The hospital was fading behind them, a smear of light against the now murky night horizon. They’d managed to make it past the police and hospital security with little effort.
Brennan was sitting in the passenger seat nervously bouncing her leg. “Do you really have to drive?” she sighed after a curiously long silence.
“I like driving,” Kasich said plainly. Mist was rising from the ground.
“So, you’re just gonna whisk me off to New York?” Lucy said with a huff. “New England has quite the border these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if dear old Dad was working some angle.”
“Nope,” Kasich said.
“Then where are we going?”
“Detroit,” Kasich said again, not taking his eyes off the road. “There’s something in the file I want to check on.”
“My file?” Lucy said with a guffaw. “Don’t tell me Fargo pulled together a dossier on his daughter?”
Kasich only looked at her.
“Dylan,” Brennan hissed. “Turncoat, two faced –“
“Hey, enough of that,” Jack snapped. “He was a friend, to both of us.”
“Whatever,” Lucy said pinching her brow. She began to tug at the long white ears that fell down her neck. “What are we even doing in Detroit?”
“Following a footprint,” Kasich said, giving up the wheel to the Nav-System. He scrolled through his Cell, sending the data, the thoughts, to Lucy’s Cell. “Or the lack of one. This news source has no footprint, somehow its linked to a death in Allensville.” He sent over everything he had to Lucy.
“Every Scheme has a footprint,” Brennan said, “Except…”
“Except?” Jack asked.
“I work with this kind of stuff, diving, data mining, coding,” Lucy said, “I’m a Fish if you wanna use those terms, I just do it as research instead of blackhat shit.”
“A whitehat?” Jack said. “Well get ready to add a little grey to that cap of yours.” He laughed a bit, taking the wheel again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well we’ll be going against a lot of things the Corps and Government want us doing,” Jack shrugged. “At least that’s where I think this is leading us. Nothing illegal, just shifty.”
“Really? What if I don’t want to go along with your crazy little plan,” Lucy said with a growl.
“Because I asked nicely?” Kasich said with a snide smile. “Or because you think I’m going along with everything Fargo says? No. The only reason I found you so quickly is because of Dylan, and I’m starting to think it...ugh I don’t know.”
There was a breath of silence, filled only by the whirring of the car and the smear of lights as they drove further west through the Arlington suburb. The mist began to clear and rain began to fall, sending droplets of water across the screens that refracted and magnified the lights from the Stacks of businesses and homes.
“I owe everything to him,” Kasich said after a while. The light was now a meld of blue and neon pink, all blurred and moving fast as Kasich pulled on to a highway. He let the navigation system take the wheel. “Now he’s gone.” Kasich could feel it all well up inside him. All the unspoken things, all the old bitterness, and then it left, only replaced by the urge to smoke. He pulled out a cigarette. He buried the thoughts with smoke and ash, trying to suffocate them.
“Yeah, well I thought I knew him,” Lucy said, crossing her arms. “All this time just working for my Dad. You think you know a guy.”
“Trust me, the only reason he probably stayed on was because he liked you,” Kasich said, shooting Lucy a look. “Dylan didn’t do things he didn’t want to, not after the Hungry War, not after the shit we went through on your dear Dad’s dime.”
“What did you guys do over there?” Billie said tersely. “Dylan never told me, or he’d give me a non-answer about killing commies.”
“Well we did,” Kasich chuckled. “A lot of good that did.”
“Ugh,” Lucy groaned. “How you can justify–“
“I’m not justifying shit, I’m agreeing with you. So if you can get that stick out of your ass–“
“Oh, I have a stick up my ass?” Lucy snapped.
“You don’t know a god damn thing,” Kasich laughed while looking out the window. “You don’t know a god damn thing.”
Kasich took the wheel and began to drive again. This time the silence was tense, the lights unbearable. Lucy rested her chin on her hand and looked out the window, pouting slightly. It stayed that way for a while, an uneasy détente between them.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said after a good fifteen minutes of silence. They had left the city and were moving through a less populated suburb. Shifting through the middle of Fairfax on route 66.
“What?” Lucy said, looking up from the window. Her red hair was a mess and her eyes sunken.
“Nothing,” Kasich said with a sigh. “Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you when we stop.”
“I wasn’t– yawn –sleeping,” Lucy said, rubbing her eyes.
“Well I need to charge the car, it’ll be a while before we hit the Keystone Border,” Kasich said. They drove for a minute longer until they found a Charge Station just inside Fairfax City.
It was about 12:45am, the store clock read as Kasich walked in. The owner was looking at a magazine that could’ve been Maxim. Kasich poured himself a cup of Café, all the while longing for a real cup of coffee. He poured a second one. Absent mindedly he added three cups of non-dairy creamer and healthy dose of sugar. The donuts looked good, the owner must have eyeballed him looking at the display.
“Real donuts, I swear,” he said in broken English.
“Not cheap, then?” Kasich replied.
“I do you deal,” the man said. “$10.75 for each, your girlfriend have sweet tooth, yes?” He pointed out the window at Lucy, who was leaning against the car as it charged.
“Soy’s fine,” Kasich said, reaching for the Soy Donuts in the back. He paid and left the store; the owner went back to reading his magazine with a grunt.
“How much time left?” Kasich asked as he handed Billie the coffee.
He looked over at the charge station as Billie sipped her coffee. The screen glitched and popped. Kasich knocked on the screen with his gloved hand. The screen seemed to right itself.
“How did you know?” Lucy said, after a sip of coffee.
“What?” Jack said looking at her. She gestured to the coffee.
“How’d you know how I take my coffee?” Lucy asked, her voice seemed far off for some reason, like someone from deep in a well.
Kasich blinked, and then the screen popped to life with a chirp and happy greeting telling him his car was charged. A small sunshine with a grin and sunglasses thanked him for using Exxon.
“What?” Jack said, then shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“Sure, it wasn’t in my file?” Lucy said with a smirk. Kasich blinked again then held up a donut for her. She snatched it away and walked over to the passenger side.
Kasich was lost for a moment as he unhooked the charger. How had he made her coffee? He remembered pouring her cup, then a moment he couldn’t see. He pulled out his Cell, then put it away worried about what he would see. His mouth drew a line as he stepped into the car, Lucy had popped the top off her coffee and was dunking her donut.
“Nothing better,” Lucy said as she bit into the soaked portion of the treat.
“Were you just sour because you were hungry?” Kasich asked with a small guffaw.
Brennan shot him an icy look as she chewed.
“Fair enough,” Jack said as he started the car.
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