Jesse must have made a noise because Detective Briggs turned.
Their eyes met.
Jesse ran.
He reached his car, drove blindly, and made it as far as the strip mall before he realized headlights had followed him off the highway.
He abandoned the car behind the shops and ran through an alley.
For almost an hour, he hid behind the service entrance of a repair garage owned by a man named Nolan Pierce.
Nolan had fixed my father’s truck for years. He knew Jesse. More importantly, he knew enough about Martin Vale to understand that a terrified seventeen-year-old boy was not imagining danger.
Nolan found him shaking behind a dumpster.
“I wanted to call Dad,” Jesse said, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I kept saying I needed to call home. I kept saying Mom would be waiting.”
