Chapter 60
Night Twenty-Five
Betty
Betty had gotten used to traveling by night by now.
She wished she had the luxury of peering out the window of the bus at sunset or in the midday sun.
She was jealous of Levi and how he’d seen the country, just as he said he would do since the time he’d torn the advertisement for that contest of United States landmarks out of an old magazine from the school library.
Betty had been terrified that they would get in trouble for vandalism, but he said, “Seriously, Bets, this was published in”—he flipped it over and searched for the date on the cover—“oh my god, this magazine is a decade old. You think they’re going to notice a page missing?
No wonder we’re all such idiots here, the magazine collection is ancient.
How are we supposed to actually learn anything? ”
She wanted to tell him not to use the Lord’s name in vain, not because she cared, but because if anyone heard him and reported back to her dad, Levi would be shunned to his room again for a week minimum with only one meal a day and no contact with the rest of them.
The first time it happened, the school called once asking about his absences, but the assistant principal had recently become a member of her dad’s church, and then no one called again.
She also wanted to tell him that he wasn’t an idiot.
He had an actual plan for getting out. That made him the smartest one in the family.
There wasn’t much to see at night now anyway.
A long stretch of deserted land. If it had been daytime, she’d probably see pockets of tumbleweeds, some cacti.
She purposely chose indirect bus routes, going north, switching stations to go south.
She hadn’t seen anyone trailing her this past week at the hostel, but then, Las Vegas was nearly as crowded as Manhattan had been, and look what happened there.
Run.
Last night, when she couldn’t sleep, she finally googled Julian.
Not just the obituary, though that, distressingly, was the first link that popped up.
But deeper, into some of the back pages.
No one had ever taught her how to be a citizen of the internet, and as ridiculous as it sounded in 2026, Betty honestly was just not good at it.
All the other girls her age were on, like, seven different apps posing in bikinis and with ornate manicures, and Betty was still half scared that she’d stumble down a link that could lead her straight to hell.
She didn’t really believe that, but also, eighteen years of her father’s sermons didn’t just evaporate.
She thought that the farther she got from Georgia, the safer she would feel.
But actually, the farther she got from Georgia, the more she realized how little she knew. And that she would never be truly safe.
Run.
There was very little on the internet about Julian.
A donation from him and his wife to a police fund; a donation from him and his wife to his daughter’s middle school, and she found that only by clicking on the school’s newsletter archives.
His wife’s obituary caught her eye. Nothing identifying about Julian other than what she already knew, but she scrolled down to the comments, the memory book as the funeral home put it.
There were over twenty comments in the memory book. Most innocuous. RIP! And Deepest Condolences! But one, from a Richard Watkins, stood out.
Simone—your mother was a superstar. She always sent your dad into the office with a fresh packed lunch because she knew he would skip it otherwise; she always checked in with us when the cases were tough and the hours were long.
She never held it against me when I needed your dad in the middle of the night or when a two-day trip stretched into a five-day one.
She raised you because your dad was off fighting bad guys too often to be around, but she made sure to let you know how much he loved you.
I’ll miss your mom, and I’m so sorry for your loss.
I have your dad’s back always, and now I have yours too.
On the thin twin mattress at the hostel, Betty’s heart felt like it was going to detonate, like she already knew what she was about to uncover. She curled herself into a fetal position, her face illuminated by the glow of her phone, and typed “Richard Watkins” into Google.
Her hand covered her mouth when she pulled up a news article about a triple homicide outside Baltimore. He was quoted in it. Richard Watkins was FBI. Julian had been FBI.
Betty had never believed in coincidences, and now she was sure. Julian had been killed because of her. She bolted upright in bed, packed her bag. Checked the bus schedule and reformulated her plan. She sped up her itinerary, got the hell out of Vegas and onto a bus that night.
All of this had to end. She couldn’t keep on running. It had to end immediately.
She was going to be the one to do it. Not just for what had been taken from her. But for Julian too.