Chapter Nine

So they drive, Nate's dark hair ruffling in the wind because Reid refuses to put the windows up in any weather short of a blizzard or torrential downpour. And Reid keeps dictatorial control over the radio, too, at least for the first few hundred miles until Nate learns that Reid loves classic rock and hates everything else. Then he takes over, twisting the dial until something acceptable blares through the speakers every time the station grows fuzzy and breaks apart.

They don't talk a lot on the road, at least not during those first few hours. Instead, it's like some kind of silent therapy - listening to the music and the wind, lost in their own thoughts and feeling the tension of the routine, of their old lives and ties, ease out of their muscles and unfurl along the road behind them. They're putting distance far greater than the miles on the odometer between themselves and their pasts and it leaves them lighter, freer, until all they think about is the scenery they pass, the song they unconsciously hum along with the radio.

They will, in time, start having long conversations on the road. It's there that they will start to slowly lay their lives bare to one another - sort of. It's the awkward dance of new friends, where each person somehow senses that this person is meaningful, that they will soon know you inside and out, but neither one wants to be the first to admit it so they tiptoe around with subjects like family and college and favorite books and movies.

And Reid begins to learn, through the stilted, digitized voice of Nate's app since he can't watch him sign while he's driving, just what it is about this man that's drawing him in. His bald honesty and social awkwardness, his total lack of pop culture knowledge that makes Reid want to cuddle up on a couch and not move until Nate has learned the joys of Star Wars and Die Hard. The way he's been raised in hell, with violence cloaked in righteousness, his siblings choosing to become priests and politicians and public figures - positions of power - that they then systematically abuse until the Angelev family gains control of the neighborhood, the city, the state. And the way he's willing to throw all that power away to do the right thing.

And Nate learns why Reid's a reformed juvenile delinquent, having lost his youth coping with a dead mother and an alcoholic father, stealing cars and running away for attention that he never received. How much pride he takes in his work, how he sees it as his calling. How he found what he really needed in the family he'd formed with his boss, Andy, and Ben, who'd been with Reid from his early days at the agency and watched his ass like a brother.

But those conversations don't come, not yet. For now, they're content with the silence.

In fact, their only exchange as they leave Kansas behind them is under the fluorescent lights of a truck stop, Reid's hands filled with the largest soda Nate has ever seen and some sort of dried meat product as long as his arm.

"Want some Mountain Dew and beef jerky?"

Nate shakes his head, raising the small paper cup of coffee in his right hand and signing with his left. "No, thank you. I'm actively trying not to die; no sense ruining all that effort by adopting your appalling eating habits."

Reid takes a dramatic bite into the jerky and grins, the meat caught between his teeth. "Aw, c'mon, Nate. This shit could go through a nuclear holocaust and still be edible."

"And your point is?"

"That maybe eating enough of it can make us indestructible, too."

He considers this for a moment, then leans over to bite off the end of the jerky...and promptly spits it back out. "I'd rather die."

"Huh," Reid scoffs, ripping off another huge bite and mumbling around it. "You clearly just don't have my refined palate."

And he's still moaning with delight as he slaps cash down on the checkout counter.