He shakes his head a little, and a few seconds later he chuckles. And then he’s laughing. I don’t know what’s more alarming: this man, this complete and utter stranger, telling me someone wants me dead . . . the fact that I have no idea what’s going on except that we nearly just died on a two-lane road . . . or the fact that he apparently finds this hysterical.

“You’ve always been smart—smarter than you know.” He shakes his head again, eyes on the road. But the lines are deeper across his forehead than before. “And you’ve always had moxie.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I hiss, less sharply than I mean to. Now that the only cars following us are those traveling well within the speed limit, drifting back farther and farther each time we pass one of them, I can feel the fingers of panic at last. With the initial shock wearing thin, I am terrified in a way I have not been in the month since I arrived.

I am also far more alive. Speeding down the road past Beaver Cove, I swear I can smell the pine wafting from the shore of the lake. Can see by the moonlight more sharply than before.

And don’t you know it—there’s a moose standing in the trees off the corner of Scammon Ridge Road.

“I’m sorry,” Rolan says a moment later. We’re nearing town. “Navigate us out of here. And then I’ll tell you everything.”

6

Highway 2 is winding and unlit, flanked by trees and telephone lines, the occasional New England farmhouse. We’ve deliberately gone west, away from Bangor and Interstate 95, which would have taken us to Portland and south along the coast, opting for New Hampshire instead.

We stop in Skowhegan just long enough to fill the tank, grab water, coffee for Rolan. And then we’re back in the car with nothing but road and an unknown destination in front of us.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“That depends on you.”

Great. I had one safe haven in this world, and it’s sixty miles behind us.

I fiddle with the cap of the water bottle, stare out at the sky. It’s starry, the moon sharp as mottled silver. That is to say, far too normal and therefore deceptive.

I take a swig of the water. “So tell me,” I say. The last hour of driving the limit, even in the dark, feels painfully slow. Between that and the questions swarming through my mind—questions I’m not even sure I want answers to—I am ready to claw my skin off.

He offers me his coffee. I shake my head.

“It’ll calm you.”

He obviously isn’t aware how caffeine works.

Rolan is silent for a minute. “This isn’t a story I’m used to telling,” he says at last.

“I only need you to tell it once.”