Keep the Ghost

41. Mud

By the time I awaken, my leg is hot in the advancing dawn. The sun rises over the front of truck, climbing my body as it pulls back the shade of the cabin.

Morgan is gone. I twist, searching, and find her sitting in the front seat, staring into the rearview mirror. Her purse is open and she's applying eyeliner. A brush and lipstick rest on the dash.

I pull myself up, hands on the metal under me and then the roof. My cast aches against my skin, pressed nearly to my bone as I slept. I move my thigh from side to side, trying to ignore the tingling numbness as feeling returns to my leg.

My knee is sore from the day of ducking and hiding, hips and shins bruised where the cast grinds against me. I'd give anything to be able to run. Seems like that may come in handy.

"Get up on the roof of the truck," Morgan says, voice muffled through the glass between us.

I do so, hoisting myself up until my legs are draped across the rear window.

"Okay, look straight ahead, the direction the truck is facing."

I turn, following her instructions, shielding my eyes with an open hand. I'm perched over the overgrown field of tall weeds and the skeletal cypress trees they choke.

The back of the medical examiner's office is only a hundred yards away. A chain link fence with a barbed wire crown guards a metal shed.

"You see the morgue?"

"Yeah," I answer. "I see it."

She says nothing—I decide to fill the void.

"Hey, let me ask: Is it all worth it?"

I can feel her voice through the roof of the truck. "What?"

"This, everything. Being a fugitive."

"Given my options, yeah."

"What about Mr. Banks? You said it yourself, it's his fault we got pulled over. Now you're cremating a body to keep yourself out of prison. How can anything be worth that?"

"I'm cremating my ex-husband so I'm not in your shoes a week from now," she says dryly. "But, Mr. Banks can keep you safe. He really can. He can also get you killed, but he can keep you safe. Not many people on this earth can say that to someone like you, someone the whole world is searching for. He can keep you safe, and he can make you rich. Come down here."

As I climb down, Morgan keeps talking: "You're going to drive me around to the examiner's office, then drop me off and come back here. When I'm done, I'll signal you from the back of the building, where you're looking now. Then, come around and pick me up, and we'll get the hell out of Florida."

She slides over, and I climb into the driver's side of the car. Thankfully, it's an automatic, and I can drive with one leg.

The truck lurches, climbing easily over ground that sucked at our tires only yesterday, wheels pulling us over the broad-leaf ferns we flattened on our trip out.

I stop at the edge of the street, good foot pressing down the brake, which does nothing until the pedal is flush with the body of the car, then stops all at once. The dashboard clock says eight in the morning, and the farm road is quiet.

We turn twice, and I stop in front of the stone sign marking the medical examiner's office. Morgan hops out, same sundress, makeup pristine, with her inconsolably tangled hair hidden under the straw hat. She pulls a mailing envelope from the duffel bag, then sets the bag and her purse in the floor of the truck. Then she shuts her door, and is gone.

I don't like this. Still, I drive on, alone.

On the return trip, I pass a policeman, going the opposite direction. My first instinct is to speed up, or turn and run—but I repress those urges. I stare straight ahead, tell myself repeatedly that there's nothing to fear. Make it true.