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Brooke kept drumming her fingers against the table in a nervous rhythm. I reached out and covered her hand with mine, squeezing it briefly. Brooke looked at me, a little desperate, and my breath caught in my throat.

‘It’s okay. Stay here,’ I said to her, standing up.

Her expression turned panicked. ‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I won’t. I’m just going to the restroom.’

‘Mouse. Seriously.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said calmly.

Starbucks stores were predictable. There would be restrooms tucked away somewhere, probably next to a storeroom or break room. I found what I was looking for quickly, in a hallway running at a right angle to the main part of the cafe, next to two gender-neutral restrooms.

Another woman was waiting for the restroom, so I joined the line behind her, leaning against the wall to look around. The STAFF ONLY sign on the door at the end of the hallway most likely led to the break room, but opposite the last restroom was a fire exit.

And just as someone left the restroom and held the door open to let me use it next, a worker came in through the fire exit, giving me a glimpse of a smoking area behind and a long alleyway.

‘Thanks,’ I murmured as a girl my age held the door to the restroom for me.

We’d have to move carefully to not tip off blonde lady, but it was a route out that meant we didn’t have to walk past her. I had no idea where the alley would dump us out, and our opportunity to keep wandering leisurely around the city was dead in the water, but I couldn’t care about that now.

I washed my hands and went back to the table.

‘You took ages,’ Brooke grumbled as I slid back into my seat.

‘I found a way out.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked, her eyes clearly telling me she was freaked out. ‘Are you absolutely sure about all of this, Mouse?’

I instinctively flinched hearing her call me Mouse, but I hadn’t mustered the courage to ask her to call me anything else.

‘Yes.’

Brooke glanced at me, then looked over at the blonde woman, then back at me.

‘Go to the restroom and wait for me in that hallway. I’ll be with you in a minute,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ she replied, blowing out a hard breath and pushing back from her seat to walk away.

I forced myself to count to a hundred, flicking through the pages of the paper and watching a group of girls my age order drinks.

This wasn’t the time to start freaking out.

I didn’t want Brooke to panic and draw attention to us, and I wanted her to think I actually had control of the situation, for once.

One last time, I chanced a look over at the blonde lady.

She looked up at me at the same time.

And I froze.

Her eyes met mine, and for a long second, my heart stopped beating. Just stopped dead in my chest.

Then she smirked at me, a tiny little twitch of her lips, and my heart went back to pounding racehorse-fast.

I had to move. The girls waiting for their orders made a good cover, so when they went to the end of the counter, I moved with them and didn’t look back to see if I was being followed.

Brooke was waiting for me, leaning against the wall and drinking her coffee.

‘It’s not alarmed,’ she said.

‘Good.’

‘Don’t run. We need to look like we’re supposed to be there.’

That was easy for her to say. She was smart and pretty and a good liar, so she could get away with stuff like this. I wasn’t any of those things, and I always got caught.

We ducked out of the fire exit and into the smoking area.

The light from the afternoon sun didn’t reach over the top of the buildings, making the alley suitably dim.

I followed Brooke’s lead, picking my way through the piles of trash and hoping the murky puddles of water didn’t stain my white sneakers.

‘This way,’ she said, turning sharply right at the mouth of the alley and taking off at a brisk pace.

I had no idea where we were going, though I didn’t mind that Brooke was taking over my expertly conceived escape plan. It was almost a relief to have someone else be in charge.

After a minute, I noticed someone was following us, and I was filled with an overwhelming need to cry. We needed a break. Just one little break.

‘You’ve seen the cops, right?’ Brooke murmured as we waited to cross the street.

I made a show of looking both ways, watching traffic, and caught glimpses of the two uniformed officers walking up the street toward us. They weren’t running, clearly not in a rush, but they hadn’t been far behind us since we’d left Starbucks.

‘This can’t be real,’ I said, my voice cracking.

‘Don’t start,’ she said sharply. ‘We just need to keep going. Don’t run.’

The cops were getting closer, then finally, finally , the lights changed, and we could cross the street.

The police officers crossed, too, still strolling easily. I glanced back over my shoulder and one of them caught my eye. He turned to his colleague and said something I couldn’t hear. Then they started walking faster.

The coffee turned sour in my stomach.

They were definitely following us.

Did they think we’d stolen something? Or were we in trouble for sneaking out of the Starbucks? I couldn’t think why that would be a problem, not unless the blonde lady had called the cops on us.

Even if the police following us was a total coincidence, I didn’t like the idea that they could recognize me later from police reports about a teenage murder suspect from Seattle and tell someone I’d been in Salt Lake City.

They might think we were planning to keep going south to Las Vegas or Phoenix, or maybe Mexico.

The panic hitched in my throat. I didn’t want anyone tracking us – that was why we’d thrown our phones in the damn lake in the first place.

The route back to the parking lot was an almost straight line, meaning we didn’t have many chances to take a side street and get out of their line of sight.

I was desperate to run, even though Brooke had told me not to.

I wasn’t sure I could run, either – my heart was beating so fast and I didn’t think I would be able to take a deep enough breath.

All of a sudden, we were back at the parking lot.

I followed Brooke silently to the car, wanting to check over my shoulder every thirty seconds to see if the cops were still behind us, but instead forcing myself to relax.

Calm down, Jessie.

We pulled out of the lot in silence, passing the police who were still on foot but clearly heading in the direction of the parking lot.

‘Did they see us?’ Brooke asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

Traffic was heavy until we got onto the I-70, then Brooke pulled her hair loose from its ponytail and stepped on the gas.

‘This is messed up, Mouse,’ Brooke said as she merged into the outside lane and picked up speed. ‘How the hell did they find us here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, my voice rising into a desperate sob. ‘Maybe Chris really is an undercover cop.’

‘Shit,’ she muttered. ‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about last night.’

I wasn’t surprised Brooke was upset. It was a big thing to have kept from her.

‘I thought it wouldn’t be an issue once we left the motel.’

Brooke sighed and pushed her fingers through her hair. ‘All right. Just don’t keep stuff from me in the future, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I said, knowing it was a lie. I was keeping a lot from her.

I picked a new cassette and shoved it into the player, still obsessively watching the road behind us, waiting for sirens or flashing lights.

‘I don’t know if I can go far today,’ Brooke said as we finally exited the city. ‘Maybe a couple more hours.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We can do a longer stretch tomorrow, if you like.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

To the south of us, Utah’s mountains loomed in the distance, still snow-capped at this time of year, even though it felt warm down at our level. Well, the air was warm. The mood in the Mustang was positively chilly.