*
They stopped at a Burger King in Rosamond. There was a mess of loose change in the Jeep’s console, including a few crumpled singles. It felt strangely wrong to take it, even from a vehicle they’d already stolen, but this would be the only time it was necessary. Soon enough they’d be done borrowing or stealing anything.
They ordered burgers and fries and took them to a seating area outside. In the sun’s glare, every piece of chrome in the parking lot gleamed like a blade.
Dryden realized he was seeing Rachel in the light for the first time. Her eyes were darker than he’d first thought—deep brown, like her hair. Other details stood out, unnoticeable before now: The girl was skin and bones. Her arms were covered with bruises of varying age—the telltale markings of the things she’d told him about: restraining straps, a swollen scar where the IV connector had been.
He thought of the boardwalk—the way she’d crashed into him at the junction. If he hadn’t been there, what would’ve happened? She might’ve gone north along the walk; she’d have seen for herself that south was a dead end. Maybe she’d have dropped to the beach and run north there. Either way they’d have caught her inside of two minutes.
She looked down at her tray. The wind whipped her hair around.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“For what?”
“This. You being caught up in all of it. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s okay.”
“How can it be okay?” she asked. “You can’t go home. Anywhere you go, they’ll—”
“Hey.” He said it as gently as he could.
She stopped talking and held his gaze.
“You can hear what I’m thinking,” he said. “If I could go back to last night and not be there, would I?”
Her forehead furrowed. She looked down into the table again and spoke in a whisper. “Thank you.”
*
Desert birds wheeled and turned above the restaurant. They alighted and hopped around a few yards from the table.
Rachel watched them, managing the first smile Dryden had seen from her. It lit up her eyes. She threw the birds the last few fries from her carton; she’d inhaled the rest of her meal in a couple of minutes. Greasy fast food, but no doubt the best thing she’d eaten in two months. A minute later the birds were gone, sweeping away in high arcs over the parking lot and the scrubland. Rachel watched them, her eyes taking in the wide open space all around, the flat pan of the desert reaching away to the mountains. Dryden wondered what it must look like after two months stuck in a room.
“How did you escape?” he asked.
Rachel bit her lower lip. “I did something pretty bad. I mean, it was all I could think of, and if I said I regretted it, that wouldn’t be true, but … it was bad.”
Dryden waited.
“Last night the blond man gave me the drug at seven o’clock, like every night. I woke up a little before three in the morning—also like every night. But this time, after I woke up, he came in with another drug bag. That had never happened before. And it wasn’t the usual drug. This one he was thinking about. It was something called a barbiturate. There was enough of it in the bag to stop my heart. Which was the idea, I guess.”
“Christ.”
“I told him I knew what it was. He got flustered, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. So then I told him something else. Something I’d heard in the soldiers’ thoughts when they strapped me down for the night. The fact that it was true must’ve helped me sound convincing.” She was quiet a beat. “They had orders to restrain him and put him in a van with my body, and drive us both to a gravel pit thirty miles north of El Sedero. Along the way they were going to wrap his head in cling wrap to suffocate him, and then bury him right on top of me.”
Dryden imagined it. The guy standing there, hearing that, knowing it was true. Knowing the kind of man he worked for.
“What happened then?” he asked.
“I asked if he knew how the building’s security system worked. He said he didn’t. I told him I knew as much as the soldiers knew about it—which was everything. I said I’d help him escape if he’d let me go, once we were out. He agreed. He even meant it; I guess he knew he couldn’t lie to me. So we went. We got as far as the building’s back door. I gave him the code to disarm the door alarm. I didn’t tell him there were motion detectors behind the building, and that there was no way to shut them off.”