Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Jack spent the twenty minutes Carla was in the bedroom pacing and panicking. A dark-haired woman over fifty poked her head around the corner, saw him, and disappeared as quickly as she came, which did nothing for his nerves.
After a few minutes of debating the ethics of running in place or resorting to calisthenics in a wealthy person’s home, Jack forced himself to sit on the couch.
Bag held tightly in his lap, he tried to focus on taking slow, deep breaths.
But nothing worked. He was too jittery, too afraid that this was some kind of cruel joke, that Carla would change her mind or leave without him.
If that happened, he’d just have to steal a car. It wouldn’t be hard. Nobody locked their car at the gas station. Some people even left the keys in the ignition. And if he got arrested? It wouldn’t have a lasting impact on his record.
But he felt more than a little guilty about causing someone the sort of stress and despair that surely went along with exiting the gas station and realizing your car was gone.
More importantly, he was terrified of being chased by the police and paralyzed at the thought of being stuffed into a jail cell.
But if Carla had a car… That was different. Suddenly, it was less important to plan ahead. They could just leave, and see what happened.
If Carla ever came out of the bedroom, anyway.
She emerged after what felt like hours, wearing a cashmere sweater, jeans, chunky white sneakers, and shimmery earrings. At her side, she carried a green, crocodile skin duffel bag.
Jack couldn’t help raising his eyebrows.
“What?” Carla asked, glancing down at the bag.
“Is that everything you need?”
“Mostly.”
“What else is there?”
Carla’s white teeth flashed in an expression that was half-laugh, half-snarl. “Maybe I need a vacation from Hidden Cove.”
“Can you… Can you do that with a mobster boyfriend?”
She ignored him. “Come on. Garage is this way.”
The garage was large enough to fit at least six cars.
Maybe more. But only one sat in the drive; a red convertible that gleamed in the sunlight.
Carla strode over to it, opened the trunk, and threw her bag inside.
Jack glimpsed a license plate and a suitcase hidden beneath a rumpled raincoat but didn’t dare ask questions.
“Let’s go,” she sighed, and he felt the slightest bit guilty. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed so hard. Maybe she didn’t want to drive after her accident.
“Thanks,” said Jack, sliding into the passenger seat, admiring the cherry red interior, the soft leather beneath his fingertips.
From the review mirror, a lucky rabbit’s foot dangled beside an air freshener.
Everything was pristine, from the steering wheel to the carpet at his feet. “For agreeing to this.”
This was by far the nicest car he’d ever ridden in, and he was determined to enjoy it while it lasted.
“Yeah, sure,” said Carla. She slid behind the wheel, brushed her bangs from her face as she chewed her bottom lip.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll go back to the list,” Jack promised.
“I think you just want to go for a ride,” she said, throwing her hair back and flashing her brilliant teeth.
Some of the tension drained from his shoulders.
“That’s part of it,” he said. “I’ve been trapped here for weeks.”
“Yeah, I know.” The ignition roared. They backed into the circle, then pulled forward down the long, long drive.
He wished she’d roll up the top. To give him the illusion of protection, if nothing else. Wind slashed at them, threatened to steal his hat from his head and feed it to the waiting trees in the forest. Jack squeezed it in his lap and mentally prepared for a hail of bullets.
They wound down the drive and out the front gate without incident, but he didn’t dare feel foolish. Boris’s warning still rang in his ears.
Carla cranked the radio. She drove fast, probably too fast for a neighborhood like this, tearing around corners, taking curves with enough speed that they could’ve easily spun out.
Nausea cramped in Jack’s stomach. Maybe, he realized with burgeoning terror, she hadn’t been trying to kill herself. Maybe she was just a really bad driver.
And now he was trapped with her.
“You OK?” Carla shouted over the wind and the radio.
“I think so,” Jack lied.
She laughed and jerked the steering wheel. The double yellow line disappeared beneath them. “No, you aren’t. You’ll come up with a new crisis in a few minutes.”
