“For me, for you. For justice. But what did your sister mean—people around you tend to die?”
“Morbid jokes are a family trait—what’s left of the family. It’s true, but I’m pretty sure it’s not my doing. And I’m sure you won’t.”
“Good to know. Kimberly’s hair…?”
“Stage IV colon cancer. The other family trait. A type so super-rare they’re thinking of naming it after us. If you’re gonna go down, you may as well go down in history, right?”
“Shit, I’m sorry. So when she said that thing about not needing her stationery where she was going…?”
“Yep. Wait, you heard that?” Shit, what else had he heard?
“Jesus.”
“Why did you tell her about the motel on the road to D.C.? You told them to be honest with the police, or whoever that is with the sirens.”
“I’m counting on that. I want the Feds to know that we have something they don’t, to make them wary about publicly pinninganything on me just yet. And we’re not going to a motel. I know a place. We’ll have to stop for supplies to last the night.”
“The night?” Okay, so she probably should have figured that out earlier, since it was well into the afternoon and a motel had already been mentioned.
“Just one night, Alice. In the morning, if you want out, I’ll drop you off at the nearest police station—around the corner from it, anyway.”
There it was: Anderson Holt was practically begging to spend the night with her—which they would pass deciphering the ramblings of a dying woman, but still.
They reached the bike and put the helmets on. “Okay, now I get why we parked where we did,” Alice said.
“That’s the spirit. Thinking like a fugitive. I can’t even choose a seat at a café without taking note of the escape routes. Old habits.”
“I’m not the fugitive, you’re the fugitive. I’m the victim,” Alice said, getting on behind him. “Survive the day,” she added, in a mutter, as he started the bike.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Survive the day?”
“Just a thing I say. Sometimes merely getting to the end of the day is a win. Then you can start over. Of course, it’s not supposed to be literal.”
“Well, we’re nearly there. One night, Alice.”
“Sure, one night, whatever. Can we just please get away from here?”
“Okay, Thelma.”
Chapter 12
Alice
Carter took the road toward the mountains, and Alice found herself starting to see the point of motorcycles. She was learning to lean as he leaned, anticipate the turns, trust they weren’t going to tip right over or skid into an oncoming truck. And yes, it felt a little dangerous, but also that she wasn’t so much traveling through the countryside as experiencing it. She could smell earthy things—mud, cattle, milkweed, road dust, exhaust. She could almost feel the ground beneath her in the vibration of the tires, and sense the temperature dropping as they climbed and the forest closed in, the sun flickering through the pines as it lowered.
By the time they pulled into a country store for supplies, Alice’s legs were a little shaky.
“I’ll go in,” she said, climbing off the bike and unclipping her helmet. “They’re less likely to shoot me on sight.”
“You’re sure?”
“About being shot on sight, or about going in? Doesn’t look like the kind of place where they take self-defense too seriously.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped if they had external security cameras.”
