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the sign a smaller sign hung that said “Vacancy”.   Twig looked at Zara with his weary eyes.   “Maybe they were worried people wouldn’t see it.”
     
    “Looks good to me,” Zara said.   She was so sick of running and fighting and lying.   All she wanted to do was lie down on a real bed and pretend to be normal for as long as she could get away with it.   Maybe when she woke she would be back in her apartment, playing spades with her dad in their tiny kitchen and waiting for the pizza guy.   Her former life seemed less boring and sad now.   She missed her friends from school and even her homework.   She missed being herself.
     
    They got out and stretched in the cool night air.   It was much colder than it had been in Denver, and Twig shivered even under his heavy jacket.   He looked around at the other cars in the parking lot.   There were a few newer cars with out of state plates.   There was a minivan from Utah with a donut-shaped rock formation on it, and the phrase, “Life elevated”, displayed at the bottom.   Two other cars sported plates of Oregon and New York respectively.  
     
    “Must be a nice place for people to drive across country to get to it,” Twig remarked.   “Better for us anyway.   Maybe they won’t recognize us, I’m sure we’re as famous as Bonnie and Clyde by now.”
     
    Zara didn’t answer.   She was staring off into the hills that swelled before the mountains, at something small and distant.   After a moment of squinting Twig deduced by its shape that it was a water tower.
     
    “What is it?” He asked in a whisper.
     
    “I don’t know…” she said.    She looked back at him and shook her head.   “Nothing I guess, let’s just get a room.”
     

7.
     

     

     
    The police had interrogated Mark Lane for an interminable amount of time.   It felt like days.   The light they kept on him was disorientating, and he couldn’t be sure how long he had been in the catacombs of the Denver City Jail.   He wasn’t told what he was being held for.   They wanted to know about his daughter, Zara.   Where was she?   He had no idea.
     
    Before the cops had kicked down his door, Mark had gotten a strange call from James Sollero , Twig’s father.   James wouldn’t go into details, but the kids were in trouble.   Mark had reacted poorly and started shouting at James, blaming and panicking.   He was infuriated that James was being so cryptic.   All James would say is that the kids had pissed off some “powerful people,” and that Mark had to get out of there and come hideout with him in some safe-house.   The crazy bastard wanted Mark to get in his car and drive to Utah, where this supposed safe house was located.   Mark chalked most of this up to delusions, and had the terrified thought that James himself had done something to the kids.   He was, afterall , batshit crazy.  
     
    Mark had hung up on him out of frustration and then proceeded to punch a wall.   After he had iced his sore hand, he called his brother.  
     
    The two hadn’t talked in years, but Leo was a lawyer and Mark had a sudden desire for some legal advice.   They had a rather nasty falling out over some shady business involving their father’s bequeathing of his lifesavings to Leo from his deathbed.   Leo, the lawyer , had gotten everything in writing.   It was how he had gotten it was a much debated subject among the rest of the Lane family.  
     
    So Mark called his brother, and after a few heated minutes of recriminations and accusations, the two men put aside their animosity and discussed the matter at hand.   Leo asked his brother if he had been watching the news.   Mark admitted he had not.   He had been working the graveyard shift and had forgotten to bring his phone.   By the time he had gotten home he had found his front door wide open, the apartment trashed, and his phone blinking with about fifty messages from an unlisted number.