The Great Escape

Chapter One

LUCY COULDN’T BREATHE. THE BODICE of her wedding gown, which had fit so perfectly, now squeezed her ribs like a boa constrictor. What if she died of suffocation right here in the vestibule of the Wynette Presbyterian Church?

Outside, an international army of reporters stood at the barricades, and the sanctuary inside bulged with the rich and famous. Only a few steps away, the former president of the United States and her husband waited to escort Lucy down the aisle so she could marry the most perfect man in the world. The man of everyone’s dreams. The kindest, the most considerate, the smartest… What woman in her right mind wouldn’t want to marry Ted Beaudine? He’d dazzled Lucy from the moment they’d met.

The trumpets rang out, announcing the beginning of the bridal procession, and Lucy struggled to pull a few molecules of air into her lungs. She couldn’t have picked a more beautiful day for her wedding. It was the last week of May. The Texas Hill Country’s spring wildflowers might have faded, but the crepe myrtle was in bloom, and roses grew outside the church doors. A perfect day.

Her thirteen-year-old sister, the youngest of the four bridesmaids in her unfashionably small wedding party, stepped off. After her would come fifteen-year-old Charlotte, and then Meg Koranda, Lucy’s best friend since college. Her maid of honor was her sister Tracy, a beautiful eighteen-year-old so smitten with Lucy’s bridegroom that she still blushed when he talked to her.

Lucy’s veil fluttered in front of her face, suffocating layers of white tulle. She thought about what an incredible lover Ted was, how brilliant, how kind, how amazing. How perfect for her. Everybody said that.

Everybody except her best friend, Meg.

Last night after the rehearsal dinner, Meg had pulled Lucy into a hug and whispered, “He’s wonderful, Luce. Everything you said. And you absolutely can’t marry him.”

“I know,” Lucy had heard herself whisper in return. “But I’m going to anyway. It’s too late now to back out.”

Meg had given her a fierce shake. “It’s not too late. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever I can.”

Easy for Meg to say. Meg lived a completely undisciplined life, but Lucy wasn’t like that. Lucy had responsibilities that Meg couldn’t begin to comprehend. Even before Lucy’s mother had taken the oath of office, the country had been fascinated by the Jorik menagerie-three adopted kids, two biological ones. Her parents had shielded the younger children from the press, but Lucy had been twenty-two at the time of Nealy’s first inauguration, which made her fair game. The public had followed Lucy’s dedication to her family-the way she served as a surrogate parent to her siblings during Nealy and Mat’s frequent absences-her work in child advocacy, her sparse dating life, even her less-than-exciting fashion choices. And they were definitely following this wedding.

Lucy planned to meet her parents halfway down the aisle as a symbol of the way they’d come into her life when she was a rebellious fourteen-year-old hellion. Nealy and Mat would walk that final stretch with her, one on each side.

Charlotte stepped out onto the white runner. She was the shyest of Lucy’s sibs, the one most worried about not having her older sister around. “We can talk on the phone every day,” Lucy had told her. But Charlotte was used to Lucy living in the same house, and she said it wouldn’t be the same.

It was time for Meg to step off. She glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, and even through yards of tulle, Lucy saw the concern that dragged at Meg’s smile. Lucy longed to trade places with her. To live Meg’s carefree life, running from country to country with no siblings to help raise, no family reputation to uphold, no cameras shadowing her every move.

Meg turned away, lifted her bouquet to her waist, plastered a smile on her face. And got ready to take her first step.

Without thinking, without asking herself how she could consider doing something like this-something so awful, so selfish, so unimaginable-even as she willed herself not to move, Lucy dropped her bouquet, stumbled around her sister, and grabbed Meg by the arm before she could go any farther. She heard her voice coming from a place far away, the words thready. “I have to talk to Ted right now.”

Behind her, Tracy gasped. “Luce, what are you doing?”

Lucy couldn’t look at Tracy. Her skin was hot, her mind reeling. She dug her fingers into Meg’s arm. “Get him for me, Meg. Please.” The word was a plea, a prayer.

Through the suffocating tulle shroud, she saw Meg’s lips part in shock. “Now? You don’t think you could have done this a couple of hours ago?”

“You were right,” Lucy cried. “Everything you said. You were completely right. Help me. Please.” The words felt alien on her tongue. She was the one who took care of people. Even when she was a child, she’d never asked for help.

