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to—”
    Alex throws himself to the back of the cab and leans back over the bench seat to grab me by the shoulders. “Does it matter? Come on.”
    For a terrifying minute, he tries to pull me back and I can’t bend myself properly to help him. My fake leg won’t let me and the harder we try, the more it hurts until I finally hiss at him, “Let me go.”
    “Too late.” Frank pushes Alex back and closes the curtains just as one of the men knocks on his door.
    He opens it and the man standing outside isn’t nearly as intimidating up close as he was when he was blocking the road. “Glad we caught you. I’m Guy Watson, that there is Roddy Ellis. We picked up orders to take the truck from here. There’s another shipment. Special one I guess. They need you to deliver that one all the way to the East Coast somewhere.”
    “East Coast?” Frank drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “What’s going there?”
    “No idea. But you’re the one they want driving it. No one else has cross-country experience.”
    “This is my truck.”
    Frank’s voice is tight and to me it sounds nervous, but the other man must think he’s just upset about letting someone else drive his truck, because he says, “I know, man. I’ll be careful with her, I promise.”
    Frank looks at me, but his expression is unreadable. Neither of us even glance at the curtain hiding Alex and Maggie.
    “Fine,” Frank says, turning back to the other driver. “Meet you back at the loading dock.”
    “Ellis’ll take you in our car. No point wasting gas driving this monster all the way back.”
    My heart slams against my rib cage like it wants out. So far Guy Watson seems to understand Frank’s hesitation. If we make a break for it, that will end. I’m too afraid to move.
    “Okay, give me a minute,” Frank says.
    It feels like a year between hearing his voice and seeing Watson step back. Frank closes the door and turns to me. He takes my hand, low on the seat where no one can see.
    “Don’t open the curtain,” he says, to Alex, not me. “We have to get out. Try to stay hidden. Get out in Salt Lake City.”
    “Leanne,” Maggie says, her voice barely a whisper.
    “She’ll be okay. I promise. Alex, you keep that girl safe. There’s water back there. Stay quiet. I don’t think he’ll open the curtain.” Maybe that would be like going into someone’s house, I think. I feel like I’m losing my mind. “If he does, just tell them your folks are in Denver and you hid in the truck to get a ride to them.”
    “I need my chair,” I say. I’m almost desperate to see Alex and Maggie, to kiss them and say good-bye. I want to crawl back there with them, go where they go. We belong together.
    “You can’t have it.” Frank tilts his head toward the two men waiting outside. “We can’t risk opening the curtain.”
    “She needs it,” Alex says.
    “Can you walk?” Frank is looking me directly in the face. We have to hurry. A long conversation will make them suspicious. “Can you walk, Leanne?”
    “I can walk.”
    “You’re going to have to. Do you understand?”
    I’ve sweat through my T-shirt, my armpits are sticky and wet. I’m having trouble breathing. “Are they going to be okay?”
    Frank doesn’t answer and I realize that I expected him to reassure me. It’s Alex who says, “We’ll be okay.”
    It hits me that I might never see his face again and Frank has to tighten his grip on my hand to keep me from ripping the curtain open. “We have to go. Right now.”
    I look out the windshield and see Watson and Ellis starting to lose patience.
    “Please don’t go, Leanne!” Maggie is crying and it sends her voice, barely a whisper, an octave higher. “Please!”
    “You keep her quiet,” Frank says. He opens his door. “I’ll come around to help you down, but you’re going to have to walk to the other car on your own. We don’t want them looking for your chair for you, right?”
    And then he’s gone. I have maybe