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things out sooner or later. The thing to do was get a good lawyer….
    Yeah, and that got him thinking again about the pile of law books under his passenger’s feet, and the exam waiting for him back in Georgia, and the hard work and tough years it had taken him to get to this point and what it would mean to the rest of his life if he blew it now. That gave him the resolve to put the Kenworth in gear and do a turnaround through the abandoned gas station’s parking lot, and a few minutes later he was back on the interstate, growling his way toward South Carolina.
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    Anderson’s Main Street, which ran straight down through the town and past the courthouse square on oneside and the police station on the other, had been landscaped and refurbished in the old downtown section and was closed to big-truck traffic. Following the truck route signs, C.J. found a place to park one street over, with a well-lit and mostly empty parking lot between him and the police station’s back door. With the big diesel engine throbbing and the air-conditioning blowing cold, he looked over at Caitlyn and tried to think of something to say that would justify what he was doing to her. She looked reproachfully back at him, not making it any easier for him.
    As he tried to read her eyes, it struck him how tangled up with one another two strangers could get in a short period of time, under the right circumstances. He felt again that strange reluctance to let her go, a dragging weight of denial at the realization that she was going to walk out of his life forever.
    It was Mary Kelly who broke the edgy silence, hitching herself forward in the sleeper so she could look out the window. “Why’re we stoppin’ here? What is this place? Caitlyn?”
    But she already knew. C.J. opened his mouth to explain, but before he could get a word out, her head was swiveling toward him, her mouth a big round O of dawning realization, and panic and denial in her eyes.
    Caitlyn reached around and put a gentling hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” she murmured, as if she were soothing a child after a nightmare. “It’s going to be okay.”
    Mary Kelly wasn’t buying it. She shook off Caitlyn’s hand, looking like a hunted animal. Her eyes darted back and forth between Caitlyn and C.J., and her voice was high and scared. “No—I—we can’t go in there! We can’t go to the police—they’ll send us back, you know they will! They’ll lock us up and take Emma. He’ll take her away, you know he—”
    â€œShh,” Caitlyn hushed her, with a warning tip of herhead toward Emma, who was waking up and looking scared by all the commotion. “It’s going to be okay. I promise—”
    â€œIt’s the best way,” C.J. broke in, meaning again to explain himself but only sounding harsh and angry with his gravel-filled voice. “You couldn’t keep on running like that, not with…” He, too, tipped his head toward the little girl, not daring to meet those big dark eyes peering at him over her momma’s shoulder. “Sooner or later either the cops are going to catch up with you, or somebody worse will. And then what’re you gonna do? Somebody might get hurt, for sure it’s going to be traumatic for her. You want her to see her momma arrested? Shot? Hauled away by force? Remember what happened to that little Cuban kid?” He was shouting by this time, and Mary Kelly just kept staring at him until finally a tear pillowed up on her lashes and slipped away down her cheek.
    Well, that did it. He said, “Aw, hell,” under his breath and turned around in his seat so he was facing forward and didn’t have to look at her or her kid anymore. Instead, he stared squinty-eyed at the windshield while his heart thumped in shallow, trip-hammer beats.
    Beside him, Caitlyn unhooked her seat belt and got turned around and up on her knees on the