Page 2 of Dotted Lines (Runaway 5)

The on-ramp for the interstate approached and I took it, my heart galloping as I pressed the accelerator.

Today was the day. Today I was returning this Cadillac to one of those runaway teens. Today, after more than a decade away, I was going to see Karson.

My stomach twisted. If not for my firm grip on the wheel, my hands woul

d shake. Twelve, almost thirteen years ago, I’d left California. I’d left the junkyard that six of us had called home for a time.

My twin sister—Aria—and me.

Londyn, Gemma and Katherine.

And Karson.

He’d been our protector. The one to make us laugh. The shoulder to cry on. He’d made a bad situation bearable. An adventure. We’d survived the junkyard because of Karson.

And the Cadillac was his, a gift from Londyn. I was simply the delivery girl.

In another lifetime, Londyn and Karson had made this Cadillac their home, back in the days when it didn’t have glossy, cherry-red paint or a working engine. But Londyn had hauled the Cadillac out of the junkyard and had it completely restored. She’d kept it herself for a time, then set out to give it to Karson.

Her trip from Boston to California had only made it to West Virginia. From there, Gemma had taken the Cadillac to Montana. Katherine had been the third behind the wheel, driving it to Aria in Oregon. Then my sister had brought it to me in Arizona.

Ready or not, it was time to finish what Londyn had started. I’d put off this trip long enough. But it was time to make the handoff, to take the last leg of the journey.

The final trip.

It wasn’t the hours on the highway or the destination that had kept my heart racing since we’d left home yesterday. It was the man waiting, unsuspecting, at the end of the road.

Had Karson found whatever it was he’d been searching for? Had he built a good life? Was he happy? Did he remember our moments together in vivid clarity like I did? Did he replay them during the long nights when sleep was lost?

Will he recognize me?

“Mom?”

I shook off the anxiety. “Yeah?”

“How much longer till we get there? Exactly?”

“About four and a half hours.”

He groaned and flopped his back. “That’s gonna take forever.”

“You could take a nap. That will make the trip go by faster.”

August sat up straight and sent me a look of pure poison through the mirror. “It’s morning.”

I pulled in my lips to hide my smile. “How about some music?”

“Can I play a game on your phone?”

“Sure.” I rifled through my purse in the passenger seat, finding my phone. Then I handed it back to him.

August unlocked the screen with the code, though his face worked at times too.

I’d be forever grateful to Devan, August’s father, for helping me create this magnificent boy. But I was also forever grateful that August looked exactly like me. He had my blond hair, though his had been lightened by the Arizona summer sun, whereas I got mine highlighted at the salon. We shared the same nose and the same brown eyes. August’s second toe was longer than his big toe, something he’d also inherited from me.

He was mine.

Mine alone. The lawyer I’d hired when August was a newborn had assured me that once Devan had signed his rights away, Gus was mine.