“What makes you say that?” he demanded, affronted.
“You’re never calm. The whole time I’ve known you!”
“It’s been two days!” Jack said, gripping the sides of the seat as Carla flew past a stop sign.
“I only needed two days to learn that you about you, sweetheart!”
He glowered. “Slow down!”
She waved her hand dismissively. “See? A new crisis already!”
There was no slowing her down. She drove as recklessly as she wrote, and all he could do was hold on.
A soundtrack of ear-piercing break-up songs accompanied them as they shot through Hidden Cove like a rogue cannonball.
Not even a stale yellow could stop them.
A semi-truck lumbering down the road like a prehistoric beast nearly clipped them; Carla only rolled her eyes and gave the driver the finger.
She slowed for exactly one stoplight and only because both lanes in front of her were blocked by law abiding drivers, to whom Jack probably owed his life.
“Where are we going?” he asked, taking advantage of the relative silence while they waited. He combed a hand through his hair and withdrew it, immediately defeated; the wind had whipped it into snarls with the efficiency of an eggbeater.
The engine revved.
“I dunno,” she said, grinning at him. “Wherever the road takes us.”
“Uh,” said Jack, struggling to recall exactly which highway led to Hidden Cove and where else it went. “I’m not really familiar with the area.”
“Right,” Carla snorted. “Tourist.”
“Not willingly,” he grumbled.
She laughed, loud and carefree. Some of the other drivers turned to stare at her. She paid them no heed, gaze locked on Jack as she waited for his reaction. “Aw, come on. It’s a nice town.”
“Maybe with more than one dollar and fifty cents in my pocket.”
‘Well, yeah. How’d you lose your wallet, anyway?”
“I left it on the train."
“And they don’t have it?”
“The clerk says he doesn’t.”
“I bet he’s fucking lying,” said Carla. Her sunglasses slid down her nose so that he could see the amusement in her eyes when she turned to look at him.
“I think he’s just an asshole.”
“A lying asshole,” she said, pulling onto the highway entrance ramp. The convertible launched into traffic at eighty miles an hour, slotting between a semi-truck and a station wagon with practiced ease.
Jack exhaled slowly. “Who taught you to drive?”
“The same person who taught me to write, apparently,” she groaned. “Ever ask yourself why you’re so judgmental?”
“I’m not,” he snapped. At her expression, he added, “I’m really not. I’m just… really fucking scared.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “Me, too. But you need to trust me. We can’t work together if we don’t trust each other.”
“Then slow down!” he shouted over the sound of yet another break-up song. What was this station? Heartbreak Only 101? “You’re fucking scaring me!”
To her credit, their speed dropped from ninety-five miles per hour back down to a leisurely eighty. “Sorry,” she said, reaching for the dial and cutting the music short. “I really wanted to get out of there.”
“Me, too,” said Jack, taking a relieved breath. “But I’d like to be alive for that part.”
She shook her head. “I already told you. It doesn’t matter! But fine, I’ll slow down. I can see that’s important to you.”
“Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat, willing his pulse to slow.
“You know how to drive?”
He opened his eyes. “Kind of. I have a license.”
“Then you know how to drive.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “They’re expensive. And I don’t need one. Public transport is good enough.”
“Not if you ever want to leave the city.”
“That’s why the train exists.”
“Yeah, and they steal your wallet and refuse to print you a new ticket,” Carla pointed out.
“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “But not everyone can afford… whatever this is.”
“It’s a convertible.”
He almost laughed at that. Almost. “Yeah, I know. I just can’t afford one.”
“There are other cars out there.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really need one,” he said, growing frustrated.
“Then why have a license?”
“Mostly so that I can borrow my parents’ car when I visit them,” he admitted. Trees flashed past, green and vibrant. Power lines wavered in the wind.
“I guess that makes sense.” She nodded. “What’s your family like? You like them?”
