Crystal called past her to me. “Take her somewhere she can sleep.”
“I can hear you,” Jade said.
“Good. Then obey me for once.”
Jade pointed at her. “You’re getting mouthy now because you have legal representation.”
“I’m getting mouthy because I’m alive.”
That shut both of us up.
Crystal smiled a little, tired and shaky. “Go.”
Jade wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand like she was angry at her own face.
Then she walked to my truck.
I followed.
The silence lasted past the first mile marker out of Whispering Pines.
The road widened past the last strip of businesses. Morning came in hard and bright over the county route, catching dust on the windshield and lighting the green slopes beyond town. Jade sat in the passenger seat with one knee angled toward the door, hands folded too tightly in her lap.
This time, the passenger seat held Jade and nothing I had to pretend about, which made the cab feel unfamiliar.
“My house is twenty minutes out,” I said.
She kept her gaze on the windshield. “Your small normal house.”
“Yes.”
“Not a cabin in the woods.”
“No.”
“Good. I’m over rustic.”
“You did great with the cabin.”
“I threatened you with a dull kitchen knife.”
“That was one of your stronger moments.”
Her attention came to me then.
A smile tried and failed. “Dex.”
She wasn’t throwing my name at me this time. She was asking where we stood.
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t.”
“Then tell me.”
She faced the road again. “I don’t know how to stop.”
“Stop what?”
