"I've got you," I breathe, throwing his right arm over my shoulders. I brace my feet against the floor, wrapping my arm around his waist.
It is a monumental, soul-crushing effort. Thayer is a wall of solid, dead-weight muscle. I am a fraction of his size, but the sheer, desperate willpower born of eighteen years of survival pushes me upward. I haul him off the bed. His boots hit the floor with a heavy thud, and he sways violently, nearly taking us both down.
"Walk," I command, my voice low and fierce. "Don't you dare fall, Thayer."
We stumble toward the door. Every step is a battle against gravity and the drugs. He is leaning heavily on me, his heat searing through my sweater, his ragged breath hot against my neck.
I reach the door, fumbling with the chain lock. I pull the heavy wood open.
The freezing Indiana rain hits us like a physical blow, a relentless, icy barrage that immediately washes away the stale smell of the motel. The parking lot is a dark, flooded wasteland, illuminated only by the rhythmic, strobing pink of the neon sign.
The ghost car is parked exactly where I left it, tucked against the back wall.
"The keys," Thayer rasps, his head lolling against mine.
"I have them," I say, dragging him through the mud.
We reach the passenger side. I practically shove him into the bucket seat, his massive frame collapsing into the leather with a pained groan. I don't wait to check if he’s comfortable. I slam the door and sprint around to the driver’s side, my boots splashing through deep, oily puddles.
I slide behind the wheel and jam the key into the ignition.
The V8 engine roars to life, a guttural, mechanical scream that seems to echo for miles in the quiet morning. I don't turn on the headlights. I don't look back.
I slam the shifter into first gear and floor the accelerator.
The tires spin wildly, kicking up a plume of mud and gravel, before they bite. The car fishtails violently, the rear end swinging wide, but I fight the heavy steering wheel, my knuckles white, my jaw locked. I launch us out of the motel lot, merging onto the dark, unlit highway just as the first flicker of blue and red lights appears on the horizon behind us.
They are there.
"Don't... go back to the highway," Thayer murmurs, his eyes closed, his hand clutching the dashboard to steady himself. "Take the county roads... through the cornfields. We need to disappear... before the helicopters... get a thermal lock."
"I'm on it," I say, my voice sounding like steel.
I whip the car onto a narrow, paved road that cuts through the endless, towering rows of dead, winter corn. The stalks are a blurred, skeletal wall on either side of us, closing in like the bars of a cage. I push the speed, the needle on the speedometerclimbing past eighty. The old muscle car shakes, the suspension screaming as it hits the ruts and potholes of the neglected road, but I don't slow down.
I look in the rearview mirror. The flashing lights are gone, obscured by the bend in the road and the density of the rain. But they aren't far. They have the plate. They have the description.
And they have the files.
Every federal agent in the Midwest is looking for this car. Every state trooper is waiting for a dark gray Charger to pass their checkpoint.
"Thayer," I call out, the silence in the car suddenly more terrifying than the chase. "Thayer, stay with me."
He doesn't answer. His head is slumped against the window, his breathing shallow. The effort of getting to the car has exhausted whatever meager reserves of energy the drugs left him.
The road ahead is a black, endless ribbon of wet asphalt. The rain is a silver curtain, making it impossible to see more than twenty feet in front of the hood. My eyes burn. My shoulders ache from the tension of the steering.
I am driving into the heart of the storm, carrying the monster who destroyed my world, and for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of the dark. I am the dark.
I shift into fourth gear, the engine's whine turning into a high-pitched scream.
We are forty miles from the state line. Forty miles from a chance to disappear.
Suddenly, the satellite phone on the console chirps again.
I don't take my eyes off the road. I reach out and tap the speaker. "Dante?"
"Sybil, listen to me," Dante’s voice is frantic, the professional mask completely shattered. "They didn't just find the car. They have a drone in the air. They tracked the heat signature from the motel. You have a perimeter closing in on County Road 42. You need to ditch the car. Now."