“Well, enough, I guess.” Jack glanced to the trees, dense alongside the highway. Far off in the distance, yellow aspens dotted the hills. The ocean had already disappeared behind the forest, and with it, Hidden Cove.
Hence the name, Jack supposed.
“Got any siblings?”
“A brother. You?”
“One sister.” Carla chuckled. “And we’re as different as we can be. She’s getting a Ph. D, and I’m getting fucked up.”
Jack was afraid to ask what that meant, so he watched the lines of the road flash by in the side mirror and kept his mouth shut.
Two hours passed in relative safety. The streak of break up songs was endless.
In spite of himself, he began to relax. Nothing had happened yet.
They were over a hundred miles away from Hidden Cove, and they hadn’t been zapped back into town, or chased by mobsters, or anything else he’d worried about.
The forest thinned into flat, brown fields. The sun low in the sky cast a rosy hue across the clouds. Traffic came to a standstill. Jack stared despondently out the window, wishing he’d had the foresight to ask Carla to pull off at the last rest stop.
Sooner or later, they would have to stop for gas, right?
It was almost as if she’d read his mind. “Next exit, we’re finding food,” she grumbled. She pulled her sunglasses off and threw them into a center console stuffed full of cassette tapes and faded receipts. “I’m hungry.”
Even through his queasiness, Jack could admit that he was hungry, too. Eating probably wouldn’t untangle the knot in his stomach, but he could always hope. “Me, too.”
“What do you want?”
“Whatever you do. I only have one dollar—”
“And fifty cents, I know. I’ll spot you. What are you in the mood for? Fast food? Italian? Thai?”
“Uh,” he said. It had been so long since he’d eaten out anywhere that wasn’t sponsored by Grover, Rowell, and Thursday. “Not Italian.”
“Not Italian?” she lamented, tilting her head back, eyes turning to the sky. “Fuck. Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
“No,” said Jack, who very much did not know and wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“What do you have against Italian?” she crowed, throwing her arms up in the air.
“Nothing. I just never get to eat at other restaurants.”
“What, like there aren’t options? You live in a city. Who the hell are you going out to eat with?”
“My coworkers, mostly,” he said grimly. “Once a month my company sponsors a lunch for us at this little Italian place.”
“Those are the best places,” Carla groaned. “You’re killing me.”
“I don’t get to go out very much,” Jack snapped, defensive even though he knew better. This was a low-stakes conversation. It shouldn’t grate on him like this.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m broke,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face. It came away grimy. Again, he wished she’d roll the top up.
“Are you?” She looked him up and down, quizzical. “I mean, I could’ve guessed, but I didn’t want to be rude.”
“It’s not rude,” Jack sighed. “It’s just the truth.”
“I thought the suit looked a little off. You didn’t really lose your wallet?”
“No, I definitely lost it.”
Carla shrugged. “I’m thinking Thai. But you’ll come around on Italian food, I promise. You haven’t tried the right place yet.”
“I just hate thinking about my job,” Jack said, daring to look at his reflection in the side mirror. Sure enough, his hair stuck up at odd angles and his bangs were tangled.
This was nothing compared to Carla’s hair, which was so wild that it looked like she had been electrocuted. It should’ve been unappealing, but his stomach flipped when she turned to him. “Alright, alright. I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again. For now.”
They ended up at a Thai place. Jack ordered some spicy noodles. Carla ordered the spicier ones and waggled her eyebrows at him.
By the time they finished, the sky outside had darkened into a lavender twilight. “We should keep going,” Carla said with a reluctant glance at the car. “If we’re going to test this theory, we should do it right.”
“Sounds good,” said Jack. Carla yawned. On impulse, he asked, “Want me to drive?”
She eyed him skeptically. Then she said, “Yeah, you know what? Who the fuck cares? Sure. Go ahead and drive. Try not to wreck.”
“No promises,” said Jack, not entirely certain he remembered how to drive.
She tossed him the keys, anyway.