Maybe I should’ve been in shock longer, but immediately the practical part of my brain kicked into gear. I’ll admit I had let out a quick scream as soon as Marty fired, but my first real thought was to wonder if anyone had heard the gunshots.

I turned my head, quickly scanned the soccer field behind us, and saw that there was no one outside the church. There were those vacant lots on each side of Teal’s house, and when I looked up the street I saw nothing but one car passing on US 1. I didn’t think the sound of the shots would’ve carried very far. They’d happened so close together that it would be difficult for someone to pinpoint where they had come from.

Taking everything in and making a quick assessment led me to yell at Marty, “We need to go, right now!”

God forgive me, but it wasn’t until we were in my car and Marty was driving south on US 1 that I even thought about whether we should have checked Teal to see if she was still alive.

Chapter 25

“Holy shit, what have I done? Holy shit, what have I done?” Marty kept chanting that same phrase like it was some kind of mantra that would bring him back to reality. Or maybe it would keep him from reality. Because at this moment, as we tried to gain some perspective and figure out what we would do next, we knew that we were both involved in a murder.

My car swerved as Marty overreacted to a car pulling up to a side street.

I screamed, “What the hell are you doing? We need to draw less attention to ourselves, not more!” I immediately regretted being so sharp. I was on edge, and looking at Marty, who was perspiring uncontrollably and leaning into the steering wheel, I knew he was, too.

He took the turn onto Kings Highway, and I knew we’d be cutting through some odd little neighborhoods just north of Fort Pierce.

“Where are you going?” I asked with the stress still evident in my voice.

“The turnpike.”

“Listen, Marty, we have to take a deep breath and think this through. You want to go to a road that will photograph us entering and ping off my SunPass as we pay the toll? We need to stay on the back roads, or at most, get on I-95.”

I could see that my words were registering with him. He said, “Do you think anyone saw us? It just sort of happened. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

I felt like I was about to throw up. I’d never been involved in anything at all like this. I had talked to the cops more in the last couple of weeks than I had in my whole life combined. If I’d been counting on Marty being my rock, I could see I’d made a mistake. Even if I went to the police right now, I’d have to explain why I’d driven all the way up to Vero Beach with Marty and why we’d both fled the scene. This wouldn’t play out well in any courtroom. Now we had to jump in with both feet.