There had been other strange moments. Three years earlier, shortly after a motorcycle rider was reported missing outside Barstow, Richard had returned in the middle of the night with dust on his boots and a smell like burned rubber in his clothes. Chloe had been sixteen, standing at the sink for a glass of water, when she saw him push a canvas bundle into the bed of a county utility truck. He had looked directly at her through the kitchen window. The next day he warned her not to repeat anything she thought she had seen after dark.
She had obeyed, partly because she was frightened and partly because the detail had seemed unimportant beside the daily task of surviving. Now, while she packed her things, that old memory surfaced without an obvious reason. Richard had spent the past week receiving calls he answered outside, lowering his voice whenever Chloe passed near the window. Once she heard him say the word salvage. Once she heard him ask whether a vehicle had been moved. He had become more volatile each day, as if something far beyond the trailer had begun to unravel.
Chloe knew she could not rely on local law enforcement to protect her. Years earlier, she had tried to tell a deputy about being locked outside overnight. The man listened, nodded sympathetically, and then mentioned her complaint to Richard before he had even finished his shift. Richard had come home with a pleasant smile and asked whether she enjoyed embarrassing him. Chloe had learned that an attempt to reach help could become another danger if it traveled through the wrong hands.
She had thought about contacting a state agency, a hospital, even a distant relative in Nevada whose address she barely remembered. But Richard monitored her calls, checked the mileage on the trailer's only car, and sometimes waited near the bus station when he suspected she was planning something. He had threatened to claim she stole departmental property if she disappeared. At nineteen, she understood that a threat made by a deputy carried a weight that could follow her across county lines. The safest escape seemed to be one he could not anticipate.
That afternoon Richard returned from his shift unusually early, poured bourbon into a chipped coffee mug, and settled into his recliner with his service badge resting in his palm. His pistol remained in its holster on the side table, a detail Chloe tried not to look at. She waited for the snoring to deepen before she moved. Her backpack contained two pairs of jeans, three shirts, a flashlight, a bottle of water, a packet of crackers, her father's wrench, and the photograph of David that Richard believed he had burned years ago.
She checked the living room once more from the hallway. Richard's eyes were closed, his jaw slack, the television showing an old crime program he had watched dozens of times. On the coffee table sat a ring of keys and a folded piece of paper bearing an official county seal. Chloe considered taking the keys but knew Richard would notice immediately. She decided she needed an escape that could not be traced to anything in his possession.