For the most part, the experience had been heady. But there were some moments that had been…hairy. Like that truck she nearly wentunderinstead ofaround.Still, all in all, the scaredy-cat driver had become a road warrior, high on her own success.
“We can still stop and sleep somewhere and get up early to make it to Destin before they arrive,” Jo Ellen said, her voice taut with the same exhaustion that pressed on Maggie.
“We’re not giving up now! We’re half an hour from 331, the exit to Santa Rosa Beach.”
“We’re going to pull into Frank and Betty’s after eleven,” Jo Ellen reminded her. “Do you know any eighty-year-old awake at midnight?”
“Frank said it was fine, he’d distract Betty, and we could just leave the car parked in the driveway and he’d surprise her tomorrow morning.”
“And you think we can get an Uber in Santa Rosa Beach at that hour?”
“I think we can do anything,” Maggie shot back. “And that includes sneaking into our apartment like a couple of wayward teenagers. And I will show up bright and early on Saturday, ready to make sure those people know who’s the boss of this family.”
Jo Ellen yawned, thankfully too tired to argue.
“Can you even see where you’re going?” she asked after five minutes of blessed silence.
“I can see,” Maggie lied, blinking eyelids that felt like sandpaper.
In truth, the darkness smudged the edges of the world and made everything blurrier than it should be. The overhead lightswere few and far between, saved for exits. The rest of this absolute wasteland of highway was pitch black.
Taillights bled red, when there were any at all for her to follow. And the headlights barreling from the opposite side of I-10 were small suns, searing into Maggie’s retinas. But she didn’t flinch. She didn’t squint. She didn’t slow down, even when that speedometer neared her age.
She gritted her teeth and kept driving.
A few minutes later, Jo Ellen groaned. “Oh, Maggie, I hate to say this, but I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Hold it.”
“Look, I’m sorry for being human,” Jo Ellen muttered. “But there’s an exit sign and a gas station.”
Maggie curled her lip. “Another lovely restroom in a BP? Ah, nothing like using a key hanging off a two-by-four to open a world of rust-stained sinks and seat-free toilets. No, thanks.”
“But you know my bladder. I believe you called it the size of a cashew.”
“A half-cashew,” Maggie corrected, then sighed. “Okay. We’ll stop.”
“It’s this exit, Mags.”
“Right here? This exit? Whoa…” She swerved into the right lane—no, she didn’t look,sorry—and blew down the ramp a little fast.
“Maggie!”
She slammed on the brakes and they screeched, which made her foot slip off the brake pedal and onto the gas, launching them forward.
“Oh, dear. Sorry!” She had a panic moment, veered into the other lane, and then straightened, finally stopping at the bottom of the exit ramp. “Whoops.”
“Well, now I don’t need to use the bathroom,” Jo Ellen said without missing a beat. “Just get me a new Depends.”
Maggie snorted and mumbled another apology as she gingerly picked up speed and turned right, but the words got trapped in her mouth when she spotted a flash of red and blue in the rearview mirror.
“Wait. What?” She hit the brakes so hard, they bucked, and she nearly stalled out, totally forgetting about that clutch. “Is he coming after us?”
“I think he was on the ramp watching for…trouble.”
Maggie bit back a dark, dark word and kept driving, very slowly and to the right, so he could get around them and go find the real bad guy.
But the cruiser stayed behind them, then turned the siren on.
