Closing In

Three days later

South Texas

The farmhouse was still, but the world outside was tightening like a noose.

Unmarked cars had been spotted in town. A gas station clerk said two strange men paid too close attention to local bulletin boards. A helicopter passed overhead twice in one afternoon — low and slow, as if sniffing for ghosts.

Layla spotted the pattern first.

“They’ve found us,” she said flatly, standing at the window with a rifle in her hands.

Clyde didn’t argue. He was stronger now, able to move without too much pain, but the way he gritted his teeth every time he lifted his right arm said the bullet had left more than just a scar.

They packed in silence.

Only the essentials: cash, burner phones, two changes of clothes each, and Clyde’s sawed-off shotgun.

They planned to leave at midnight. Travel by backroads until they reached Laredo. From there, a smuggler friend Clyde once did time with would help them cross under new identities.

But at 10:17 p.m., someone knocked on the door.

Once.

Twice.

Then again.

Clyde raised his gun. Layla whispered, “They don’t knock if they mean to kill us.”

Still, they moved carefully. He peeked through the crack in the curtain and saw a boy — couldn’t have been older than thirteen — holding a folded piece of paper.

Clyde opened the door an inch.

The boy handed him the note and ran without a word.

Clyde unfolded it.

“They’re watching the road north. They’ll come at dawn. Move now.”

— R

Layla frowned. “Who the hell is ‘R’?”

Clyde’s eyes narrowed. “Roy.”

They were on the road within ten minutes, headlights off, tires crunching over dry brush as they cut through the field behind the house.

Layla drove. Clyde navigated, sweat beading at his temple as he held the pistol in his lap. Every bend in the dirt road felt like it could end in blue lights and flashing guns.

They made it forty miles south before they saw the first checkpoint — a makeshift roadblock with sheriff vehicles and state troopers, radios crackling.

Layla didn’t hesitate.

She hit the brakes, reversed hard into the trees, and kept driving off-road, the Chevelle’s replacement — a beat-up blue El Camino — bouncing over roots and rocks.

Clyde held on, heart pounding. “You trust Roy now?”

“No,” she spat, swerving through the brush. “But I trust instinct. And mine says we’re not dying in Texas.”

They stopped just before sunrise, hiding in an old irrigation tunnel beneath a dried-up canal.

Exhausted. Filthy. Silent.

Clyde leaned against the concrete wall, eyes half-closed. Layla sat beside him, hands shaking.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Even if we make it to Mexico… how long before someone else finds us? Before we’re running again?”

He turned his head to her. “Then maybe we stop running.”

She looked at him. “You mean…?”

“If it’s the end,” he said, “then we go out our way. Not theirs.”

Layla nodded slowly.