Rachel crashed hard and only woke up when they stopped moving. Opening her eyes made no difference to the darkness swallowing her. Outside, voices rose and machinery whirred. Her hand crept toward her phone, but she hesitated to turn it on, in case the light gave them away. Jason's soft breaths rose and fell next to her. Carefully, she crouched and snuck to the door.

She slipped her hand through the open crack, like she had earlier, and again ran into the metal crate stored next to hers. And then that crate started moving.

Her hand jerked back. Daylight leaked into her crate, and she shied away. A THUNK came as somewhere, the other crate was dropped onto the ground. Rachel braced herself for their crate to start moving too, but it didn't. Workers called out to one another, and booming echoed through other train cars. A whistle sounded.

"Where are we?" Jason groaned.

"Everything's fine." She crawled back to his side. "We're still on the train."

"What city?" His words were low and slurred, but he still somehow managed to sound as if that should have been obvious the first time.

"Do I look like a GPS?" she whispered.

Painstakingly, he rolled from his stomach onto his back. His good arm fished in his pocket, pulled out the prepaid phone, and pressed it into her hand. "This does."

"Someone's feeling better," she muttered. His eyes closed again, as if he were too tired to keep them open. She bit her lip. His fever had probably spiked in the night and come down some now that it was morning. That happened a lot. She'd researched it before: something to do with white blood cells and falling cortisol levels. They'd probably go through this cycle for the next few days, and if they were lucky, he'd be better by then.

If he wasn't, she swore she'd take him to a hospital.

She pulled out some of the jerky and put it in his hand. "You eat. I'll look." He didn't move. "I mean it. Eat."

Eyes closed, his nose twitched in distaste, but he pulled the food up to his mouth. She nodded even though he wasn't looking and pulled up Google Maps on the phone. The train started rolling again as their location loaded. "Kansas City. That's where we're at."

He swallowed. "North, east, west, south?"

"What?"

Jaw tight, he asked, "Which direction is the train going?"

"Oh. Um." She checked the phone. "South, it looks like."

"Good." His face screwed up. "Keep an eye on it."

"To what end, Psycho Boy? I can't exactly steer the thing."

He gave a breathy chuckle, then winced harder. "Like you said. Ride it as long as it's going our way." Lips twisted, he set the half-eaten jerky on his chest. "I think I'm gonna get some more sleep."

"The pill I gave you last night's worn off. You can have another."

"I just wanna sleep, Rachel."

And he did, off and on for the next several hours, face twisting and twitching. He'd sleep better with the oxy, but she wasn't about to force it down his throat. With nothing really to do, she passed the time by pacing, peeking out at the passing countryside, frowning at him, and glancing at the phone. They tracked steadily south, passing through a bunch of tiny towns she'd never heard of before: Paola, Parsons, Pryor. This railroad sure likes its P-towns. Maybe it was Track-P. Maybe to join the rail club, cities had to get on board the name trend.

She dragged a hand down her face. She really needed someone to talk to before she started driving herself crazy. Just to get more fresh air, she pulled open the door a little more and sat in the opening. The wind wound through her curls. Vast flat fields of some sort of golden-green plant flashed by mile after mile. Was it corn? Wheat? She really had no idea. It could have been weeds for all she knew. It hardly looked like anyone lived out here.

As another speck of civilization appeared on the horizon, Rachel retreated back inside for a quick meal. The speck, according to Google, was named Wagoner. She memorized it in case it meant something to Jason that it didn't to her. She woke him to give him a bit of water, offered him another pill he refused, and had him shift to his stomach again before going back to sleep.

He barely argued about any of it. A frown took her lips.

After changing his bandages, she took her seat in the doorway again. Fields slowly gave way to forests. In the distance, mountains started to break up the endless horizon.

And they started going east.

A sinking feeling slid into her stomach. She wrote it off for a while, thinking they might switch back south soon, but if anything, they just pointed even more directly east.

Rachel might never have won any prizes for her mad geography skills—heck, she wasn't even sure she had ever had a geography class—but she did know one thing.

Arizona was definitely to the west. And they were no longer going the correct direction.

"Wake up." She nudged his foot with her own, then again as he didn't stir. "Jason."

"What's wrong?" he groaned, coming to. He looked around their box, shoulders tensing as he lifted his head before he winced and laid it back down. "What's wrong?" he asked again, voice clearer than it'd been all day.

