“Where to now?” Tyler asked, slowing as they approached the next light.
Regan still watched behind them. A car soared out of the hotel parking lot, bouncing at the dip where entry met road, and headed their way.
“Circle back to the highway,” she said. “They’re coming.”
Tyler floored it and squealed into a U-turn, the truck’s heavy hind end resisting the move, as the light turned red. Regan slid all over the slick seat before righting herself and grabbing the seat belt.
“Sorry.”
“Get on the ramp going back to where we were,” she instructed, shoving the belt into the latch with her right hand. It was becoming easier to compensate for the sling, but she still wished she could get rid of it.
“Don’t you think it would be easier to lose them on surface streets?”
“Yes. But do as I said.”
He did, and just as they got to the top of the ramp, before it curved right to merge, she said, “Cut left.”
Tyler didn’t question her this time. The truck plowed over a tall, narrow reflector that pingpingpinged against the undercarriage. Then they were jouncing over rough terrain at top speed.
“Down there.” Regan pointed to the lower road, then put her hand on the ceiling to keep from hitting her head as they bounced. “Then make the next left, through the shopping center.”
Once they were in the parking lot, she chanced a look over her shoulder again. The car that had flown out of the motel parking lot was stuck off the road at the top of the ramp, unmoving. She assumed the little tires had gotten caught in the soft earth, maybe even in the churned-up tracks from Tyler’s truck.
“Get out of their line of sight,” she told Tyler. “Angle away from the highway and keep driving. I have to think.”
Something that was getting harder and harder to do.
Chapter Six
“What kind of network do you belong to, anyway?” Kelsey cursed, pacing and checking the signal on Van’s phone every few steps, knowing full well the lack of bars wasn’t going to change.
Cursing herself, too. She’d screwed up. When they got off the highway she’d directed them into a quiet residential area, figuring the fake cops would expect them to stick with bright lights and retail traffic. But none of them had checked the gas gauge, and they’d run out of gas a few miles from the highway.
She’d called the police back home, who at first claimed they knew nothing but then told her they had her mother on the other line. She’d started crying and had barely been able to give them Van’s number. But before her mother could call her back, the car had sputtered to a stop in a pocket with no signal for the phone.
Van managed to get the vehicle to the side of the road. Tom found a gas can in the trunk and headed off to fill it—assuming he could find a gas station open at four in the morning. He’d been gone a while, and the tension of waiting made Kelsey want to puke. While Van dozed on the front seat, she’d walked a couple of blocks in each direction trying to get a signal, to no avail. They were sitting ducks with no protection and no way, still, to contact her mother.
She desperately wanted her mother.
Not just because terror was digging in and she was frantic to hand over the controls to someone. Not just because that same terror tried to convince her that her mother was dead, or mortally wounded, or abducted. But because her mother was the one with answers.
Since her mother’s call, she’d been reacting, thinking ahead, looking forward. Not back. But since Tom had left and all she could do was pace here, worrying, she’d had time to entertain the parade of questions that had been warming up, ready to march through her skull. What the hell was happening, and why?
“You should be resting,” Van grumbled through the car’s open window. “You’re gonna call attention to us.”
“No one’s up.” But Van was right. She had to calm down and be the person her mother had trained her to be. They should be ready, with a plan, as soon as Tom returned with gas.
In the dark stillness an engine approached, sounding as if it was moving slowly. Kelsey froze. “Van.”
“What?”
“Get out of the car.”
“Why?”
“Someone’s coming.”
“So get in here and hide.”
“They might recognize the car. Come on.” She yanked open the door and pulled her roommate out by the sleeve.
“All right! Geez. Where are we going?”
Kelsey had cataloged their surroundings while she paced. “There.” She pointed to a shed at the rear of a corner property. They raced to it, Kelsey praying it wouldn’t be locked. It wasn’t, and she exhaled in a gush.
They ducked inside and pulled the door closed. The angle of the door blocked their view, even if they cracked it, and the other side was latched. They didn’t have time to undo it without the movement being seen. Kelsey strained to see in the darkness. There was a single small window above her head. She thought she could climb the stack of boxes underneath, if they didn’t collapse under her. She tested them and when they held, she gingerly made her way up the stack until she could see through the dirty window. Van braced her leg against the box and her torso against Kelsey, helping her maintain her balance.
“What do you see?” Van whispered.
The car they’d heard rolled slowly by, barely above an idle, and pulled over in front of their stolen car. The streetlight down the block glimmered on the bar on top of the vehicle.
“Shit. It’s the cops. The real ones.”
“Then let’s go! They’ll help us!” Van let go of Kelsey. The edge of the box under her right foot crumpled, and she dropped to the cement floor. She caught Van’s arm before she opened the door.
“No! How are we going to explain being in here? They won’t know anything about my mom or the school. They’ll think we’re trying to steal or something, and if they take us to the station Tom will never know where we are. He’ll be alone.”
