Reyes appears beside me. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah, okay.” But before I leave I turn back to the glass and pound with everything I’ve got. “Get comfortable, asshole. You’re going to be in there for a long time.”
Then I turn around and walk out, because I've got a woman to bring home. There's exactly one way out of these mountains that ever touches the interstate. Every back road for sixty miles funnels down to the same interchange, and Lana doesn't know that. I've driven these roads my whole life. So when a county unit radios a plate matching her car running south toward the on-ramp, I don't panic. I point my truck at the one place she has to pass through, and I get on the phone to make damn sure it's the last place she passes through tonight.
CHAPTER 11
LANA
The interstate risesup out of the dark like a decision I can't take back. There are six lanes, maybe eight. It’s hard to tell between the semi-trucks and the dust storm. It's been hours and hours of two-lane county roads with nothing but my headlights and the dotted white line for company so the trucks are a welcome change.
I keep driving. Then the interchange swims up green and enormous. It promises cities I've never seen and don't particularly want to. All I need to do is follow the signs.North. South. Merge.
I don’t have a plan. It’s just picking a direction and disappearing into it. This is the part I'm supposed to be good at. It’s what I’ve done all my life. So why are my hands shaking on the wheel?
Truth is, I know why. I've known for two hundred miles. I just haven't been brave enough to say it out loud in the empty car.
I shouldn't have left Jordan.
The thought has been riding shotgun since I pulled out of the driveway. It’s only getting louder with every mile marker. That part of this process is new. I keep waiting for the old, carefulvoice to shut it down. The one that knows how this goes. The one that's kept me alive for years. But that voice is quiet tonight, and the only thing left is a different one. It’s low and steady. It sounds an awful lot like a man who reads Gatsby and writes his phone number inside a kitchen cabinet.
You're not alone anymore.
I thought leaving was the right thing to do. But the truth comes for me. Driving seventy miles an hour with his coat still in my passenger seat because I couldn't make myself leave it behind makes it impossible to ignore.
I didn't leave to protect him.
I left because staying meant believing I get to keep something good. And I have never once in my life believed that. But maybe it isn’t too late. A plan starts to take shape in the corners of my mind. It’s a bad plan, but a plan nonetheless.
I'll drive until I hit the next real town. I'll find a motel with a parking spot I can see from the bed. And then when I'm somewhere Jordan can't show up and undo me with those dimples I'll call the number I have, in fact, already memorized. I'll apologize. I'll tell him the whole truth. I’ll tell him that I love him and that the two weeks with him were the only time in my whole life I've felt like a person instead of a target.
It will hurt, but he deserves to know and I won't ask him to come. I'll just let him know that I wanted to stay. It isn't enough. But it's the bravest thing I've got.
I spend the next ten miles rehearsing the wordsJordan, it's me, please don't hang up.Jordan, it’s Lana, I’m sorry. I was wrong.
I’m still talking to myself when the dark up ahead stops being dark. My foot comes off the gas before my brain catches up. It’s an old reflex. My body always knows first. The golden night sky is peppered with flashing lights in red and blue. There are so many that the whole horizon flickers with them.
I get closer and everything comes into focus. There are lights strung clear across the interstate. It’s not one or two cruisers, it’s awallof them. Light bars stutter against the trees and flares burn orange down the shoulder.
There is an impressive line of vehicles angled nose-to-nose across every lane like a gate someone built across the night. Or like a roadblock. My stomach drops straight through the floorboard. The four words detonate in my head all over again.Cute town, baby girl.
He found me once with a phone. He found me twice. He lit a fucking school on fire. Is it possible that he found a way to put a wall across the only road out of Whispering Pines? Of course it’s possible. I’ve let my guard down for fourteen days. Absolutely anything is possible at this point.
I'm already scanning for the U-turn. Maybe I can cut across the median or back up and take the exit ramp I just passed. My heart races. I’m so desperately tired of running, but I don’t have any other choice. My hands have a plan my heart hasn't approved yet, because that's how I've survived. It’s what I need to do.
I put both hands on the wheel and prepare for a NASCAR-adjacent maneuver. But then… I see him.
I have to blink a few times to make sure my mind isn’t playing tricks on me and that he’s really here. But I close my eyes and open them and he’s still there.
He’s standing in the gap at the center of the line, where the cruisers leave just enough room for one car to pass. There’s no fire helmet. No gear at all. It’s Jordan, in a jacket and jeans. I'd know him in the dark from a mile off, lit up red and blue and bracketed by every law enforcement vehicle in a hundred miles.
I swallow down my nerves.Why is he here? And how? I hope nothing awful has happened.But as I get closer, I see that Jordan doesn’t look worried at all. It’s just him, planted in themiddle of the interstate like he grew there. It’s like he's been standing there his whole life, waiting for my headlights.
I stop the car.
I'm aware of officers. I catch a flare-lit man waving me into the gap out of the corner of my eye. I feel my tires crunching onto the gravel shoulder. I feel myself throwing it in park with the engine still running. And then I'm aware of nothing at all except the door opening.
From there it’s a blur. There’s the warmth of Jordan's hands closing around my arms. There’s the sensation of him pulling me up out of the seat followed by the comfort of his embrace collapsing me into his chest.
