Chapter 23
NOAH
Seventy-four miles to empty.
The numbers mock me, a ticking countdown to our next disaster, I’m pretty fucking sure.
The adrenaline that propelled me out of the Glenrio Travel Center, that had me scooping up the dog and ripping open the door of a running vehicle, is bleeding out of my system.
In its place, a cold, hollow ache settles deep in my bones.
Maybe it was the wrong decision. Maybe we should’ve waited it out.
I grip the leather steering wheel tighter, my knuckles white. The interstate is a straight, black ribbon cutting through the desert, but it feels way too exposed right now.
Every time a pair of headlights appears in the rearview mirror, my chest tightens, my muscles locking up as I wait for the flashing red and blues to ignite the night.
I can’t keep doing this. Not on the main artery of this state.
Up ahead, a faded, bullet-riddled sign reflects in the high beams: See Historic Route 66! Next Right.
I don’t even signal. I just jerk the wheel, taking the exit ramp a little too fast. The SUV’s suspension absorbs the dip, and the smooth hum of I-40 is instantly replaced by the rough, rhythmic thud of cracked asphalt and overgrown weeds snapping against the undercarriage.
“Um… Where are we going?” Rue’s voice is almost a whisper. It barely carries over the sound of the road.
“Off the interstate,” I answer, my voice rougher than I intend. “We can't be out in the open when the sun comes up. Not in a stolen car. The sun’s gonna rise, and they’re gonna be looking for us.”
Her lips part as if she might protest, but she doesn’t say anything. Rue just lets out a sigh and turns her gaze to the window. I’m still warring with the fact that she didn’t stay at that travel plaza.
I don’t get it. She got me this far. Does she really think she owes me more than that? Is she really that delusional? Because I’ve killed a man, too.
I swallow the copper taste of guilt coating the back of my throat. I made you get in this car. I really, honestly did.
I mean, I said it to take the burden off her conscience.
I said it so she could tell herself she was a victim, a hostage to a desperate fugitive.
But looking at her now—pale, shivering in her thin clothes, covered in the dirt of the bar ditch—I wonder if I just confirmed every horrific thing she’s thought about me since I dragged myself out of Moccasin Lake.
I’m no longer just the guy who got framed. I’m the guy who made her an accomplice to grand theft auto. And I’m a dick. A big one.
Sometimes loyalty is a disease. And it’s our disease.
I look at Rue in the dim light. She’s loyal to a fault, driven by a debt she thinks she owes me. And I’m using that loyalty to drag her straight to hell.
Honestly, I could have left her at the travel center. I could have locked the doors and peeled out, forcing her to call her mother and go back to her safe, clean life in California.
But I couldn’t do it. The thought of watching her shrink in the rearview mirror suddenly terrified me more than the goddamned Marshals.
“There’s a heater,” I mutter, reaching over to adjust the climate control on the console. “Turn the vents toward you. You’re freezing.”
“I'm fine,” her teeth chatter, not looking at me.
“Come on, Rue. You’re shaking. Just turn on the fucking heat.”
She reaches out with a trembling hand and adjusts the vent, a blast of warm air filling the cabin. Bullet, who has been pacing the backseat anxiously, finally settles down, letting out a heavy sigh as the warmth hits him.
We drive for another ten miles down the desolate stretch of Route 66. The world out here is a ghost town. Decaying gas stations, collapsed billboards, and empty buildings flash by like skeletons in the dark. It’s the perfect place to disappear, at least for a few hours.
There’s bound to be somewhere we can go.
The adrenaline crash hits me all at once.
My vision blurs at the edges, and a wave of pure, unadulterated exhaustion threatens to pull my head down.
My bad arm throbs in time with my pulse, a sharp reminder that Netty’s fucking antibiotics can only do so much if I keep pushing my body past its breaking point.
We need a breather. We both do. Rue has a concussion, and if I keep driving like this, I’m going to put us in a ditch permanently.
Which wouldn’t be the worst outcome.
But it wouldn’t keep Rue safe either.
Up ahead, I take a hard turn onto a dirt road, and then spot a dirt path branching off, mostly hidden by a dense cluster of overgrown mesquite trees and a crumbling stone wall—maybe the ruins of an old tourist trap from the fifties. Or something else entirely. I don’t care.
I ease my foot off the gas and turn the wheel, guiding the SUV off the road and into the shadows.
The tires crunch over dry brush and loose gravel for almost two hundred feet, as I navigate behind the stone wall, pulling us deep into the thicket where the car will be completely obscured from the road.
“Noah…”
I shift into park and hesitate for a fraction of a second before reaching out and killing the engine.
Without the hum of the tires or the roar of the motor, the desert early morning presses in on us. The only sounds are the ticking of the cooling engine block, the wind rustling through the dry branches, and Rue’s ragged, uneven breathing.
Or maybe that’s mine.
I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes, letting out a long, slow exhale.
“Why did we stop?” Rue asks. The panic in her voice is back, sharp and breathless. “We only have sixty miles of gas left. We can’t be stranded out here.”
“We aren’t stranded,” I answer quietly, keeping my eyes closed. “But we can’t drive a stolen car with New Mexico plates in broad daylight. We’re sitting on it until dusk. Then we’ll find a station off the main highway, use the cash you found, and get to Maricopa. Somehow.”
“But…” She turns in the seat, peering out into the thick brush. She can’t see anything. We’re fully obscured, and this car is too old to have a location available to pull up, thankfully. “We really should keep—”
“Rue,” I cut her off, turning my head to look at her.
“You have a concussion. You haven’t eaten, and you’re throwing up.
My arm is bleeding again. If we don’t stop and decompress for five fucking minutes, we aren’t going to make it to Arizona.
We’re going to make a bigger mistake than this car, and we’re going to get caught. Both of us.”
She stares at me, her green eyes wide and luminous in the shadows.
The defiance in her expression slowly crumbles, giving way to the sheer exhaustion she’s been fighting since the crash.
She looks so small, swallowed by the passenger seat of a car that isn't hers, trapped in a life she didn’t ask for.
Without thinking, I reach across the center console. My fingers brush against her arm.
She flinches, a tiny, involuntary movement that feels like a knife to my gut.
I pull my hand back immediately, my jaw clenching. “Try to sleep,” I tell her, my voice turning cold again to mask the sting. “I’ll keep watch for now.”
I turn away, staring out the windshield into the black void of the desert, wondering how much longer I can keep this wall up before the proximity of her completely breaks me.