For a moment she wavered, thinking that might be best for him. If he came back and found them gone, he could put the gas in the car and make his way home, where he’d be safe. Away from her. The police would probably send Van home, too. Then Kelsey could shed the burden of responsibility for her friends. Shed the fear they’d be hurt, or worse, as long as they were with her.
But Van, who’d only known her for a couple of months but seemed to be able to look straight into her head, shrank away from the door and into the darker shadows at the back of the shed.
“Forget it, girlfriend. I’m in this for the long haul. So’s Tom.”
“Fine.” Kelsey hunkered down behind a tarp-covered lawnmower and a kid’s battery-powered Jeep. “Don’t say you never had the chance to get out of this.”
She folded her arms around her knees and listened hard. She heard the squawk of the police radio but no clear words. Two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, were low but calm. The clear, still, predawn air carried sound well. Kelsey could only make out a phrase here and there, but was afraid to move and give them away.
“…plates stolen in California…local vehicle…call owner?”
“…the tow…and Captain…not…canvass the neighborhood.”
Kelsey’s heart started to race again. Had he said they were going to canvass the neighborhood, or that he didn’t want to? The woman said something sounding like “abandoned car” and Kelsey held her breath, hoping. A few minutes later she heard two car doors close. The engine didn’t start right away.
She tried to plan. If the cops waited for a tow truck and the car got hauled away, they’d be on foot. She and Van would wait for Tom and then they’d have to find their way to another public area where they could lose themselves. That could be a good thing, because the fake cops would still be looking for their car. But it was a very bad thing, because she was exhausted and her friends must be, too. Tom most of all, after walking for miles. Plus…
“Shit,” she breathed.
“What?” Van whispered back.
“Our bags.”
Van gasped. “Shit.”
Their bags were in the car. Kelsey’s ID and a couple of emergency credit cards were in a card case in her back pocket. She had Van’s phone in her hand. But everything else they’d dragged along was in the car, including her math notebook with her name and dorm address on the inside front cover. She wanted to cry. Her mother never would have let her label stuff. Why hadn’t she taken it out of her backpack when she left?
She’d thought she was so tough, so prepared. Especially because she’d believed her mother was crazy. But she wasn’t. This was real. People were after her, she had almost no one to trust, and she was making mistake after mistake. Kelsey dropped her head onto her arms and took a deep breath, trying not to fall apart. She didn’t have the luxury.
She lost track of how much time passed. It couldn’t have been much, because the sky hadn’t started to lighten. At least, not what she could see of it through the tiny windows in the shed. After a while there was a sound like a screen door opening, then slapping shut. Scuffing footsteps, maybe in bedroom slippers, scraped across the sidewalk. Then she heard a man’s voice.
“What’s going on, officers?”
A car door opened but didn’t close again. There was clinking, and Kelsey imagined the male cop hitching up his pants, making his belt rattle the handcuffs and stuff hanging from it. But the voice was the woman’s.
They must have been on the lawn, closer to the shed, because Kelsey could hear them talking clearly now.
“Do you recognize this car, sir?”
“No. I don’t think so. Why?”
“Did you happen to notice when it appeared?”
“Um…” Kelsey imagined him scratching his head. “Nah. Don’t think it was there when I let the dog out. ’Bout ten last night. Someone call you about it?”
“You’re up early.”
“Yeah, I leave for work at five. Early shift. Look, am I in some kind of trouble?”
“No, sir. Thank you for your time.” Shoes scratched against concrete.
“Is the car stolen?” the guy from the house asked.
“Best get to work now, sir. Thank you.”
“Hey!” The man didn’t sound pleased at being given the brush-off. Kelsey smirked.
The police radio squawked again, something about a burglary in progress. The man cop shouted to his partner and started the engine. A moment later the door slammed and the car moved off, fast.
Van started to get up. Kelsey caught and held her until they heard the screen door open and close again. They rose to their feet and edged to the door, cracking it just a little and squinting through.
“Dog,” Van whispered, and they closed it quickly again, listening to the animal snuffling around. Praying it didn’t sense them in the shed.
It did. First it gave an excited little yip, then a sharper bark. Kelsey wedged her fingers into the trim around the edge of the door to hold it closed. She jumped as the dog started to scratch at the siding, and clung tighter. Van stared at her, eyes wide, lips pressed together. Her chin trembled when they heard the screen open yet again.
“Kinky! What are you doing? Get over here.”
Kelsey let out a snort. Kinky? Luckily, the dog’s bark covered the sound. His feet rustled against the dry grass.
“Kinky! Come!”
The dog gave one last bark and ran off, receiving praise from his owner. Kelsey covered her mouth to hold in her laughter, but Van started coughing with her effort. Kelsey shushed her, which made the laughter worse for both of them.
Until the shed door opened.
Sheer nerve kept Kelsey from screaming as the door jerked out of her hand, ripping two fingernails. She barely felt it, clenching her hand in a fist and swinging. Van let out a stifled yelp and fell back into the shed, away from their attacker.
“Whoa!” The man in front of her caught Kelsey’s right fist in his hand, but his instinct to dodge threw him off balance. She followed with a left uppercut before she realized it was Tom. She pulled the punch, but it clipped the underside of his chin and he sprawled onto his back.
