Page 42 of No Place Left to Hide

Now

Threat now delivered, the Bronco backs off—not enough for me to feel safe, but enough to not hyperventilate off the road. My entire body is covered in sweat, and these damn seat heaters are making it worse. I reach down and shut them both off, wishing I could chuck Dylan’s sweatshirt into the backseat without crashing. My palms are slick on the steering wheel.

I can’tbreathe.

“What do we do now?” Jena asks, staring at the slowly receding headlights behind us.

“I don’t know yet. Let me think.”

“Babe, we don’t have time to think.” She presses pause on my phone and drops it into a cup holder. The coffeeshop playlist abruptly cuts off and the car fills with the sounds of our tires on the highway instead. “We have to lose him somehow. Can you pull off on another side road?”

“How am I supposed to do that? They’re right behind us. Howcould I possibly turn off fast enough to lose them without flipping the damn car?”

“You did it before!”

My hands clench on the steering wheel. “I made the turn at Devil’s Lake when they were a hundred feet behind me, and we were only going forty miles an hour. He’s got me up to ninety; there’s no way.”

“Then slow down!”

I don’t want to argue with her, but she’s going to keep insisting on her plan until I prove it’s stupid. I let off the gas. The Bronco comes up fast, not braking until they’re basically on top of us. I have two choices: hit the gas or let him hit me.

“Okay, okay! Go, go, go, I take it back,” she screeches.

I hit the gas again and the speedometer climbs back to ninety. The Bronco backs the hell off again. It seems like he only stays away when I’m going too fast for my own good, forcing us to stay in constant danger.

Jena grips her head with both her hands. “Shit, shit, shit. What do we do? We need a plan.”

“I said I’m working on it,” I snap.

I imagine the rest of the drive. Winding highway, cliffside roads, potholes the size of small children… I can’t think of a single place to stop or pull off before we hit service again. If I can stay ahead of him the whole drive, I might have a chance of finding a farmhouse once we reach the outskirts of the next town. We might be able to scream for help and attract attention before he’s on top of us. But it’s a long shot. Especially because the threat was clear: truth or die.

Which is another problem. Even if I had some truth to tell, how am I supposed to do that with no service? My head starts to hurt trying to understand his plan and make one of my own simultaneously.

“Okay, we need to…think. We need tothink,” Jena repeats, like I’m not already doing that. “If we can’t get away from him, then we have to do what he says, right? What could you possibly have to confess?”

A low hanging branch grazes the top of the Subaru. In my rearview mirror, I watch it snap across the top of the Bronco’s windshield a second later. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

The road dips and the whole car lurches into the air. I don’t think I could grip the steering wheel any tighter. I drop the speed to eighty-five, but the headlights behind us loom the second I slow down.

Fuck.

“Come on. Help me. What’s your first guess?”

“Jena, I don’t know. He must be out of his fucking mind if he’s threatening the daughter of a soon-to-be-judge. Not to mention his plan makeszerosense: we’re trapped on a highway with no service. How does he expect me to reach theproper channels? Send up a smoke signal?”

“Shit. That’s a good point.”

“Upside, he’s an idiot, which means we have a solid chance of outsmarting him.”

The highway curves sharply to the right, then back to the left around a stand of massive trees. I slam on the brakes, and luckily so does the Bronco. Still, I take the turn faster than I should to get a little distance between us, and it works. He slips back and his headlights stop glaring in my rearview mirrors.

“Downside,” she says, “his fucking car is twice the size of ours and we’re going ninety miles an hour.”

“Only eighty-five now.”

She huffs at me. “The point still stands. We need to figure out what he wants so we can find a way out of this.”

“I told you—I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’d love toconfess and live, but I’m not going to make shit up to placate a bad driver with an anger problem.”

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