THEY WERE ONLY A FEW miles out from the dump of run-down fast-food restaurants that counted for the center of Ronchowoa when they came across the accident: a big delivery truck and a sedan nosed together at a right angle so they blocked the road entirely. The truck driver was visible in his cab, hunched over the phone. The woman was pacing, and when she spotted Pete and Gemma she flagged them down, as if they might otherwise have any choice but to stop.
“Don’t get out,” Gemma said, when Pete unbuckled his seat belt. “There must be another way home.”
“She could be hurt,” he said.
Gemma was too tired to care, and too tired to feel guilty. “She isn’t hurt,” she said. “She’s walking. See?”
And she was—the woman was heading straight for them, gesturing for Pete to roll down the window. When he did, she leaned down to squint into the car. She had the washed-out coloring of an old T-shirt, but her eyes were dark and Gemma didn’t especially like them. They were the kind of eyes that worked like specimen pins, as if they were trying to nail things down in their proper place.
“Sorry to bug you,” she said. “Do y’all have a cell phone I could borrow? Mine’s out of batteries. And this guy won’t give me his info, won’t speak a word to me.”
Gemma’s phone was also dead, so Pete handed his over. Gemma did feel a little guilty then. The woman’s hands shook badly when she tried to dial the police, and it took her several tries before she could get the number right. She moved away from the car, plugging one ear with a finger, while the truck driver climbed out of his cab and glared at her. Gemma didn’t like the look of him. He looked big and ropy and mean.
The woman hadn’t even hung up before the police were on the scene: two of them, a man and a woman, who arrived in an unmarked sedan.
Every minute it got hotter. Gemma and Pete sat and watched the woman and the truck driver argue and the cops look on impassively—they were too far to hear what was being said.
“Should I ask for my phone back?” Pete asked. Gemma shook her head and said nothing. She was too tired to think. When he keyed on the engine so they could use the AC, the female cop turned in their direction, as if seeing them for the first time.
“Great,” Pete said. Now it was the cop’s turn to approach. “Just great.”
“Step out of the car, please,” she said, in the flat drawl of someone extremely bored by her job. Gemma could see the sky mirrored in the woman’s sunglasses, and she straightened up as fear twinged her spine.
“Hang on a second,” Pete said. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Please step out of the car.” She showed her badge—a flash of gold, and then it retreated.
“But we didn’t do anything,” he insisted. “We were just driving home and we came across the accident.”
“I understand. If you would both just step out of the car, we’ll get you on your way in a minute.”
“Just do it,” Gemma whispered to him. Now the other cop was sauntering over, hands on his belt, working a piece of gum in his mouth.
They got out of the car. The backs of Gemma’s thighs were slick with sweat from where they had stuck to the seat leather. It was bright and very quiet. A dozen cows stared dolefully at them from behind a rotting fence. From their perspective, Gemma and Pete were the ones fenced in.
“You see what happened?” the female cop asked.
Pete was getting agitated. “No. I already told you. We had nothing to do with it.”
Now the male cop chimed in. “You from around here, then?”
Pete hesitated. His eyes slid to Gemma’s. Once again she felt a pinch of worry—could they be sure these were real cops? She’d only seen the woman’s badge for a second. They weren’t driving a squad car, and though they were in uniform, it wasn’t like she could pick out a fake. Still, she knew they were safe so long as there were witnesses.
“We’re from Chapel Hill,” Gemma said. Right away, she knew she’d made a tactical error.
The male cop’s eyebrows blew up to his hairline. “You’re quite a little ways from home,” he said. “Whatcha doing in Tennessee?”
“It isn’t any of your business,” Pete said. Gemma nearly told him to calm down, but she didn’t want to make things any worse.
The cop gnawed his gum some more. “You two got some ID?”
Gemma’s heart sank. She didn’t have ID—she’d given Lyra her wallet. Pete seemed as if he might argue the point, but at a look from Gemma, he turned and moved back to the car, muttering. Gemma waited in the agonizing silence, half wondering why the truck driver and the woman he’d smashed were being so patient. If she’d been in an accident, if the cops were wasting their time on two nobodies instead of helping, she would have lost her shit. But they just stood there, dumb and practically silent, as if the cops’ arrival had turned them into statues.
Pete was taking too long. He searched the front seat. He appeared to crouch, as if searching the floor. When he straightened up, his face was hollowed out with fear.
“I—I can’t find my wallet,” he said.
Gemma felt the ground buck like an animal beneath her. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?” He threw open the door to the backseat and disappeared again. “I can’t find it. It’s gone.”
“That’s—that’s impossible.” But as Gemma closed her eyes, she remembered that they’d stopped for coffee a few hours before dawn. She saw Pete, juggling a Styrofoam cup and a water bottle, slide his wallet on top of the car so he could reach for his keys. What if he’d left it there? They’d been so tired.
It was possible.
Pete slammed the door shut. Then, suddenly, he aimed a kick at the rear tires. Gemma shouted. The cops started toward him and he backed off, holding up both hands. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.”
“Why don’t you have a seat here on the curb?” The male cop reached for his belt—Gemma saw a flash of metal handcuffs.
“What—are you going to arrest me now? We. Didn’t. Do. Anything.”
“Settle down, son. No one’s accusing you. No need to get so defensive.”
“I’m not defensive—”
“Early in the morning, wearing party clothes, maybe you been drinking some, decided on a little joyride—”
“Jesus Christ. This is insane. We weren’t joyriding—”
“Pete.” Gemma’s voice cracked. Everything was happening too fast. Gemma felt as if she were listening to a song at triple, quadruple speed. There was a high ringing in her ears, like the sound of electricity through a live wire. Danger. “Please. We weren’t joyriding. And we haven’t been drinking. We have . . . we have friends nearby.”
“Friends?” Too late, Gemma knew she’d made another tactical error. “These friends have names?”