21
We get out of Malacaster and onto the two-lane highway through endless fields of head-high juvenile corn stalks, all rippling in the irregular August breeze. The SUV’s finally getting comfortable, and with distance the stink of the sugar plant is finally starting to recede. We settle in behind a monstrously oversized beet sugar syrup tanker.
Deke pulls onto the five lanes of I-75 and heads south. We drive the speed limit, like any self-respecting criminal couple. Normally I’d take perverse glee in all the upstanding citizens ignoring the law and rocketing past us, but right now I want to tell Deke to floor it.
This is not the time to get stopped.
When I think I can hold a professional conversation, I raise my phone and punch in a memorized number. The phone rings twice, then an elec
