“Come on,” I hissed.
As she climbed back in, she tucked something small into her pocket. “Pull around to the back of the petrol station. Park next to the owner’s truck, turn it off, and duck down.”
I did as she said, and not a moment too soon. Red-and-blue lights flooded in through the rear window. I held my breath as the cop car circled the gas station, slowing down behind us. A door opened, closed. Footsteps padded up to our back window.
If he shone a flashlight in—if he even glanced in—he’d see us. I thought I might throw up.
And then a sound of something big thunking onto metal, as if he’d dropped his bag onto the trunk of our car.
“I need to get my gloves out,” the cop said, his voice muffled. “I know they’re in here somewhere.”
“Well, hurry up,” the other cop replied.
“My hands are ass-cold, man. Give me a second.”
“We’ve got a single-car crash and a drunk wandering somewhere in these woods, Taylor. We better get to it.”
Taylor must’ve found his gloves, because there were footsteps again. Retreating. The cruiser ambling back out to the road, and the officers getting out to look again at the sedan.
Holmes turned to me with a look of morbid satisfaction. She had been right. We hadn’t been found. Crouched below the steering wheel, I rubbed my face with my hands. One way or another, this year was going to kill me.
I could hear the pair of officers talking as they examined the black car, though I couldn’t make out their words. An endless hour passed while they dickered about something. Their lights kept flashing; I fought to keep my eyes open. Holmes had folded herself down to the foot of her seat, still alert, somehow. Our wild chase hadn’t exactly been subtle, and if someone had called it in to the police, they would know there was another car. What if they came back around again, searching for us? I dug my hands into the seat, trying to steady my nerves.
Then finally, finally, we heard it. The unmistakable groan of a tow truck as the sedan was hauled away. The cop car following after.
When I shut my eyes, I could still see the flashing lights pulsing against the darkness.
It was another half hour before Holmes gave the all clear. “We should wait longer,” she said, her voice even hoarser than usual, “but the petrol station will be open any minute now, and I don’t want us to get caught back here.”
Every joint in my body cracked as I climbed back into the driver’s seat. I caught a glimpse of my face in the rearview mirror, scored here and there by the sharp fingers of branches.
“Jesus,” I said, with feeling. Holmes cracked her neck. “All that for the campus dealer. Some paranoid freak who probably just ran because we were chasing him.”
“Not a dealer,” she said. “Something worse.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Like what?”
“It doesn’t add up. If he’s sampling his wares, as it seems from the powder spilled on the driver’s side seat, why is he in such terrific shape? Why was he was wearing four-hundred-dollar shoes and running like an Olympic sprinter? If he’s a dealer, he’s unlike any I’ve had contact with. I’d be shocked if he was Lucas, the townie who deals on campus.”
“Why?”
Holmes’s face twisted. “He ran like one of my brother’s men.”
“Did you see his face?”
She shook her head.
“Then how—no, wait. Your brother has men?”
“Several thousand, at last count. It’s the most rational explanation. He has a tail or two on me most of the time. I imagine we ran into one, and he panicked.”
I let that sink in. “All that was because your brother was trying to check up on you? Your brother. Who’s a good guy. It doesn’t add up.”
“It’s likely that Milo wanted to assess you. Find out where your loyalties really lie. My friends . . . well, I haven’t ever really had one before.”
“Oh,” I said.
She considered me for a moment, her eyes bloodshot. “I don’t want my brother on your tail. You don’t deserve that. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“And you have,” I said softly. My vices got in the way of my studies.
We looked at each other. She bit her lip, took a breath—she was on the cusp of saying something—and then she turned away.
“What did you find?” I asked, finally. “What was that thing you put in your pocket?”
She didn’t look at me. “Let’s get back,” she said. I tried not to look at the square outline of the thing in her jacket, and started the car.
We didn’t talk. Instead, I turned on the radio as Holmes peered silently out the window. The passing streetlights washed her face blank and bright.
I couldn’t tell you what was in her head. I couldn’t even guess. But I was beginning to realize I liked that, the not knowing. I could trust her despite it. If she was a place unto herself, I might have been lost, blindfolded, and cursing my bad directions, but I think I saw more of it than anyone else, all the same.
five