to go over strategy for next week’s event. The polls have him up by seven points. Look, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but I didn’t invite you here just so you could watch me drink subpar whiskey and shoot the shit. This situation I’m talking about, in the hands of lesser men, it would ruin a candidate’s political career. But in my hands”—he stretched his fingers out wide and grinned—“I’m about to spin this shit into gold, and I want you to be in on it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cement your name in history.”
He signaled the bartender for the bill, slapped his credit card on top.
“What I’m about to propose is going to sound like political suicide, and sure, the wife will be collateral damage, but trust me: if we play this right, he’s going to be in the Senate next year, and after that it’s straight on to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And you know what that means for you? I’m not just talking about the circuits. I’m talking all the way to the top. So, what do you say: can I count on you to help make history?”
Outskirts of Santa Rosa, New Mexico—83 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait felt the nerves starting to build again, thrumming in her chest, making her fingers and toes itch. They’d just passed another sign for Albuquerque: eighty-three miles. Just a little over an hour at this rate.
They passed a single house at the end of a long dirt track. She squinted into the dark. There was a light on above the front door and a beat-up old Cadillac parked up out front. Someone was home.
She waited for the sweep of headlights, the growl of the pickup’s engine, but there was just darkness and silence and the endless stretch of road.
He was close, though. She could sense it. She knew that Rebecca did, too.
One Week Earlier
Cait kept an eye on the door, half expecting to see someone stride into the bar and blow her away with a single shot. She’d slept like shit the night before, getting up every ten minutes to check the locks, peering out into the dark for a pair of eyes to appear on the other side of the glass, convinced that the guy who’d followed her in his Durango was out there waiting for her. Every creak and groan that the old apartment gave out sent her skittering off the bed, knife clutched in both hands. Like she would actually know what to do with it if someone did break in. Like she wouldn’t already be dead.
She finally drifted off when the sun came up, only to be woken up by her alarm a couple of hours later. She was on a double shift at the Dark Horse. The new manager had changed the usual schedule “to mix things up,” as he’d said during the introductory meeting he’d called at nine a.m. on a Monday, but they all knew that he was really doing a little dick-waving to show he’d arrived. She’d managed to hold on to her Saturday-night shift, but the rest of her schedule was dogshit. Normally, she would have thrown a fit—she was one of their longest-serving bartenders and definitely one of the best—but she was happy to have the quiet, even if it meant eating ramen noodles for the next month. If the bar was empty, she’d be able to see whoever was coming through the door. Maybe in time to hide or at least duck.
The door swung open, and her heart clenched in her throat, but it was just Ken. He gave her a wave, but instead of making a beeline for his usual seat at the bar, he slid into a booth at the back and signaled one of the waitresses for a menu. Cait had already started pouring his drink, but now she cut off the tap and left the glass half full on the drip mat.
It was a slow shift, deep in the midweek doldrums, so there was a small part of her that was sad to lose the company (and the tip), but mainly, she was grateful she wouldn’t have to make small talk about UT’s football prospects or smile through jokes she’d already heard a thousand times. Still, she kept an eye on Ken as he placed his order with the waitress, and she felt a little sag of relief when the drink ticket came in and she was proved right about his drink order