“Why can’t we just turn around and cut over on Avenue 12?” said Poff, looking at the map on the dashboard screen.
The deputy was impatient, ready to end the conversation. “This thing’s blowing up fast around Irrigosa, between Fresno and Madera. Cal Fire wants to reroute everyone as far away as possible so they can fight it.”
Cara smelled a hint of smoke through the open window.
“No way to sneak through?” asked Poff.
The deputy raised his palms, nothing left to say.
Everyone fell silent and watched the hazy sky in the distance as Poff turned the van around.
During closing arguments in the chilly, utilitarian courtroom, the prosecutor had swung the murder weapon thirteen times as if hammering an invisible spike. He ran his fingers along its sharp claw as he claimed Cara had raked it across Karl’s right cheek before “tapping” herself on the head to “pretend” she was a victim, too.
She wanted you to believe this was the work of a fictional stalker, he told the jury.Not the money- and fame-thirsty trophy wife who realized her financial tap was running dry.
All of it was news to her.
Every piece of so-called evidence also argued for reasonable doubt, and yet here she was, listening to LaDonna and Eve resume their complaints about hunger. They grew more and more insistent until Vozenilek finally produced some Costco mini water bottles and MREs he claimed were “for emergency use only.”
“And you didn’t think this qualified until now?” said LaDonna, as the battlefield rations were passed out.
“Bon appétit,” said Poff.
Cara noticed the COs didn’t take any, even though they had to be hungry, too.
Each box contained a squeeze packet of chili mac, a kippered beef snack, processed cheese as orange as their jumpsuits, applesauce, and a bag of Skittles. After her experience in the bathroom, Cara couldn’t imagine trying the chili mac, and anyway, it seemed impossible to eat with her hands cuffed close to her stomach. Eve simply squeezed the packet between herpalms, bent forward, and tore it open with her teeth before sucking down the chunky lava.
LaDonna tore open her kippered beef stick and the cheese. The new girl ignored her food altogether.
Cara didn’t dare to try even the applesauce, which was two years past its best-by date, but the Skittles seemed safe enough. Pouring a few into her hand, she decided to savor each flavor by picking them up one at a time with her tongue.
First a crunchy, chewy purple. Basic grape.
Then a delicious, lemony yellow.
She had just captured and begun to chew on a green one, the sweet but tangy lime flavor spreading across her tongue, when the van swerved so sharply the remaining Skittles flew out of her hand and rattled against the window like hailstones.
Poff swore and Vozenilek screamed. Her head jerked violently, and suddenly they were sideways on the road with two trucks bearing down on them.
Cara’s vision blurred as the van collapsed in a cacophony of crunching metal and shattering glass. Then they were spinning, whiplash fast, gravity simultaneously pinning her to her seat and trying to free her body from her chains.
Strangely, it wasn’t her own life she saw ending, but Karl’s. His voice shouting her name as her skull flooded with blinding pain. His voice growing garbled and strange as he seemed to fight back and her vision went black. Coming to and discovering his body, heavy and cold, his arms and legs splayed stiff as she tried and failed to pick him up. Her tears falling on his face. Her clothes soaked with his dark blood as she raced back down the path for help.
“Goldie! Cara Campbell! Wake up!”
Cara wasn’t sure she was still inside her body. Her hearing was muffled, and she couldn’t tell if she was upside down or right side up.
“Open. Your. Eyes!”
It wasn’t God, an angel, or even one of Satan’s little helpers who had come to take her away, but LaDonna, who was trapped by a twisted steel cage that had been part of the rear security door.
The actual back doors hung open, one of them off its hinges.
When Cara looked for the guards, she couldn’t see the front half of the van at all. Only asphalt. Broken glass, crumpled plastic, and torn metal littered the highway.
Her stomach twisted and brought her back to her body.
She dry-heaved.
