Chapter 159: The Lot

The two men didn't waste time, which Del would have appreciated under other circumstances.

They came in fast—not running, but with a particular walk of people who had made the calculation and decided the numbers worked out in their favor. Two of them, one bag, a man, and a woman who looked like they wouldn't put up much of a fight. The math probably seemed straightforward.

Oliver heard them at the last second. He turned.

The first man — taller, with a jaw that looked like it had taken a few hits and stopped minding — went straight for the bag. He grabbed the strap and pulled. Oliver didn't let go. The second man moved toward Del, positioning himself like he was making the situation clear.

Del stepped back.

The taller man yanked again. Oliver yanked back, and his elbow caught the man across the cheekbone—not a punch, just the geometry of two people fighting over the same object in close range. The man made a sound, and his grip loosened.

"Oliver," Del said.

"I see it," he said.

The second man reached for her arm. She pulled back sharply, and her elbow hit the car door behind her, and pain shot up to her shoulder, and she lost track of where her feet were for one bad second.

The taller man recovered fast. He let go of the bag and went for Oliver with his fist instead. Oliver moved.

Del had noticed before that he moved well, better than someone who worked at a digital firm had any obvious reason to, and here was that again. He turned the punch into a grab and twisted, and the man went sideways, and it should have ended there.

But the second man had something in his hand.

Del saw it before Oliver did. Not a gun but a knife, short-bladed, the kind that fit in a jacket pocket.

"Oliver —"

He was already mid-turn when the blade caught her.

It didn’t feel like a stab at first. More like the world slipped, and then there was heat along her left side, just under her ribs. Oliver was shouting, and the two men were already running. The knife was gone.

Oliver caught her before she understood she was going down.

"Del." His hands were on her face, then her shoulders, then moving to her sides. "Del, look at me."

"I'm looking at you," she said. Her voice sounded strange.

"Where does it —"

"My side." She looked down. Her shirt was dark. "It's not — it's not bad. It doesn't feel bad."

Oliver was already moving, one arm around her, steering her toward the car. "Get in. Get in right now."

Del got in. Oliver was around the car and behind the wheel in seconds, and they were moving before she'd fully registered that they were moving. He drove with one hand and reached across her with the other, pressing against her side, and she grabbed his wrist.

"I can hold it," she said.

"Hold it, then. Hard."

She held it hard. The pressure was uncomfortable in a useful way, keeping her focused on something instead of whatever her nervous system was starting to suggest about the situation.

"How fast are we going?" she asked.

"Sixty. We're going sixty."

"Is that enough to get away from them?"

"They're not following." He glanced at her. "You're pale."

"I've always been pale."

"Paler," his voice tightened.

She checked in with herself honestly. "Well, I don't think it got anything important. It's on the outside."

But Oliver was silent and just drove.

Del kept pressure on her side and stared at the visor. She thought about the men noticing the bag—and how she’d seen it and said nothing. She’d made a choice. Didn’t think it all the way through. Now she was bleeding, and Oliver was driving sixty miles an hour.

"Aren’t you supposed to take me to a hospital?" she asked after a moment.

"I don't know yet." Oliver checked the mirror again. "Let me think."

She let him think. She looked at the road ahead. The sky was that relentless Texas blue with absolutely nothing going on in it. A hawk or something circled in the far distance, doing its own business.

Then, the tire went out without warning.

There was a hard, flat crack, and the car jolted to the side. Oliver grabbed the wheel with both hands right away, easing off the gas and guiding the car toward the shoulder. They rolled to a stop in a cloud of pale dust. Del kept her hand pressed to her side and looked at him.

"Right," Oliver said.

He got out. She heard him walk around the car, heard the specific silence that meant he was looking at the tire. He came back to her window. She rolled it down.

"Flat," he said.

"I heard it."

"The spare is flat too."

Del closed her eyes for one second.

"I think something's in the lot," he rubbed his jaw. "When we were —" He shook his head. "It doesn't matter how."

Del looked out at the highway. Nothing in either direction. The hawk or whatever it was had moved on. Some yellow grass on the opposite shoulder moved in a hot, dry wind. No signs. No buildings. In the very far distance, if she tilted her head and wasn't sure she wasn't imagining it, there was a smudge of something that might have been a structure of some kind.

"What's that?" she said, pointing.

Oliver looked. Squinted. "I don't know." He looked at her side. "You can't walk far."

"I can walk further than you think."

He looked at her when he was measuring her stubbornness against the situation. Then he reached into the car and picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder.

"Stay close," he said.

"Where else would I go?" Del said and got out of the car.

The heat sat on them immediately, the kind that came from above and below both. Del kept her hand at her side and walked, and Oliver walked beside her and didn't ask how she was doing every thirty seconds, which she appreciated.

The smudge resolved slowly into a shape. A house. A long gravel driveway. Beyond it, a second building — a barn, maybe. Further back, another structure, lower to the ground.

There were two cars in the drive. A light was on inside.

Oliver stopped at the edge of the road. Del stopped beside him.

"We ask for help," she said. "That's all. Ask for help."

Oliver looked at the house for a moment. Then he nodded.

They turned up the gravel drive. Del's side ached, though she was doing her best to ignore it. She was almost at the door when she felt it — the specific sensation of being watched from inside before anyone had opened anything.

Oliver knocked.

The door opened, and a woman in her late fifties stood there, warm-faced, and looked at them both without visible alarm.

"Oh, goodness, what happened to you?" she said, her eyes going straight to Del's side. "You'd better come inside."