Bethany told herself that this was totally absolutely don’t panic normal. Luke’s truck bounded over the open country while she clutched on to a hook with two fingers and prayed a golf bag skittering around in the bed with her didn’t come flying into her face.
The truth. They were heading toward the truth, Bethany knew, she knew it—heading toward the truth she would reveal, she would call the lady deputy with the ugly shoes and say, “Officer, Officer, I’m sending you my location now—” (because Bethany knew all the tricks to all the modern devices) “—come quick, tell everybody, I found the TRUTH.”
Bethany had spotted the pile of stale clothes in the far corner of Luke’s truck bed the moment she’d lowered the unlocked tailgate in the parking lot. She’d even been pleasantly surprised to discover that she could curl herself beneath the few old shirts and towels and hardly raise the pile at all. As long as nobody shone a flashlight in here, as long as she wasn’t still here come daybreak, she could stay perfectly hidden.
Her resolution had lasted about thirty seconds before common sense had intervened and asked her what the fuck she thought she was doing.
Being brave. Bethany was a very brave person.
Once she heard Luke approaching the truck bed her bravery didn’t much matter. Because shortly after Luke’s footsteps stopped at the tailgate—what was he waiting for, hurry, let’s go—Bethany had heard her father’s voice shouting, “How the hell could she have left early when her car is in my damn garage!” and for a while Bethany hadn’t thought about much of anything.
Once the truck started rolling she felt her fear abate for a moment. She had escaped that man again. She almost smiled at the thought of her father scouring the parking lot for her in a panic, experienced the same small pleasure she’d felt when she’d gotten Jamal inside her house a week ago. Whatever the consequences, Bethany would always love getting the better of that furious piece of shit, the man who, years before, had given her perfect mother and her perfect face a permanent lazy eye after a blow from Bethany’s (surprisingly heavy) Disney Cinderella pumpkin chariot (with real light-up windows).
Bethany used to try telling people what her father had done but had quickly learned that nobody wanted to know. Bentley refused to doubt its men. But one of those men had hurt her man—they must have, why else would someone be trying so hard to pin the murder on Jamal?—and she would be fucked three ways if she let them get away with it.
They would listen to her now, oh yes. Everyone was about to start listening to her now.
Luke’s truck had rolled north on the highway for what felt like a few miles, idled by the side of the road and then set off again. It had been joined by another truck. No—get it straight, Bethany, you might need to state this in court—from what she could hear, it sounded as if Luke had started following another truck. Had followed the other truck east, scooted carefully down the highway’s shoulder and set off bounding over open country.
The Flats. They had headed into the Flats.
Bethany might have been a very brave person but now, a few miles away from the highway, anyone—anyone!—would feel their courage falter. Pretty soon, at the rate Luke was going, she was going to be very, very far from any shelter. She’d once heard that the Flats were over a hundred square miles wide. Or had it been acres? Kilometers? Big enough, anyway, that anything could happen out here.
Anything.
Bethany decided to get in touch with Officer Clark now, get her and the whole sheriff’s department mobilized and ready to roll the fuck out. But when she slipped her phone loose from her bra and looked at the screen the last of her courage left her.
She had no service.
The truck shifted course and rolled over a heavy stone. Bethany’s head struck the lower wall of the truck’s cab. She bit her hand to keep from screaming. Bit until she was afraid she was going to draw blood and didn’t let go.
The thought finally occurred to her that whatever had killed Dylan, whatever Luke and the other boys were driving to, the truth that was so determined to stay hidden it had concealed itself all the way out here in the barren Flats: what would the truth make of Bethany finding it? Bethany, wielding nothing to defend herself but a useless phone and an expensive smile?
The thought finally occurred to her that she could—how was it possible?—die.
Peeking from beneath her towel, Bethany saw a pale hook of moon through the camper shell’s window: brilliant and clear as an open wound in the sky. Fear struck the last of her composure from her head. Her mind went blank, her body cold.
That moon, that exact hook of moon, had watched her in her sleep every night this week.
They had crossed the threshold. They were going where the dreams were made. They were driving toward that thing, that pit that had been calling to her since the night Dylan died. It had been calling her here, all along.