Chapter Twenty-Eight
WEIRDLY, I EXPECT THINGSto feel different on the other side, like I’ve transported myself into another realm, but they don’t. It’s still Sherwood Forest, still the lazy cheeping of birds and the calm rustling of pine needles and leaves.
Still, I take in a big inhale.
Then I look for my car.
It’s a ways down the road, at the bottom of the hill—where LJ left it, presumably, when he couldn’t get it in gear. Thank God for drivers who don’t know stick, I guess.
I don’t know what I’ll do, exactly. Drive as far as I can, try to get a job? I could easily take on a mechanic gig if I can get far enough away from Sherwood to be anonymous. Just a girl with motor oil streaking her palms and a broken heart in her chest who’s half-decent around a welding torch. I’ll work for cash, under the table. I’ll do anything to stay alive.
I slide into the front seat and rev the engine, almost crying with relief when it turns over easily. There’s still almost a full tank of gas. I could be in the next county before I need to stop—maybe the next state.
I put it in gear and peel out.
As I pick up speed on the forest roads, I try to form a plan. Where’s the best place to go? Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania? I fumble around for my smartphone and pull up the maps app, so at least I know where I’m going. I don’t have great reception—just two bars—but it’s enough to situate the little blue dot. I’m headed northwest, towards the edge of the forest that’s in the opposite direction of Nottingham.
Good.
The edge of the forest is close. A few minutes of driving.
I glance in the rearview. Nothing there.
Good, again.
I shift into second, then third, and keep going.
HOURS PASS.
Except I don’t mark time, don’t do anything except occasionally flick a glance to the phone screen or the gas tank. I have a rough plan to keep going, past the state line, power through West Virginia and on to Ohio—Cincinnati, maybe—but I’m taking back roads the whole time, making random turns like someone might be tailing me—which they might be, for all I can tell.
Really, all I know is that I’m driving through farmland with the sun high overhead when I see it.
Lights, flashing. Blue, red, blue. In the rearview mirror. A Ford Explorer, cop edition.
Fuck. Fuck, shit,my mind immediately goes. I glance at the dash—I’m only doing 55 in a 65 zone, what’s the problem?—when I remember. The stupid taillight. As if that matters out here where there’s not another soul for miles except maybe a guy on a tractor. But maybe it’s the principle of the thing.
I swallow hard, suddenly jittery from the lack of food since breakfast. I’m far away enough from Sherwood County that this can’t be one of the sheriff’s guys—and it’s not, I see, looking back, but a state trooper.
Briefly, I consider gunning it and trying to flee, but that hardly worked last time, and really only because Will and LJ found me. Besides, I don’t have enough gas at this point for a high-speed chase over however many miles it’d take to shake him, and it’s not like I can make a pitstop when I’m fleeing a cop.
Behind me, the Explorer flashes its headlights. As if I didn’t get that he was asking me to pull over, and not the thousands of other drivers that aren’t here on this lonely road.
I grip the wheel and breathe out.
Okay, so just play it cool. Sure, the taillight’s busted, but you’re not doing anything illegal. Maybe you can charm your way out of it.
I wince, imagining myself thrusting my boobs in the cop’s face and going all doe-eyed. Not in my nature. But at this point, what do I have to lose?
Exhaling on a slow hiss, I signal to the right and decel, pulling into what passes for a shoulder on this narrow strip of asphalt.
I wait as the cop car brakes behind me, sitting stiff as a statute in the driver’s seat. I check my face in the rearview—I look like shit. Eyes look wild, hair’s a mess. I halfheartedly push some loose strands behind my ears and lick my dry lips.
The Explorer door open and the cop saunters out—a lady cop, I notice immediately, her hair slicked back into an impossibly sleek bun the same sandy brown as her khaki uniform. So much for my flirtation plan—even if she does swing that way, I don’t think I can convincingly hit on a girl.
“Miss.”
I jump in place. The cop’s already at my window. I turn, slowly, and smile, my mind a panicked static of nothing.
“You’ve got a taillight out,” she observes, her voice a gravelly Virginia drawl. “Did you know that?”
