“You can’t call her,” he says, reading her mood.
“I’m not—”
She glances over.
“—get out of my head.”
He made the mistake of switching on the radio on their drive over from the campsite this morning. The Supreme Court nomination for Judge Margot Nadir is entering its second week, the reporter told them. Felix lunged for the dial, but Story slapped his hand. Supreme Court? she said, stunned. That’s how deep a hole they’ve been in. No TV, no internet, no news for three weeks. And then the radio talked about the judge’s missing daughter, Story. It spoke of their home in Austin, abandoned mid-meal, of the bags packed but left behind. Was Story Burr-Nadir dead? Was foul play suspected?
Felix turned off the radio. He could tell that Story was feeling panicky. For her mother. For herself. She’s not used to roughing it. To shitting in the trees. For his part, Felix knows how to stay off the grid. You pay with cash, avoid places with cameras. No motels. No phone calls. He knows how to distill fresh drinking water from saltwater, to fashion a tourniquet and compress a bullet wound.
“Do you love me?” he says.
She looks at him, focusing. Behind her the paramedics load another suicide into their rig.
“You know I do.”
Felix takes her hand. “Well, I have to do this. Save her. But you can go. I’ll understand. Just don’t tell anyone where I am. Okay?”
Story closes her eyes. They’re trying to be adults here, to make responsible choices, but this whole thing feels so crazy. Ever since his sister, Bathsheba, called him that night in Austin and told Felix she’d been kidnapped and was trapped in the desert. Ever since Bathsheba told him that they monitored what she ate, kept her locked in a tower. Ever since she said she’d been impregnated—that’s the word she used, impregnated—and then told Felix the name—E. L. Mobley, a politically connected billionaire—and said he couldn’t call the cops. Well, ever since then she’s felt like Alice down the rabbit hole.
“Let me at least tell my mother,” Story said that night. “She’s a federal judge. She can call the attorney general.”
But Felix was adamant. No calls. No emails. He asked Story if she knew how much Mobley had donated to get the current president elected, how connected he was in political circles.
“All you’ll do is warn him,” Felix told her, “and he’ll pack her up and fly out of the country before we can get there.”
The whole thing made Story’s head spin. They’d abandoned the meal half-eaten—plates on the table, their chairs pulled out. She ran around, trying to get them packed, but in the end they’d left it all behind. It was an eight-hour drive, and Felix was desperate to get started. All they took were some toiletries, a few pairs of underwear.
Travel light. That’s what his father taught him. Confuse your trail. And always pack heat. Which is why, after he got Story in the car, he went into the garage and slipped a .32-caliber Ruger from its hiding place behind the furnace. It was tucked into a black Velcro sleeve, which he pocketed, along with a box of bullets.
He came out at a half run, carrying their water bottles.
“Don’t worry,” Story told him, seeing his face. “We’ll find her.”
They drove through the night, stopping for gas in Junction. While Story was in the bathroom, Felix swapped license plates with a dented green Ford parked by the air pumps. They were from Georgia now, state motto: Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. Felix had driven through Georgia many times. He doubted Story had ever been below the Mason-Dixon Line before she moved to Austin. Certainly not to the Deep South. Searching the car, he’d found her cell phone in the center console and threw it in the trash. His own he’d smashed at the house, flushing the pieces down the commode.
Leave no trace.
They drove west with the windows down, feeling the wind on their faces. At 1:00 a.m. Story fell asleep, her bare feet perched on the dash. Felix drove the speed limit, keeping his eyes out for cops. It was force of habit for a man who worried his identity wouldn’t hold up to real scrutiny. He didn’t vote, had never gotten a parking ticket. His high school transcript was real, just not his. True lies, he called them. In this way he’d convinced himself he was safe, hidden, that the truth of what he did will never come out.
This is another form of denial. Wishful thinking.
Felix’s anxiety was that of a hunted animal. He woke often in the dead of night convinced that his father was standing by the bed, dressed in camouflage.