Page 53 of Tate
They drove for five miles, as she fiddled with her GPS. Finally, she gave him a grim look.
“What?”
“We lost cell phone coverage a ways back. I…I think we’re lost.”
He slowed and pulled over to the gravel. Turned to her. She gave him a chagrinned smile. “Sorry.”
“Okay, let me take a look.”
The map was loading.
He handed it back. “We’ll find directions somewhere.”
He pulled back on the road, and they kept driving, but his gaze went to the fuel gauge. They’d dropped below a quarter tank going through Salt Lake City, and now the gauge hovered just above E.
And that’s when the gas empty light flickered on. Forty miles to them standing on the side of the road with a gas canister, him hitching to the nearest Sinclair.
“I’m turning around.”
She spotted a sign as he turned around. “Ten miles to Malad.”
“That’s…we were just there, Red. We passed the Welcome to Idaho sign miles ago. You’re sort of useless without a drone.”
“Wait—” She sat up, turned around to read the sign they’d passed. “Sixteen miles to Holbrook. I recognize that—it’s on the way.”
“Red—we’re getting close to fumes here.”
“Trust me.”
He turned around and kept heading west.
They passed a vast area of grassland and a national forest sign. A weathered house looked just about ready to fall in the wind.
They entered the town of Holbrook, designated by a wooden sign and a silo. “I don’t see a gas station.”
“Yeah, but Rockland isn’t far.”
He took a right and headed north.
Mountains rose to the west, green peaks still covered in places with snow. A lone red farmhouse sat off the road, a gate sagging, clearly abandoned. Purple sage blew in the wind.
He glanced at his gauge. Twenty-eight miles to E.
Scarlett had fallen into a pensive silence.
“You okay?”
She took a breath and gathered herself. Nodded. “Yeah. Yep. All good.”
“Yeah, you’re lying.”
She glanced over at him. “I don’t like my mother’s latest boyfriend too much. His name is Axel. He’s an ex-con, which doesn’t make him a bad guy, it’s just…he doesn’t work, and he doesn’t treat her very well and…I just wish better for her.”
“This guy isn’t…well, he’s not like Gary, right?” He wasn’t sure why he’d brought that up again, but something about the way she’d handled the guy in the roadhouse, an understanding of how to evade and escape—he’d begun to wonder if it didn’t come from the military but personal experience.
“No,” she said quietly. “He’s not like Gary.”
Ford’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
