Page 40

There Is Nothing Left to Lose – Foo Fighters

While Brooke napped, I read my book. I only had a couple of chapters left, then I was out of paperbacks. I was sure we could find somewhere in Atlanta for me to pick up a few more – there were bound to be more thrift stores in the city.

It would be an eight-hour drive from Atlanta to Orlando tomorrow, which was longer than we’d driven in one day since leaving Seattle, but I had a feeling that once we were on that last leg of the trip, neither of us would want to stop.

At least Brooke had gotten over her refusal to let me drive the Mustang now, so we could take it in turns.

Two hours each, then swap. That would give us plenty of opportunities to use rest stops, get something to eat and put gas in the car.

I almost jumped out of my skin when someone knocked lightly on the windshield.

My heart didn’t slow down at all when a sheriff’s deputy gave me a jaunty wave.

‘Brooke,’ I murmured, shaking her shoulder.

She startled awake.

‘Sorry,’ he said, leaning down to the open window. ‘Just a welfare check. I was driving past and noticed you had pulled over.’

He seemed friendly enough, but I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust him, especially as there was the possibility that he could recognize me at any second. Would the cops be expecting to find me in the middle of nowhere in Georgia, though? If there was ever a time to play it cool, it was now.

He was handsome, with a Southern accent that was starting to sound familiar. His sandy hair was about the same color as the uniform he was wearing, complete with shiny black shoes and aviator sunglasses tucked into the open collar of his shirt.

I scrambled to get out of the car.

‘Sorry,’ I said as he walked around. ‘Didn’t mean to worry you.’

‘That’s okay.’ He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his pants and rocked back on his heels. ‘Where are you headed?’

‘Atlanta,’ I said with a smile that I hoped looked real. ‘My friend was feeling a little tired, so we pulled over.’

‘This isn’t the safest place to stop. There’s a gas station with a truck stop about five miles down the road.’

‘Okay. We’ll head that way.’ I silently prayed that would be it. That he would let us go.

‘Do you guys have any identification on you?’

My stomach sank. This was it. He was going to call us in.

‘I’m really sorry, I lost my driver’s license in Nashville,’ I said. I tried another smile, like Brooke would, flirting a little to get him on our side. ‘I’ll pick up a new one next week.’

‘How about you?’ he asked as Brooke stepped out of the driver’s side of the car.

‘Sure,’ she said easily, taking her wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans. She flicked through her cards and pulled out Meredith’s fake ID.

‘Meredith Summer,’ he said. ‘You’re a long way from Denver, Ms Summer.’

‘I dropped out of college,’ Brooke lied with an easy grin.

He handed the fake ID back, then nodded to me. ‘And what’s your name?’

‘Jenna Roberts,’ I said, praying that he didn’t ask for us to go to the station with him to confirm our identities.

‘Okay, Ms Roberts. Why don’t I give you both an escort down to the rest stop?’

I couldn’t get a read on him to decide if he was trying to follow us because he didn’t trust us, or if he was one of those over-eager, concerned types.

I glanced at Brooke.

Brooke turned to the deputy. ‘We’ll probably head straight on into Atlanta. I feel much better now.’

‘No problem, ma’am. Drive safe.’

We made a performance of getting into the car and putting our seatbelts on before heading back onto the road.

The deputy lifted his hand in a wave as we pulled away.

‘Shit,’ Brooke murmured. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ She was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel in a nervous tattoo. ‘He’s going to run my license plate.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah.’ Brooke looked back over her shoulder, then glanced ahead at the road. ‘I’m going to get off at the next exit. We should take a different route into the city. Maybe bypass Atlanta altogether. Go to Athens, or Birmingham. One or the other, it doesn’t matter.’

I hadn’t seen Brooke this flustered since … ever. But she was right. We had almost got caught, and now it felt like there was a massive spotlight on us.

‘I think we need to get out of this car,’ I said, still checking the rearview mirror every few seconds. ‘It’s too recognizable.’

‘No,’ Brooke said sharply.

‘I know it’s your car, and you love it, but –’

‘No,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘I’m not selling the car. I can’t, Jessie.’

