Carly dashed from around the tree, waving her arms to flag her attention, but Marcelline didn’t turn her head. She didn’t stop. She didn’t even slow down.

Carly watched from the middle of the dirt track as John’s car receded out of the field and toward the main road. Which left no time to hide again as Owen’s car rocketed into view.

She stepped back, ending up at the driver’s-side window as he slowed to a stop next to her.

“We’ve got to go.” That’s all. After everything, that’s what he chose to say.

“I—”

“Get in.”

Carly looked back down the road she’d run, then off toward the comet trail of dust that shrouded the back of Marcelline in John’s car, growing smaller in the distance.

“Now!” said Owen.

She came around and climbed in beside him. She’d spent a long time in this seat already today, but it was only something she knew, not something she remembered in her mind or body. A story of what had happened. Unreal. There would be no video to show her how she ever sat next to him and did not scream.

“Buckle up.”

Carly burst into tears. “She didn’t even look at me. She was crying.”

“You’ll see her again. I’m taking you to her hotel. She’ll be back in a little while.”

Carly fought the shuddery breaths. “Why was she crying like that?”

Owen just glanced at her.

“Is he dead?”

Owen looked away from the road again, scowling at her, incredulous.

An unpadded avalanche of consequence hit, blow by blow until Carly doubled over onto her knees. John was dead. All of this. Her life. Oh, God, her mom. Carly was so tired.

She didn’t feel the bump and rise of the transition to asphalt, but when the sobs had run out, she realized the road was smooth under their wheels.

Owen was rolling up his shirtsleeves. His forearms were ridged with muscle, but pale.

“What happened to your jacket?” Carly risked a likely bad answer on purpose, to test herself for more tears.

“It got burned.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you have to kill him?”

Only his right eyebrow acknowledged the question, and they drove on in silence.

When they got as far as the first traffic lights in civilization, he looked over at her again. “You have a very human problem.”

“What?”

“You want everything both ways. Or more like you want everything every way. You know what he was. You know what he’d done. You saw what he would have done today. You did see that, right? You watch the shit out of everything. I’m going to have to hope you were paying attention to that.”

She was certainly paying attention now.