“Yeah, it is. Sorry, I know it seems a little extreme, but—” She left the rest of the sentence hanging in the air. Both of them knew that these were extreme circumstances.
The woman fumbled around in her bag and pulled out her phone. Cait kept one eye on the road and watched until she’d switched it off.
“How long will the drive take?”
“About six hours. Maybe a little less. There’s bottled water in the back if you want it. Help yourself.”
Rebecca hugged her bag tighter to her chest. “I’m fine, thank you.”
In the rearview mirror, Cait saw a light snap on in a neighboring house and a face appear at the window.
Take it easy. Just drive normally; don’t read anything into it.
“Are you close with your neighbors?” She kept her voice casual.
Rebecca looked at her, surprised. “Not really.”
Cait’s eyes were locked on the rearview. The curtain fell back across the window, the light flicked off. She let out a sigh. “It looks like the kind of place where you’d all be friendly. Block parties, that kind of thing. Is there a neighborhood watch?”
Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Good.” She’d run into trouble with neighborhood watches in the past. Give a guy a fake badge and a pinch of authority and things could go sideways fast. The rest of the houses stayed dark. No cars on the road, either. They were almost out of the development. It would be easier once they got on the major roads. “Do you mind if I put the radio on? It helps keep me awake.”
The woman shook her head. Cait reached over and clicked on the dial. The drone of a talk radio host filled the Jeep—the great scourge of Texas. She flicked through the stations until she landed on the local Magic station. The crooning voice of Billy Joel came through the speakers, singing about drinking alone. She left it on. She figured she couldn’t go wrong with Billy Joel.
The house was on the southeast side of Lubbock, so they had to pass straight through downtown to get to Highway 60. She turned onto Broadway and drove past a banner hanging in the window of a local law firm: welcome to beautiful downtown! no win, no fee! There were stoplights every other block, and all of them seemed to turn red as soon as they got close, plotting together to keep them within the city limits.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Cait muttered, hand tapping the wheel. She didn’t like how quiet it was. That was the hardest part about these night drives: the quiet. It was easier to blend in if there were other signs of life.
A man dressed in a Santa hat walked past holding a filthy cloth in one hand and a sign in the other: hungry, please help. He knocked on the window as they waited for the light to change. Cait tried to wave him away, but he mimed the action of cleaning and started wiping the cloth across the windshield, leaving streaks of grease on the glass. She glanced over at Rebecca, who was cowering in the passenger seat, knuckles white on the straps of her bag.
Cait rolled down the window and shoved a couple of dollar bills at him. “Thanks for the sterling work.” He took them with a tip of an imaginary hat and shuffled off just as the light switched to green. “You okay?” she asked Rebecca.
Rebecca nodded, but her jaw was set tight and she was staring straight ahead, her eyes glassy and unseeing. She hadn’t so much as blinked since leaving the house. “Almost out of Lubbock now,” Cait said.
The wide double lanes were lined with the cash-and-carries and the megachurches and the little Mexican restaurants advertising Taco Tuesday, just like every other town in Texas. Occasionally, a neon-lit billboard would flood a sickly light down on them, conjuring up strange, flickering shadows. The Christmas lights were out—multicolored stars and pale blue snowflakes, an angel strung high above the avenue, her wings sparkling gold—and the signs in the shopwindows advertised half-price champagne and cheap diamond bracelets.
Cait hated Christmas. It was amateur hour for drinking, full of awkward office parties and old guys looking to cop a feel after one too many whiskeys. Her old manager had insisted on hanging a sprig of mistletoe at the edge of the bar, and every time she’d go to open the champagne fridge, there’d be some guy lurking, hoping to try his luck. There was a new manager now, a woman, so maybe it would be different, though given that the staff uniform involved mandatory crop tops and Stetsons, she wasn’t holding her breath. At least the tips would be decent.
She stretched, winced. Her back was killing her already. She’d been driving for hours, pushing through rush hour traffic out of Austin and on to 183. She’d lived in the city for eight years and every year it seemed to get worse, the roads thick with pickup trucks and beaters and shiny new sports cars, clogging up the city’s arteries, strangling its heart.
Friends talked about leaving the city. They said they couldn’t take the traffic anymore, or the ever rising rents for ever shittier apartments, or the Tesla charging stations that had sprung up like dandelions and were perpetually full. It was all talk, though. No one ever left. Where would they go? Someplace like this?
They passed Church’s Chicken and the Eleganté Hotel. The city was starting to lose its grip a little, pockets of land stretching wider between buildings and the buildings themselves growing longer and wider. Cait saw Rebecca’s shoulders inch away from her ears and the grip on her handbag start to loosen.
Finally, they saw the sign for the Lubbock city limit. “We’re out,” Cait said. “The hardest part is over now.” Rebecca cracked a smile.
They drove through Littlefield, past a John Deere dealership and a sign advertising vacancy at the Plains Motel. She’d done this stretch a couple times before—once with a sweet-faced college kid who spent the whole time cramming for her biology exam, and another with a woman from Odessa who wept for most of the journey.
That had been a tough one. But there had been worse.
Some of her clients—those who had jobs flexible enough to allow them a few days off, or partners who weren’t breathing down their necks—stayed within state lines, and she ferried them to Austin or Dallas or Fort Worth. Most went to New Mexico, where the rules weren’t so strict. It was a longer drive but quicker in the long run. Lubbock was in a dead zone: a five-hour drive no matter what direction she drove. It was the client’s choice. Tonight she was heading west.
She glanced in the rearview. There was a tractor trailer behind them. She stepped on the gas, and its headlights receded. No tail that she could detect. She allowed herself to relax a little. It was always most dangerous nearest the home. The more miles they had under their belts, the safer they would be. Until they got to where they were going, of course, but that was a headache she wouldn’t worry about until morning.
Cait had left in a hurry—late, as always—and hadn’t managed to get dinner. Hunger was mixed in with exhaustion, gritting her eyes and making her bones heavy. A cup of coffee and maybe a slice of pie would be enough to keep her going. “Do you mind if we stop once we’re over the border?”
Rebecca’s head snapped toward her. “Why?”
“I need a cup of coffee. I’ve been on the road since six o’clock.”
The corners of her pretty mouth turned down. “I guess. If you need to.”
“Thanks. It’ll be quick, I promise. I know you’re nervous, but we’re out of the danger zone now.”