Still nothing from room twelve.
I pulled out before luck changed its mind.
The motel disappeared in the rearview mirror one bright stripe at a time.
I kept the headlights low until I cleared the lot, then took the first county road that climbed back toward the timber. The pickup was too big, too smooth, too full of Dex. His map was still shoved beside the console. His water bottle sat in the cup holder. His jacket lay over the back of the passenger seat, and the cab smelled like leather, dust, and the man I’d just left sleeping in an empty bed.
My hands tightened on the wheel.
The road blurred for a breath.
I blinked hard and kept driving.
Regret was a luxury. I had maybe fifteen minutes before Dex woke, maybe less if the missing heat beside him worked faster than exhaustion. He’d come after me angry. He’d come after me smart. He’d look at the empty restraints on the nightstand and the keys gone from his jeans, and every bit of warmth in that room would turn into a problem with my name on it.
Not my name.
Not yet.
A sign flashed past in the headlights.
BEARCLAW MOUNTAIN PASS
The road narrowed as it climbed. Dawn thinned the sky behind the ridge, turning the trees into black cutouts. Fog sat low in the dips, silver where the headlights touched it. Gravel appeared at the shoulder where a service road broke off behind an old wooden sign for a closed trailhead.
Good enough.
I turned the pickup down the service road, drove until the motel was a lifetime behind me, and parked under the thickest stand of trees I could find. I wiped the steering wheel with the hem of my overshirt because panic made people ridiculous, then stopped because Dex already knew exactly who had taken his truck.
He just didn’t know who.
I left the keys on the front tire where he’d find them if he tracked the pickup before some idiot hiker did.
Generosity looked strange at four in the morning.
So did guilt.
I walked back to the main road with my boots half-laced and my thighs still unsteady from him. The burner phone felt tiny in my hand when I pulled it from my pocket.
One bar.
I typed fast.
JADE:
Need pickup. Closed trailhead off Bearclaw. No headlights until the turn.
For three breaths, nothing happened.
Then the phone buzzed.
CRYSTAL:
Ten minutes. Stay off the road.
I looked down the empty road, then back toward the trees hiding Dex’s truck.
JADE:
