Don’t Book Tour & Giveaway

THE MOISTURE ON THE CAR WINDOWS crystalizes into frost. When I exhale, the warmth is a thin cloud. In the fogging rearview mirror, a car approaches, its headlights bright, and when it cruises up behind me, it sheds an eerie light across the small open space, across the trees.

And a reflective surface tucked among them.

The car passes me and is gone the next moment, but I keep track of the reflective spot in the trees as I rerun the glimpse in my mind. It seemed like two surfaces. One, glass. The other, metal.

Glass and metal. An abandoned vehicle.

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, reaching for a connection that isn’t there—but those trees would be a perfect place to ditch a getaway car. As well as any other evidence.

I bite my lower lip until the dry skin splits, and warm, metallic fluid creeps out from the sting. My mother told me to be smart, and I promised her that nothing would happen to me, that I’d come home safe. Is it worth the risk?

I search the thicket for any motion. There’s none.

My mom’s in the hospital for two gunshot wounds. This is how I keep her safe. Her. And Mercedes. And the baby.

I grip my folded knife and wrap my spare hand around the door handle. This is how I keep them safe.

Night air rushes into the cabin, freezing until it hurts my nose, my lips, my ears. My hand aches through the gloves where the edges of the knife hilt bite into it.

I swing my leg out. My exposed cheeks practically crackle in the cold. When my whole frame is out in the open, I set the door shut behind me without making a sound, my shoes falling noiselessly on the dust.

That’s maybe a hundred yards to the trees. One hundred yards for someone to spot me. Can I outrun someone for that long if I need to get back to the car? Probably not. And certainly not a bullet. I pocket my knife.

I exhale far too loudly and sweep through the cloud it makes. Goosebumps ridge my skin. Behind me, the street glistens like obsidian from the moonlit ice; there’s no sign of the upcoming daylight. To my left is the underpass and the hill it runs beneath. A trickle of water burbles from it. I step over and creep forward, flinching every time my boot crunches on a patch of gravel. My ears ring.