TJ looked over to Chastity, with her ringlets of blonde hair and wide-set blue eyes and that hooked nose that kept her just on the wrong side of being pretty. The makeup and clothes perfect, down to her three-hundred-dollar frayed jeans and little frilly white top. The only frayed jeans that TJ had came from her pants getting worn slap out. All this damn talk about being a social influencer and reaching the world with a message of truth was giving her a headache. The only reason they let Chastity come along with them was on account of her threatening to call the police back at that mansion on the lake. Of course, the girl did have a point, since the house belonged to her rich daddy, and TJ, Ladarius, Holly, and John Wesley had busted in and made themselves at home. Two days at the big house and an endless buffet of stolen steak dinners, smoked almonds, cocktail olives, and mini cans of Coca-Cola had allowed them to rest, catch their damn breath, hole up, and think on where they’d be headed next. California? Texas? Florida? Spin the damn bottle, boys.

“I know you’re innocent,” Chastity said.

“Good,” TJ said. “So do I.”

“Only your people back home don’t want you to be.”

“What do you know about back home?”

Chastity gave a reckless little look while she played with the tips of her hair and shrugged her shoulders, a mess of freckles across her chest and a half dozen thin gold chains around her neck. One with a diamond-crusted compass on it saying, daddy’s little girl is never lost.

“You think Holly will go to the police?” Chastity asked.

“Nope.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because she’s Holly Goddamn Harkins,” TJ said. “My best friend since we was five, before you showed up and damn well elbowed her to the side.”

“I think she got pissed we pretended I’d been kidnapped.”

“No shit, Chastity,” TJ said. “Why else do you think she gave me the middle finger?”

Chastity didn’t say anything but gave a small grin as TJ pushed herself up off the bed and walked over to the curtains. She looked out onto the empty pool and the abandoned storefronts across the road, not a mile over the Texas border from Arkansas, the first time TJ had been in either state. Farthest she’d ever been out of Tibbehah County was a visit up to Memphis to the zoo or Incredible Pizza on John Wesley’s birthday. He ate a million pepperoni slices and stuck his whole hand right into that chocolate fountain. He puked all the way back home.