WITH BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL, DRIVING ALONG THAT DIRT track, Latisha listened as Garth recounted everything she’d told him to somebody else—to his boss, she guessed. It sounded like a story someone would make up, as though it couldn’t possibly be true, and yet it was true, and it was over. She was out. She was free. And somewhere along the line, she stopped listening.
The world outside the Boss’s darkened basement was huge and beautiful and bright. Even driving away from the sun, there was so much light that it hurt her eyes. The landscape on either side of the road could just as well have been from a distant galaxy. They were traveling through a broad, flat valley with jagged pieces of distant mountain ranges scattered all around them and far enough away to be tinged a strange shade of bluish purple.
The weird, otherworldly plants she saw growing on either side of the road were fascinating and completely foreign to her. Even the barren trees with their blackened, twisted trunks were like no trees she’d ever seen back home. Still, strange as they were, those trees, set against a cloudless bright blue sky, were as astonishingly beautiful as anything she’d ever seen.
Traveling along, she took a few more careful bites from the sandwich. The softness of the bread, the taste of actual meat in her mouth, the ease with which she could chew and swallow it—that was amazing too. Yes, her tooth still hurt, but in the face of all this wonder the ache that had plagued her every waking moment had somehow receded into the background.
A series of pings broke in on Latisha’s reverie. She hadn’t heard sounds like that in months, but she instantly recognized them for what they were—text alerts on a cell phone. Garth was still talking on the radio, but the ping meant there was cell service now, too.
“All right,” Garth said, turning away from the radio and speaking directly to Latisha. “The ambulance is on its way. So is Detective Howell, the lead detective on the homicide case. We should meet up with them soon. The dispatcher asked if I thought you needed an ambulance. I told her no, but Detective Howell will take you to the ER so doctors can check you out, if that’s okay. After that she’ll most likely need to interview you.”
Latisha nodded, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was thinking about the phone. It hadn’t been working before, but now it was.
“What day is it?” she asked.
“November twenty-first.”
“No, I mean what day of the week is it?”
“Monday.”
“And where are we?”
“Arizona.”
The clock on the dash said fifteen past eight. “If it’s eight fifteen here, what time is it in St. Louis?”
“We’re on Mountain Time. St. Louis would be Central.”
“Can I borrow your phone to call my parents?”
“What’s the number?” Garth said. “I’ll put the call on speaker. This road’s too washboarded for you to drive one-handed.”
Latisha recited the number for her mother’s cell phone, then worried about what she was going to say. Instead the call went to voice mail. That probably meant her mother was already at work. At the hospital she always turned off the ringer and put her phone away.
“Do you want to leave a message?” Garth asked.
“No,” Latisha said. “I need to talk to her in person.”
“Anyone else?” Garth asked.
Nodding, Latisha reeled off her stepfather’s number. Lyle was probably at work, too, but he went in early, and nine to ten was when he usually took his lunch break. Lyle answered on the second ring, and he sounded angry. “If you’re calling to sell me something, don’t bother,” he growled. “Hang up now and don’t call me again.”
“It’s me, Lyle,” she said, her voice a tiny squeak. “It’s Latisha. A cop rescued me. I’m safe.”
The phone went dead silent. For a moment she thought the call had failed. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed at last. “Is it you? Is this really true? Does your mother know? Have you talked to her?”
“I tried, but the call went to voice mail.”
“She’s at work,” Lyle said. “I’ll call the hospital and have someone give her a message. Can she call you back on this number?”
Latisha glanced in Garth’s direction, and he nodded.
“Yes, she can call me back here.”
“But where are you?”
“In Arizona.”
“Arizona? How did you get there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“That worthless piece of crap Trayvon is responsible for this, right? If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see that he ends up in jail.”
“Lyle, Trayvon didn’t do it,” Latisha objected. “It’s not his fault.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Lyle muttered. “We’ll talk about this later. Where are you in Arizona?”
“Bisbee,” Garth put in, answering for her.
“Who’s that?” Lyle wanted to know.
“A friend,” Latisha said quickly. “Someone who’s helping me out.”
She didn’t want to say anything more than that right then—she didn’t want to mention that the deputy who had come to her rescue had been shot and that they were on their way to meet up with an ambulance.
“So if you’re in Bisbee, Tucson’s the closest airport, right?”
With Latisha at a loss, Garth answered for her. “That would be correct, sir, Tucson International.”
“Okay,” Lyle said, “I’ll call your mom now. As soon as we can get plane reservations, we’re coming to get you. It’s so good to hear your voice, Latisha. I can barely believe it. Your mother and I both thought we’d lost you for good. We didn’t think you were ever coming home.”
“I didn’t think so, either,” Latisha said, speaking around the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.
“We love you, girl.”
“I love you, too, Lyle,” she whispered back, but he had already ended the call.
“You call your father by his first name?” Garth asked.
“Lyle’s my stepfather, not my father,” she said. “I’ve never told him I love him before, and I don’t think he even heard me.”
“He may not have heard you,” Garth said quietly, “but I’ll bet he already knows.”
A text alert came in, and then another call. “All right,” Garth said. “Hold on, I’ll have her take a look.” After doing something to the phone, he turned to Latisha. “I need you to pull over and take a look at something.”
“What?”
“Chief Deputy Hadlock just sent me a photo.”
Once the SUV stopped moving, he handed her the phone. The image staring back at her from the screen took her breath away. Her fingers spasmed, and she dropped the phone.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s the Boss.”