Karas stood in the office doorway, arms crossed over his barrel chest. Lou sat behind his desk doing a terrible job of disguising his anxiety. "I don't memorize addresses," he said. "Faces and tits I remember." He got out of his chair.

Sit down," Pat growled.

"I got a business to run out there."

Pat raised his voice. "Sit your ass down." 

"Relax." Lou returned to his desk. "Address book's in the top drawer there. She lives with that pretty boy."

Pat removed a spiral-bound tablet, flipping through a few pages then stopped. "Rachel Ferris."

Lou nodded. "Rachel Ferris. That's what you were looking for, right? Always happy to help you guys out."

"I'll start engraving your medallion first thing in the morning," Karas said. "With the red ribbon, it'll go real nice with that shirt."

Pat glowered. "You got her name, phone number, and address and that's it? Where's this chick from?"

Lou shrugged. "She's a wet dream in that uniform and she can mix a cocktail or two. I'm supposed to ask her blood type?"

Pat grumbled, ripping the page out of Lou's notebook.

"Hey, don't--" Lou caught himself but it was too late.

Pat turned his head sharply, his brow creased, his jaw jutted. He grabbed a fistful of Lou's shirt then launched him head-first into the corner of his desk with such force, the desk briefly left the floor. Lou lay motionless, uttering a quiet moan.

"You got a real irritating way about you," Pat said, stepping over the prone man on his way out of the office.

########

Accompanied by Gizmo, a lanky man lugging a prybar, Alex and Uncle Geo marched down the hallway of Blake's apartment building, checking apartment numbers.

"Twenty-six." Alex pointed at the number. He threw his shoulder into the door. Again, harder.

CRACK! The door surrendered.

A neighbor poked his head out into the hallway.

"Mind your business," Geo growled. The guy ducked back into his apartment like a prairie dog into its tunnel.

Alex bulldozed inside Blake's apartment and flicked the wall switch. Gizmo searched the adjoining rooms while Geo sorted through a stack of opened mail.

"Here she is. Rachel Ferris," Geo grumbled. "These kids are up to their asses in money problems."

Gizmo entered with Blake's laptop under his arm. "Check out the search history," he said, scrubbing his hand through his bristly crew cut.

On the laptop screen was a row of listings: HOW TO HACK A GARAGE DOOR.

"This goddamn internet!" The old man thundered. He noticed a framed photo on the end table, a beach scene featuring Rachel in a bikini, her dark hair obscuring her face. Wearing a euphoric love-drunk grin, Blake's arm wrapped her trim waist.

Alex leaned in over Geo's shoulder. "That right there is why they invented the bikini."

Gizmo extended his hand. "Gimme that laptop. I'll find 'em."

Alex sneered, passing off the laptop. "You're gonna find 'em with that computer? Yeah, right."

"Sounds like something my yia-yia would say."

"Kiss my ass."

########

Down the street from the old brick home, a skinny teenage kid with a mop of hair got out of the dark car. One of the passengers flicked a cigarette at him. Blake and Rachel felt relief at hearing youthful laughter and an exchange of expletives as the vehicle drove away. The adolescent voices bounced around the street with faint echoes like kids on an auditorium stage playing to an empty house.

With the coast clear, they made a frantic dash from the rundown old home to the Honda idling at the curb. Rachel scurried inside.

Blake swung the heavy canvas gym bag onto the back seat then slammed the door. He jumped behind the wheel and steered the car away from the curb, his eyes wide.

"I'm pretty sure I saw Vince looking out the window at us," she said, her eyes on the neighbor's house. "Yeah, he's watching out his front door."

Blake checked the rearview mirror. "Nobody coming up behind us."

She craned her neck, squinting out the back window.

########

Before they got onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Rachel held an open palm. "Gimme your phone."

He slid it from his pocket and handed it to her. She turned off tracking on both phones, rolled down her window, and tossed the phones out onto the roadway. "I hope a truck runs them over." She raised the window.

He whined. "I had stuff on my phone--"

She stopped him with a glare.

Approaching 2:00 AM, traffic on the turnpike had thinned. They'd run out of conversation almost an hour ago. With the moon concealed somewhere beneath blankets of heavy clouds, they heard the rumble of a lumbering 18-wheeler up ahead before they saw its boxy shape shimmying through the fog. Behind them, only distant headlights perforated the darkness.

Rachel turned up the heat control on the dash while Blake squeezed his tired eyes. When they saw the sign for a rest stop five miles ahead, they agreed that it was an opportune time to refuel the car.

Tires chirped when the Honda took the curved exit ramp, Blake decelerating from eighty miles per hour to thirty, the car leaning as the vehicle's weight shifted forward.

"Whoa!" She stomped the invisible passenger-side brake pedal and pressed her palm against the ceiling.

"I got it. I got it." He slowed, steadying the vehicle.

"How about I drive for a while?"

"I'm good. Really."

"He said as he almost rolled the car."

"Sorry." He stopped at the island of gas pumps where an exhausted-looking college kid had just finished gassing up his vehicle.

"No debit or credit cards," she said, rubbing her upper arms against the cold. "Cash transactions only."

"Yeah, okay." He reached for his wallet. "I think I got maybe six dollars."

She rolled her eyes then turned toward the canvas bag in the back seat.

He got out, opened the back door, unzipped the duffel, and withdrew a few hundred dollars.

Before Blake slammed the door, Rachel said, "Hey. Get me a sweatshirt or T-shirt or something. I'm freezing my ass off." Her scanty sports bar uniform provided no insulation from the damp cold. "Close the door."

Valley fog that had settled into the hollows and basins of the surrounding Allegheny mountains had sunk so low, that Blake practically had to duck to keep his hair dry.

Inside the convenience store, he lucked out when he found the only Penn State sweatshirt made for a person weighing less than four hundred pounds. On his way to the register to make the purchase and to prepay for gasoline, he noticed a small display of greeting cards.

When he returned to the car, he opened the driver's door, tossed the sweatshirt to Rachel, and laid a birthday card on the driver's seat along with a few bags of chips, cookies, and two bottles of Coke. "That was the smallest size I could find."

"As long as it's warm." She eagerly inserted her arms into the fleece-lined sweatshirt then pulled it over her head. "You gotta mail that card before we leave Pennsylvania."

"Right," he said, then fueled the car, standing in the cold blackness, his broken thoughts spinning through his mind faster than the numbers on the gas pump. When the tank was full, he drove from the pumps into the vacant parking lot where he addressed the envelope. He grew misty-eyed, trying to think of what he could possibly write inside the card. It was a terribly inadequate way to say I love you for the last time and the ache of that hung heavy in his chest where he'd carry it probably forever.

He couldn't bear to think of his mom opening the card, her heart shredded into thin strips, her hands trembling. Her only child a fugitive, out there somewhere, accused of something she could never in a million years imagine.

"You okay?" Rachel ripped into a bag of overpriced, stale cookies.

"Yeah. Just... just that I'm gonna miss her. Not my dad. He doesn't deserve her." Untethered from every attachment he'd known, he felt the crushing weight of loss, and he nearly wept.

"They don't have to love you," she said, her voice suddenly strained with emotion. "They just need to stay. So you feel like there's something you can count on. Something, good or bad, that's always going to be there for you."

"He clasped her hand, leaned across the console, and kissed her. "We have each other. And you can count on me. Always."