I keep my hands at ten and two, the wheel vibrating under my palms. The oil pressure gauge still flickers occasionally, a nervous tic I’ve learned to ignore. Silas’s repair is holding, but I can’t shake the awareness that we’re asking a lot of a fifty-year-old machine. The boot is packed with water bottles and petrol station sandwiches, our entire lives reduced to whatever fits in a duffel bag and a silver clutch.
‘Pull over,’ Beatrice says suddenly.
I glance at her. ‘Here?’
‘Anywhere. Just — somewhere with a view.’
I signal, though there’s no one behind us for miles, and guide the Mustang onto a gravel shoulder that overlooks a valley painted in shades of sage and rust. The engine ticks as I cut the ignition. Beatrice opens her door and steps out, and I follow, my legs grateful for the stretch.
She stands at the edge of the overlook, the wind pressing her dress against her thighs. Then she reaches for her wrist.
The watch is sleek, expensive — the kind of thing that probably costs more than my entire flat back in London. Rose gold, with a face that glows faintly even in the afternoon sun. I’ve noticed it before, of course, but I never really thought about what it meant. A GPS tracker disguised as jewellery. A digital leash.
Beatrice unclasps it and holds it in her palm, staring at it like it’s a living thing. Her jaw tightens.
‘He bought me this,’ she says. ‘For my birthday last year. Said it was so he could always know I was safe.’ She lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. ‘I thought it was romantic.’
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.
She turns and walks back to the Mustang. Before I can ask what she’s doing, she swings her arm down and smashes the watch against the dashboard. The crack is sharp, violent — plastic and glass splintering. She does it again. And again. The third time, the screen goes dark, a spiderweb of fractures spreading across the face.
I watch, my mouth slightly open. There’s something terrifying and magnificent about it, like watching someone set fire to a prison.
‘Beatrice—’
She doesn’t answer. She’s already reaching into the footwell, retrieving the phone she discarded back in San Francisco. The one that’s been lying there, silent and dead, for days. She holds it up, examines it with the same expression she wore when she looked at the watch — disgust, grief, and something else. Something that looks a lot like hope.
Then she hurls it out into the valley.
The phone arcs through the air, a silver glint against the blue sky, and disappears into the scrub below. No dramatic shattering sound. Just silence. Just the wind and the distant call of a bird and the thudding of my own heart.
Beatrice stands there, breathing hard, her hands empty. She looks younger somehow. Or maybe not younger — maybe just lighter. Like she’s shed a skin she didn’t know she was wearing.
‘There,’ she says. ‘Now he can’t find me.’
I want to say something profound. Something about freedom and courage and how I’ve never seen anyone do anything braver. But what comes out is: ‘That was a very expensive watch.’
She turns to me, and for a second I think I’ve ruined the moment, but then she laughs — a real laugh, bright and unexpected, the kind that crinkles the corners of her eyes. ‘You’re ridiculous,’ she says.
‘I’m practical,’ I say. ‘There’s a difference.’
She shakes her head, still smiling, and climbs back into the passenger seat. I linger for a moment, staring out at the valley where her phone disappeared. A thought flickers through my mind — that would have made incredible footage, and I feel a hot flush of shame. I push it down. This isn’t content. This is her life.
I get back behind the wheel.
‘Thank you,’ she says quietly. ‘For not filming that.’
I start the engine. ‘I wouldn’t.’
‘I know.’ She says it like she means it, and the weight of those two words settles somewhere in my chest.
We drive for another hour before I remember my own phone. I’ve been keeping it in the glovebox, mostly switched off to preserve battery. Reception has been patchy anyway, and there’s something liberating about being unreachable. But as we merge onto a smaller highway, I pull it out and power it on, more out of habit than necessity.
The screen lights up. A cascade of notifications floods in, missed calls, messages, emails. And then a news alert.
My stomach drops.
The headline is from some entertainment outlet, the kind of thing that would have sent pre-road-trip Arthur into a frenzy of envy and aspiration. But the words make my blood run cold: Celebrity Actress Beatrice Hart Abducted? Manager Marcus Issues Desperate Plea.
I scroll down, my thumb trembling. The article is a masterpiece of manipulation. Marcus’s face appears in the accompanying photo, his expression a careful arrangement of anguish and resolve. He’s standing at a podium, looking like a man barely holding himself together. The caption quotes him directly: ‘I just want her to come home safely. If anyone knows anything, please contact the authorities.’
Below that, a description of the ‘suspect.’ A young British man, early twenties, driving a classic Mustang. Last seen in the San Francisco area. Considered dangerous.
Dangerous. I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I once apologised to a man who stepped on my foot on the Tube.
I glance at Beatrice. She’s looking out the window, humming something under her breath, still buoyant from her act of liberation. She hasn’t seen this. She can’t see this. Not yet.
I switch the phone off and shove it back into the glovebox, my hands clammy.
‘Everything okay?’ Beatrice asks, turning to me.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just checking the map.’
She accepts this and returns to her window. I grip the wheel tighter and try to think.
