Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Cal’s jaw set firm. “Let ‘em come.”
I bit my lip. He meant it. He’d fight off the whole club and an entire army of police, if it came to it. He’d die to protect me.
And that was exactly why I had to leave.
29
Cal
THE NEXT MORNING, back at the cabin, she confronted me. The day before had been exhausting: all the way to town and back in one day, plus the stress of her nearly being caught. We’d pretty much eaten and then fallen into bed. But when she sat down at the table, I could see the dark circles under her eyes. She’d been awake all night thinking and worrying. I sat down opposite her on the new chair I’d made: still rough-hewn and in need of sanding.
She looked at the table for a moment, drew in her breath, and said, “I need to go to Canada.”
Cold shock, then fiery rage, disturbingly strong, at the thought of being separated from her. “What?! No!”
She put her hand on mine. The touch of her was calming but I didn’t want to be calmed, right then. “It’s the only way,” she said. “I can’t go to the police or the FBI: they control them. I can’t go to another city or another state: my picture’s everywhere by now, they’d arrest me and then disappear me. And I can’t stay here. They’ll find this place eventually.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why they can’t just let me go. I’m just one woman. I’m no threat to them!”
I nodded. It was weird. They knew that if she ever went to the authorities, they could make sure it came to nothing. So why go to all the trouble of hunting her down? It almost felt personal.
“Canada’s the only safe place,” she said. “They don’t have any pull there...I hope. I can start fresh.” She met my eyes. “I won’t be a threat to you and Rufus.”
Hearing his name, Rufus strolled over and looked from Bethany to me, his tail wagging. I stared stubbornly at Bethany and shook my head. No. No way. I wasn’t going to let her run off on her own, just to protect us.
She squeezed my hand. “It’s the only way,” she said gently.
I sat there fuming. Wasn’t this exactly what I’d wanted? For her to leave, so everything could get back to normal? Except I hadn’t expected it to feel like this. I’d been secretly imagining some fairy tale ending where I beat the club, vanquished them like some heroic knight, in a way that let her get her old life back. I wanted to think of her happy and free, not hiding out in Canada.
But none of that changed the fact that she was right. If these bastards were prepared to use the entire state police to search for her, they’d do whatever it took...even searching the woods. “How do you even plan on getting there?”
“Walk,” she said defiantly. “We’re in Idaho, the border can’t be that far.”
“It’s a hundred miles!”
“We could do that. If we did it together.”
“You mean, I see you to the border?”
She bit her lip. “No.,,” she said tentatively.
Go with her? Something inside me soared and for a glorious few seconds, the idea seemed golden and bright. A new life. A new start. The two of us together. It wasn’t like I couldn’t build a new cabin, buy a new cow. There was plenty of wilderness in Canada.
Then I woke up. Nothing had changed. What had happened in Marten Valley—something we still hadn’t talked about—was a reminder. She was still a city girl and I was still a fucked up mess who couldn’t be around people. I couldn’t give her the life she needed. And after what I’d done, I didn’t deserve to be anywhere but out here on my own.
I shook my head and forced my voice to be hard. “How would you get across the border? You have your passport with you?”
She blinked, shocked and a little hurt, too. That made me feel like shit, but it was the only way. “No,” she said, “But we could sneak across, there must be places—”
She still said we. She was still hoping. My guts twisted, but I pressed on as if I hadn’t noticed. “Even if you could, how are you going to live? How are you going to get a job, without any ID?” I sighed. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. You need a whole new identity: a Canadian passport, driver’s license, everything, so you can start a new life. And we need to get you to a proper border crossing, and get you in officially.”
She stared at me in miserable silence for a few seconds. And I realized that this whole idea: leaving her life in the US behind, starting a whole new one...that wasn’t what scared her. What scared her was doing it on her own. I almost reconsidered.