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“That’s the deal. Too many loose threads. I tried to text Nat but got nothing back. I’m guessing they have a block on the whole area, which I don’t blame them for,” Mae offered, finally talking. It was good to hear her voice without sadness laced through it. I smiled at her from the rear-view mirror, not sure if she could see it or not from where she was sitting.

“How much farther? I could use a coffee and a pit stop,” I said.

“We’re an hour out of Nashville but closing in on them. I’d say we catch them twenty miles before city limits, but we have time to stop really quickly, because I imagine we aren’t going to ram them off the road if we do find them.” Mary fidgeted with the tablet, zooming in on their location.

“They have to sleep just like us, so they might be taking turns, but if they’re heading to a big city like Nashville, I’d say they’re meeting someone,” Mae said from the backseat.

The dash lights dimly glowed against my face, and I remembered driving a Jeep on our journey a year ago. It had been a lot different, but somehow the tension and the adrenaline were now familiar to me; my days of counting beans for people’s small businesses in upstate New York felt like a lifetime ago.

We pulled over at a truck stop outside of a small town named Portland. It always struck me as amusing how we loved to recycle our town and city names, but then again, how many people in the world were named Dean? Or Mary? I shrugged it off and noticed the gas station lights weren’t on. We had enough fuel to get us to Nashville, but since we’d stopped, I wanted to take advantage of the lost time.

“Dean, I think the pumps are still on,” Mary called.

Turned out they hadn’t been turned off, and we could use our credit cards to pay for the gas. It was more than I expected from an old truck stop, but we were close to Nashville, and I imagined a lot of trucks came that way, judging by the volume of them sitting in the lot across the street. Most of them probably had sleeping truck drivers in them at that moment, and my eyes felt weary as I thought about it.

The lights came on in the attached diner, and the ladies went inside to use the restrooms and beg for some coffee to go. At that moment, I could hardly think of anything other than coffee.

My cell phone vibrated in my left front pocket and I pulled it out, wondering if Magnus had broken free and found service. The number said UNKNOWN, but there was a text message. Don’t trust her, was all it said. Don’t trust who? And who the hell was sending me a text an hour before the sun came up?

Care to elaborate? I sent back. By the time the ladies came back with cups of coffee, there still hadn’t been a reply. Mary was almost running to me, passing me a cup after nearly spilling it.

“I’ll never understand why some places don’t have those little cardboard slips to put around their cups. Seems like almost everyone buying one of these would prefer to not be burned.” She frowned at me, softening when she must have seen my off expression. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I lied and hated myself for it. I just needed to consider the obscure message before I said anything aloud about it. “Bathrooms out back?”

“Just inside to the left. The nice lady said we could use them even though they aren’t open for another thirty minutes,” Mary said, still giving me a sideways glace.

As I walked, the phone vibrated again, and I was anxious to see what the mysterious “helpful” stranger who was sending me cryptic five AM messages had to say. Once inside the doors, I reached for the phone, but stopped short as I saw the middle-aged woman waving at me. The restaurant had that classic Middle America feel to it, and I loved the way the booths lined the walls, and the four-seaters were huddled around the middle of it all. I longed to go sit at the barstools like my father and I used to do when we’d head into town to get something for the farm.

It started off as a benefit to helping my dad do errands and fix something, or do yard work after, but as I got older, we just started to make it our tradition. My mother would often be invited, but she would just shoo us away, knowing it was a special bond between father and son. That, to her, was priceless.

The smell of oil on the grill in the back, right then, reminded me of the last time I’d had breakfast with my old man. I’d headed back to the country the year after Janine and I were married. He was sick but wouldn’t let it stop him from going out for a big breakfast at the diner, just like always. When I tried to tell him we could just stay in, have some oatmeal or something, my mother just shook her head at me, and I knew what it meant. He wasn’t going to live for long. It was prostate cancer, and it hit fast; faster than we could have imagined. I knew he wasn’t well, but my mother, most likely trying to protect me, had kept the severity of it from me for too long.

My little sister had called me, frantic, but she had always been an overreactor. Thinking of her then, I decided to text her as soon as I’d used the washroom. I had a longing for the one family member I had left, even though she resented me for not following her and Mom to California after my dad died. It’d been hard to explain to a heartbroken fifteen-year-old that I couldn’t uproot my life.

When we stepped into their house, the sights and smells of being a happy kid filled all my senses, and then I saw my father. He was sitting in his plaid chair, looking like a skeleton with skin. His sunken eyes creased as he smiled at us, and it had taken all my strength to not fall to my knees in tears.

Janine had held my hand firmly, and I knew she was feeling a portion of what I was. It was so strange, because as soon as I saw him, I felt an overwhelming layer of sadness, mixed with a heavy sense of missing him, even though he was right in front of me. I really just missed the fact that things were never going to be the same, and I could see in his eyes he felt that way too.

“Can I help you with anything?” the lady asked, as I stood there staring at the empty room like a crazy man.

“Sorry, just tired is all. Thanks for the coffee. I needed it.” I smiled and went to the bathrooms, checking the message once I was inside the small room. Think about it and all will be clear. Not wanting to get into a message war with someone I didn’t know, I put the phone away. A minute later, I was heading out the front doors, and back to the Jeep.

The message could mean anyone: Dalhousie, Leslie, Mae… though I didn’t want to go there, it could even mean Mary. There was no sense in speculating. We had to get back on the road.

“You good to keep driving, or do you want to switch off?” Mary asked as I was about to get into the driver’s side door.

“I’m as good as I’ll ever be,” I said, giving her a smile. I popped the top of the coffee, took a sip, and off we went, heading for Nashville.

__________

The sun was rising as we approached the city limits, farmland and small town being replaced with suburbs and chain stores. I’d never been there before and was glad I had someone navigating my way.

“They came this way and seem to veer off toward this industrial area. Looks like nothing but warehouses for a few miles,” Mary said, pointing to the exit east.

Morning light blasted me, and I flipped the visor as we made our way down the secondary freeway. We were catching up and still didn’t know what we were going to do if we caught the killers.

“They’re stopping!” she called with a little more excitement than I was used to from her normally calm voice.

I slowed and exited off the freeway, now driving the large Jeep wheels over potholed, worn asphalt. It was Sunday, so traffic was light so early in the morning, and there wasn’t a car in sight in the many parking lots we were passing by. Soon we were nearing an old building, an auto repair shop by the look of it.