I stared out at the passing landscape, but there wasn’t much to see. Pastures with cattle, the occasional abandoned house, mountains and trees. That was it.
“Are we still in Colorado?” I asked when I turned back to face him.
“Wyoming,” Marc replied.
We’d crossed into another state, which was significant for two reasons. One, we were farther from the Stanley. Two, Marc had crossed state lines with a fugitive. There was no going back now. Not that either of us would.
“How long was I out?” I asked instead of bringing up the felony he’d committed.
“A couple hours,” he said, then shot me a grin. “You were snoring like a chainsaw.”
I laughed for the first time in ten weeks. “I don’t snore.”
“Believe me,” he replied, his smile stretching wider, “you do.”
His hand was still resting on my stomach, and I covered it with mine. The contact was electric and not just because I’d missed him so desperately. I’d also missed people, which wasn’t something I’d ever thought would happen since I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Trevor had been my only real friend until Bette elbowed her way in, and at this point, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see either of them again.
The song that had been playing ended, and the voice of a male commentator filled the car.
“Shit.” Marc took his hand off my stomach and turned up the radio.
It had been so low I might not have heard what was going on if he hadn’t done it, but once he did, dread pooled in my stomach.
“Authorities in Colorado are asking for help in finding a couple on the run,” the man was saying. “Twenty-six-year-old Arabella Murphy and twenty-eight-year-old Marcos Ramirez were last seen holding up a gas station in Estes Park, Colorado shortly after sunset. The suspects are traveling in a stolen 2065 black Honda Civic and are believed to be heading north toward Canada. Murphy is seven months pregnant and described as a white female, five feet six inches, with long brown hair and green eyes. Ramirez is a Hispanic male, five feet eleven inches tall, dark hair and brown eyes, and weighing approximately two hundred pounds. Residents in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana should be on the lookout for the couple. If you spot them, call authorities right away, as they are considered armed and dangerous.”
“Son of a bitch!” Marc slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “I thought we’d have more time. How the hell did they realize we were gone so fast?”
“Maybe the wristband?” I suggested.
The thought hadn’t occurred to me before, but it made sense. If it transmitted an increase in my heart rate to Hilary, it stood to reason it would alert her to a lack of heartbeat as well. Which was something I should have considered.
“Shit,” Marc muttered.
“We’re fine,” I assured him. “We’re going to be fine. Yes, they know we’re gone, but they don’t know when we left or how far we’ve gotten. We’ll be okay.”
Like him, I’d thought we would have more time, but despite the fear coursing through me, I knew there was no point in freaking out. There were thousands of miles between Canada and the Stanley Hotel, and they had no idea which way we’d gone. They still had to find us.
Marc’s brown eyes were swimming with worry when he looked at me. “You think?”
“I know,” I said as firmly as I could.
I prayed I wasn’t lying.
After the radio announcement,sleep was impossible. Every headlight in the distance had the potential to ruin my life, and every car that came up behind us might be the authorities. There weren’t a lot since we were in such a rural area and in the middle of a pandemic, but it was still nerve-wracking. I couldn’t wait until we were safely across the border.
We’d changed course after learning the authorities were on to us, taking a longer but much more rural route than Marc had previously planned. It took us through small towns, many of which had been abandoned years or even decades ago, and through miles of nothingness. We went for more than an hour without passing a single car, and had we not been on the run, the drive might have been peaceful. Even cloaked in darkness, the fields and snowcapped mountains were breathtaking. And there was no light pollution, making it seem totally untouched by man and giving me a false sense of safety. But things were tense, and we were both too on edge to talk much.
Seven hours into the drive, Marc broke the quiet. “Can you see if there’s a town or something coming up? We’re going to need to stop for gas before long.”
My stomach lurched. It was inevitable since we wouldn’t get anywhere without gas, but we knew how risky it was going to be as well. I just hoped Marc’s friend hadn’t been forced to report his credit card stolen yet, because if he had, we’d be caught the second we used it.
Hands shaking, I grabbed the atlas from between the door and seat. The overhead light was off, but the moon was just bright enough to illuminate the page, allowing me to find our location and see what was coming up.
“Looks like there’s a place in about ten miles or so. Assumingit isn’t a ghost town now.”
“This is why I didn’t want to go this way. There’s too much nothingness.” Marc slapped the steering wheel. “I should have put an extra can of gas in the trunk or something. That was stupid.”
Atlas still on my lap, I put my hand on his leg. “We’re going to be okay. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? We just have to have faith.”