There was something in her voice, the I can’t , that reminded me that this was more than a car to Brooke. It was her freedom. I didn’t know how to balance that against the very real fear that had gripped me.

‘Maybe we should drive it to the airport and leave it in a long-term lot, then?’ I suggested.

‘Someone will steal it,’ she said, her voice rising in panic. ‘And we don’t have enough money to pay to park it and hire another car. We’re just going to have to figure out how to fly under the radar.’

‘Okay,’ I said, taking a breath and trying to think rationally. ‘Okay. We’ll keep going to Atlanta – it’s a big city, right? We can find a hotel with an underground parking lot. Let’s get it out of view, at least.’

I glanced in the rearview mirror again, then at Brooke.

She was chewing the edge of her thumbnail.

‘That could work,’ she said. ‘As long as they don’t follow us into the city.’

‘You can drive faster,’ I said.

‘I can always drive faster,’ she replied with a little smile, and I tried to force myself to relax.

Just outside Atlanta we stopped for gas, this time at a rest stop that looked busy. That was better. It was easier to blend in.

‘You want anything?’ I asked, heading inside to pay.

Brooke shook her head. ‘I’m good.’

When I came back outside, she was sitting in the passenger seat. I raised an eyebrow at her.

‘You drive,’ she said. ‘I’m too anxious.’

‘Okay. I can do that.’

We hit traffic soon enough, but sitting and waiting for lights to change gave us plenty of time to plan out our next move.

In a way, Atlanta was a great place to hide.

Big cities had plenty of neighborhoods we could move between, and we blended in with the population, just two more teenage girls in a city full of them.

I headed for the downtown area, then looped around the block when Brooke spotted a hotel that advertised its underground parking lot on the sign outside.

She winced as I navigated the turn down a long concrete ramp.

‘Don’t scrape the car, Jessie.’

She was clearly wound tight. Well, so was I.

‘You wanna drive it in?’ I snapped back.

Brooke leaned over, grabbed my chin to turn my head, and kissed me hard. ‘No. Just don’t scrape the paintwork, that’s all.’

‘You are literally the most difficult woman in the entire world,’ I muttered as the barrier rose for us.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said, craning her neck to look around the lot. The fluorescent lights were harsh down here. ‘Where are we going to eat tonight?’

‘You’re asking me that now?’ I demanded. ‘While I’m trying to concentrate on getting your precious car into this damn garage?’

Brooke snorted with laughter and ejected the cassette from the stereo to put it back in the case. I tried not to notice that she’d brought the bullet cassette right to the front, so it was easily accessible.

I found a space on the first level underground, which was good because I didn’t have to navigate the tight ramps going down, and it also meant we could make a quick escape if we needed to.

We put the top back up on the car, grabbed our bags from the trunk, and as we rode the elevator up to the lobby, Brooke put her arm around my waist.

‘Take your sunglasses off – you’re not a Kardashian,’ I murmured.

‘Absolutely not.’

She looked hot, so I couldn’t argue with her.

The lobby was swarming with people, and we had to wait twenty minutes to check in, which was only annoying because Brooke was fidgety. I could tell she wanted something to eat – she got cranky when she was hungry.

Brooke let me check in this time, and I spun the same story we used at every stop about wallets being stolen and needing to pay in cash.

No one working these check-in desks ever seemed to care, other than trying to sign us up to their mailing list or loyalty rewards scheme or whatever.

I rattled off a fake email address and smiled through the conversation.

We dumped our bags in the hotel room, and I took a second to brush my hair since it had gotten windswept on the journey down here.

When I got out of the bathroom, Brooke was checking over the gun.

She noticed me leaning against the doorframe, watching her, and tightened her jaw defiantly before putting it in her backpack to bring with her.

‘I’m not arguing with you,’ I said lightly.

‘Good,’ she said.

We headed out to find something for Brooke to eat before her blood sugar dipped any lower. A few blocks from the hotel, Brooke stopped in front of a Five Guys.

‘This’ll work,’ she said.

We spent an hour hanging out, and for just a moment, I felt normal.

It was a Thursday afternoon, after school, and I guessed we weren’t too far from a high school since everyone here seemed to be around the same age as us.

That meant we blended in, and I didn’t feel the need to check over my shoulder every few minutes, wondering if someone was following us.

