“No offense, but you’re a long way from LA freeways. You planning to pound the trail in those?”
Wen straightened one leg and looked at her shoe, a leather stacked loafer that would give her feet zero traction or protection on a rocky trail.
“You really think Clawhammer Karen is going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail? First chance she gets, she’s making a beeline to a beauty parlor.”
Jordan couldn’t help but admit to himself that that had been his own initial assessment. Doubt had taken up residence inside his objections. A mistake now could cost him the election. But shouldn’t the mistakes be his? It wouldn’t sit right, blaming anything on the Feds.
Letting them run his operation didn’t, either.
A fist hammered hard on the flimsy door of the MCP. Beto shouted through it.
“Sheriff! Marshal! Get out of there NOW!”
TEN
CARA
Whole thing is fuckin staged bro. She never went anywhere. Or if she did, she just laughin and sippin Cristal in the limo. Shit.
—@alleyezonme_O_O
The barking grew louder as the wind shifted toward them. After hiking twenty minutes in tense silence, Cara finally saw, through a break in the trees, a road and a half-dozen parked cars.
Thank God.
“You’re like a racehorse running back to the barn,” Sanjay said.
“I just really need to... pay a visit to the outhouse,” she told him.
A horrible-smelling, fly-ridden public shitter was the only thing Cara could think of that might put the dogs off her scent.
“I guess we’ll catch up to you there,” Devin said.
She sped up. “See you shortly!”
At the trailhead, the cars were dusty and the outhouse was empty. Karoline from Torrance dove right in. It was a chance tocatch her breath—more like hold it, given the olfactory assault. She stayed inside, breathing through her mouth, until she heard the crunch of Sanjay and Devin’s boots.
And fat rubber tires kicking rocks.
She climbed onto the toilet seat and peered out the vent on the back wall. A Madera Fire District SUV pulled into the small lot and stopped beside Devin and Sanjay.
What were the chances he hadn’t been briefed about missing fugitive Cara Campbell?
Cara balanced over the blue-tinted, almost overflowing cesspool as the fireman rolled down his window.
“I’m about to close this trailhead due to fire danger,” he told her new friends.
“We’re actually on our way out,” said Devin.
“Headed back to Fresno?”
“San Francisco, actually.”
“In that case, take 49 to 140 to I-5. Highway 41 is closed to nonessential travel south of Oakhurst.”
“You got it,” said Sanjay.
Cara closed her eyes and exhaled so deeply that she forgot to hold her nose when she breathed back in.
