Jess didn’t realize she had slowed the truck until she heard Burke say her name. Then she blinked back to now. She’d parked them on the shoulder, one of those pullouts, the crash of the surf audible over the engine. Burke was looking at her, and Lucy whining and trying to get over to her, and Jess wondered how long she’d kept them stranded here.

This was what happened when the adrenaline was used up. When instinct decided it wasn’t needed anymore and checked out.

Her mind came back, and her mind remembered: the shotgun and Whitmer’s gun and the dogs squealing and barking and the fear and the thrill of it, that galvanizing tension and the excruciating release in the aftermath.

Shit, she was spent. Jess stared at the steering wheel and heard the rain on the roof, and Burke saying her name again, but she just couldn’t wrap her head around an answer.

*  *  *

“Jess?”

Mason repeated her name, but Jess didn’t so much as blink. She was gone. She sat there with her hands on the wheel, ten and two, the engine still running, gearshift in P. She stared down at the dashboard and didn’t say a word, didn’t move but for the shivering.

She was shaking hard. Mason didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he imagined it had something to do with why she’d been given Lucy in the first place. The dog sure seemed to notice; she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Jess since they pulled over, kept squirming to get free of Mason and over to her. Mason unbuckled his seat belt and let Lucy go. The dog leapt across the bench seat, tail whipping around like a weapon, sidled up beside Jess, and leaned her weight onto her owner, licking her face like she was covered in peanut butter. Jess’s shaking seemed to subside a little bit. She still wouldn’t move otherwise.

They couldn’t stay here. This highway ran twisted, but there weren’t many ways off of it, not that Mason had seen. The ocean on the one side effectively blocked off all means of escape, and aside from the odd logging road disappearing into the woods on the other, you pretty much had a straight shot from the Whitmer property to wherever here was.

They’d be coming, he knew. And he didn’t want to be sitting here in this truck in the middle of nowhere when they arrived. Not with Jess in this state.

He opened the passenger door. Ducked out into the rain and heard the sound of the ocean beside him, could glimpse the crashing surf just offshore. He circled around to the driver’s side and opened Jess’s door and hunched down beside her.

He said, “Why don’t you let me drive for a while?”