Page 10 of The Midnight Knock

(If Kyla was honest, of course, she’d had her own part to play, but thank God she was seldom honest. At least not with herself.)

Fernanda, however, was honest to a fault. “In that case, I should tell you that our fuel is falling very low. We will run dry in thirty miles. Maybe less.”

Kyla sat straight up. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. You have been asleep for some time. I thought we would be closer to Mexico by now.” Fernanda shrugged, chewed her cheek. “I had hoped to fuel up in Turner, but of course that was out of the question.”

Fernanda was right. They’d passed through the town of Turner shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, though it was a miracle they’d made it through at all. When the girls had reached town, the parking lot of the diner that served as the little town’s main juncture had been ablaze with flashing lights, cops everywhere. The girls had thought it was a roadblock set up just for them, but then they’d seen the color of the SUVs, the department names printed on their side panels, and realized that something must have happened at the diner itself. Something the girls wanted no part of.

Kyla had told Fernanda exactly what to do.Don’t avoid looking at the cops, but don’t look at them for too long. Stay well to the edge of the big parking lot. Slow down, but not too much. Keep breathing.

They’d reached the southern road without drawing so much as a second glance.

They’d been driving ever since.

Now, a little after four fifteen, something finally changed. A mountain appeared to the south: sharp peak, dark sides, an air of menace Kyla told herself she was imagining.

A much more welcome sight appeared by the side of the road. Above an abandoned old Ford truck, a hand-painted sign read:

BRAKE INN MOTEL

GAS—FOOD—WARM BEDS

HIKE SCENIC MT APACHE

5 MI THIS WAY

There was a ping from the dashboard: the Malibu’s little fuel icon springing to life. Kyla said, “Perfect timing.”

She expected Fernanda to be relieved, but the woman studied the sign with a frown as it passed by. Something was poised on the tip of her tongue.

It passed, like the sign. Fernanda shook back her hair. She said simply, “Yes. Very fortunate.”

Not a mile past the sign, two figures appeared up ahead on the side of the road. Two men. One carried a brown duffel bag. The other a red gas can. One was tall and lithe, the other short and muscular. They turned at the sound of the approaching Malibu. The shorter one stuck out his thumb.

Kyla said, “They’re armed.”

Fernanda said, “How can you tell?”

Kyla said again, “They’re armed.”

She sat very still, her fingers wrapped around the gun in her door’s pocket. Kyla was hardly a marksman, but her boyfriend had taken her to the range a few times, taught her enough to be dangerous.

Dangerous for him, as it turned out.

Fernanda reached one hand into her own door’s pocket, touched her own pistol there. She said, “You are sure?”

Kyla looked at the two men again. They both looked like trouble, but for different reasons. The taller one seemed shifty, angry at something, but it was all a little much, a little strong. He was forcing himself to be angry so he couldn’t feel something else. He was probably dangerous, but not in the way that he wanted to think. Men like that could be unpredictable in the worst ways.

But it was the shorter of the men that frightened Kyla, the muscled one with the darker hair. He had a flat, impassive look, hard hazel eyes, an unreadable face. He looked strong, lethally capable.

He looked exactly like the sort of man Frank O’Shea hired to do his dirtiest work. Kyla would know the type. Until this afternoon, she’d been a waitress at the best steakhouse in Fort Stockton. She’d spent much of the last six months serving rib eyes to men just like this short bruiser with the hard, inscrutable face.

“Is it an ambush?” Fernanda’s voice was low, barely a whisper, like she thought the men could hear her.

“Maybe.”

“But if they were chasing us from Stockton, how did they get up the road without passing us?”