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*
The reality of traveling with her companions proved far more complicated than Felicity had anticipated. By the time she crossed into Montana, she was sick of drive-through food, sick of motel rooms, and sick of hauling dog beds, food bowls, blankets, and luggage in and out of the Bronco every night.
The pugs seemed equally unimpressed.
The solution appeared somewhere outside Billings.
She stopped for gas and coffee early that morning, ready for the next leg, and was standing in line when a conversation between two women caught her attention.
“… selling the camper van,” one of them was saying. “Can’t justify keeping it now that Steve’s gone.”
Ten minutes later she was listening to a middle-aged widow explain the finer points of the converted Sprinter parked in her driveway.
It was an awful shade of green.
The woman caught her expression and laughed. “Yeah, it’s hideous.”
It truly was. But it also had a bed.
A tiny shower positioned over a compact toilet. A two-burner stove. Storage cupboards. Solar panels. Air conditioning.
An hour later, Felicity was the bewildered owner of the ugliest camper in North America. By mid-afternoon, she’d sold the Bronco to the woman’s nephew and set out westward in her rolling avocado-colored disaster.
*
Felicity woke before sunrise. For several confused seconds she couldn’t remember where she was, and she focused on reorienting herself. The cramped ceiling of the Sprinter came into focus. And for the first time in days, she smiled.
It was still the ugliest vehicle she’d ever owned, but it wasn’t a nasty, moldy motel room. She rolled out of bed, set the coffee to brew, and helped the pugs down.
Leashes attached, the four of them stepped out into the early morning air and enjoyed the sunrise in Yellowstone. Steam drifted from somewhere in the distance. Birdsong carried through the trees. The mountains glowed gold beneath the rising sun.
Breathing deeply, she felt the tightness in her chest start easing.
They lingered in the park. One day became two. Then three.
She drove winding roads through forests and valleys, pulled over whenever something caught her eye. The vast wilderness certainly didn’t care about Sergei, Vasily, Ronan Murphy, or the choices those men had made on her behalf.
There was something oddly comforting about that.
*
The Pacific Coast brought its own kind of healing. Felicity spent her days wandering windswept beaches, collecting driftwood she had no space for, and laughing at the pugs’ reactions to the endless crashing waves.
And somewhere along the coastline, without even realizing it, she stopped counting the days since she’d left Nebraska. Stopped checking her phone for missed calls she had no intention of returning. Stopped reliving every choice Ronan had made.
The truth arrived gradually in quiet moments watching the sun sink into the ocean. In the simple pleasure of waking each morning and deciding how to spend the day.
Ronan had taken away her choice — that wound remained.
But he had also saved her from a future she hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate while planning ways to smuggle a weapon past security and ending Vasily’s life.
That path led to a prison cell. Concrete walls. Steel bars.
Even death.
Instead, she was standing barefoot on a beach with three pugs, watching the Pacific Ocean stretch toward the horizon.
She was free.
