The Chosen (A Talents novel)

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

We left at three in the morning and Izzy drove until eight before stopping at the first safe house to change out the car. Even though we were on back roads we passed two police cars in speed traps, and both times I had to stop myself from jumping under the seat. The idea of being pulled over was terrifying. I knew we weren’t speeding—I’d checked surreptitiously a few times—and I also knew Izzy had a good ID that identified him as “Juan Herrara,” age eighteen, from Minnesota, so it wasn’t as if we’d raise any red flags.

But still. Judging from the news we’d watched the night before, they were still after me, and the TV stations were covering it like I was some kind of celebrity. My picture was probably hanging in every squad car on a “wanted” poster, and everyone knew I was supposed to be traveling with a Hispanic guy around my age. If we ended up in police custody, I had a very good idea that eventually they’d send us to Judan.

Jack slept in the backseat for most of the morning, and I studiously avoided looking at him. Something had changed on our run and I didn’t like it one bit. I kept noticing things about him that I didn’t want to see. Things like the way his muscles flexed when he lifted our bags into the car, or the way his cheekbones made sharp edges in his finely-drawn features.

I didn’t want to see these things, and I didn’t want to consider that I might have been thinking about him that way. Because my boyfriend had just died, and I should have been utterly focused on avenging him. Not entertaining these new-old feelings that I thought I had gotten rid of months ago.

The temperature gauge on the car registered ninety, and every time we opened a door to change cars or go to the bathroom, heat blasted at us like a physical being trying to invade the space. We spent the late morning and early afternoon in a four-door compact car with barely enough room for my knees in the back seat. For lunch, we ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples from a cooler we’d packed back at camp, and talked about everything other than the task in front of us.

Now that we figured there really was something to our weird bond, we relaxed with each other in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. Jack and I picked back up where we’d left off in school—or good and for bad—and even with the somewhat dire circumstances we were in, Izzy had a way of making us laugh about absolutely nothing. We forced ourselves to listen to bad radio and played hangman and twenty questions.

We pulled into the third safe house as it was getting dark. We were in Montana, on a rolling plain that had stretched for hours in the hot sun, and now reflected the light from thousands of stars in an utterly clear sky, the view unobstructed by trees, buildings, or lights. The house was just off a road marked with an occasional route number and not a lot else. We’d had to stop twice to avoid animals crossing the road. Once, our headlights caught the eyes of a coyote loping at a steady path, unconcerned by the thousand pounds of steel headed his direction. The other time we’d paused to let some deer-like creatures cross. They had small curving horns and white butts. Jack said they were antelope.

About half the time when we pulled into a safe house the car would just be waiting for us, keys in the ignition, tank full of gas. The other half of the time someone would wait for us to pull in. We’d see them in the window, or on the porch, and they’d leave us their keys and take ours.

Izzy had explained that the people who lent their cars always got them back. Sometimes it took a while, and sometimes they had to travel to find them. But they were always notified where the car had been left, and how to recover the keys. In a sign that whatever restraint he may have had about sharing information was rapidly disintegrating, he explained that the Irin network basically existed for two reasons: one, to protect members who were being targeted for harassment or worse by the Program; and two, to push back on the Program when Irin were attacked or harmed.