Kelsey leaped out next to him and crouched at his side. “Tom!” she whispered urgently. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
He groaned and worked his jaw with his fingers. “I think I bit my tongue.”
“God, I’m sorry. I thought you were—”
“I know.” He let her help him sit up. “You’ve got to stop doing that to me.”
Van, who’d followed Kelsey out of the shed and closed the door, wrinkled her nose. “Hon, I hope you didn’t land in what I’m smellin’.”
Kelsey leaned to look at Tom’s back. “Ew.” He’d definitely landed in Kinky’s fresh poo. “Van, see if there’s anything in the shed to clean him off. At least it’s your jacket,” she tried. “Could have been your shirt.”
Tom grimaced. “You know how hard it is to clean leather?” He pushed to his feet. Kelsey took the wad of paper towels Van handed her and scraped off the bulk of the mess, which luckily came off in one chunk. The dark stain left behind was still going to stink, though. She barely stopped herself from apologizing again.
“How did you know we were in there?” Van asked.
“I saw the cop car and backtracked through the neighbor’s yard.” He pointed to a thicket of trees separating the yard they were in from the house behind. “Crawled through there and watched until they left. I heard the dog scraping at the shed, and since you weren’t around, I figured you were in there.”
“Or gone,” Van said.
Tom looked directly into Kelsey’s eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”
A frisson went up her spine and something seemed to burst inside her chest. “No.” She wanted to hug him, but her sense of self-preservation told her they were wasting time. “Did you get the gas?”
“Yeah, the can’s next to the car.”
“Let’s get out of here. The cops might still call for a tow on their way to that burglary or whatever.”
“Where are we going?”
They followed Kelsey to the car and watched as she filled the tank. She took the keys from Van and dumped the can into the trunk.
“Wait.” Tom stripped off his jacket. “Better put this back there, too. Keep the stench out of the car.” He dropped it in and quietly closed the trunk lid. “Where to?” he asked again.
“You’ll see.” She’d remembered something her mother had taught her when she’d been learning how to drive. She wished she’d thought of it earlier. They could have been resting instead of hiding and walking miles and miles for gas. And the car wouldn’t reek so friggin’ much. Putting the jacket in the trunk hadn’t helped.
But lamenting poor choices didn’t make the results any better. She started the car and put it in gear with a spark of optimism. They were going to be okay.
She hoped.
***
“What next?” Tyler asked Regan quietly after he’d driven aimlessly for nearly half an hour. Restraint tightened his voice, but his frustration had been building for the past quarter hour.
“I don’t know yet.”
“We can’t drive around all night. What’s left of it.” The sky had already turned gray on the eastern horizon.
“I know.”
“So—”
“Just shut up and let me think, Tyler.”
His mouth clamped shut and his hands clenched and released on the steering wheel, and she felt bad for her outburst. Logic said the likeliest explanation for the guys showing up at the motel was that Tyler had called them. But she was still here. She was beginning to trust him. Eighteen years of conditioning were hard to break, but she hadn’t run from him.
Nor had she come up with a plan. Fear for Kelsey and uncertainty of her whereabouts made it hard to think of a strategy. Every few minutes she tried Van’s phone and got voice mail every time, usually after a recording stating the network was trying to find the subscriber she was calling. She hoped that only me
ant there was no signal.
She was not prepared for this. For eighteen years she’d been training and planning escape routes and survival techniques, but never on the fly. Time was not a factor in her planning. Now all she could do was react, and her tired brain wasn’t up to the task.
“We should find another place to rest,” Tyler suggested. “I’m whupped, and you’ve been through a lot more than I have tonight.”
She couldn’t believe it was still the same night. It seemed they’d been on the run for months. “I need to find Kelsey.”
“She might not even be around here. They probably kept going.”
“If they had, they’d be home by now and at the police station. They would have called. They got off the highway.” She looked around, her instincts almost screaming that her daughter was close. She knew getting back on the highway would be leaving her behind, and she’d never do that.
She turned back to Tyler as he approached a stop sign. “Drop me here. I’ll find my way.”
“Screw that!” He threw the truck into park and let it idle. “I doubt you can even stand. If you can’t make the decision, I will.”
Feeling as though she was drowning in inertia, Regan looked out the side window at the house they were next to. It looked like a parking lot, with six cars crammed into the driveway and the yard next to it.
Then it clicked. She knew what Kelsey would have done.
“Turn the truck around.” She directed Tyler back to the commercial strip near the highway, then up and down cross roads, looking for the right place. The sky had lightened considerably and they were close to dawn, but all the retail parking lots were empty. Even the twenty-four-hour superstore’s lot only had three cars, probably belonging to employees.
Finally, she spotted it.
“There. Pull in there.” She pointed across the street. Tyler gave her a quizzical look but complied, making a left turn and cutting through a furniture warehouse lot to get back on the road. A second later, he pulled into the car dealership she’d indicated.
Fight or Flight Page 8