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She watched him for another long moment before fishing keys out of her jacket pocket and unlocking the trunk. Then she stepped back, keeping herself positioned between him and her kid like a human shield. “I’d appreciate the help.”

“I’ll be quick.” He set down his duffle and raised his hands in front of him as he approached. He found the spare tire and jack under a pile of reusable grocery bags.

He circled the car to reach the flattened passenger side tire and saw the kid more clearly—a little boy with wide brown eyes like his mom’s.

He guessed the boy’s age was somewhere north of diapers and south of school, but he had no experience with children, so the kid could still be a baby for all he knew.

The car seat definitely tipped the scale toward baby. How long did kids ride in those?

He crouched by the flat, set the jack, and started cranking.

The woman stayed near her kid, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, her arms crossed defensively.

He worked in silence, methodical and efficient, the way he’d been trained to approach everything.

The lug nuts were stubborn. He put his full weight into loosening them, and they finally gave.

The kid kept staring at him through the car window. Jax avoided that gaze as best he could while he swapped out the flat for the spare and tightened everything back into place.

When he finished, he wiped his hands on his jeans, then stepped back to pack away the tools and the flattened tire in the trunk. “Should be good now.”

She was still watching him like she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

The boy pressed his hands against the glass and peered out at them with unabashed curiosity.

“Uh, thanks,” she said, then she reached for her wallet. “I can?—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t need your money.” From the looks of that car, she didn’t have a lot to spare.

She hesitated, then put the wallet away slowly as if she thought he might change his mind.

Jax picked up his duffel and started walking. It didn’t take long before he heard the engine again, a low rumble behind him. But instead of driving away, she pulled up alongside him with the passenger window rolled down.

“Where are you going?” She seemed genuinely puzzled by a man carrying a pack down an empty road in the middle of nowhere.

He didn’t stop walking. “Away from here.”

The car inched forward, keeping pace with him. The kid’s face was still plastered against the window.

“You don’t have a plan, do you?”

He didn’t, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “I’m headed to town. To start.”

“Well, then you’re going the wrong way. The closest town down this road is a fundamentalist Mormon settlement. They don’t like strangers. They like the men from the Ridge even less.”

Fuck. He stopped moving and exhaled, his breath clouding the air as he looked up at the brightening morning sky. Before prison, he’d spent nearly six years living in a town with a crazy doomsday cult in the mountains. He didn’t love the idea of repeating the experience.

Just one more reason he had to leave.

“And if you’re headed to Solace,” she added after a beat of silence, “then that’s a long walk.”

“I’ve done longer.”

She gave him a look that said she didn’t doubt it. “Get in. I owe you a ride and a cup of coffee for helping me.”

“Anyone ever tell you not to pick up ex-cons on the side of the road?”

“Everyone I know,” she answered. “But I have a weakness for strays.”

“We have a dragon,” the boy added, like that explained everything.

Jax blinked. For a second, he thought he’d misheard. “A… dragon?”

“Bearded,” the woman clarified.

Ah. That made more sense. Sort of.

The boy all but bounced in his seat. “He doesn’t really have a beard. He’d look funny if he did. And he has teeth, but his name is Toothless, like in How to Train Your Dragon .”

Jax had no idea what the kid was talking about, but he nodded anyway.

“We also have Niblet the chinchilla, who hates Tuesdays. And three cats! One’s named Socks because he has socks, one’s Princess Jellybean because I like jellybeans and she’s a girl, and one’s Trouble because that’s what Mom says he is.

But we actually found them in the garbage, not on the side of the road. ”

In the garbage.

Jax’s grip tightened on the duffel’s strap. He didn’t know why that hit the way it did, but it struck somewhere deep and ugly. He couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the woman added, echoing his own words back at him.

Jax studied her face. She didn’t look scared. Maybe she was crazy.

Maybe he was, too, because he found himself almost smiling. “That’s a relief.”

She leaned over the seat and pushed the passenger side door open. “Get in.”

Yeah, why the hell not? It beat walking. And the faster he could get away from Valor Ridge, the better.

He slid into the seat and placed the duffel on the floor between his feet. The car was old, but well-kept. It smelled like cinnamon and sugar. Or maybe that was the woman beside him.

The boy gawked from the back with those huge, fascinated eyes. “Hi! I’m Oliver, and this is my truck.” He held up a toy fire truck. “Do you know a lot about fire trucks?”

Jax blinked. “Uh, I know they’re red.”

“Oh, you’ve done it now,” the kid’s mom said. She shifted the car into gear and turned around on the narrow dirt road.

“Well, yeah, but there are different kinds ,” Oliver said like a professor schooling a dim-witted student. “Ladder trucks have the big ladders that go up-up-up and rescue people from tall buildings. Pumper trucks have hoses and tanks with like five hundred gallons of water! That’s a lot, right?”

Jax wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or not, so he kept silent.

Oliver plowed on, barely taking a breath. “And some fire trucks are called quints, which is short for quintuple.” He held up his hand, splayed wide. “That means they can do five things.”

Did the kid ever stop talking? “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Oliver bounced a little in his seat. “They have a pump, a water tank, a hose, a ladder, and ground ladders! That’s all five.”

The woman glanced over, smiling. “Sorry. He’s on a fire truck kick right now. Last month it was dinosaurs.”

“I’m gonna be a firefighter and a paleontologist. They study dinosaurs,” Oliver added seriously, and then just looked at him like he expected a response.

Jesus, what was he supposed to say? “That’s… ambitious.”

Oliver’s brow crinkled. “What’s am-bit-shush?”

“It means you have big plans,” his mother explained.

Oliver nodded. “I do. I am am-bit-shush.” Then he beamed. “What’s your name?”

Jax hesitated. And then, because it didn’t matter—because this was just a detour, and the kid didn’t know him or what he’d done—he said, “Jax.”

The woman smiled over at him. “Hi, Jax. I’m Vanessa, but everyone calls me Nessie.”

“Like the monster,” Oliver added helpfully.

Jax looked out the window and said nothing. He didn’t care about their names. He just needed to put as many miles between him and Valor Ridge as possible.