In a dank highway truck stop bathroom, after pissing blood in a heavily graffitied stall, Blake rinsed his bruised face at the sink. He blotted his torn eyebrow with wet paper towels, flinching to a stop when the pain sharpened.

Beside him, a friendly trucker pumped pink liquid soap into his leathery hand. "Shoulda seen the other fella, right?" he said with an easy grin.

Blake nodded. He wet another wad of paper towels and scrubbed the dried bloodstains on his shirt and pants. "Hey. You got any aspirin or anything? They got my wallet, my jacket, my phone."

The man shook his head sympathetically. He retrieved a few packets of Advil from his jacket pocket. "Here you go."

"Thanks." A dislocated finger or two made tearing the foil packets a daunting task. Blake clenched the packs in his teeth, ripped them open, then swallowed the caplets.

"I expect you could use a cup of coffee," the trucker said.

Blake's burning lips and aching jaw muscles cut short his appreciative smile.

A short time later, with coffee in hand, he crossed the wide parking lot cluttered with passenger vehicles and 18-wheelers toward Alex's SUV. A crippling cough buckled his knees, bringing a discharge of blood. He wiped his mouth, opened the passenger door, and climbed up into the seat. With his hands on the steering wheel, he filled his aching lungs with air and slowly exhaled. When he closed his eyes, he found his mother there in the dark waiting for him.

She'd probably received his birthday card and had likely called to thank him and to ask him if what she'd been hearing about her son was true, hoping that he could explain how the story got so distorted and blown out of proportion. She desperately needed his assurances that everything was going to be fine, that whatever this was that he'd gotten himself into could be fixed. And he wanted to tell her that he'd get to that later. He'd sort it all out with her but right now he needed to focus. His life depended on it.

His eyes shot open and he gathered himself, blinking away her image, trading it for a blurry parking lot full of big trucks. A hard cough kicked at the bottom of his ribcage burning like hell but it cleared his head and his vision. He leaned across the seat and opened the glove box. Inside was the pair of vice grips that had been deployed during the interrogation. He tossed them onto the passenger seat and then almost smiled when he found a multi-tool.

He slid down from the passenger and hobbled to the rear of the vehicle. He grunted, opened the tailgate then attempted to unscrew the sill plate. The screws felt like they had been welded into the frame. His right hand went numb so he tried with his left. He pressed down so hard he could feel his vertebrae crack. Finally, the screws relented. He removed the plate then pulled away the plastic side panel to access the On-Star device. He unplugged the three connectors and then slammed the tailgate shut. With the tracking system disabled, he settled into the driver's seat. He dialed Rachel's number on Alex's phone. His call went to voicemail.

Blake texted: It's me - Chia Pet. He waited but received no response.

He washed down the acrid taste of despair with a sip of coffee along with his fading hopes. So much had happened so quickly, that he hadn't had time for thoughts, reflections, or preoccupations until now. He was struck by the realization that he had been living minute-to-minute, narrowly escaping with his life, relying almost exclusively on luck. Being alive was a temporary condition. He was smarter than his pursuers but they were better at this game. He had to put his thoughts in order but he needed to do that while he was an object in motion. Once he became an object at rest, he was a dead man. He started the Tahoe.

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The motel clerk was halfway out of his chair when Gizmo pushed the office door open, a cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth. "You run this place?" He glanced out the window at the sign. "This is the Red Star motel, am I right?"

"Uh-huh." The man cupped a hand over his mouth but the odor of whiskey seeped through his fingers.

"Uh-huh, you run the place or uh-huh this shit hole is the Red Star Motel?"

"Both."

"I'm looking for a guy and his chick who stayed here. Young couple from up north."

The clerk nodded.

"Did they use a credit card?" Gizmo asked, sucking on the cigarette, the tip glowing orange.

"As I recall," the clerk mumbled, "he paid with cash." A bottle clanked when he pushed the desk drawer closed with his leg.

"You talk to the girl?" He mashed his cigarette against the countertop, then tossed it onto the floor. "Maybe about where they were going?"

