“Proof?”
“No.”
“What about your girl friend?”
“She's my sister.”
He laughed. “I've heard that one a million times. You kids ought to be more imaginative.”
With each stop and each story, I could see Sandy getting more agitated, more worried.
She finally blurted out: “I knew this was going to happen, Terry, I knew it. There's just no place for us to go in this country.”
“Wait'll we get to San Francisco. It'll be okay then.”
“I doubt it. What are we going to do, Terry?”
“Drive on, I guess, until we find a place to stay.”
“Maybe we should turn back.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled. “Look how far we've gone! Don't you feel great to be free like this, at last? Out of the nest and on our own? God, I love you! If we go back, we'll just be killing everything we've done, admitting that we were naughty children and didn't really mean it after all. If they want to kill our love they'll have to catch us first.”
“I'm sorry, Terry. Don't pay any attention to me when I get like that. I need you so much, I'm nothing without you.”
She snuggled against me, under my arm, and a new warmth suffused between us. It seemed as though every moment we spent together was better and richer than the last.
“Maybe the best thing to do would be to take a bus,” I said. “We could pull into one of these towns and ditch the car. They'd never get us then.”
“Do you think they're after us?”
“If they found Daddy, they must be. They probably have the license number. Anyway, we crossed the state line hours ago.”
“Couldn't they have one of those all-state alarms?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, those cops must have thousands of them on file.”
“Look, an exit!”
I started to slow down and glanced in the rear-view mirror. I saw the flashing red light just before the siren sounded and the state police car gunned in on us.
