"Oh--ah, no, I'm--we're heading out. To Dallas. With my boyfriend." Eve said it without too much emphasis, which was good; Claire didn't think Ernie was a bad person or anything. And Eve was cute, even when she hadn't made an effort to dress herself up Goth-style. Ernie winced. "Should've seen that coming," he said. "Well, enjoy the new ride, Eve. And don't be a stranger."
"No stranger than I am already," she promised, straight-faced, and then they went out to admire the big black hearse again. Linda moved straight past them to her own truck. "Hey," Shane called. "How about breakfast? We were going to buy--"
"No need," she said, and climbed into the cab. Through the open window she said, "I'm going to go see the sheriff, see if I can find out what the heck's going on today. If I don't see you kids before you go, have a safe trip. And thanks for livening up my week. Hell, my whole month, come to that."
"No, thank you," Shane said. "Your motel is great." She gave him a tight, quiet smile. "Always thought so," she said. "Good-bye, now." She took off in a spray of gravel, raising plumes of dust as she skidded back onto the road. Ernie, who'd come out with them, sighed. "My grandma, the race car driver," he said. "Have a good trip, now." They said their thanks, got into the hearse, and headed back to the motel. They never got there. As they passed the town limits sign, and the road rose up a little in a mini-hill, Claire caught sight of flashing red and blue lights up ahead. "Uh oh," she said. Eve hit the brakes, and she and Shane exchanged a look. "That's the motel, right? They're at the motel."
"Looks that way," Shane said. "This is not good."
"Ya think?" Eve chewed her lip. "Call Michael."
"Maybe they're--"
"What, hanging out there looking for somebody else? Call him, Shane!" Shane dialed the number of Michael's cell phone, listened for a second, then closed his phone. "Busy," he said. "We need to get in there."
"And do what, exactly?"
"I don't know! You want your boyfriend dragged out to french fry in the sun?" Eve didn't answer that. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, looking agonized, and then said, "I'll apologize later, then." She hit the gas, and the hearse picked up momentum coming down the hill. It zipped past the motel, doing way past the speed limit. One of the police cars--there were two in the parking lot--backed out and raced after them. Eve didn't slow down. She hit the gas. "Eve, what the hell are you doing? We can't outrun them in a hearse, in the middle of the desert!"
"I'm not trying to," she shot back. "Claire, look out the back. Tell me if the other car joins in." It took a few seconds, but then Claire saw another flare of red and blue flashers behind them. "They're both following," she called back. "And how is this good, exactly?"
"Text Michael," Eve told Shane. "Tell him the coast is clear and to get his butt out of there."
"What about Oliver?"
"Michael's too much of a Boy Scout not to tell him, too. Don't worry about that." Shane texted fast. "It's still kind of sunny out, you know."
"Oliver's older," Claire said. "He can stay out in the sun a lot longer than Michael. Maybe he can lead the police away, or something."
"That's up to them," Eve said. "I just need to keep driving as long as I can before we give up. The more we piss these guys off, the more chance Michael and Oliver have of getting away." It turned out, as the police cars cranked it up, that Eve's hearse really wasn't made for car- chase speeds. They were overtaken in about another mile, and boxed up in another two. Eve, surrendering, eased off the gas and hit the brakes to slow down and pull over. "Okay, here's the deal," Shane said. "Keep your hands up, and play nice. You panicked, that's all. We were telling you to pull over, but you locked up. Got it?"
"It's not going to help."
"It will if you play the ditz. Better sell it, Eve. We're in enough trouble already." The rest of it went straight out of the reality-TV-show playbook. The police ordered them out of the car, and before she knew it, Claire was being thrown up against the back of the hearse and searched. It felt humiliating, and she heard Eve crying-whether that was acting or not remained to be seen; Eve cried over smaller things. Shane was answering questions in a quiet, calm voice, but then, he'd spent a lot of time getting hassled by the Morganville police. For Claire, it was kind of a new experience, and not at all a good one. She had the deputy, she supposed; he was a tall, skinny guy whose uniform didn't fit very well, and he seemed nervous, especially when he put handcuffs on her. "Hey," Shane called as his own hands were secured behind his back. "Hey, please don't hurt her. It wasn't her fault!"
"Nobody's hurting anybody," said the sheriff from the night before. "Okay, let's just calm down. Now, let's have some names. You?" He pointed at Claire. "Claire Danvers," she said. Oh man, there went any chance at all of ever getting into MIT. She was going to have a mug shot that got pasted all over Facebook. People were going to mock her. It would be high school all over again, times a million. "Address?" She gave him the address in Morganville, on Lot Street. She didn't know what the others would have done; maybe she ought to have lied, made something up. But she didn't dare. Like Shane had said--they were in enough trouble already. Eve gave her name in a trembling, small voice, and then Shane finished things up. They both gave the Glass House address. "So, you're all, what, sharing a house?" the sheriff asked. "Where's the blond kid from last night?"