Her sister Tracy spun on Meg, her blue eyes flashing with indignation. “I don’t understand. What did you say to her?” She grabbed Lucy’s hand. “Luce, you’re having a panic attack. It’s going to be okay.”

But it wouldn’t be okay. Not now. Not ever. “No. I-I have to talk to Ted.”

“Now?” Tracy echoed Meg. “You can’t talk to him now.”

But she had to. Meg understood that, even if Tracy didn’t. With a worried nod, Meg lifted her bouquet back into position and started down the aisle to get him.

Lucy didn’t know this hysterical person who’d taken over her body. She couldn’t look into her sister’s stricken eyes. Calla lilies from her bouquet flattened beneath her stilettos as she moved blindly across the vestibule. A pair of Secret Service agents stood by the heavy front doors, their eyes watchful. Just beyond, a crowd of onlookers waited, a sea of television cameras, a horde of reporters…

Today, President Cornelia Case Jorik’s oldest daughter, thirty-one-year-old Lucy Jorik, is marrying Ted Beaudine, the only son of golf legend Dallas Beaudine and television newswoman Francesca Beaudine. No one expected the bride to choose the groom’s small hometown of Wynette, Texas, as the site for her wedding, but…

She heard the purposeful strike of male footsteps on the marble floor and turned to see Ted striding toward her. Through her veil, she watched a beam of sunlight play on his dark brown hair, another ray splash across his handsome face. It was always that way. Wherever he went, sunbeams seemed to follow. He was beautiful, kind, everything a man should be. The most perfect man she’d ever known. The most perfect son-in-law for her parents and the best imaginable father of her future children. He rushed toward her, his eyes filled-not with anger-he wasn’t that sort of man-but with concern.

Her parents were right behind him, their faces masks of alarm. His parents would appear next, and then they’d all come pouring out-her sisters and brother, Ted’s friends, their guests… So many people she cared about. Loved.

She searched frantically for the only person who could help her.

Meg stood off to the side, her hands in a death grip on her bridesmaid’s bouquet. Lucy pleaded with her eyes, prayed Meg would grasp what she needed. Meg started to rush toward her, then stopped. With the mental telepathy shared by best friends, Meg understood.

Ted caught Lucy’s arm and swept her into a small antechamber off to the side. Just before he shut the door, Lucy saw Meg take a deep breath and stride purposefully toward Lucy’s parents. Meg was used to dealing with messes. She’d fend them all off long enough for Lucy to-To do what?

The long, narrow antechamber was lined with hooks holding blue choir robes and high shelves bearing hymnals, music folders, and musty, ancient cardboard boxes. A trickle of sulfurous sunlight oozed through the dusty windowpanes in a door at the end and somehow found his cheek. Her lungs collapsed. She was dizzy from lack of air.

Ted gazed down at her, those cool amber eyes shadowed with concern, as calm as she was frantic. Please let him fix this like he fixes everything else. Let him fix her.

Tulle stuck to her cheek, held there by perspiration, by tears-she didn’t know which-as words she could never have imagined speaking tumbled out. “Ted, I can’t. I-I can’t.”

He lifted her veil just as she’d pictured, except she’d pictured him doing it at the end of the ceremony, right before he kissed her. His expression was perplexed. “I don’t understand.”

And neither did she. This raw panic was unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

He cocked his head, gazed into her eyes. “Lucy, we’re perfect together.”

“Yes. Perfect… I know.”

He waited. She couldn’t think of what to say next. If only she could breathe. She forced her lips to move. “I know we are. Perfect. But… I can’t.”

She waited for him to argue with her. To fight for her. To convince her she was wrong. She waited for him to take her in his arms and tell her this was merely a panic attack. But his expression didn’t change except for an almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of his mouth. “Your friend Meg,” he said. “This is because of her, isn’t it?”

Was it? Would she be doing something so unimaginable if Meg hadn’t appeared with her love, her chaos, and her swift, brutal judgment? “I can’t.” Her fingers were icy, and her hands shook as she tugged at her diamond. It finally came off. She nearly dropped it as she pushed it into his pocket.

He let her veil fall. He didn’t beg. He wouldn’t know how. Nor did he make even the slightest attempt to change her mind. “All right, then…” With a brusque nod, he turned and walked away. Calm. Controlled. Perfect.

As the door shut behind him, she pressed her hands to her stomach. She had to get him back. Run after him and tell him she’d changed her mind. But her feet wouldn’t move; her brain wouldn’t work.

