She took the bottle back, drank small sips, and trailed a hand in the hot, hard air. After that, no one really spoke. The radio played. The sun beat down. I watched the countryside, liking how large certain trees grew when they stood alone in empty fields. Around four o’clock, we came to a crossroads and a right turn that took us deeper into the countryside. Jason took his first pull on the bottle, gesturing at pine forest, shimmer, and sandy verge. “This is the edge of the sandhills. Another hour or so, then we turn back west. Everybody happy?”

Strangely, I was, and it was only in part because of Sara. Her hand was back on my leg, yes, but Jason was being very cool, and Tyra had settled into the kind of quiet resentment that was easy to ignore. I thought the day had found its second breath, that everyone was good.

I was wrong about that.

The first sign came when Tyra took another giant pull on the bottle, and Jason said, “You might want to slow down.”

She took another swallow instead, turning the radio louder.

“Do you mind?” I asked. “They’re new speakers.”

She turned them even louder. Jason studied her from the corner of his eye, then said to me, “I’ll buy you new ones if she blows them.”

“Damn right.” Tyra said it loudly, and turned her face to the wind.

After that, Jason took us south. At first, we had the road to ourselves, but we passed a pickup, an old sedan. They fell away, far behind, and the car was steady at seventy miles an hour when we crested a small hill and saw the bus a mile or two ahead. We dropped off the slope, and heat devils shimmered far out on the blacktop. Beyond the distortion, the bus seemed half-real and half-mirage, a white shape that floated above the road and solidified as Jason took us up to seventy-five and then eighty, the road perfectly straight as it cut through a world of wind and sunlight and scrub. The bus swelled as we raced up behind it, and I could feel the speed building.

“Shit.”

Jason’s foot came off the gas as we closed the gap. The car fell back, fifty yards behind the bus, then a hundred. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Reflex.”

I looked from my brother to the bus, and understood, at least a little. Tall, black letters stretched across the back of the bus.

LANESWORTH PRISON

INMATE TRANSFER

I saw the windows next: the wire mesh in steel frames. I saw the prisoners, too.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. No problem.”