Her beautifully dark eyes found mine, and I ran my hand through her hair. She nearly pulled away as I did this, as my fingers brushed so close to her skin, but she didn’t, somehow knowing I understood—it was her flesh I had to fear. “They used you. You can do…this thing…and they used you. They took advantage of you. It’s over now. I’ll never let them hurt you, or use you, again.”
“I don’t want to kill anymore. I can’t…I don’t…” And the sobs came again, soft, buried in my chest. “I want to stop.”
“We’ll find another way,” I told her.
“Jack,” she whispered, her sobs softening,“I can’t even touch you.”
“We’ll find a way.”
We stood there in each other’s arms for a long time, the two of us, no other words. Then I led her back to my Jeep, her gloved hand in mine.
The Chestnut Motor Lodge was just off I-118 about a mile outside of Fallon between the town proper and Mike’s Gentlemen’s Club. It wasn’t much to look at, which is why I chose it. A squat two-story building that passed its prime about twenty years back, the landscaping was desert dirt and the blacktop parking lot had long ago lost the battle with the harsh Nevada sun. Two sodium lights blared down from opposite ends of the property, creating just enough light so it wouldn’t be missed from the highway. There was an enormous neon sign on the roof, but only the wordlodgestill burned, and judging by the loud buzz coming from the sign, it probably wouldn’t be lit for much longer.
After leaving Harmon Reservoir, Stella directed me down a series of side roads, the last of which petered out at a dead end about a mile from any main road. When I stopped, she got out of the Jeep, went to the deep ditch beside the road, and retrieved a black duffle bag. She put it between her feet on the floorboards. “Everything I own,” she said softly. She planned to leave Fallon immediately after dispatching Leo Signorelli, so she left the bag here earlier in the day. From Fallon, she hoped to drive to Las Vegas, where she’d leave his BMW. From there, she wanted to cross the country to Charleston. She had never been to South Carolina. She told me all of this in a quiet, monotone voice, so far removed from the confident girl I remembered from back home. The girl from our bench, or her pool, or even the girl I watched dance only a few short hours ago. A curtain had been removed, a facade dropped. Although both were Stella, this was the real Stella. No longer putting up a rehearsed confidence but instead, sharing with me, albeit in careful fits and starts. I wondered if she had ever truly talked to anyone. She went from a captive in that house to running alone, a solitary existence I knew all too well.
There were three white cars in the parking lot of the Chestnut Motor Lodge. Stella saw them too, but she didn’t say anything. A man in a white dress shirt and chinos watched us pull up from the ice machine, then went back to the business of filling up his bucket. I had room 27 on the second floor, so I parked on the east side of the building, near the stairs but as far from the lights as I could.
We waited for the man in the white shirt to return to his own room (first floor, three doors down from the west end of the building) before getting out of the Jeep. We both had Leo’s blood on us. We couldn’t risk being seen. Stella followed me up the stairs to my room and waited as I dug out the key and pushed open the door.
“It’s not much,” I told her.
Stella glanced around the room. A double bed, sagging in the middle with a floral quilt draped over the top in a rumpled heap. Green shag carpet on the floor with tan tile at the back of the room under the sink and continuing on into the small bathroom. There were three prints on the walls, all depicting horses at the Kentucky Derby. I left an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the nightstand and wished I hadn’t. The cardboard remnants of a Coors Light twelve-pack sat next to a plastic trash can containing my empties. I drew the drapes and placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the door before closing it, locking the dead bolt, and putting the chain in place. If somebody wanted to get in, these things would only slow them down, but that was better than nothing.
I pulled back the corner of the curtain and looked out over the parking lot, my eyes bouncing from one white car to the next.
“It’s not them.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Not every white car belongs to them.”
Somehow, that didn’t reassure me. “Did you have anything lined up in South Carolina? A place to stay or anything?”
She shook her head.
“I think we’re okay here for tonight, but we should probably head out first thing in the morning. We don’t want to be around when they find Leo. And there was only one white car yesterday. Probably nothing, like you said, but best to keep moving.”
Stella wasn’t listening to me. When I turned around, I realized she was standing in front of the mirror above the sink. She had peeled off her clothes as she went, leaving a trail behind her.
I think my mouth fell open.
Down to only a black lace bra and matching panties, Stella rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen me naked, Pip. No need to be shy. I need a shower. I’ve got his blood in my hair. That doesn’t usually happen.”
With that, she stepped into the small bathroom and pulled the door halfway shut behind her. I heard the water start a moment later.
I picked up my empty bottles and other trash and took it all down to the Dumpster, cleaning the room up as best I could before she finished.
A fourth white car had joined the others, a white Ford Escort. Nobody was inside.
When Stella emerged from the shower wrapped in a white towel and somehow smelling of vanilla again, I hastily shucked off my filthy clothes and showered too. The steaming water felt fantastic, and I stayed in there far longer than I probably should have, scrubbing and scrubbing until my skin was pink and raw, until I saw the last of Leo Signorelli wash down the drain.
By the time I came out, Stella had changed into an oversize tee-shirt. She had washed her black gloves by hand in the sink, and they were now draped over the edge of the cracked formica counter, air-drying.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her slender bare legs crossed beneath her. “I bagged our clothes. We need to get rid of them somewhere. Not here, though.”
I had left my backpack on the floor outside the bathroom, next to Stella’s duffle bag. It was gone now. “Have you seen my—”
“What’s this?” She held up the letter from her parents to mine, my backpack open beside her.
