just going to be sitting here waiting to be found.
I open my wallet and see that I have a couple grand that Tessa had given me earlier and that puts my mind at ease.
I still need to get a car. I have my phone, but I don't want to leave an electronic trail of evidence so I can't call Uber or Lyft. Instead I open the yellow pages and call the first cab company I see.
I pack the rest of my stuff. I am tempted to leave a lot here, but I know that it will be difficult to buy anything on the road.
Preferably, I won’t stop for hours, if not days. So, I take the big camping backpack and pack it with all of my stuff and then whatever groceries fit on top of it.
I place my phone in the front pocket and hesitate for a moment. I need to get rid of it. Isabelle knows the number and if she's compromised and working with the authorities, it's just going to lead them to me.
Still I hesitate.
It's my only connection to her. Things have changed so quickly and I can't quite get my mind around it.
Someone honks outside the door. It's not the cops, they don't honk. I look out the window and see that it's my cab.
Just in time.
I take one last look around the cabin to make sure that I didn't forget anything. Then I grab the charger out of the wall and stuff it into my pocket. When I get rid of this phone, I'm going to get another one and I'll need this.
“I need to go to the car dealership in San Bernardino,” I say.
The driver starts to protest because it's all the way down the hill, but I tell him that I'll pay him extra.
As soon as we get on the main road and turn right at the light, three police cars with sirens blaring drive down the road heading to my cabin.
My heart clenches.
I pull my baseball cap over my eyebrows and bury my eyes in my phone. It's not on, but I want to look occupied. The driver doesn't seem to notice and the further we get from the cabin, the easier my breathing gets. Still, I know that it's not over.
We get to a used car dealership at the bottom of the hill and I give the driver a good tip and let him go.
If this place doesn't work out, then I can always call another cab to take me to another one, but the fewer people that interact with me in the meantime, the better.
The guy in charge of the car lot is bored and not particularly alert. He sells old cars to people with poor credit and I hope that he doesn't look at my ID too closely.
I tell him that I have cash and that seems to perk him up a little bit. Eventually we settle on a price of $700 for a 2002 Dodge Neon.
It's bright red and red cars are more likely to be stopped than any other color, but I don't really have much of a choice.
I give him cash and he takes my fake ID and writes down my name to transfer the title. I stay on my phone the whole time, careful to avert my eyes, but that doesn't seem to bother him.
He barely looks up at me more than once, too preoccupied with filling out the paperwork and watching a recording of an old Super Bowl game behind me.
I'm tempted to ask why he's re-watching a game that he probably already watched, but I want to make myself the least memorable as possible.
So I keep my mouth shut and grab my phone to pretend to read something there.
Half an hour later, I have a car and I pull out of the dealership. The weight of the world is slowly lifting with each move that I make, but I'm too focused and nervous still to do anything that remotely looks like a celebration.
When I get on the freeway, I deliberately drive south for ten minutes. I pull into a gas station. I park for a moment to look at my phone.
I need to throw it in the dumpster. I can’t take it with me because they’ll use it to trace my location.
Still, it feels impossible to throw out the only connection that I have to Isabelle as if nothing happened.
Just earlier today, I thought that I was going to ask her to marry