Fight or Flight by Natalie J. Damschroder Page A

leather?” He pushed to his feet. Kelsey took the wad of paper towels Van handed her and scraped off the bulk of the mess, which luckily came off in one chunk. The dark stain left behind was still going to stink, though. She barely stopped herself from apologizing again.
    “How did you know we were in there?” Van asked.
    “I saw the cop car and backtracked through the neighbor’s yard.” He pointed to a thicket of trees separating the yard they were in from the house behind. “Crawled through there and watched until they left. I heard the dog scraping at the shed, and since you weren’t around, I figured you were in there.”
    “Or gone,” Van said.
    Tom looked directly into Kelsey’s eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”
    A frisson went up her spine and something seemed to burst inside her chest. “No.” She wanted to hug him, but her sense of self-preservation told her they were wasting time. “Did you get the gas?”
    “Yeah, the can’s next to the car.”
    “Let’s get out of here. The cops might still call for a tow on their way to that burglary or whatever.”
    “Where are we going?”
    They followed Kelsey to the car and watched as she filled the tank. She took the keys from Van and dumped the can into the trunk.
    “Wait.” Tom stripped off his jacket. “Better put this back there, too. Keep the stench out of the car.” He dropped it in and quietly closed the trunk lid. “Where to?” he asked again.
    “You’ll see.” She’d remembered something her mother had taught her when she’d been learning how to drive. She wished she’d thought of it earlier. They could have been resting instead of hiding and walking miles and miles for gas. And the car wouldn’t reek so friggin’ much. Putting the jacket in the trunk hadn’t helped.
    But lamenting poor choices didn’t make the results any better. She started the car and put it in gear with a spark of optimism. They were going to be okay.
    She hoped.
    ***
    “What next?” Tyler asked Regan quietly after he’d driven aimlessly for nearly half an hour. Restraint tightened his voice, but his frustration had been building for the past quarter hour.
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “We can’t drive around all night. What’s left of it.” The sky had already turned gray on the eastern horizon.
    “I know.”
    “So—”
    “Just shut up and let me think, Tyler.”
    His mouth clamped shut and his hands clenched and released on the steering wheel, and she felt bad for her outburst. Logic said the likeliest explanation for the guys showing up at the motel was that Tyler had called them. But she was still here. She was beginning to trust him. Eighteen years of conditioning were hard to break, but she hadn’t run from him.
    Nor had she come up with a plan. Fear for Kelsey and uncertainty of her whereabouts made it hard to think of a strategy. Every few minutes she tried Van’s phone and got voice mail every time, usually after a recording stating the network was trying to find the subscriber she was calling. She hoped that only meant there was no signal.
    She was not prepared for this. For eighteen years she’d been training and planning escape routes and survival techniques, but never on the fly. Time was not a factor in her planning. Now all she could do was react, and her tired brain wasn’t up to the task.
    “We should find another place to rest,” Tyler suggested. “I’m whupped, and you’ve been through a lot more than I have tonight.”
    She couldn’t believe it was still the same night. It seemed they’d been on the run for months. “I need to find Kelsey.”
    “She might not even be around here. They probably kept going.”
    “If they had, they’d be home by now and at the police station. They would have called. They got off the highway.” She looked around, her instincts almost screaming that her daughter was close. She knew getting back on the highway would be leaving her behind, and she’d never do that.
    She turned