"Nothing. Or nothing like you're thinking. It's just you said to keep an eye—" Rachel broke off from her ramble, neck warming in self-conscious embarrassment. She didn't need to have woken him up. The sleep seemed to have cleared his head some; more sleep could only help more. But she didn't have a plan, and he said he didn't want to go backwards. "We're just going the wrong way."

One handed, Jason pushed himself up with a tense jaw, lips curling to the left. "There's a map somewhere..." He dug through the backpack's pockets before pulling out a crinkled brochure. It was the railroad track map he'd shown her before, the one he said showed Chicago was a hub of trains. He rubbed his eyes, then peered down. His right hand splayed the map open in his lap while his left one dangled beside him. "We headed east or north?"

"East." The walls of the box seemed smaller than ever. She walked over to the opening and stuck her face out, just to get a bit of air.

"East," he murmured. The brochure crinkled behind her. "It's either this dead end here"—something tapped against the paper—"or Fort Smith."

"Let's hope it's somewhere with a hospital," she muttered.

"No," Jason said sharply.

She'd thought the wind would have caught her words, but apparently not. She scoffed at him.

"We don't have time," he said calmly.

"Time?" she exclaimed, spinning toward him. "Do you know how ridiculous you sound?"

"Arizona," he reminded her. "I'll get help in Arizona. Not before."

"You might be dead before Arizona," she snarled.

His skin was clammy and pale, the dark circles under his eyes darker than ever. But as though he were the one explaining things to her that she didn't understand, he gently shook his head. "We're not that far. A day, two tops."

"And then how long before we find these mysterious friends of yours?"

"I don't know," he said, voice maddeningly even. "But I don't think it will take them long to find us."

Her lips curled. "Oh, you just think they're gonna come find you?"

"They will if we make them." His head sank back against the wall, eyes closing.

Rachel bit her tongue. Slowly, she sank down to sit across from him. "This is a bad idea."

"I keep trying to tell you that you don't have to come."

"Like that would make it a better idea!"

He shrugged one shoulder, then dragged his head up off the wall. "Can I have the phone back? I want to find out where we're at for sure."

She stared at him slack-jawed, torn between the desire to slap him and the urge to bundle him off to the nearest medical facility. He had no regard for his own safety, and little regard for her worry about it.

Then again, she hadn't exactly shown the most regard for his safety when she'd first dragged him onto a moving train.

"Whatever," she said. She dropped it in his lap. "But when you die, I'm not burying you."

He wasn't looking at her, busy with Google Maps. She turned away, stomach churning, back toward the sliver of the world outside.

And that's when the phone rang.

Jason stared at the dark screen in his hands. CALLER UNKNOWN. Not surprising, since he didn't have any contacts.

But no contacts had this number either.

In the cold metal box, the ringtone echoed off every wall. It pinged into him, again and again, like a submarine radar. CALLER UNKNOWN.

"It's a scam call," Rachel said, voice uncharacteristically quiet. "Don't answer it."

"It's a brand new number," Jason murmured. It shouldn't be on any databases yet; no marketing ploy had conned him into giving it out. In fact, the only entity who had ever seen this number was 911.

Jason's mind flashed back to the gloved man on the New York news, smiling through the screen at Jason, talking to him as if he knew he would hear it. They're from nowhere, he'd said, as if he'd known Jason had never had classmates two years in a row, had never been a local, had never spent Christmas in the same town twice. Someone needs to take those bambinos home before they get themselves into real trouble.

Had it been a threat... or an offer? To point out Jason hadn't ever had a home, then turn around and suggest he should go there, didn't make much logical sense. Unless the gloved man knew something Jason didn't.

"Jason, don—"

He accepted the call. "You have a message for me?"

A rich baritone rumbled through the other end. It was devoid of any Brooklyn accent now; it had the crisp consonants and leisurely vowels of an academic—or someone who wanted to sound like an academic. "A man of business," he laughed. "No time, I see, for introductions."

"You know who I am."

"Not as well as I'd like, Jason," the man admitted.

He stiffened at the warm tone in the man's voice, recognizing the tactic for what it was... and yet still not completely unaffected by it. The faux familiarity was the same way Jason tried to pull new people in. And it appealed to him the same way it appealed to most people: everyone wanted to be seen, felt, known. Especially when so few people knew him at all.

