“No,” I correct him, but I pause because he looks worried. More worried than I think a person who accidentally hit someone should be. “Not that rest stop. The first one. All the way back on I-78. I bumped into him in there first.”

“On I-78?” Harper wrinkles her nose. “That’s like three or four hours away. What would he be doing here?”

“He wouldn’t be here,” Brecken says.

Josh frowns. “It would be an…unlikely coincidence.”

“Well, call it what you want. I saw that guy. In the rest stop by the vending machines. I remember the scars on his hands and his yellow hat.”

Brecken scoffs. “You—”

“Wait,” Josh says, interrupting him with a raised hand. “No, I think I remember this guy. I saw him outside the stop. Yellow baseball hat, right?”

“Exactly!”

“Okay, but he’s gone, so who gives a shit?” Kayla asks.

Harper crosses her arms. “I don’t like some guy lurking around.”

Brecken throws up his hands. “He’s not here to lurk!”

“Why are you so tense?” Josh asks Brecken.

“I’m not. I’m just cold and sick of this damn storm.”

“We should get in the car,” I say.

Harper hesitates. “I want to check something.”

Kayla and Harper cross the lot for the back of the car, where they begin rummaging. Harper, I assume, is looking for a backup battery or something. Who knows about Kayla. Maybe she’s still trying to find whatever drug paraphernalia she lost.

“I’m going to scrape the car,” Brecken says, but the wind has kept most of the snow from sticking, so the job is pretty easy. He’s tucked inside—sulking, presumedly—in no time.

Josh steps in closer to me. “What if we leave him here?”

I look at him, snow and wind whirling around us, both of our coat hoods whipping in the cold. “What?”

“Brecken.” His voice is steady. Even. “What if we leave him and go?”

I go still. “You can’t be serious.”

Josh closes his eyes, exhaling. “Mira, I know I sound paranoid, but I’m telling you—he hit that kid. It wasn’t an accident. If he did that to a random kid in a parking lot, what else is he capable of?”

Brecken stares out the windshield in the car. Harper is still wrestling in the back, looking through the luggage. Kayla is empty-handed, wandering toward us, and then back to the car. She makes me think of a pinball in slow motion, ricocheting off every surface with no mind of her own. Finally, she circles around the opposite side of the car and gets in the back seat. She pulls her hood up and leans against the window.

“How are you so sure?” I ask.

Josh crutches a step closer to me. “Because I was trying hard to pull him away from that kid. He jerked the wheel back.”