Liam silently passed him a half-empty water bottle from under the driver’s seat. I glanced back at Zu out of the corner of my eye, but the twilight had lulled her to sleep. A thin sheen of sweat coated her forehead and the skin above her lips.

The car rumbled back to life. Liam exhaled as he cut a diagonal path through the parking lot. He didn’t seem to know which direction to turn when we finally found the road.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He was silent for a moment, scratching his chin. “We’re still headed to Virginia, if I can find it. I think we crossed the state line a while back, but I don’t know where we landed. Not too familiar with this area, to be honest.”

“Use the damn map,” Chubs groused behind him.

“I can figure it out without it,” Liam insisted. He kept swiveling his head back and forth, like he expected someone to appear and guide him in the right direction with road flares and fanfare.

Five minutes later, the map was spread out over the steering wheel, and Chubs was gloating in the backseat. I leaned over the armrest, trying to make sense of the pastel colors and crisscrossing lines on the flimsy, ripped paper.

Liam pointed out the boundaries of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

“I think we’re about…here?” He pointed to a tiny dot that was surrounded by a rainbow of crisscrossed lines.

“I don’t suppose Black Betty has GPS?” I said.

Liam blew out a sigh, patting the steering wheel. He had decided we were going right. “Black Betty may drive the straight and true path, but souped up, she is not.”

“I told you we should have taken that Ford SUV,” Chubs said.

“That piece of—” Liam caught himself. “That box on wheels was a death trap—not to mention its transmission was shot to hell.”

“So, naturally, the next choice was a minivan.”

“Yep, she called to me from the parking lot of abandoned cars. The sun was shining through her windows like a beacon of hope.”

Chubs groaned. “Why are you so weird?”

“Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.”

“At least what I do is considered an art form,” Chubs said.

“Yes, in ye olde medieval Europe you would’ve been quite the catch—”

“Anyway,” I cut in, now in full possession of the map, “we have to be close to Winchester.” I pointed to a dot on the western end of Virginia.

“What makes you say that?” Liam began. “Are you from this area? Because if—”

“I’m not. I just remember driving past Keyser and Romney while the two of you were out. And with all the Civil War Trails signs, we should be near one of the battlefields.”

“Those are some good detective skills, Nancy Drew, but, unfortunately, those signs pretty much mean nothing in this part of the country,” Liam said. “You can barely go fifty feet without hitting a historical marker for the place this army crossed, or that guy died, or where James Madison lived—”