When Brooke wanted a milkshake, I made a point of going to buy one for her.

I wasn’t sure if this was a date – I’d never been on a date – but I wanted to do it anyway, even though I paid for it from the stack of cash we were sharing.

I thought it meant something if I bought it, and the way she smiled at me when I carried it back to our booth made me think it meant something to her, too.

As soon as we walked back outside, a police car raced past us, its lights flashing and siren blaring, and I immediately went back on high alert. I almost wanted to berate myself for relaxing, but we needed to eat, damn it – we couldn’t constantly be on the run.

Brooke seemed to sense my nerves and ran her hand down my arm in a sweetly reassuring gesture.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked as we walked back to the hotel.

Brooke shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I feel like I’m questioning everything, you know?’

‘I know,’ I murmured.

‘That cop,’ she said. ‘He was really looking at Meredith’s ID. I know we look similar, but we’re not freaking twins.’

‘He didn’t question us, though. He let us go.’

‘Yeah. That was good. I just have a bad feeling.’

‘About him in particular?’ I asked.

‘Maybe. I’m trying to put it all together.’

We walked in silence for the next block.

‘What if,’ Brooke said as we were waiting for the lights to change, ‘Meredith told Jules that you’re with me.’ She nudged my arm to get my attention and we crossed the street together. ‘And that I have her ID. Then Jules told the police. Or she told my parents, who called the police.’

‘Would she do that?’

‘If she saw the same news reports we’ve seen, then yeah. Maybe.’

‘Shit,’ I muttered.

‘So then if the cops know we’re together, and they know I’ve got Meredith’s ID, and that cop runs my license plate …’

‘It won’t take them long to figure it out,’ I finished for her.

‘We need to get out of here as soon as we can,’ Brooke said, glancing over her shoulder. ‘First thing in the morning.’

‘I’m okay with that.’

‘And maybe we skip Orlando altogether.’

That didn’t feel right to me. We’d worked so hard to get there – it felt important that we at least saw the city.

‘You didn’t tell Julianne or Meredith that’s where we’re headed, though,’ I said. ‘No one knows where we’re going.’

‘I know. I really just want to shake things up a little, you know?’

I could hear the anxiety lacing her words, and decided we could have this conversation again in the morning, when she’d calmed down.

Something felt wrong as we turned the corner for the hotel and I noticed two police cars parked outside, their lights flashing.

Brooke looked at me and frowned.

‘We need to take a detour,’ I said.

Brooke’s eyes went wide, frantic. ‘How did they find us so fast?’

We got closer to the front door of the hotel, and it became even more obvious that something was going on – the police hadn’t set up a barrier, but in the lobby there was definitely more than two police cars’ worth of uniformed officers.

‘I don’t like this, Brooke,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it at all.’

Her eyes went hard, and she shook her head. ‘This is really not good,’ she said.

‘Listen, I know we might be paranoid right now, but –’

‘No, you’re right.’ She grabbed my arm, and we moved toward the street entrance of the parking garage. Our footsteps echoed on the cool cement, putting me more on edge. ‘We should go check the car.’

I felt Brooke tense as we walked up to the Mustang.

‘That’s not –’ she started, and a rage settled over her.

‘What?’

‘Someone messed with the roof,’ she said, stalking over to it. ‘It’s been put back wrong. They’ve been in my car.’

‘Let’s go,’ I said immediately. ‘Brooke. We need to go.’

‘I know,’ she said, glancing at me, and I could see my panic reflected in her eyes.

I jogged over to the passenger door and let myself in. By the time I was done buckling my seatbelt, Brooke was pulling out of the space.

‘We left our bags in the room,’ she said suddenly as she pulled out into downtown traffic. ‘With all the cash in them.’

‘We can find a public lot and park the car, then come back for the bags later when the police have left,’ I said. My heart was hammering in a way it hadn’t since St. Louis. I felt the tension crackling between us, nervous energy being shared back and forth.

‘Shit, Jessie,’ Brooke said, slamming her hands down on the steering wheel. ‘We’re so fucking close.’

‘I know, Brooke,’ I said. ‘I know.’

We were half a block away from the hotel when the sirens started.