“Yes,” I say, then quickly change my mind. “I mean, no.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Did you or didn’t you?”
“I, uh...” Shit. Is it better to know it was broken and not have it fixed, or play ignorant? “I thought I had fixed it,” I finish lamely. “I’m a mechanic.”
She gives me a look that says not a very good one, apparently. “Are you now,” she says aloud.
“Well, I’m between jobs at the moment,” I babble on, “but I’ve been doing it for years. Both as a hobby and for pay. I fixed this whole car up myself, actually. Just thought I’d take it out for a nice little spin.”
I’m word-vomiting, and I can’t stop, and the over-explanation is completely backfiring, because the lady cop looks more suspicious of me now than she did before.
“Uh huh,” she says, in an unconvinced tone. “Can I see your license and registration, please?”
Oh, fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I want to kick myself for being so stupid. Not doing anything illegal? Maren, you’re literally driving without a license. Or did that just slip your mind given how much other illegal shit you’ve been witness to these past few weeks?
“I...” I lick my Sahara-dry lips again. “I’m so sorry,” I croak. “I don’t have it on me. Just...went out for a quick drive, like I said.”
“We’re fifty miles from anywhere,” the cop says. “That’s your idea of a quick drive?”
“I...lost track of time.” Even I wouldn’t believe that excuse. The lady cop purses her lips and hitches up her belt.
“Stay right here,” she orders.
“Okay,” I squeak.
I listen to the crunch of her boots on the dirt road as she circles back to the rear of the Mustang, hear the crackle of her shoulder radio.
“Yeah, I’ve got a plate I need run. No license, probably suspended. Ready when you are.”
Suspended license? Try nonexistent one, I think. Panic ricochets through me as she reads off the plate number into her radio. Are the tags even valid? I know the inspection’s expired for sure. Shit—the title might not even be in my name, another thing it would’ve been good to get Tuck to hack into when I had the chance.
I lean my forehead on my hands on the steering wheel and try to formulate a plan: I could slam the gas and try and lose her, but there’s no way: the road is straight as an arrow, with no trees or bends to speak of, and she’d either catch up with me or call in reinforcements to fend me off somewhere down the road. I could jump out and escape on foot, but I’m no athlete, and who’s to say she wouldn’t hesitate to use lethal force? I could...
“Are you aware this car is stolen, miss?”
“Huh?” I say, stupidly. No, actually, I wasn’t, I want to say. Because it isn’t.
Except that maybe it is. This is my car in every sense—by rights, by sweat equity, by the justice of the universe—but maybe not in the one that counts. Because it’s—
“Registered to a John Lackland out of Sherwood County,” the lady cop goes on. “Reported stolen weeks ago.” She raises an eyebrow, pausing to let me fill in with a guilty confession.
I don’t give in, even as my heart spikes with adrenaline.
“Oh, really?” I say. I’m stalling. Stalling because I’m out of ideas, out of time, out of luck.
The law says I stole the car.
The law says I’m not allowed to drive.
The law says my fucking taillight should be working.
But the law is bullshit.
The lady cop jingles her belt, readying her cuffs.
“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to step—”
But the growl of an engine cuts her off.
A sleek, black Range Rover crunches over the gravel and pulls to a stop just next to us. The window rolls down as a man’s voice from inside says “I’ll take it from here, Officer Beale.”
It’s not a cop, not a sheriff’s vehicle, and for a moment I have the faintest, slightest hope that one of them has come to get me—that Rob or Will or Tuck or even fucking LJ will be the one to get out of that car and whisk me away to safety.
You probably want us to know where you are if you’re in trouble, Maren. The quicker, the better.
But there’s never been a Range Rover in that garage. Least of all one with a UVA Alum license plate.
And when the driver gets out, it isn’t any of them.
The man who exits the SUV and strides around to pin me in his gaze is handsome, young, dressed in black from his sunglasses to his boots, and somehow familiar. But I can’t place him.
Not until he lowers his Ray-Bans.
“Why, if it isn’t Matilda.”
He smiles a sickening smile.
“Guy Gisbourne. You’ll be coming with me now.”