Page 117 of Gambler's Fallacy

I stop and face her. “I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can,” I promise. My heart aches at the idea of leaving her here, but she’s as safe as she can possibly be.

Seven isn’t.

She’s my only family, though, and what happens if something happens to her on the way to the hospital? I hesitate, not sure I can actually leave her behind.

“Get him back,” she tells me.

I nod, my throat tight. “Thank you,” I tell her. I can only hope she understands how grateful I am to her for that blessing.

I get in the car, reaching over to the glove compartment to pull out a container of wet wipes so I can scrub the blood from my hands. When I’m not going to get more blood — my sister’s blood — everywhere, I start the car and ease out of the parking spot.

Havoc gets into the passenger seat, phone still out. “They’re still heading out of the city. I’d say they’re aiming for the interstate.”

“Fuck!” I snarl. “What if they’re going to drive him all the way to New Bristol?” Fear grips me, refusing to let me go. I can’t lose Seven any more than I can lose Connie.

“Then we road trip all the way to fucking New Bristol to get him back,” Havoc snaps back. “Fucking hell.”

Havoc gives me directions as best he can, but it’s not like we know where we’re fucking going.

“Still on the interstate,” Havoc says as I pull onto it.

The sun is shining directly at me, and I grab my sunglasses from the car console. “This isn’t in the direction of New Bristol,” I say quietly.

“It isn’t,” Havoc agrees. “Maybe that’s a good sign.”

“Not if they’re heading deeper into the desert,” I say. “I have no idea how to track someone out there, least of all chasing after another car I know next to nothing about.”

Havoc curses. “If they go into the desert…” He looks into the backseat. “You got water in here?”

“No.” It’s my turn to curse. “We’re going to have to stop.” Before Havoc can argue, I say, “You know we don’t have a choice. We don’t know how long we’ll be out there or what we’ll find.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Havoc says. “You think I don’t know how the desert works? I lived in a fucking army base out there. We trained in this heat.” He taps on his phone again. “We can stop at the outlet mall two exits down. There’s a sporting goods store there, and a supermarket.”

I grunt. I don’t like this. We’re going to get farther and farther behind. “What if we can’t find him?” I find myself asking.

“We’re going to find him,” Havoc says immediately. “We’re going to save him. We did last time. We found him in that mall, and we didn’t even have a tracker on him then.”

I don’t remind him that we’d had people to question and an obvious trail — or that the tracker might not keep working once wereach the desert. He knows it as well as I do, and I’m showing enough vulnerability as it is.

“Yeah,” I say instead, and both of us fall silent until we get to the parking lot of the supermarket. “Let’s go.” I lead him in through the grocery section, heading straight for the cases of water. That’s the most pressing item.

“We need to buy shoes and hats,” Havoc says while I’m paying for the four giant cases of water and three boxes of protein bars. “Rope, too.”

“Shoes?” I ask. “We’ve got shoes. I’m not stopping for more crap.”

Havoc sneers at me. “You’re wearing a pair of loafers. My sneakers will probably melt two seconds out on the hot rock. We need real hiking boots.”

“We don’t have time for all this shit,” I tell him as we load the water into the car. “We’re not going to need rope.” I stop, then say, “I already have rope.”

Havoc holds up his phone, which shows the tracking app. “You think we can get here easily?” he asks, zooming out.

The little dot keeps moving, but it’s no longer on a road.

“This isn’t an address,” Havoc says. “It’s GPS coordinates. My cell signal is already close to zero and we’re at an outlet mall. We need to stop for gas, and then we have to hope your car can get us anywhere near this place, off road, and we have to hope we can find Seven and Caleb and then also find our way back to the car. You want to do that in your loafers and dress shirt?”

I growl at him, but I have to concede the point. “Fine.” I drive us to the sporting goods store, hurrying out of the car and slamming my door harder than necessary as frustration and fear well up in me.

What if we can’t find them?

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