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but only by a matter of feet.
    Twenty minutes ago I was actually looking forward to a night of frozen pizza and the last two episodes of Roswell, season one. Debating whether or not to attempt to sleep in the bedroom like a normal person. I’d even considered leaving a coating of flour by the front door just so I’d know by morning whether I wandered out in the middle of the night. Now I’m in a car with a complete stranger who knows more about my past than I do, fleeing a murderer I ate lunch with two days ago. I glance at Rolan. His expression is grim.
    “Once we get to Kokadjo, we run out of pavement,” I say. I know because Clare and I once drove to the northern outpost, where the trees thin around the open expanse of river that runs through a hunting and fishing hub so small the population is listed as “not many” on the sign.
    With one hand on the wheel, he reaches into his jacket, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to pull out a gun. He produces a phone instead, unlocks it with his thumb, and flips it at me.
    “Pull up the map. Look for the next good bend.”
    I do my best, but the map twitches and zooms beneath the involuntary tremor of my fingers, refusing to refresh, the signal lost.
    “Hurry.”
    I close my eyes, retrace the drive that day with Clare. “Another mile—maybe two,” I say.
    “One mile or two?” he snaps.
    “Two. The road goes left, south of Kokadjo at a fork. A dirt road goes right along the south edge of the pond.”
    I open my eyes and he glances at me, but he doesn’t question me, either.
    Lily Bay Road has by now turned into generic Main Street, briefly straightening out before us. Rolan guns it. The speedometer hovers around 97. The headlights in the rearview mirror fade around the last bend as we come up on a car, ride its bumper, unable to see oncoming traffic.
    Rolan flashes his lights, but the driver ahead gives a distinct bird high against his rearview mirror, refusing to pull to the side and let us pass.
    The sign for First Roach Pond rushes at us, the fork ahead divided by a tiny grass island with an electrical pole smack in the middle, a gravel outlook over the valley to the right.
    The car hugs the line. The instant I realize Rolan means to break right—sending us careening into the pole or skidding off the outlook into the valley—I catch sight of a row of mailboxes along the main road, the hint of a drive in the trees ten yards beyond. “There!” I shout, pointing ahead. He follows the car and breaks hard, killing the lights as we pull into the trees.
    Not two seconds later, the Cherokee flashes around the bend in pursuit of the taillights in front of it. I close my eyes, and listen for the angry screech of tires, the stillness like torture. 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .
    Rolan throws the car into reverse, backs onto the road, and then accelerates south.
    “Find us a road,” he says. “He’ll be on us in thirty seconds.”
    We go two miles before I get the signal back. “Nothing east through the mountains. West we’re in the lake. This is it.”
    We pass three cars in silence. Nothing in the rearview mirror.
    “You know you can’t go back,” he says.
    “There’s a police station in Greenville—”
    “No.” He shakes his head.
    “If he’s trying to kill me, we have to go to the cops!”
    He tears his eyes from the road long enough to look at me as though I’ve lost my mind. “Cops? The cops can’t help you!”
    “What do you mean? Of course they can!”
    “Do you think you would’ve gone to the lengths you did if the police could help? You don’t get it, Audra. He won’t stop! He’ll never stop until he kills you. If not today or this week, then next month, next year. One day when your guard is down, he’ll find you. Like he has now, like he did before. And next time, he’ll kill you.” He pounds the steering wheel and shouts, “Why’d you do it?”
    “Do what?” I shout back.
    “Go in and—” He gestures to his head.