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Chapter Three of seven.

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San Angelo smelled like hot tar and cattle trucks. Cutter eased the Dodge Sportsman off the loop and into the gravel lot of a roadhouse that promised Chicken-Fried Steak and Cold Lone Star in letters half burned out. The van’s flames looked less like decoration in the midday sun and more like a dare. Parker was already scribbling in her notebook, legs crossed in the captain’s chair as if she’d ordered the whole town to appear just so she could record it.

Topher tilted his head back against the dash, cigarette bobbing. “So this is the next big stop on our grand tour of Texas? Smells like home to me.”

“Smells like something that doesn’t keep,” Cutter muttered, parking between a rusted pickup and a Buick that looked ashamed of itself. The coffin creaked in back. No one spoke of it anymore—it rode along like an unwanted chaperone.

They hadn’t been there long enough for the dust to settle when the sound arrived. A hard, insistent rumble that didn’t belong to a truck or tractor. It was higher, brasher, like a promise of bad ideas given four wheels.

Then it came into view: a 1978 Pontiac Firebird, screaming yellow under the noon glare, twin nostrils on the hood flaring as it swung into the lot. The driver snatched the wheel with one hand, radio turned up loud enough to rattle the beer signs in the window. Gravel spat behind it, rooster-tailing a poor man’s welcome parade.

Topher sat up, grinning like a schoolboy. “Well, hell. That’s a shade of yellow even louder than I am.”

The Firebird rolled to a stop sideways across two spaces, door swinging open before the tires quit moving. Out stepped Shannon Hudspeth, legs as reckless as the Pontiac’s paint, hot pants that nearly matched the car, and a smile that had led more men into ruin than whiskey. She flipped the T-top panel back with a practiced flick, letting the desert wind tumble her hair, and leaned against the roof like she’d been staged there.

“Afternoon, boys,” she called, voice honey poured over gravel. “Which one of you’s buying me lunch?”

Parker looked up from her notebook, one eyebrow raised, unimpressed but curious. Cutter said nothing, only watching through narrowed eyes, his instincts pricking. Topher, helpless, was already halfway out of the van, brushing dust from his shirt as if he’d been preparing for this all day.

“Shannon Hudspeth,” he said, grinning wider. “Didn’t expect you in San Angelo.”

“You never expect me,” she said, tugging her sunglasses down just enough to meet his eyes. “That’s half the fun.”

Cutter muttered under his breath, almost to himself. “Storm’s coming.”

And the Pontiac, bright and brash in the lot, seemed to agree.

The roadhouse smelled of fryer grease and cigarette ash, ceiling fans turning slow as courtroom clocks. Shannon slid into a booth like she owned the place, yellow hot pants flashing against the red vinyl. Cutter took the end opposite, stiff as the coffin riding in the van, while Topher dropped beside her, grinning like he’d just been dealt aces. Parker stayed near the door, notebook already out, the observer who never missed a cue.

Shannon propped her elbows on the table, chin in her hands, and looked first at Cutter, then at Topher. “You boys ever hear of the corridor?”

Topher laughed, low. “You mean I-10? Spent plenty of time on it.”

“Not that corridor, sugar.” She leaned closer, her perfume cutting through the grease and smoke. “I’m talking about the one that runs quiet, a vein through the desert. South of here, men move things they don’t want counted, weighed, or taxed. Liquor, rifles, sometimes people. Sometimes…” She let the pause dangle like a garter strap. “…things that ride in pine boxes.”

Cutter’s jaw flexed. Topher whistled softly. Parker’s pencil scratched across the page.

Shannon smiled, wide enough to show teeth. “Now, I don’t sell information cheap. Dollars spend fast. Loyalty lasts longer. And sometimes the price isn’t money at all.”

She let that settle, then stood in one smooth move, tossing her hair back. “Come on.”

Outside, the Firebird waited like a coiled animal, yellow paint glowing under the sun. Shannon swung into the driver’s seat, motioning to Topher with a curl of her finger. He didn’t hesitate. Cutter followed, slower, suspicion dragging at his boots.

The Firebird barked to life, exhaust snapping, engine note sharp and hungry. Shannon dropped both windows down, letting the desert wind roar in. “Hold on,” she said, and floored it.

The Pontiac leapt forward, tires chirping, hood scoop swallowing heat. Topher laughed like a fool, one hand on the dash, cigarette nearly flying from his lips. Cutter braced in the back, the cracked vinyl sticking to his suit. Shannon shifted hard, knuckles white, grin feral. The car smelled of smoke, perfume, and something that might have been sex or just memory.

“Every curve of her,” Shannon shouted over the wind, “is faster than the last. Like me.”

Topher was already sold. Cutter only saw the storm in her eyes, same as the Firebird’s.

She swung back into the lot and cut the ignition in one sharp twist. Dust settled. Silence fell heavy. Shannon leaned across Topher, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut deep.

