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you.
    “Mostly, we went where my dad had business. Overseas,” Elliot answered, cutting Ash slack. “I didn’t really have a choice.” He refused to say anything about being groomed to take over Davenport Oil Company. He didn’t want to ruin Ash’s opinion of him. It was hard won enough as it was.
    Thankfully, Ash let it drop. “Auburn is almost two hundred fifty miles, maybe a little more. It’s northeast of here, by the Finger Lakes.”
    “Aside from your sister, what’s up there?”
    “Well, a bunch of outdoor places for the lakes. And the prison.”
    Elliot did a double take. “Wait, you were serious about the inmate comment?”
    Ash smiled, the glow from the dashboard giving his expression a disturbing feral quality.
    “Yeah, I need to get my sister and nephew out of Auburn before the inmates wreak havoc. The prison should have generators, but the one at the Poly Institute failed, which makes me nervous. Who knows what will happen if the prison goes without power.”
    “I’m sure they have contingency plans for power outages.” Elliot tried for reassuring, but he wasn’t sure he pulled it off.
    “I’m not inclined to stay long enough to find out,” Ash deadpanned.
    Elliot settled in his seat and folded his long legs to put his feet, sans shoes, on the dash. He let the soothing strains of a piano lull him into a doze, trusting Ash to speak up if he needed anything. With his eyes closed, he let his mind wander for an indeterminate length of time.
    His parents, out of the country on a Mediterranean cruise, bubbled to the surface. Were they aware of the outage? Was anybody? His dad was not one to be out of touch, no matter where he was, but Elliot had no way of knowing what the news was capable of reporting. Of course, there was Brian Harding, his father’s IT and Cyber Security VP, who was basically second in command of Davenport Oil since his department was responsible for running the technology that made the company capable of doing business at all. Brian lived in New York City, too, often traveling with Steven Davenport, but Elliot knew Brian wouldn’t have gone on what was supposed to be a genuine vacation. Brian would let his dad know what had happened.
    How? Think he has a landline in his apartment? Doubtful. He’s got wireless everything.
    Suddenly feeling the nakedness of being unable to reach people, he shifted uncomfortably, coming out of his daze. Not normally a slave to his cell the way many of his peers were—well, he was, but for emergencies, not social media, which he wasn’t terribly fond of—missing the security of being a google away from whatever he might need was foreign enough to make him anxious. He had no access to anything: his parents, money, his computer.
    His doctor.
    “Stop the car,” he ordered, seeing how isolated they’d become on the road while he’d drifted off. They passed a sign showing they traveled I-280, a usually busy artery between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. At the moment, it was sparsely populated, a fact that made Elliot unhappier.
    “What?” Ash startled.
    “Stop the car!” He raised his voice, reaching for the door handle, prepared to jump if necessary. Air. He needed air.
    Ash pulled over quickly, putting the hazard lights on before they came to a complete stop. “What’s wrong?”
    Elliot didn’t stick around long enough to answer, darting across the shoulder and into the small field beside the highway. Great gulps whipped through his lungs as he ran, and he began to concentrate on memorized symphonies to give his brain something to chew on besides fear. He had to get himself under control, or else….
    He collapsed in the grass on his back, looking up at the night sky, the damp ground seeping cold fingers through his t-shirt. With no light pollution, the stars were bright, and Elliot quit the music and began to count pinpoints. He didn’t get far before Ash dropped beside him.
    “Elliot?” he asked. Elliot hated the careful tone, but he