The knob turned, the door opened, and her father stood there, with her mother just behind, both of them pale, tense with concern. They’d done everything for her, and marrying Ted had been the best thank-you gift she could have given them in return. She couldn’t humiliate them like this. She needed to get Ted and bring him back. “Not yet,” she whispered, wondering what she meant, knowing only that she needed a moment to pull herself together and remember who she was.

Mat hesitated and then shut the door.

Lucy’s universe collapsed. Before the afternoon was over, the world would know that she’d dumped Ted Beaudine. It was unthinkable.

The sea of cameras… The herds of reporters… She’d never leave this small, musty room. She’d live the rest of her life right here, surrounded by hymnals and choir robes, doing penance for hurting the best man she’d ever known, for humiliating her family.

Her veil stuck to her lips. She tore at her headpiece, welcomed the pain as the combs and crystals pulled her hair. She was crazy. Ungrateful. She deserved pain, and she ripped it all off. The veil, the gown-snaking her arms behind her to work at the zipper until the white satin lay in a puddle around her ankles and she stood gasping for breath in her exquisite French bra, her lacy bridal panties, blue garter, and white satin stilettos.

Run! The word shrieked through her brain. Run!

From outside the chamber she heard the crowd noise grow momentarily louder and then muted again, as if someone had opened the front doors of the church, then quickly closed them.

Run!

Her hand grasped one of the dark blue choir robes. She jerked it from its hook and pulled it on over her disheveled hair. The cool, musty robe slipped along her body, covering her French bra, covering her tiny panties. She stumbled toward the small door at the end of the antechamber. Through the dusty windowpanes, she saw a narrow, overgrown walkway enclosed by a cinder-block wall. Her hands weren’t working properly, and the lock didn’t give at first, but she finally managed to open it.

The walkway led toward the rear of the church. The cracked pavement grabbed at her stilettos as she made her way past an air-conditioning unit. Spring thunderstorms had blown trash into the gravel at the side of the path: smashed juice boxes, bits of newspaper, a mangled yellow shovel from a kid’s sandbox. She stopped when she reached the end. Security was everywhere, and she tried to think of what to do next.

She’d lost her Secret Service detail a few months earlier, at the end of her mother’s first year out of office, but the agency still guarded Nealy, and since she and her mother were so frequently together, she’d barely noticed the absence of her own detail. Ted had hired private security to supplement the town’s small police force. There were guards at the doors. The L-shaped parking lot overflowed with cars. People were everywhere.

Washington was her home, not this Central Texas town she’d failed so miserably to appreciate, but she remembered that the church sat on the edge of an old residential neighborhood. If her legs could carry her across the alley and behind the houses on the other side, she might be able to get to one of those side streets without anyone seeing her.

And then what? This wasn’t a well-planned escape like the one Nealy had pulled off from the White House all those years ago. It wasn’t an escape at all. It was an interruption. A suspension. She needed to find a place where she could get her breath back, pull herself together. A child’s empty playhouse. A hidden nook in someone’s backyard. Someplace away from the chaos of the press, from her betrayed bridegroom and bewildered family. A temporary hideout where she could remember who she was and what she owed the people who’d taken her in.

Oh God, what had she done?

A commotion on the other side of the church caught the guards’ attention. She didn’t wait to see what it was. Instead she stumbled around the end of the cinder-block wall, rushed across the alley, and crouched behind a Dumpster. Her knees were shaking so badly she had to brace herself against the side of the rusty metal bin. It exuded the fetid stench of garbage. There were no cries of alarm, only the distant noise of the crowd packing the bleachers that had been set up in front of the church.

She heard a thin cry, like a kitten’s mew, and realized it was coming from her. She made herself creep along the row of shrubs that separated the old Victorians. The shrubs ended at a brick-paved street. She rushed across it and into someone’s backyard.

Old trees shaded the small lots, and detached garages opened into narrow alleys. She pulled the choir robe tighter as she moved blindly across the yards, from one to another. Her heels sank into the soil behind freshly planted vegetable gardens where marble-size green tomatoes grew on the new vines. The smell of pot roast wafted through an open kitchen window; the sound of a television game show came from another. Soon that same television would broadcast the story of former president Cornelia Case Jorik’s irresponsible daughter. In the space of one afternoon, thirty-one-year-old Lucy had blown seventeen years of good behavior. Seventeen years of proving to Mat and Nealy they hadn’t made a mistake by adopting her. As for what she’d done to Ted… She couldn’t have hurt him more.

