“Why are you including me in your escape anyway? You don’t know me. You think I’m working with your husband.”
“Because I don’t want another death on my conscience,” she shouted, her voice shaking.
This was insane. She was insane. I couldn’t believe that I had gone along this far with her. There was no logical reason for me to believe that I was in any danger. Whoever her husband was, the chances of him giving a shit at all that I was on the side of the road were slim to none. I was crazy, actually considering going on the run with her. It was insanity. I needed to get out of this truck and get a few moments of peace where I could think this through without having a fucking gun pointed at me.
I opened the door and ignored her when she called my name. I started walking for the trees.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, following behind me.
“I’m going to take a leak.”
“Now?”
“No, in ten minutes. Right now, I’m just getting the fuck away from you and your crazy idea that someone is going to come kill me. This is insane. This is so far beyond fucked up that I don’t even know what to say.”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re really just fucking crazy. Maybe you need to be locked in an insane asylum or something.”
I turned and kept walking and I heard her stomp back to the truck. When I was far enough away from her, I leaned back against a tree and took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to think about any of this. I was sure that she was off her rocker, but if she wasn’t, if I was wrong, I could put my entire family in danger. I felt like there was something bigger I was missing, but at this point, I really didn’t want to know. I just wanted to go back to my life, and as I stood there under the trees in the fading light, I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. I would talk with the sheriff in the morning and get this all sorted out. As for Hannah, I felt bad for her, but this wasn’t my mess to deal with. Whatever was going on with her husband, if she chose to keep running, that was on her.
I turned toward the tree and took a piss, then zipped up and headed for the truck, but stopped in my tracks when I saw Hannah running toward me. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me behind the tree.
“What-“ She slapped her hand over my mouth and peered around me. That’s when I heard the sound of a door slamming. I nodded to her, letting her know that I understood. I slowly shifted to get a better view. It was the guys from earlier if I was seeing this right. They had guns out and they were checking out the truck.
“Engine’s cold. They’ve been gone for a while,” the first one said.
“We have to get rid of the truck.”
“We could leave it here. Everyone would think he was just a missing person.”
“Yeah, and then there would be police out here combing the area. You heard what the boss said, no evidence left behind. We can’t leave any trail.”
“We don’t even know who this guy is,” the first argued.
“It doesn’t matter. He saw what happened, and now he has to disappear. No trace of him. He needs to vanish. We can watch his apartment and his parents’ house in case he goes back there.”
“And what if he turns up?”
“Then we make sure he disappears again, along with all his family. There’ll be too many questions, and we can’t risk that.”
“And the girl?” the first guy asked.
“We’ll find her. She can’t run forever.” He tossed the first guy the keys to my truck. “You get rid of it. Make sure no one finds it.”
Within minutes, my truck, along with their car, were gone. And then it really started to sink in. Whatever the fuck I had gotten wrapped up in, it was life and death. There was no going home. There was no getting out of this. I had to run, and since Hannah seemed to know so much about running, I stood a better chance of staying alive with her by my side than if I ran alone. I couldn’t go back to my brothers. I couldn’t call Ma and tell her goodbye. I couldn’t ask my dad for advice. This was it.
I looked at Hannah, and she looked at me sadly. “Believe me now?”
We’d been walking through the darkness for a few hours now. It was best to stay away from town and anyone that might recognize me, or so Hannah said. I wondered about how she had been running for four years. She seemed to know a lot about it. How many close encounters had she seen? How did she always seem to know what to do next? Was that something she just picked up after a while?
“Where do we go from here?”
She thought about it a moment. “We need to change our appearances. I was going to dye my hair. We’ll need to cut yours completely. And we need to change the way you look.”
“How?”
“We’ll get to that. For now, we need to find a way out of here. Do you know any place we can steal a car that won’t be noticed immediately?”
I nodded. “There’s a junk yard we can go to.”
“No offense, but we need a vehicle that runs.”
“We’ll find what we need. This guy collects cars to rebuild for teenagers. People donate old vehicles to him, but they have to be in working order.”
“That’s nice of him,” she said sarcastically.
“It is nice of him,” I shot back. “See, that’s what it’s like living down here. People help each other out. I don’t know where the hell you’re from, but this town helps each other.”
“Sorry,” she said regretfully. “It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone that helped anyone else just for the sake of it.”
I didn’t say anything else. If I was going to run with this woman, I needed to not want to strangle her. It was the middle of the night by the time we reached the junkyard, which was good because I wasn’t about to steal a car in the middle of the day. We ran across the empty field in the darkness, up to the edge of town where there was a junk car lot. The security was non-existent, aside from a dog that was lying by the gate. And since he didn’t move when we came close, it wasn’t likely that he would attack us.
I slipped in and found an old car in the back that didn’t look half bad. Popping the hood, I took a look underneath and saw that it looked okay. “You ready to find out if this works?”
“Now or never.”
I got in and hot-wired the car, thankful that it started up. “I’m not sure how far it will get us, but as long as we can get out of here, we should have some luck.”
She hopped in the passenger side and we took off down the road. “We should probably drive for a few hours and then find an all night pharmacy.”
I nodded. It sounded like a good plan. I drove for the better part of an hour, all the while I was looking out every window, expecting at any minute to get shot. This was insane.
“So, who is this husband of yours?”
“It’s best if you don’t know,” she said hesitantly.
“I beg to differ. I’m in a car with you, on the run. I think I at least deserve to know who I’m running from.”
She fidgeted with a necklace she was wearing, but didn’t answer.
“Do you know how he found you?”