His anger froze. He never tried because he knew it would never matter. Now he was being told that it might. It could. He closed his eyes and reclined his head as she rushed them through the early morning. Cars began to merge onto the highway behind them. He could do this. It seemed his psyche was laying some tough love on him. Nothing Rachel had said was untrue. Nor had she said it unkindly. Rather, the bluntness of the delivery had taken him totally off guard. Most people he knew would only hint at something like that. At most. Someone close may ask, but in a way they could just back off if they met any resistance. Rachel just laid it out there on him. Fair enough.

  “Ok I’m sorry.” He hated saying that. Could count on one hand the amount of times he had, and meant it anyway. “How do we get there? Peru, right? We just drive?”

  He had a tenuous grip on the situation, the rules they were operating with were far more slippery.

  “Mostly yes” Though she seemed to have dismissed her earlier animosity, there was still a look in her eyes he didn’t like. “We will drive to the border and see how things look from there. We may have some “help” again. If not, we figure it out and move on. We get to the door, I go in. You’re done.”

  This seemed like a pretty concise plan to Tim.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “We drive straight through or do we need to sleep? And can I ever drive? You’re crazy.” He said this because it was true.

  Rachel had settled to between 85 and 90 miles an hour. The engine hummed beneath them, the big car gamely dodging nimbly around any car going slower than them. They never stayed in a lane for long, moving left and right constantly to frogger through the open spaces between cars.

  “Yeah, we stop.” She didn’t acknowledge his comments about her driving but she did drop down to 75 and stay mostly in the high-speed lane. “We’ll need gas and food. To sleep at night. We need to act normal. In general people will ignore you. Just like usual.”

  He got it. Blending in happened to be a specialty of his.

  “We have a time limit on this?” Seemed a reasonable question.

  “Nope. We just need to get there. It should be fairly uneventful.” She hesitated, putting words to concepts that did not have them. “It’s not a trial…it’s a journey.”

  This sounded reassuring on its face, but journeys could be perilous too. He closed his eyes and leaned back again. The sun pressed, unseen but felt across his cheek. The miles passed smoothly beneath the wheels. He was starting to have nothing to do but think and he did not like it. It seemed Rachel may have gotten the same itch because he heard the blinker sound. He cracked his left eye open, a natural squint against the light that shone past Rachels profile. She had put on the right blinker and appeared to be taking an exit. Rachel took a short ramp then her first right off the highway. She guided their car into an empty parking lot that used to serve a Toys R Us.

  “Smoke break!” Rachel said cheerfully as she dug through the center console when they stopped.