Chapter 16 The sun felt warm against Sean’s shoulders, gleaming through the rear window as if it were urging him forward like the flame behind a rocket. When it set behind a flat horizon— unlike in his hometown, a sight he wasn’t used to—it was the rising moon that drew him forward. Hours passed and the oncoming headlights grew more and more infrequent.
He made it past some moonlit fields on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa, before he found himself nodding off at the wheel. The lack of sleep he’d been managing through over the past 48 hours had finally caught up with him. He spotted a small business district along an upcoming exit. There wasn’t much there other than a couple of 24-hour gas stations, a closed restaurant, and a short strip mall. The mall, however, had a decent-sized, dimly
