“Can you give me like five minutes?” Cassandra looked at Hardy in desperation. “I’ve been up since seven yesterday morning. I need to get some water, get my face clean, something.”

Hardy’s gaze left her face for a moment, his brow furrowing as he contemplated her request.

“Ten minutes. They’re looking for me; I can’t afford to waste time.”

Cassandra sighed and sidestepped away from him, walking through her apartment quickly. She considered calling the police, but in spite of her fear of Hardy, she had to admit to herself that she was more than a little curious about their mission.

This is either going to end with him clearing his name—or it’s going to end with him killing me.

Cassandra stepped into her bathroom, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Hardy hadn’t followed her, before closing the door.

Washing her hands, she splashed water onto her face again and again, blinking as the moisture began to clear some of the throbbing in her head. Cassandra opened the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of headache medicine. Looking at the cluttered shelves, she saw another item: caffeine pills. The coffee she’d had at the office hadn’t done much, but the NoDoz was stronger. She shook two into her palm along with the paracetamol, and quickly left the bathroom.

“What’s that in your hand?” Hardy asked, suspicious.

Cassandra showed the contents of her palm. “If you want to take me on a wild goose chase at four in the morning, you’re going to give me a second to at least be able to stay awake for it,” she said.

A moment later, Cassandra felt a stab of doubt. It’s remotely possible that he’s telling you the truth, she thought. He’s risking a lot.

“Like I said, I’m exhausted,” she said, softening her voice a little, “Two of them are caffeine pills, the other’s a painkiller.”

Hardy looked at the pills a moment longer before nodding his acceptance.

Cassandra darted into the kitchen and opened the fridge. She grabbed the first bottle of water she could find and tossed the pills into her mouth before she cracked the seal on the bottle. Swallowing again and again, she drank down about a third of the bottle and got the pills down.

“We need to get going,” Hardy said.

Cassandra turned to look at him and saw that Hardy was watching the door and windows in steady, constant surveillance. If nothing else, this will make a hell of a story, she thought grimly. She gathered up her bag and found her keys. When she turned to tell Hardy that she was ready, he was right at her side, only inches away from her.

“Come on,” she said, not quite looking up into his face. She led the way through her door, closing and locking it behind her. “Not that it seems to matter if I lock it or not,” she muttered to herself. Pitching her voice just loud for him to hear, she added, “If we take the stairs, there’s less risk of someone seeing us.”

Hardy nodded and followed her down the hall.

Cassandra hurried down the steps as quickly as her tired feet would allow her, wishing that the caffeine would kick in already—she wasn’t sure when she would next get a chance to sleep. That’s assuming Hardy isn’t just using this story as an excuse to get you somewhere isolated enough to kill you and get rid of your body, she thought.

Down in the garage, Cassandra spotted her car in its usual spot. The topcoat of the dusty old Nissan sedan was starting to peel and erode away, leaving the powdery black paint underneath exposed in patches.

Cassandra unlocked the driver’s side door and the rest of the locks flipped up in the same moment. She turned around to see Hardy standing only about a foot behind her.

“How are we going to do this?” she asked.

“I’ll get in the back; the windows are dark enough that they shouldn’t be able to see me.”

No need for Cassandra to ask who ‘they’ were. She climbed wearily into the driver’s seat and heard the shift and groan of the car as Hardy slipped into the back, closing the door quietly behind him. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw him slide down, making himself as small as possible in the seat.

Shaking her head in disbelief at the bizarre turn her evening had taken, Cassandra turned the key in the ignition. The car came to life with a roaring purr of the engine, and the stereo turned on. The middle-aged women talking about dogs had apparently finished for the night, replaced by two presenters talking about current affairs.

“You listen to talk radio?”

“There’s not much on at this time of night.”

“Put in a CD or something, would you?” Hardy said, his voice testy.

Cassandra rolled her eyes; she would have protested, but she knew all too well what Hardy was capable of. She slipped her phone out of her purse—wondering again why she wasn’t using it to call the police—and plugged it in.

“Just to be clear, you may be hijacking my car, but I’m going to pick the music,” Cassandra said, in what she hoped was a firm tone.

“I don’t care,” Hardy said, shifting in the back seat again. “Just put something on that isn’t the fucking news.”

Cassandra’s hands shook slightly and she wasn’t sure if it was lingering adrenaline or the start of the caffeine entering her system. She scrolled quickly through her music library, knowing that Hardy wouldn’t appreciate her taking the time to find something appropriate for their errand, and tapped play on Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle album. As the intricate, soft-toned guitar began to fill her ears, Cassandra put the car in reverse, pulling out of the parking spot she had pulled into less than thirty minutes before.

She took a breath and began to navigate the parking garage, smiling with recognition as Elliott Smith sang that he was hallucinating, hallucinating. No matter how much she might want him to be, though, Cassandra knew that Hardy was definitely no illusion. The convicted felon really was sitting in the back seat of her car, and Cassandra was fairly certain that he was capable of doing her real harm if she pressed him too much, or asked too many questions.

“Where are we going?”

She glanced at the shape of him in her rearview mirror as she came to the exit gate, saw Hardy’s face in a brief flash of the fluorescent security lights.

“Turn right out of the building,” he told her firmly, shifting onto his side on the seat.

Cassandra briefly entertained the idea that if she applied the brakes just sharply enough, she could throw him against the backs of the seats, knocking him out for just long enough to allow her to call the police. But there were too many risks in that plan.

Even more importantly, there’s a story on the line, she thought, smiling slightly at her own hubris. Just think: if he’s telling the truth and you can prove it, you’ll have the story of a lifetime. And if he was lying? She would worry about that later. For the moment, she had a mission—and the possibilities opening up in front of her were as intriguing as they were terrifying. Cassandra drove towards the gate until it opened, turned right, as Hardy had commanded, and pulled onto the quiet, near-deserted street.