Song of the Fireflies by J. A. Redmerski Page B

appeared dull and faded. The comfort I always felt when I’d walk through my front door after work was replaced with something ominous. Nothing was the same and it never would be again.
    Bray and I knew that skipping town would would look suspicious, and put us on the police’s radar. But we also knew that it didn’t matter much at this point, because what we had already done was enough to make us the number one suspects. The motives that Bray pointed out. Mitchell having it in for me and knowing everything about those motives. Us leaving the camp before the first night was over. It didn’t matter what we did from that moment on. We just knew that we had to get away. We hoped that maybe Jana’s body wouldn’t be discovered. It was our only way out.
    Of course, the bodies are almost always found, sooner or later. And since we didn’t try to hide it and left it out in the open, I knew too that “sooner” would trump “later.”

Chapter Ten
Elias
    We drove southeast toward the ocean and wound up in Savannah. Things quieted down while we were on the road. We sat mostly in silence for the four-hour drive, but every now and then one of us would bring up the what-ifs and the maybes, which always rendered us silent again, left us to think heavily about this ever-expanding web of disorder we were creating for ourselves. One question would produce three more, but never any answers. By the time we found a small shithole of a motel to stay in, we had exhausted the topic. For a short while, anyway.
    I chose this motel, likely the first choice of hookers and drug dealers, because it was one of the few that accepted cash and didn’t care if I’d “lost” my driver’s license.
    The only thing that worried me as I stood at the front desk waiting to get my room key was that I was already in fugitive mode. It was like something was triggered in my brain that told me that we had to be careful in everything we did. Use fake names. Pay only with cash. Don’t call home. Don’t answer the phone when home calls us. And we hadn’t even officially been targeted as suspects yet. Hell, we didn’t know if Jana’s body had even been found.
    “I’m starving,” Bray said, sitting down on the end of the bed.
    “I’ll get us something,” I said. “There’s a few fast-food restaurants farther down the road.”
    She reached out to me, and I took her hand and crouched on the floor in front of her. She brushed her fingers across my unshaven face. I kissed them.
    “I love you,” she said with a weak smile. She was exhausted. Physically and mentally. We both were.
    I raised up on my toes enough to reach her lips. “I love you, too,” I said after I pulled my lips away from hers. Then I stood up and grabbed my keys from the nightstand. “I’ll be back soon,” I said and left her in the room.
    Instead of stopping at a restaurant I drove right past them all and went straight to my father’s house about ten minutes away.
    He welcomed me at the door with open arms. “Elias! It’s good to see you, son. Come on in.”
    If there was any person in the world whom I could trust and count on even more than Bray, it was my father. Unlike my mom, who was always the voice of reason, the do-gooder, my dad was the one who wasn’t beyond doing the wrong thing if, in his heart, it happened to be right. His was another kind of voice. Like father, like son. In more ways than one. I favored my father. I inherited his dark hair and blue eyes.
    “You didn’t mention you were coming to Savannah las’ time we talked,” he said.
    He brought two bottles of beer from the kitchen and handed me one as I sat on his old beige sofa.
    “It was an unexpected trip,” I said.
    “Well, I’m always glad to have ya here,” he said with a proud smile. He pushed his glasses up to the top of his nose.
    We took a sip of beer at the same time and silence ensued.
    “Dad, I’m in trouble.” I got right to the point. Not only was I not afraid to tell him, but I