A dog barked and a baby cried. She stumbled over a garden hose. Cut behind a swing set. The dog’s barking grew louder, and a rusty-haired mutt charged the wire fence that marked the next yard. She backed around a statue of the Virgin Mary toward the alley. The toes of her stilettos filled with pebbles.

She heard the roar of an engine. Her back straightened. A beat-up black and silver motorcycle spun into the alley. She ducked between two garages and flattened her spine against peeling white paint. The bike slowed. She held her breath, waiting for it to pass. It didn’t. Instead, it crept forward, then stopped in front of her.

The rider gazed into the space between the garages to the place where she stood.

The motor idled as he took his time studying her. One black boot hit the gravel. “’S’up?” he said over the engine noise.

’S’up! She’d crushed her future husband, mortified her family, and if she didn’t do something quickly, she would become the country’s most infamous runaway bride, yet this guy wanted to know what was up?

He had too-long black hair that curled past his collar, cold blue eyes set above high cheekbones, and sadistic lips. After so many years of Secret Service protection, she’d grown used to taking her safety for granted, but she didn’t feel safe now, and the fact that she dimly recognized the biker as a guest at last night’s rehearsal dinner-one of Ted’s odd assortment of friends-didn’t exactly reassure her. Even semi-cleaned-up in a dark suit that didn’t fit well, a rumpled white shirt open at the collar, and motorcycle boots that appeared to have received nothing more than a dusting, he didn’t look like anybody she wanted to meet in an alley. Exactly where she happened to be.

His nose was blunt, square at the tip. A wrinkled necktie poked out of the pocket of his ill-fitting suit coat. And that long, wild hair, all curls and tangles, looked like a finger painting of a van Gogh night sky made from a sloppy pot of black ink.

For more than ten years, ever since Nealy’s first presidential campaign, she’d tried to say the right thing, do the right thing, always smiling, forever polite. Now she, who’d long ago mastered the art of small talk, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead she felt a nearly irresistible desire to sneer, ’S’up with you? But of course she didn’t.

He jerked his head toward the rear of his bike. “Wanna go for a ride?”

Shock radiated through her body, shooting from vein to capillary, piercing skin and muscle into bone. She shivered, not from cold, but from the knowledge that she yearned to get on that bike more than she’d wanted anything for a very long time. Get on that bike and flee from the consequences of what she’d done.

He shoved his necktie deeper into the pocket of his suit coat, and her feet began to move. It was as if they’d detached from the rest of her body. She tried to make them stop, but they refused to obey. She came closer to the bike and saw a battered Texas license plate along with a dog-eared bumper sticker that covered part of the worn leather seat. The print had faded, but she could still make out the words.

GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

The message hit her like a shock wave. A warning she couldn’t ignore. But her body-her treacherous body-had taken control. Her hand tugged on the choir robe. One foot came off the ground. Her leg straddled the seat.

He handed her the only helmet. She pulled it on over her wretched bridal up-do and wrapped her arms around his waist.

They shot off down the alley, the choir robe billowing, her bare legs catching the edge of the wind, his hair flying, whipping her visor.

She tucked the robe under her legs as he cut from one alley to the next, took a sharp right turn and then another, the muscles in his back flexing under the cheap material of his suit coat.

They rode out of Wynette and down a two-lane highway that stretched along a craggy limestone bluff. The helmet was her cocoon, the bike her planet. They passed lavender fields in bloom, an olive oil factory, and some of the vineyards that were springing up across the Hill Country. The wind pulled at her robe, exposing her knees, her thighs.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, and the growing chill cut through the robe’s thin fabric. She welcomed the cold. She didn’t deserve to be warm and comfortable.

They barreled over a wooden bridge and past a decrepit barn with a Lone Star flag painted on its side. Signs for cave tours and dude ranches flashed by. The miles slipped away. Twenty? More? She didn’t know.

As they reached the outskirts of a one-stoplight town, he turned toward a shabby convenience store and parked in the shadows at the side of the building. He jerked his head at her, indicating she was to get off. She tangled her legs in her robe and nearly fell.

“You hungry?”

Even the thought of food made her nauseated. She eased her stiff legs and shook her head. He shrugged and headed for the door.

Through the helmet’s dusty visor, she saw that he was taller than she’d thought, about six feet, longer in the leg than the trunk. With his wild blue-black hair, olive complexion, and rolling gait, he couldn’t have been more unlike the congressmen, senators, and captains of industry who populated her life. She could see part of the store’s interior through the window. He walked toward the cooler at the back. The female clerk stopped what she was doing to watch him. He disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared to set a six-pack of beer on the counter. The clerk tossed her hair, openly flirting with him. He placed a few more items by the register.

