Page 116 of Never Never

Except I trust her feminine intuition, joking or no joking. And after what I saw this morning…

Don’t wait up.

I tear up the 303, rocketing between car doors and praying the speed guns are shelved for the day. The fucking AirTag dot’s jittery, lagging, and I’m taking my life in my own hands every time I look away from the road to glance at my screen. But I can still follow the trend. Pan’s a mile or so out of the Hills on the 303, which puts him six or seven miles ahead of me. If he’s headed home, to the Strip, he’d have to take the next exit.

I look up—clear shot, accelerate through the passage—then down—dot jumps ahead a quarter mile. Up—car, brake lights, lean, swerve—down—another jump.

Past the exit.

“Fuck,” I mutter to no one. Because the only reason to keep going that way, the only other thing that is that way, is the Marina.

I dig my feet against the footpegs, as if that’ll somehow make me go even faster, and risk a look at my phone again. I can’t catch him on the freeway, no matter how fast and reckless I ride. But the freeway isn’t straight. Ahead, maybe a mile, it lazy-S’s around the foothills, and—I look at my phone mount, the map, a thin gray thread slicing right through the middle of the S. Utility road or something for power lines, something I’ve ridden past probably dozens of times without ever really seeing.

It’ll have to work.

“Cool, cool,” I tell my helmet. “Great plan.”

I cut across three lanes of traffic and take the next exit so hard I’m practically shaving my right leg with the asphalt. It’s no-man’s land, desert and scrub and the ribbon of one-lane highway with that goat path of a thank-you-Jesus utility road up ahead on the left. I surge forward to where a rusted metal Y-gate blocks it off from the main road and thread the gap in the bars with maybe an inch to spare on each end. Then it’s rock and dirt, Little Green absolutely chugging under me as she sends up a plume of dust and I have to decel slightly to avoid completely eating shit. But Fox’s spring earns its keep, and if I can’t go as fast as I want, I at least manage not to lose any teeth as I stand on the pegs and rattle over the bumps of my shortcut. The sun’s low now, gleaming orange off the transmission towers and painting the foothills a pink I can see even through the haze of dust on my visor.

Finally, I’m out. The road cuts me loose at the top of an on-ramp and I gun for a gap between a fuel truck and a minivan, the clinging sage and buckwheat of the back road whipping off my boots.

Just like that, I’ve magically teleported miles down the 303. I look at my phone.

The dot blinks. I’m on him. I should be⁠—

Eyes up, and three lanes over, I see him.

I’d know the bike, know his riding posture, even if it weren’t the only bike in view. I swallow the stab of adrenaline that pierces my chest and gun it.

I weave, skate, too fast to get my balance but I free one hand anyway and jab the button on the side of my helmet for the mic.

“Pan.”

Nothing.

“Pan, it’s me. It’s Tink.” Lane, lane, a gap I have no right to fit through. “I know you can hear me.” My voice is trembling—from nerves, anger, I don’t know. “Say something, asshole.”

He tips into the next lane and lets a tractor-trailer slide between us.