Chapter 57
NOAH
The weight of the duffel bag in my hand feels like it’s filled with lead, pulling my shoulder down, dragging my entire soul toward the shitty linoleum floor. I don’t look back at the bed. I can’t.
If I see the silhouette of her body under that thin hoodie one more time, sitting on the edge and staring at her feet, I won’t be able to move. My legs will turn to stone, and I’ll stay here until the Marshals kick the door in and end us both.
This is what’s best for her. I know it is.
I set the panhandler’s phone by the door, along with five hundred dollars—everything I can spare. It feels so fucking wrong.
“Just leave,” she snaps at me, her voice callous. “I don’t need anything else from you.”
I slip out the door, the ache in my chest brutal. The humid night air hits me, smelling of diesel and impending rain. The motel walkway is empty, the flickering neon sign of the Desert Oasis buzzing like a trapped insect.
Every step toward the parking lot feels like a betrayal of her. Every inch of distance I put between myself and the room is a fucking knife twisting in my gut. I am tearing my own heart out and leaving it in that motel.
But she just sees me as a monster.
I find a late-nineties sedan tucked in the shadows at the edge of the lot.
It takes me less than thirty seconds to pop the lock and another ten to scramble the wires under the dash.
When the engine turns over, coughing a cloud of grey smoke into the dark, I feel a physical ache in my chest so sharp I have to gasp for air.
One person. That is the rule. That is the only way she survives.
I throw the car into reverse and peel out, the tires screeching a mournful cry against the asphalt. As I accelerate toward the main road, a cruiser blurs past in the opposite direction, blue and red lights painting the interior of my stolen car in rhythmic stabs of color.
My heart jumps in my chest, but they speed past, not paying me any mind.
The silence in the car is a vacuum that sucks the oxygen out of my lungs. I reach out and jam a finger onto the power button of the radio, needing noise—any noise—to drown out the sound of Rue’s voice in my head.
The speakers crackle to life, static hissing before a signal catches.
“—update on the multi-state manhunt for Thomas Peterson.
Sources close to the investigation suggest a breakthrough in the Moccasin Lake disappearance of Ruth Iverson.
Authorities are now questioning the 'victim' narrative as new evidence suggests she may, indeed, be a willing accomplice. Marshals are en route to Maricopa…” The announcer's voice blurs into a high-pitched ring.
My breath hitches in my chest. They aren’t looking for a victim anymore. They’re looking for an accomplice.
The image of her back at the farmhouse, the blood on her hands, the way she looked at me with that terrifying, beautiful loyalty—it all crashes over me. I left her there to play a part she has already destroyed. I left her to face the world all alone.
While I dipped out like a fucking coward because I thought it would somehow redeem us both.
I slam my foot on the brake and make a U-turn.