The familiarity had to be fake, but it didn't sound fake, even to Jason's practiced ear. Jason couldn't help but wonder what he knew.

"They're going to trace you, idiot," Rachel snapped. She reached for the phone, and he hurriedly switched it to his other ear. Pain blossomed warm as his body twisted, and his face screwed up.

"Is that Miss Carson?" the gloved man asked, voice rising through the speaker. "Tell her that her friends speak well of her."

Rachel froze, the blood draining from her face.

"Did you call just to taunt us?" Jason said.

"Of course not," the gloved man said. "I wanted to let you know that I'm hopeful we can meet in Fort Smith, perhaps in half an hour. Miss Carson needn't worry about us tracing the call; I've had your location for a couple hours now."

Jason's eyes narrowed. "Why would you tell me that?"

"Because it's beneath us to keep playing cat and mouse. I'm not your enemy, young man."

"You took my whole family," Jason snarled.

"And I would be more than happy to reunite you with them. That's why I'm calling."

Chills ran through him. "They're alive?"

"And well," he assured. "Jason, I wish I could have reached out to you more directly before now. This has all gotten far out of hand. Will you meet me so we can clear things up?"

"We can clear things up right now."

"I wish I could, but it's not something we can talk about over the phone. So many ears on these things, you understand? Suffice to say I've known your parents most of their lives. I'd like to help you."

Jason's hand clenched around the phone. Could his parents, and Ana, really be just on the other side? Or was this man simply telling him exactly what he wanted to hear? He'd been searching for every micro-tell in the man's voice, but he hadn't heard one. The man sounded honest. It didn't make sense.

"Will I see you in Fort Smith?" the gloved man entreated. "There's a park not far from the rail yard. The train should stop. We can meet there."

Jason's jaw clenched. "What's your name?"

"Adrian," he said, as if surprised he hadn't told Jason already. "Adrian Foster."

"Well, Adrian." Jason's finger tapped against the back of the phone. "I'll be there."

Jason hung up. Rachel, still pale, stared at him open mouthed, leaned back, as if he were a pile of trash someone had left on her doorstep. "You're just gonna run right to them?"

He powered the phone off, just in case they were still listening to it somehow. "No. But he didn't need to know that."

She cursed. "Why did you even answer the call?"

"We got more out of it than we lost." He shifted, trying to relieve the pinging pressure in his arm. It didn't help much. After a deep breath, he said, "Now we won't be ambushed."

"You think because he asked nicely he's not still going to ambush you?"

"He might," Jason said, "if I planned on being there."

Slowly, he pulled his legs underneath him, using the wall of the box to steady him. A familiar wave of dizziness spun through, but he just stayed put until it stilled. Some sleep did me good, he tried to convince himself, even as his arm pounded harder than ever and a sweat built on his brow. I'll be fine.

When his eyes opened, Rachel was in his face, her curls framing his vision. Voice low and dark, she asked, "What exactly are you planning on doing?"

He mustered as much of an even tone as he could while hot wires wrapped tighter around his arm. "We have to get off. Before we make it to Fort Smith."

"Get off? Like jump off? You," she hissed, "can barely stand."

"I'm standing fine." He let go of the support of the wall. His vision wobbled, but his legs held. "See?"

The train rocked over a bump in the tracks. They both stumbled a pace, and Rachel caught him as his head swam. His arm screamed at him, and he leaned against her shoulder as he caught his racing breath.

"You're not a movie star," she whispered, breath tickling the back of his neck. "You're sick, Jason. Really sick."

Her shoulder was soft, and his eyes were heavy. Just a few seconds, he promised himself. He counted to three. Then, ignoring the world swaying as he moved, he forced himself to straighten.

"Sick or not," he said slowly, "we can't be there when they are. Please, Rachel."

"I won't." Her curls shook. "I'm not going to help you jump off a moving—"

"You think I've got a better chance of outrunning them?"

She sucked at her lip, head tilted, eyes pleading. "This is a bad idea."

"I know." He reached out for the wall, borrowing its balance, but his eyes didn't leave her face.

Her gaze roamed over him, lips downturned, and he did his best to keep his back straight. She sighed, shoulders drooping. "Let's figure out how we're going to do this."