Scorched to Ash Beneath the Blazing Sun novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Early

Brice's POV

Lance walked out of the county jail at nine that night with an ankle monitor and a deputy on each arm.

I was parked across the street with the engine off.

Lorena didn't know I was there, and I wasn't going to tell her.

He came down the steps slowly, with a blanket over his shoulders in eighty-eight degrees.

He stopped at the bottom and looked up at the night sky.

Then his father's sedan pulled up, and he got in.

I wrote down the plate and the time in my notebook, because that is what I do.

Then I drove to Rhonda's and sat in her driveway until the porch light went on.

Lorena came out in her hoodie and sat down next to me on the tailgate.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

"Take me up there," she said at last.

"Where?"

"The road. Where you found me."

"It's night."

"Tomorrow, then."

"Lorena, you don't have to."

"I know I don't."

She pulled her sleeves down over her hands.

"I've never seen it. I was on my back looking at the sky, and then I was in your truck, and then I was in a bed. I don't know what the place looks like."

"It looks like sand."

"Brice."

"Okay," I said. "Tomorrow."

I picked her up at six.

I took the county road north, then the fire road past the old gate, and I did not turn the radio on.

My hands were tight on the wheel.

I had not driven that ridge road in nine years.

After that day I let the deputies work the ridge and took the other loops.

This morning I drove it straight.

At the second turn I felt the old thing climb my back.

Then Lorena put her hand over mine on the gear shift, and it eased.

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