Lucy’s shoes were rubbing a blister on her feet. As she shifted her weight, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. The big blue helmet swallowed her head, hiding the small features that always made her appear younger than her age. The robe hid the fact that prewedding stress had left her normally slender figure a little too thin. She was thirty-one years old, five feet four inches, but she felt tiny; stupid; a selfish, irresponsible waif.

Even though no one was around to see, she didn’t take off the helmet but lifted it slightly, trying to ease the pressure on the hairpins digging into her scalp. Normally she wore her hair almost to her shoulders, straight and tidy, generally held back with one of those narrow headbands Meg detested.

“They make you look like a fifty-year-old Greenwich socialite,” Meg had declared. “And unless you’re wearing jeans, ditch those stupid pearls. Ditto your whole stupid-ass preppy wardrobe.” Then she’d softened. “You’re not Nealy, Luce. She doesn’t expect you to be.”

Meg didn’t understand. She’d grown up in L.A. with the same parents who’d given birth to her. She could wear all the outrageous clothes she wanted, dangle exotic jewelry around her neck, even have a dragon tattooed on her hip, but not Lucy.

The store door opened, and the biker emerged carrying a grocery sack in one hand, beer in the other. She watched with alarm as he silently stowed his purchases in the bike’s scuffed saddlebags. As she imagined him drinking the whole six-pack, she knew she couldn’t let this go on. She had to call someone. She’d call Meg.

But she couldn’t summon the courage to face anyone, not even her best friend, who understood so much more than the rest. She’d let her family know she was safe. Soon. Just… not quite yet. Not until she’d figured out what to say.

She stood in front of the biker like a big, blue-headed alien. He was staring at her, and she realized she still hadn’t spoken a single word to him. How awkward. She needed to say something. “How do you know Ted?”

He turned back to fasten the clasps on the saddlebags. The bike was an old Yamaha with the word WARRIOR written in silver across the black fuel tank. “We did time together in Huntsville,” he said. “Armed robbery and manslaughter.”

He was baiting her. Some kind of biker test to see how tough she wasn’t. She’d have to be crazy to let this go on any longer. But then she was crazy. A bad kind of crazy. The crazy of someone who’d fallen out of her skin and didn’t know how to crawl back in.

His shadowed eyes, heavy with another kind of threat, slid over her. “You ready for me to take you back?”

All she had to do was say yes. One simple word. She pushed her tongue into the proper position. Arranged her lips. Failed to force it out. “Not yet.”

He frowned. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

The answer to that question was so obvious even he could figure it out. When she failed to respond, he shrugged and climbed back on the bike.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, she wondered how riding off with this menacing biker seemed less chilling than facing the family she loved so much. But then she didn’t owe this man anything. The worst he could do was-She didn’t want to think about the worst he could do.

Once again the wind tore at her robe. Only her hands stayed warm from the body heat radiating through his thin suit coat. Eventually he turned off the highway onto a rutted trail. The bike’s headlight cut an eerie pattern across the scrub, and she held tighter to his waist even as her brain screamed at her to jump off and run. Finally they reached a small clearing at the edge of a river. From a sign she’d seen earlier, she guessed it was the Pedernales. A perfect place to dispose of a dead body.

Without the roar of the engine, the silence was suffocating. She got off the bike and backed away. He pulled something that looked like an old stadium blanket from one of the saddlebags. As he dropped it on the ground, she caught the faint scent of motor oil. He grabbed the beer and grocery bag. “You gonna wear that thing all night?”

She wanted to keep the helmet on forever, but she took it off. Pins tumbled, and a wedge of oversprayed hair poked her in the cheek. The quiet was dense and noisy with the rush of river over rock. He lifted the beer in her direction. “Too bad this is only a six-pack.”

She gave a stiff smile. He popped the top, sprawled on the blanket, and tipped the longneck to his mouth. He was a friend of Ted’s, wasn’t he? So he had to be safe-despite his threatening appearance and boorish manner, despite the beer and the frayed bumper sticker.

GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

“Have one,” he said. “Maybe it’ll loosen you up.”

She didn’t want to loosen up, and she had to pee, but she hobbled over anyway and took a bottle to keep him from drinking it. She found a spot on the far corner of the blanket where she wouldn’t brush against his long legs or breathe in his general air of menace. She should be drinking Champagne now in the bridal suite of the Austin Four Seasons as Mrs. Theodore Beaudine.

