For as long as Boyd can remember, he's been pushing pins into a map. Carson City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque -- all places he wants to see, for a dozen different reasons that wouldn't mean a thing to anyone else. When he finally gets a chance to purchase the '70 Plymouth Duster of his dreams, at a price that even he can manage, Boyd jumps at the opportunity.<br><br>Oliver seems like just another kid with a broken dream when their paths cross in Vegas. Against Boyd's better judgment, he offers to let Oliver hitch along for the ride when Oliver confides the need to get out and get gone.<br><br>But isn’t long before Boyd realizes Oliver's reasons for running are more complicated -- and more dangerous -- than Oliver let on. Boyd doesn't like people who play hardball, and he definitely doesn't like people messing with a man who's managed to light a fuse that Boyd forgot he had.

Road Trip

He wasn’t gone long. Just long enough to stand out in cooling desert air and feel how very quiet the night could be away from all things civilized. It was nice, he decided. Spooky, but nice. And the location certainly offered enough solitude and cover that if one did have untoward plans, one would be in the right spot to perform them. When mental images of bending nubile young men over the hood of the car began to dance through his head, Boyd had to try far harder than he should have to shut them down. He had no doubt that by the time he climbed into the back seat, his neck was flushed from his own embarrassing thoughts.


“I should go too.” Oliver said, turning to peer into the backseat. “Will you watch for me?”


“Thought you weren’t a kid,” Boyd mumbled, doing his best to make himself comfortable on a bench seat that seemed impossibly long when he looked at it, but much shorter when he tried to stretch out across it.


Chapter 9