“You want to know where your road leads, boys? It ain’t San Angelo.” Her eyes glittered. “It’s south. And if you’ve got the guts to follow, you’d better keep up.”

The Firebird ticked hot as she slid out, legs first, smile like a blade.

Cutter stayed behind with Parker outside the roadhouse, arms crossed, jaw tight. He watched Shannon tilt her chin toward the Pontiac, and Topher followed like a moth after a lantern. The yellow Firebird snarled awake, nose twitching, and the two of them pulled away in a spray of gravel.

Parker flicked ash from a cigarette she hadn’t smoked, eyes narrowed behind her notebook. “You don’t like her.”

“I don’t trust her,” Cutter said.

“Difference?”

“One gets you killed faster.”

The Firebird roared down the highway, its bright flanks catching every ounce of desert sun. Shannon kept one hand on the wheel, the other draped on the seat back behind Topher. She didn’t talk at first—just let the car do the bragging. The Pontiac’s V8 howled when she mashed the throttle, throwing Topher against cracked vinyl that smelled of every secret the car had ever carried.

They didn’t get far before she swung onto a dirt track, dust ballooning around them. She killed the engine in the shade of a mesquite stand and turned to him, smile sharp enough to open skin.

“You ever see scenery like this?” she asked.

Topher grinned, breathless. “Not in Galveston.”

Her laugh was low, confident. She climbed over the console with a grace that suggested practice, not hesitation. The Firebird creaked under them, its springs squealing protest as she pressed him back against the back of the passenger seat. Vinyl stuck to skin. The air smelled of hot plastic, perfume, and dust and something harder to identify.

Topher didn’t think, didn’t breathe, didn’t care. For a few reckless minutes, the desert disappeared, and there was only her weight, her hair in his face, the slam of heartbeat against heartbeat.

When it was over, he sat half-undressed, chest heaving, staring at the tinted glass above him. Shannon smoothed her shorts, adjusted her blouse, and smiled down at him like she’d just signed a deed.

“Now you’re in,” she said.

Topher fumbled with his belt, still dizzy, still lost. He tried to laugh but it came out thin. “Lady, I think you just bought my soul.”

Shannon leaned in, kissed him once more, slow and deliberate, then slid back into the driver’s seat. The Pontiac fired up again, exhaust snapping like applause.

By the time they rolled back into San Angelo, Topher’s grin was fixed and hollow. Cutter didn’t need to ask what had happened. He could see it in the way Shannon walked, in the way Topher couldn’t look anywhere but at her.

The deal was sealed.

And the devil had used a Firebird to sign it.

They pulled back into the roadhouse lot in a haze of dust and gasoline, the Firebird rumbling like it had secrets to tell but wouldn’t. Shannon killed the ignition, the yellow hood ticking in the heat, and climbed out with the slow satisfaction of someone who had just claimed another piece of the board.

Topher slid out after her, shirt half-tucked, eyes glassy, a grin plastered across his face that didn’t reach his soul. Cutter read it all in a heartbeat: the indecent proposal, the bargain, the surrender. Parker, scribbling in the corner of her notebook, didn’t need to ask either. She caught Cutter’s glance and smirked. “Well,” she said, “our Mr. Thompson just made his choice.”

Cutter didn’t answer. He only looked at the Pontiac—bright, brash, too loud to last—and then at Shannon, who leaned against it like a queen who had just crowned herself.

“South,” she said simply, as if it were already decided. “The corridor doesn’t run through San Angelo. This is just a watering hole. If you want to know what your coffin means, if you want to keep ahead of the men who are already sniffing after it, you follow me to the line. Past Del Rio. Beyond.”

Topher nodded like a schoolboy promised summer break. Cutter said nothing, but the set of his jaw betrayed the storm brewing in his gut.

Shannon pushed off the Firebird and walked toward the van, voice drifting back. “You’ll want to ditch the van soon. Too much flame, too much flash. I know a man who’ll swap it for something quieter. He keeps an Airstream parked on his land just outside Del Rio. The kind you can live in if you’re careful. The kind that swallows sins without burping them back up.”

Parker shut her notebook with a snap. “An Airstream,” she repeated, interest flickering in her eyes.

Cutter turned toward the Dodge, the coffin thudding once as if it, too, wanted to weigh in. He didn’t look at Topher. He didn’t need to. The younger man’s silence, the glow still on his face, told Cutter the Firebird had already set their course.

And so it was decided, not by vote or reason but by lust and momentum. They would follow Shannon Hudspeth south, Firebird in the lead, van dragging its sins behind, toward Del Rio and the promise of an Airstream waiting in the dust.

Cutter exhaled once, heavy, then started the Dodge. “Devil’s got the wheel now,” he muttered.

The Firebird roared to life beside them, bright as a flame against the dying sun, and the caravan rolled out together, southbound toward whatever was waiting.

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