“Where the hell is it?”

“In my bra.”

His eyes came up fiery.

“That’s right, Logan. Pressed right up against what you have so eloquently referred to as my sweet tits. I don’t recommend you go looking for it there, however, seeing as how your hands are dripping a blood trail and both my father and the sheriff know you’re in the car with me.”

His complexion paled a little more. She took pleasure in it.

He came back around in his seat. She reached under her sweater, brought the recorder out, stopped the tape, and slid the machine under her leg. “Now do you feel like talking?”

“Enough of this shit.” He reached for the door handle. “I’ll fuckin’ walk.”

Savannah hit the door-lock button and the gas pedal simultaneously. “You might want to buckle up; my braking foot seems to be a bit itchy.”

“Ah, hell.” He flicked the cigarette out the window. “What do you want from me?”

“Directions for starters. Where are we headed?”

“Fuckin’ home!”

“Fine. Where’s fuckin’ home?”

“Left on Cummings!” he barked. “Another left at the dead end, all the way down Maple to the tracks.”

“That’s the trailer park, right?” She cringed, immediately wishing she hadn’t said it.

“Yeah. Orchard Village. But if you reach either an orchard or a village, trust me, you’ve gone too far.”

She turned left at the light and checked her rearview mirror to make sure the sheriff wasn’t having them followed.

Confident that they were in the clear, she said, “Okay, Logan, we’re off the record now, so relax. This won’t sting. If it’ll make any difference, I’ll admit that you were right. I did miss the biggest event in this school’s history, and I am trying to save my ass. I didn’t even hear about the explosions until twenty minutes after the fact because I was in the photo lab, and I didn’t know about your injuries until just a minute ago. So, yes, I’m playing catch-up.”

“Hard to believe that shitty school paper could mean this much to you.”

“It doesn’t. But if I can write a couple good articles for that shitty school paper—something with a little more intrigue than field trips and book fairs—I might get an internship at the Daily. I get the internship, and it could go a long way toward helping me get into a good journalism school, preferably somewhere as far from this godforsaken town as possible. You can relate to that, can’t you, Logan? Isn’t that your plan, too, to let football be your ticket the hell out of here?” He didn’t answer. “I mean, why else would you be so adamant to play tonight, considering what’s happened to you?”

He lit another Marlboro. “Are these the questions you got me in here to ask?”