The motel clerk shook his head, then coughed into his fist. He could almost smell the man's proclivity for violence.

Gizmo extended his hand as he exhaled two streams of blue smoke through his wide nostrils. He stepped closer. "Lemme have the key to that room."

"Well, see, that room ain't been cleaned proper."

"Zero fucks given."

The man nervously scratched the back of his chicken neck, processing the request. The thug startled him by stuffing a twenty-dollar bill into his shirt pocket. "Make yourself some spending money and gimme the key." He ground the smoldering butt into the threadbare carpeting with the toe of his boot. "Or I can put your fuckin' head through the wall and save a few bucks."

The clerk chose option A and accompanied him out the door and down the cracked walkway to room 8. Gizmo unlocked the door and entered the room leaving the man standing in the doorway.

He pulled open an empty drawer in the nightstand then one in the desk. He got down on the floor and using the flashlight on his phone, inspected beneath the beds. A balled-up sock nestled against the baseboard in a nest of lint and fuzz.

When he entered the bathroom, he sniffed, detecting a telltale chemical odor layered beneath the nauseatingly fruity room deodorizer. He wiped a wad of toilet paper around the sink drain, bringing the blonde dye-streaked paper to his nose, confirming his hunch. He got down on his hands and knees, running his fingers along the baseboard beneath the sink where he found strands of dark hair, about four inches long.

########

George Milionis' second-floor office looked out onto a street that ran through what used to be a bustling mill town. The little corner store on the first floor had been a thriving business twenty years ago before the steel mills were shuttered. Now, it sat dark, butcher paper covering the windows.

At his desk, Geo's turbulent eyes shifted from one man to the other, Pat and Karas crammed shoulder-to-shoulder on a vintage leather couch. They braced themselves for the storm.

"They're still out there running," the old man shouted, rage boiling his voice. "With my money."

Pat shrugged his broad shoulders. "How could they get the drop on Alex?"

Karas agreed. "It don't make no sense."

Geo's fury swelled like a rolling wave. "That pretty little piece of tail played you. There was no lookout across the street in that diner. She was the lookout. She kept an eye on the both of you, sitting right there in front of her."

He rose from his desk chair, his words fairly exploding. "Some punk kid and his girl. Ffffffft! Four hundred grand right out from under my nose." He threw his hands into the air, his voice hoarse. "And how does a thing like this happen? I gotta halfwit down at the shop with one simple job to do. Sit on his ass and watch my money until you clowns show up. Yet he finds a way to muck that up. Then I got you two. Conned by some floozy in tight pants and a low-cut shirt. Both of you. Lazy. Not paying attention. Not doing your goddamn jobs!"

He let that thought sit there for a minute while he paced to the window, his face red from shouting. He watched murky clouds heavy with snow approaching, cutting across the valley. "That kid's soft. He ain't got the balls to cook up something like this. It's her. It's always the woman. This poutana is small-time. The kind that's got one hand down a guy's pants and the other hand in his wife's jewelry box. She's in over her head."

They nodded, relieved that the old man's temper was reduced to a simmer.

"You talk to Gizmo? She's cut her hair. Colored it blonde," he said.

The couch groaned when Pat leaned forward placing his thick hands on his knees. "Giz said he found that payphone out in the boonies somewhere in South Carolina. We're taking a drive down there."

"That kid took Alex's truck and you can bet your ass he's on his way to his girl. You find that car, you find them and my money."

"That truck's got On Star, right?" Karas asked.

"The kid musta figured out some way to monkey with it." The old man's voice sank.

"That Tahoe come offa Simon's lot," Pat said. "Didn't it? I'll look up the VIN number and check around."

"You make this thing right. Is that understood?"

Both men nodded like toddlers caught red-handed trying to flush their cat down the toilet.

"You don't find my money, you don't find that punk and his whore, don't come back here."

"We'll find them," Pat replied.

Wiping the corners of his thin lips where the saliva had caked white, he said, "I want to look them both in the eyes while I open them up and spatchcock them."