Not having a moment to question him, I start following him out the laundry room door, as I say goodbye to the only peace I’ve known over the past two days.
Stone leads me to a run-down shed, and confusion swarms through me—until he tears the door open, revealing a classic car hidden within.
“Oh, do we get to play real-life GTO?”
Stone grins, and I swear, it might just be the first smile of his I’ve ever seen. At least, in this new life. “Assuming she kicks over, then yeah.”
Excitement builds deep in my gut, and I all but throw myself into the passenger seat as Stone moves around the front of the shed, opening up the garage door. He hurries back, tossing the backpack and the black trash bag into the back before finally settling himself in front of the wheel. It’s almost comical how big he is. The guy needs a convertible so his head has somewhere to go, but something tells me if I were to let him know, my stupid little joke isn’t going to land well.
His fingers hover over the key in the ignition as if nervous for what the next few seconds are going to bring, and when he finally grips the key and twists, the car’s engine roars to life, rumbling through the seat beneath me.
Stone’s grin widens, and not a moment later, he hits the gas, sailing out of the driveway without a single glance back.
My heart races. We just stole a car.
That’s insane.
Well, not as insane as me stealing the gun from an unconscious guard, shooting an inmate, and then escaping the prison with one of the world’s most notorious killers, but what can I say? It’s been a weird few days.
With neither of us knowing where the hell we’re going, Stone just drives, doing what he can to lead us out of the town and far from any prying eyes, and honestly, this car doesn’t exactly scream discreet. We’re going to have to lose it at some point and switch it out for something a little less conspicuous.
Stone drives east for twenty minutes before easing to a stop alongside an old train track. Without a word, he gets out and grabs the black trash bag filled with our old clothes.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond, just goes about his business, fishing a bottle of something out of the backpack, along with a small lighter. He dumps the trash bag beside the old track and pours some kind of liquid inside of it, making sure it’s thoroughly soaked before taking a few steps back and igniting the flame on the lighter.
He tosses it onto the trash bag, and it immediately goes up in flames. “Well, shit,” I say, an impressed smirk pulling at my lips. “That’s one way to do it.”
Stone just turns and walks back to the car, and I can’t help but feel like it’s a scene out of a movie. The only difference is that instead of a massive explosion in the distance, it’s a flaming bag of dirty clothes. Either way, he looks hot doing it.
Stone drops back into the car. Not waiting to see if the whole bag burns to ash, he hits the gas and pulls the car around, heading right back the way we came.
“Whoa,” I say, bracing one hand on the dashboard and glancing over my shoulder at the direction we just spent twenty minutes heading. “What are you doing? Why are you turning back?”
“Get them off our scent,” he explains, grasping the steering wheel as though he doesn’t have a care in the world, and damn it, it’s the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen. “They’ll find the remains of that bag and assume we’re heading east. They’ll pull their search teams and focus their energy here, and while they’re doing that—”
“We’ll be heading in the complete opposite direction.”
“Exactly.”
I shake my head, impressed by the level of thought he’s put into this. “You’re not just a pretty face, are you?”
He glances at me from the corner of his eye, his lip quirking into an amused smirk, and if it wasn’t so attractive, I’d almost find it unsettling. “You think I’m pretty?”
Letting out a sigh, I settle back into my seat and kick my feet up on the dash, realizing we’re in for the long haul. “So, where the hell are we supposed to go now?”
There’s a brief pause, and I glance up, my brows furrowed as I find Stone deep in thought. “Home,” he finally says, not that I know where that is. “If our faces are plastered all over the news, then it’s not just the public who know I’ve escaped. It’s the fuckers who put those burns on your body, and after what I did to their crew, they won’t be able to resist the chance to get revenge. But I’ll be damned if I don’t find them before they find us first. It’s time to start marking names off my kill list.”
And with that, he presses his foot down harder on the gas and takes off like a bat out of hell, leaving Hartley Creek, old sewer lines, and the bushland way in our dust.
18
ARIA
Two fucking days I’ve sat in the passenger’s seat of this old Pontiac Firebird, and the longer we drive, the more we start to realize that the dude fixing this thing up was more than happy to cut corners.
There’s been a heatwave over the last two days, and driving these backroads hasn’t been great, especially when the AC decided it no longer needed to be an active participant in this fucked-up little road trip. To be fair, I’m not sure these old cars were really built to drive the way Stone has been driving, despite what he might think. The poor Firebird has barely had a break in forty-eight hours, only short stops every now and then to siphon gas or when Stone’s eyeballs are falling out of his skull.
