Chapter Seven
STEVIE
The car is offensively normal.
Like the factory went out of its way to scrub it of personality. Silver sedan, government plates, the kind of vehicle that disappears into a parking lot and quietly contemplates death. It smells like pine air freshener and coffee that gave up hours ago. Saul’s coffee, probably. It’s definitely gone cold, and somehow I know he’ll drink it anyway.
There’s a GPS mounted on the dash, but Saul doesn’t use it.
He knows where we’re going.
I don’t.
I sit in the passenger seat with my new blonde hair and my folder of fake documents and watch the city dissolve into suburbs into something smaller.
Saul drives like a man with secrets, a clean conscience, and excellent stamina. Hands at ten and two. A public safety PSA, but the kind of hands you just know could also hold your hips down while giving a safety briefing.
His fingers are relaxed but present. Ready to react if something happens.
Nothing happens.
The road stretches out flat and gray and endless.
“Beth Taylor,” I say to the windshield.
It sounds like someone else’s name. Because it is.
“Again,” Saul says. Not unkind. Just practical.
“Beth Taylor.” I try to make it sound natural. Casual. Something you’d say while offering banana bread at a book club. “Hi, I’m Beth Taylor. Nice to meet you.”
Wrong. All wrong. Too bright. Too performative.
“Beth Taylor,” I try again, flatter this time. “I’m Beth. I work in data entry.”
Saul glances at me. “Better.”
“Beth Taylor, I definitely didn’t watch a man die and get wet about it. Beth Taylor, I am extremely normal and definitely didn’t orgasm on a witness stand while thinking about a mobster who could ruin my life and my cervix.”
The corner of Saul’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile, which feels like winning the lottery and also possibly edging.
“Maybe save that version for the mirror,” he says.
I melt into the seat like a girl who’s just been rebranded against her will. The landscape is a blur of billboards and bad choices, and I want to make at least three more with the man beside me.
“How long until it feels real?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment. Considering.
“Depends on the person. Some people adjust in a few weeks. Others take months.” He shifts lanes smoothly, checks his mirrors. “Some never do.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s honest.”
I look at his profile. His jaw, his scruff, the scar in his eyebrow that keeps showing up in all my intrusive thoughts. Iwant to ask what made it. I want to touch it with my tongue. I want to not want that, and I fail.
“Have you ever lost someone to this?” I ask, like I’m not halfway to Googling how to fake your own death in the witness protection program.
