It didn’t take Ethan long to move Lisa’s body out of the Jeep’s back seat. He laid her body out as gently as he could on the passenger side of the vehicle so she couldn’t be seen from the highway. He covered her with a blanket before he moved back to the car to scrub the blood out of the seat. Cade waited on the side of the road, her back to the blanket-covered body and the Jeep. Her shoulders were so tense that Ethan could see her stiffness even from where he stood.
Ethan ran his hand through his hair, pushing the blond strands away from his eyes as he scrutinized the darkened interior of the Jeep. It looked like he’d gotten as much blood as would be possible out of the seat, but the faint scent of the metallic liquid hung in the air. Ethan wrinkled his nose in disgust and took a step back from the opened door. Something told him that he and Cade were going to end up driving to Gadsden with the windows rolled down, despite the chill starting to bite into the air around them.
“How’s it coming?” Cade called from her spot at the side of the road. She stood with her arms wrapped around her as she watched traffic pass along the highway. Ethan felt another pang of worry. He knew that this wasn’t the first time the Israeli woman had been involved with a killing. It wasn’t the first time for him, either. Their histories had put them in the occasional situation where they’d been forced or ordered to pull the trigger. Somehow, though, this time felt different. This time felt more like murder, despite the threat Lisa had posed to them. Perhaps it was the fact that Ethan had known her in life that made her death so difficult for him to wrap his mind around.
Ethan stepped away from the car, leaving the back passenger door open, and walked over to Cade. He stood beside her in companionable silence for a moment and watched the traffic roll by. He wondered where all the people were going, where they thought they could escape to as the entire southeast crumbled around them. North? East? West? Ethan knew it was only a matter of time before whatever caused this chaos spread to other cities—and possibly even other countries.
Ethan let out a weighty sigh and shook himself free from his thoughts. He hooked his arm around Cade’s shoulder, pulled her close, and gave her a gentle squeeze. “I think the car is about as clean as it’s going to get,” he told her.
Cade leaned into Ethan’s side. She stared off across the highway blankly as they stood side by side. She finally broke the silence that had settled over them like a thick blanket. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Head out to Gadsden, like we planned,” Ethan said. He leaned his head against hers and squeezed her again. “And when we get there, we’re going to make sure Mom is okay. After that, we’re going to hole up and not think about anything for a while. A long while, if I can help it.”
“And after that?”
Ethan breathed out again. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?” he said. He looked back at the Jeep and tugged at her arm as he took a step away from her. “Come on. We need to get moving. I’ll drive for a while.”
Ethan could sense the gratitude in the look Cade gave him even in the darkness around them. She pulled away from him and circled the Jeep to the passenger side, stepping delicately around Lisa’s blanketed body to climb inside. Ethan considered not moving on until the highway was clear of cars. But that could take hours, and he didn’t think they had hours. Resigning himself to the likelihood that someone would see Lisa’s body on the side of the road at some point, Ethan climbed into the driver’s seat. He put the Jeep in gear and headed down the highway once more.
Cade and Ethan traveled in silence for over two hours, the radio the only sound between them. As they listened to the frantic reports of riots spreading out from the limits of the major southeastern cities, Ethan dialed his mother’s phone number repeatedly, but he kept getting the operator informing him that his call could not be completed.
Ethan swore as the operator’s mechanical voice spoke into his ear again. He slammed the cell phone down into the console between the seats. “Fucking phones are down,” he grumbled as Cade gave him a questioning look.
Cade pushed her windblown hair out of her face and rolled up her window halfway. She pulled her leather jacket tighter around herself with her free hand. “Can’t get in touch with your mom?”
“No, and I’m worried,” Ethan admitted. He slowed the Jeep as he approached the end of a very long line of glowing tail-lights. “The radio’s mentioned—”
“Birmingham,” Cade finished. Gadsden wasn’t very far from Birmingham in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the escalating violence had reached the city in which Ethan’s mother lived, and they were both fully aware of it. “I know. I heard.”
Ethan fell silent once more as nightmarish thoughts swirled in his head. He had no idea what he was going to find once he and Cade reached Gadsden, but he had a creeping suspicion that it would be something he wasn’t going to like. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and glanced at Cade. She had picked up his cell phone and had begun to scroll through his contacts list, her ice-blue eyes focused intently on the small LCD screen.
“Have you tried sending a text message?” Cade asked. She started to type with one of her thumbs on the phone’s small keypad. “Sometimes if the network is overloaded with voice calls, it’s easier to get a text message to slip through.”
Ethan’s cheeks flushed with heat as he shook his head. He was honestly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of that. “No, I haven’t,” he said with a healthy dose of chagrin. “My mother doesn’t have a text messaging plan. I’m kind of in the habit of not sending them to her.”
Cade continued to peck out her message on Ethan’s phone. “Well, I’m sending her one. We’ll worry about the whole ten cents it will cost her later, okay?” She smirked as she finished the message and hit the send button. She flipped the phone closed and set it back in the console before looking out the windshield at the cars ahead. “Is there any way we can get around this damned traffic? I don’t feel comfortable getting stuck in it. God only knows what will happen with so many people around.”
Ethan grabbed the map book from the dashboard where he’d tossed it and flipped backwards through it to examine the map of Alabama. “We’re over the state line now, aren’t we?” he asked. He squinted through the windshield and searched for a road sign to give him a hint of their location.
“I think I saw a sign back there that said something about Jasper,” Cade suggested. Ethan found Jasper on the map and started to measure the distance between it and Gadsden with his fingers.
“We want to avoid Birmingham itself,” Ethan said as he walked his fingers over the paper. “And the way I normally go to Mom’s takes us right through Birmingham. So we’re going to get off on Highway 69 just up ahead and cut up above Birmingham.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Cade said. She leaned down to the floorboard of the Jeep and retrieved the heavy black case at her feet. She set it across her knees reverently and ran both hands over the lid, nearly caressing it. “Can I have the key, please?”
“Key?” Ethan repeated. She seemed to be asking him for keys an awful lot lately. “What are you doing?”
Cade shrugged innocently and held out her hand to him. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared, does it? Now, key please.”
Ethan sighed and shoved his hand in his pocket. He pulled out the silver key but didn’t hand it to her right away. Instead, he closed his fist around it and simply looked at her as the Jeep idled in the stalled traffic. She made an impatient face and wiggled her fingers. “You’re not going to get us in trouble, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Cade said. “The permits are in the case, and I barely even have any ammo for it. It’s just a precaution, Ethan. Always be prepared and all that shit.” She waved her hand around flippantly as she said the last part and gave him a small smile.
Ethan snorted and shook his head ruefully. “You weren’t even in the Girl Scouts, Cade,” he pointed out. He surrendered the key. He didn’t know how he felt about Cade running around the state of Alabama with that rifle in her hands, but discomfort was definitely high on the list of possibilities.
“And you weren’t exactly a Boy Scout, but the idea still holds true, doesn’t it?” Cade said. She took the key with a look of almost unholy glee on her face.
“Why do I get this horrible feeling that I’m going to regret handing you that key?” Ethan asked. He tapped the gas pedal to ease the Jeep forward.
“Probably because you know me entirely too well,” Cade said. Her small smile turned into a wide, cheeky grin as she unlocked the case and flipped the lid open.