Marcus has done something monstrous. He’s taken Beatrice’s escape, her first real act of agency, and twisted it into a crime. He’s made me the villain and himself the hero, and the worst part is, it’s brilliant. The public will eat it up. They’ll see his tearful press conference and her discarded phone and they’ll connect the dots exactly the way he wants them to. I’m not a failed YouTuber on a road trip anymore. I’m a kidnapper.
The highway ahead looks suddenly hostile. Every car that passes feels like a potential witness. Every petrol station, a trap.
I take the next exit without signalling, pulling onto a smaller road that winds through rocky terrain. The Mustang shudders as the asphalt gives way to gravel, the suspension groaning. Beatrice braces herself against the dashboard.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Scenic route,’ I say. ‘Less traffic.’
She doesn’t question it. The road deteriorates further, potholes and loose stones testing the Mustang’s ageing frame. The fuel gauge dips below a quarter tank. I should have filled up at the last station, but I was too focused on putting distance between us and the highway.
The sun begins its descent, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. Beautiful, but also a reminder that we’re running out of daylight. Running out of options.
Beatrice shifts in her seat. ‘Arthur, you’re gripping that wheel like you’re trying to strangle it.’
‘Bad road,’ I say.
‘You’re a terrible liar.’
I exhale. ‘I’m aware.’
She studies me for a long moment. I can feel her gaze on the side of my face, probing, patient. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
I think about the news alert. About Marcus’s face, all that rehearsed grief. About the word abducted and everything it implies. I think about how Beatrice just smashed her last connection to her old life, how free she looked, how light. If I tell her now, that lightness will curdle into fear. She’ll spend the rest of this journey looking over her shoulder.
But if I don’t tell her, I’m no better than Marcus. Controlling the narrative. Deciding what she gets to know.
‘There’s something,’ I admit. ‘But I need you to trust me for a little while longer. Just until we find somewhere safe to stop.’
She’s quiet. Then she nods. ‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’
‘I trust you, Arthur.’ She says it simply, without fanfare, and it lands in my chest like a stone dropped into still water. ‘You haven’t given me a reason not to.’
I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that trust. I’m the man who filmed our first encounter. I’m the man who considered, even for a split second, what kind of content her breakdown might generate. But she doesn’t know any of that, and the gap between who she thinks I am and who I actually am feels suddenly enormous.
The road crests a hill, and in the distance, a neon sign flickers against the darkening sky. A petrol station. Remote, isolated, but functional. The kind of place with a single pump and an attendant who’s seen everything and asks no questions.
‘There,’ I say. ‘We’ll stop there.’
Beatrice squints at the sign. ‘Is it safe?’
I think about the news alert again. About my face, probably, circulating on every screen in the country. About the word dangerous attached to my name. ‘Safer than running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere.’
I pull up to the pump and kill the engine. The silence rushes in, broken only by the ticking of the cooling metal and the distant hum of insects. An old man emerges from the tiny shop, wiping his hands on a rag. He nods at us, his expression unreadable.
‘Fill her up?’ he asks.
‘Please,’ I say.
Beatrice stays in the car. I watch the numbers climb on the pump, my wallet growing lighter, my mind racing through possibilities. We need to stay off the main roads. We need to avoid towns. We need to find somewhere to hide until I can figure out how to fight back against a story that’s already been written for us.
The idea that’s been germinating since I read the article pushes its way to the surface. Marcus has controlled the narrative so far. He’s the one with the platform, the credibility, the sympathetic face on every screen. But I have something he doesn’t. I have Beatrice. I have the truth. And I have a camera.
Not for content. Not for views. For evidence. For a counter-narrative. If we can tell our own story, if she can tell her own story, then Marcus’s fabrication collapses. But that would mean asking Beatrice to go public, to expose herself in a way she’s never done before. It would mean turning our escape into a statement.
I don’t know if she’s ready for that. I don’t know if I’m ready to ask.
The pump clicks off. I pay the attendant in cash, avoiding eye contact, and climb back into the Mustang. Beatrice has found a map in the glovebox, a proper paper one, the kind that doesn’t require a signal, and is tracing routes with her finger.
‘There’s a state park about thirty miles east,’ she says. ‘Camping grounds. It might be a good place to stop for the night.’
‘You want to camp?’
‘I’ve never been camping.’ She says it like it’s an adventure, not a necessity. ‘Marcus thought it was beneath me.’
I almost laugh. The idea of Beatrice Hart, global celebrity, sleeping in a tent in the middle of nowhere, is absurd. But it’s also perfect. Remote. Off-grid. Hard to find.
‘Let’s do it,’ I say.
She smiles, and for a moment, I forget about the news alert. I forget about Marcus and his fabricated kidnapping and the fact that I’m now a wanted man. I just see her, Beatrice, not the actress, not the brand, excited about sleeping under the stars.
I pull out of the petrol station and point the Mustang east, into the gathering dusk. The road ahead is dark and uncertain, but Beatrice is beside me, and she’s free, and somehow that feels like enough.
My phone stays in the glovebox. The truth can wait until morning.
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