The Silver Glare Fernanda
She had been driving for as long as she could remember.
Driving and driving and driving. In all that time, nothing had changed outside the stolen Malibu.
The same blue-white sky. The same gold-brown desert scrub.
The same straight ribbon of road. The Malibu’s motor had thrummed at the same pitch for hours, the tires moaning against the blacktop.
The Sierra Madres—or any other sign of the border—were still nowhere in sight.
Nothing had changed except the needle of the fuel gauge, sinking and sinking toward the red.
An unnumbered highway. The Dust Road. There were faster ways to Mexico, but when the girls had edged past the parking lot of the diner in Turner—past all the cruisers gathered there, lights flashing—Fernanda had chosen this route because Frank never sent his men down here.
Frank feared the Dust Road, and for good reason.
His mother had apparently disappeared at some motel somewhere out here.
He used to wake up screaming in his bed, tormented by nightmares.
Frank said his mother was still there, at the motel, calling to him.
A monstrous man, reduced to an infant weeping for his mami.
Those tears had been Fernanda’s salvation. Just like she used to do with her brother, she would say to the weeping Frank O’Shea, “Have you heard the story about the bear that swallowed a princess?”
“The bird who built a city?”
“The little god that made new friends?”
It was pathetic, really, how easily Frank could be soothed. Until this morning, of course, when Frank had caught her in his office with a camera in her hand.
Kyla stirred in the Malibu’s passenger seat, just in time for the two girls to watch a strange flash of silver light pass over the desert’s sky. A mountain rose into view a moment later. A solitary mountain.
Fernanda felt a cold rash of gooseflesh spread over her arms. She told herself it was absurd to fear a mountain, whatever dreams Frank might have had. No time for fear. Fernanda’s brother was waiting for her, down in Mexico. He needed her.
That was all that had kept Fernanda going these last awful months. Miguel needed her.
Kyla rubbed her forehead with a groan. “I just got the worst headache.”
The girl leaned forward, unzipped the green backpack at her feet, fished out the roll of film inside buried under all the cash. “It’s still here.”
“Did you think we had forgotten it back in Stockton?” Fernanda said.
After a long hesitation and another rub of her temples, Kyla said, “I forgot something. I just can’t remember what.”
Kyla was restless, twitchy. Terrified. Who could blame her?
On top of everything else, the fuel gauge of the Malibu let out a soft warning ding.
Another thing to feel terrible about, another mess into which Fernanda had dragged this girl she barely knew: they were on the run from a very bad man, in the middle of nowhere, about to run out of gas.
Fernanda said, “Have you heard the story of the rabbit who met the pirate king?”
“No stories. I feel like I’m already living in one of the awful ones.”
A sign for a motel appeared on the road ahead.
A rusted pickup truck was abandoned by the side of the road.
The sight of the sign sent the gooseflesh spreading to Fernanda’s shoulders.
Its paint was fresh, the wood new. Someone must have renovated the motel, put out a fresh sign.
A terrible location, but they had probably bought the land for a song.
Fernanda wondered how they could have kept the construction secret from Frank.
He might not send his men down the Dust Road, but there was not much in west Texas he did not hear of.
brAKE INN MOTEL
GAS—FOOD—WARM BEDS
HIKE SCENIC MT APACHE
5 MI THIS WAY
Fernanda must be thinking about a different place. Because if this was the motel of Frank’s nightmares, he would never have allowed anyone to reopen it. He would have burned it to the ground first, and with the new owners inside.