The Sword and the Scythe

Chapter 5: Highway to Hell

Charlotte took a deep breath, running her hands through her curly blonde mane, trying to keep herself from shaking. She was sure she hadn't been seen hours earlier when she'd hot-wired an old blue Ford coupe, but that didn't quell the horrible feeling in her stomach. It wasn't guilt about the car—the owners had been trying to sell it for months. She'd passed it daily on her way to school, sitting in the driveway with the for-sale sign in the back window. And she had left more cash than the asking price in a paper bag on the porch with a note indicating it was for the car.

No, the guilt was for leaving Leroy dead in his living room without so much as tipping the cops off about his murder. Someone will find the body, she reminded herself, staying would only have gotten you taken into police custody. But that didn't make her feel less guilty. He had been a really good friend to her, and she was sure his family—if he had one—would be heartbroken when they found out.

As guilty as she felt, she couldn't help feeling a little resentful that Leroy had let it come to this. If he'd used better judgement in hiring his band members, or even if he'd been a little more flexible with his rules, this never would have happened. And then he wouldn't be dead, she would still be living there, and their lives would have continued on as normal.

God was she going to miss that weirdo.

Pressing her foot down harder on the gas in frustration, she wondered whether all this was her own fault for getting complacent. She shouldn't have gotten so comfortable with him. Fugitives were better off if they kept moving—she'd seen that Harrison Ford movie from the '90s. New personal rule, she seethed to herself, never become friends with sketchy tramp-stamp-toting guitarists.

Shaking off the thoughts of Leroy, she focused on the road. Where was she? Going northeast out of California, she knew that much. Where was she headed? She didn't know and didn't have the energy to think about that just yet. And what about her new name? The name Charlotte had fit her so well. But she couldn't keep being Charlotte any more than she could go back to being Holly; her fake name had been all over the mail UCI had sent to the beach house. The cops would find it and look for her once they found Leroy's body. At least she hadn't been stupid enough to leave behind any pictures of herself.

The little blue coupe needed gas. She might as well gas up and then stop at a motel for a quick nap; the sun was just starting to come up and she was dead tired after having been up all night. The motel she'd found wasn't the worst she'd ever stayed in. It was clean(ish) and didn't have any bugs that she could see. She decided it would do and threw her suitcase and small day purse into the corner. Without taking her clothes off, she fell flat onto the bed and into an uneasy sleep filled with disturbing nightmares about her murdered former roommate.

After unlocking the car with a wire hanger only four hours later while eating a stale pastry she'd gotten from the motel lobby, she decided her destination was someplace in the middle of the country. Someplace like Nebraska or Kansas where no one would get in her business if she was lucky. What she'd do once she got there, she had no idea. At least she had her relative direction decided and bought a roadmap from the gas station by her motel.

During her first few months as Charlotte Evans, she had missed her smartphone more than would have thought. The last four years she'd used nothing but burner phones—and even then, only for school purposes. There was nobody else who'd ever needed to call her. It was easier to stay hidden that way, but not at all useful for navigation.

Charlotte drove all day until she needed to fill up on gas for the second time. It was dark out and she was exhausted. She planned to find the first motel she could after she fueled up at a dingy gas station somewhere between Utah and Wyoming. While the tank was filling, she leaned against the side of the old Ford and hummed Leroy's unfinished song in an attempt to calm her nerves.