“Good. Also good that we’re getting you the hell away from here.”
“Hell, yes.” She glanced behind them as she said it. “Latest registration in his name is a Chevy Blazer, 1990. Probably the same one he had last year. It’s jacked with flat black paint.”
“That should be easy to spot.”
She twisted around in the seat, bringing up one knee, watching the traffic behind them.
Wolf reached over and touched her shoulder, and she looked at him instead. “You can take a breath now.”
She looked at him, nodded, smiled a little.
“Have you been this nervous all night? Did you even sleep?”
“Not really.”
“You should’ve called, Camellia. You could’ve crashed in Mom’s room.”
She glanced at him quickly, and he must’ve seen the slight alarm in her eyes, because he went on quickly. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I feel like we are.”
She pressed her lips, nodded. “It’s a new friendship, but yeah, I feel that way, too.”
“Well, you’re allowed to crash at a friend’s place when you’re scared and alone,” he said. “I think it’s in the rulebook.”
He was really trying to put her at ease, and she was beginning to think he meant it. Maybe he didn’t have any expectations from her beyond helping with the case. And becoming a friend.
“I had a long night, too,” he said, maybe to change the subject.
“What keptyouup?” Camellia asked.
He patted the dashboard. “Put in a new starter. Got her a brand-new battery, too. Tested the alternator just to be sure. We’re in good shape for the drive.”
She nodded, appreciating that, but her nerves didn’t ease until they’d put a solid fifty miles between themselves, Hobbsville, and everything related to Earl.
At length and unprompted, she said, “He was a nice guy once. It was like something broke in his mind. All of the sudden, he was suspicious and controlling, always sure I was deceiving him one way or another. And he started hanging out with the worst group of guys, a bunch of gun-nut survivalist types. It was a relief, though, when he started going with them on their trips.”
“Trips?”
“All over Texas. Wilderness training, he called it. They’d set up camp in one park or another, do some target shooting and survival shit. I swear it sounded like one of those Taliban training videos you see, except with white boys.” She sighed, shaking her head. “God, I hope he didn’t kill Mary Jo Gallagher.”
“Tell you what,” Wolf said. “I brought Ma’s diaries.” He reached across in front of her, popped open the glove compartment, and pulled out the red journal with a bookmark in it. “Why don’t you read aloud while I drive?”
“Sure,” she said. It touched her to be entrusted with his mother’s words. So she opened to where he’d left off and began.
CHAPTER SIX
Cilla
September 15th
Today was…I don’t even know.
I haven’t written in a while, so I have to get it all down. I want to remember this. Okay, so the park rangers have been starting to notice me, you know? They’re not stupid. I’ve been here longer than anyone who was camping when I arrived.
I went out exploring for a new spot and I found the perfect place, hidden among the boulders on the shore of the river. The Rio Grande! I can hardly believe I’m here. It’s a different world from New York. First off, everybody makes eye contact, smiles, waves. The first couple times it happened, I thought the person had a traumatic brain injury or something. Childlike mind in an adult-sized body, that kind of thing. But no. It’s everybody. It’s freaking weird.
My new spot’s outside the park boundaries, according to the map I picked up off the dash of a Jeep with the window leftdown. And yet it’s still close enough that I can make regular trips back in to steal supplies.
It feels bad, writing that down. I steal, yes. I don’t see that I have much choice about it. I don’t feel like I had much choice about any of this. What else can I do, tell the authorities and wind up in a foster home? There was a girl in my English class who lived in one of those places, and she was a mess.