The biker pulled a couple of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches from the grocery bag. He tossed one in her general direction and opened the other. “Too bad you didn’t wait until after the big wedding dinner to dump him. The food would have been a lot better than this.”

Lump crab parfait, lavender grilled beef tenderloin, lobster medallions, white truffle risotto, a seven-tier wedding cake…

“Really. How do you know Ted?” she asked.

He ripped off a big corner of his sandwich with his teeth and spoke around the wad in his mouth. “We met a couple of years back when I was working a construction job in Wynette, and we hit it off. We see each other when I’m in the area.”

“Ted hits it off with most people.”

“Not all of them good guys like him.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another noisy swig of beer.

She set aside the beer she wasn’t drinking. “So you’re not from around here?”

“Nope.” He balled up the cellophane sandwich wrapper and flipped it into the weeds.

She hated people who littered, but she wasn’t going to mention that. Devouring his sandwich seemed to require all his attention, and he didn’t volunteer any more information.

She couldn’t postpone a trip into the woods any longer. She took a napkin from the grocery bag and, wincing with every step, limped into the trees. When she was done, she returned to the blanket. He chugged some more beer. She couldn’t stomach her own sandwich, and she pushed it aside. “Why did you pick me up?”

“I wanted to get laid.”

Her skin crawled. She looked for some indication that this was his crude attempt at a joke, but he didn’t crack a smile. On the other hand, he was Ted’s friend, and as odd as some of them were, she’d never met any that were criminals. “You’re not serious,” she said.

He skimmed his eyes over her. “It could happen.”

“No, it couldn’t!”

He burped, not loud, but still disgusting. “I’ve been too busy for women lately. It’s time to catch up.”

She stared at him. “By picking up your friend’s bride while she’s running away from her wedding?”

He scratched his chest. “You never know. Crazy women’ll do anything.” He drained his beer, burped again, and tossed the empty into the bushes. “So what do you say? Are you ready for me to take you back to Mommy and Daddy?”

“I say no.” Despite her growing apprehension, she wasn’t ready to go back. “You haven’t told me your name.”

“Panda.”

“No, really.”

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s hard to believe that’s your real name.”

“No skin off my nose whether you believe it or not. I go by Panda.”

“I see.” She thought about it while he ripped open a bag of chips. “It must be nice.”

“How do you mean?”

“Riding from town to town with a made-up name.” And a big blue bike helmet to hide beneath.

“I guess.”

She had to stop this, and she gathered her courage. “Do you happen to have a cell I can borrow? I… need to call someone.”

He dug into his suit coat pocket and tossed her his phone. She failed to catch it and had to fumble in the folds of her robe.

“Good luck getting a signal out here.”

She hadn’t thought about that, but then her ability to think logically had deserted her hours earlier. She hobbled around the clearing on her now-torturous heels until she found a spot near the riverbank where she picked up a weak signal. “It’s me,” she said when Meg answered.

“Luce? Are you all right?”

“Matter of opinion.” She gave a choked laugh. “You know that wild side of me you’re always talking about? I guess I found it.” Nothing could be further from the truth. She was the least wild person imaginable. Once maybe, but not for a long time.

“Oh, honey…” The signal was weak, but not weak enough to mute her friend’s concern.

She had to go back to Wynette. But… “I’m-I’m a coward, Meg. I can’t face my family yet.”

“Luce, they love you. They’ll understand.”

“Tell them I’m sorry.” She fought back tears. “Tell them I love them, and I know I’ve made a horrible mess of everything, and that I’ll come back and clean it up, but… Not tonight. I can’t do it tonight.”

“All right. I’ll tell them. But-”

She disconnected before Meg could ask her any more questions she had no way of answering.

A crushing fatigue swept over her. She’d slept badly for weeks, and today’s awful events had used up whatever energy she had left. Panda had disappeared in the woods, and as he came out, she decided to let him get drunk in peace. She gazed at the blanket spread on the hard ground and thought of the narrow, comfortable beds in the private presidential quarters of Air Force One and the blackout shades that covered the windows with the push of a button. She gingerly lay back on the farthest edge of the blanket and gazed at the stars.

She wished she had a biker name to hide behind. Something tough. Something strong and menacing. Everything she wasn’t.

She fell asleep thinking up biker names. Snake… Fang… Venom…

Viper.