Ahead of us, a light suddenly twinkles.
Olena halts, holding up her arm to make me stop. We stand as still as the trees, watching as the lights move past, and we hear the whoosh of tires on wet pavement. We push through the last tangle of brush, and our feet hit blacktop.
We have reached a road.
By now my feet are so senseless from the cold that I am clumsy and floundering as I try to keep up with her. Olena is like a robot, trudging steadily forward. We begin to see houses, but she doesn’t stop. She is the general, and I’m just the dumb foot soldier, following a woman who knows no more than I do.
“We can’t walk forever,” I tell her.
“We can’t stay here, either.”
“Look, that house has its lights on. We could ask for help.”
“Not now.”
“How long are we supposed to keep walking? All night, all week?”
“As long as we need to.”
“Do you even know where we’re going?”
She suddenly turns, the rage so apparent on her face that I freeze. “You know what? I’m sick of you! You’re nothing but a baby. A stupid, scared rabbit.”
“I just want to know where we’re going.”
“All you ever do is whine and complain! Well, I’ve had enough. I’m done with you.” She reaches into the tote bag and pulls out the bundle of American money. She breaks the rubber band and thrusts half the cash at me. “Here, take it and get out of my sight. If you’re so smart, go your own way.”
“Why are you doing this?” I feel hot tears in my eyes. Not because I’m afraid, but because she is my only friend. And I know that I am losing her.
“You’re a drag on me, Mila. You’ll slow me down. I don’t want to have to watch out for you all the time. I’m not your fucking mother!”
“I never wanted you to be.”
“Then why don’t you grow up?”
“And why don’t you stop being a bitch!”
The car takes us by surprise. We are so focused on each other that we do not notice its approach. Suddenly it rounds the curve, and the headlights trap us like doomed animals. Tires screech to a stop. It is an old car, and the engine makes knocking noises as it idles.
The driver sticks his head out the window. “You two ladies need help,” he says. It sounds more like a statement than a question, but then our situation is obvious. A freezing night. Two women stranded on a lonely road. Of course we need help.
I gape at him, silent. It is Olena who takes command, as she always does. In an instant she has transformed. Her walk, her voice, the provocative way she thrusts out her hip-this is Olena at her most seductive. She smiles and says, in throaty English: “Our car is dead. Can you drive us?”
The man studies her. Is he just being cautious? Somehow he realizes that something is very wrong here. I am on the edge of retreating back into the woods, before he can call the police.
When he finally answers, his voice is flat, revealing no hint that Olena’s charms have affected him. “There’s a service station up the road. I need to stop there for gas anyway. I’ll ask about a tow truck.”
We climb into the car. Olena sits in the front seat, I huddle in the back. I have stuffed the money she gave me into my pocket, and now it feels like a glowing lump of coal. I am still angry, still wounded by her cruelty. With this money, I can manage without her, without anyone. And I will.
The man does not talk as he drives. At first I think he is merely ignoring us, that we are of no interest to him. Then I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror, and I realize he’s been studying me, studying both of us. In his silence, he’s as alert as a cat.
The lights of the service station glow ahead, and we pull into the driveway and stop beside the pump. The man gets out to fill his tank, then he says to us: “I’ll ask about the tow truck.” He walks into the building.
Olena and I remain in the car, uncertain of our next move. Through the window, we see our driver talking to the cashier. He points to us, and the cashier picks up a phone.
“He’s calling the police,” I whisper to Olena. “We should leave. We should run now.” I reach for the door and am about to push it open when a black car swings into the service station and pulls up right beside our car. Two men step out, both dressed in dark clothes. One of them has white-blond hair, cut short as a brush. They look at us.
In an instant, my blood freezes in my veins.
We are trapped animals in this stranger’s car, and two hunters have now surrounded us. The blond man stands right outside my door, gazing in at me, and I can only stare back through the window at the last face the Mother ever saw. The last face I will probably ever see.
Suddenly, the blond man’s chin snaps up and his gaze shifts to the building. I turn and see that our driver has just stepped outside, and is walking toward the car. He has paid for the gas, and he is stuffing his wallet back in his pocket. He slows down, frowning at the two men who now flank his car.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” our driver asks.
The blond man answers. “Sir, could we ask you a few questions?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Special Agent Steve Ullman. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Our driver does not seem particularly impressed by this. He reaches into the service station bucket and picks up a squeegee. Wrings out the excess water and begins to wipe his dirty windshield. “What do you two fellows want to talk to me about?” he asks, scraping water from the glass.
The blond man leans in closer to our driver and speaks in a muted voice. I hear the words female fugitives and dangerous.
“So why are you talking to me?” the driver says.
“This is your car, right?”
“Yeah.” Our driver suddenly laughs. “Oh, now I get it. In case you’re wondering, that’s my wife and her cousin sitting in the car. They look real dangerous, don’t they?”
The blond man glances at his partner. A look of surprise. They don’t know what to say.
Our driver drops the squeegee back in the bucket, throwing up a splash. “Good luck, guys,” he says, and opens his car door. As he climbs in behind the wheel, he says loudly to Olena: “Sorry, honey. They didn’t have any Advil. We’ll have to try the next gas station.”
As we drive away, I glance back and see that the men are still staring after us. One of them is writing down the license number.
For a moment, no one in the car speaks. I am still too paralyzed by fear to say a word. I can only stare at the back of our driver’s head. The man who has just saved our lives.
Finally he says: “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”
“They lied to you,” says Olena. “We are not dangerous!”
“And they’re not FBI.”
“You already know this?”
The man looks at her. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know the real deal when I see it. And I know when I’m getting bullshitted. So how about telling me the truth?”
Olena releases a weary sigh. In a whisper she says: “They want to kill us.”
“That much I figured out.” He shakes his head and laughs, but there is no humor in it. It’s the laugh of a man who cannot believe his bad luck. “Man, when it rains on me, it just fucking pours,” he says. “So who are they and why do they want to kill you?”
“Because of what we have seen tonight.”
“What did you see?”
She looks out the window. “Too much,” she murmurs. “We have seen too much.”
For the moment he lets that answer suffice, because we have just turned off the road. Our tires bump over a dirt track that takes us deep into woods. He stops the car in front of a ramshackle house surrounded by trees. It is little more than a rough-hewn cabin, something that only a poor man would live in. But on the roof is a giant satellite dish.