Eventually, they found themselves in the women’s room of a quaint diner off the side of the highway, Irene wetting a paper towel in the sink. Her hands still shook, faintly. She wondered briefly if they would ever still again.

Irene gestured for Wendy to lean closer. She cupped Wendy’s chin gently, tilting her face toward the grimy, flickering light as she wiped away the dried specks of blood. The unsteadiness of her hands was either not noticed or consciously not commented on—for which, she was thankful. An intrusive thought passed her mind—at least the blood isn't hers—and she had to clench her jaw at the idea.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Irene said again, focusing her gaze on the paper towel and not Wendy’s eyes. She tilted Wendy’s head again, wiping a spot on her neck.

The response was almost imperceptible. “Don’t make me go back alone.”

Irene breathed very slowly, cleaning off a smudge under Wendy’s chin. When she thought she might suffocate from the words lingering in her mind, she heedlessly let them out in a rush. “How far would you come away with me?”

Wendy didn’t hesitate. “To the edge of the earth, Joohyun.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

Irene’s hand stalled, her eyes finally making their way to meet Wendy’s.

“I’m serious,” repeated Wendy, barely more than a whisper.

Irene pulled her hands away, suddenly unable to maintain the eye contact. “We—we’ll have to plan this out,” she said, thoughts a million miles per hour and stagnant at once. “I’m going to ask for a map from the—up front. I—you—“

Their conversation had become very hushed at some point that Irene hadn’t noticed. “We can get food. I’ll grab a table,” Wendy interjected, hurt flashing very briefly across her features. When Irene didn’t move, Wendy nodded her head toward the door. “Go ahead. We’re going to be okay.”

Typical, selfless Seungwan, to be reassuring her like this when it should have been the other way around. So Irene just nodded wordlessly, and Wendy watched her go out the doors like every other time she watched Irene leave—with a humorless smile on her lips, and a thousand words unspoken.

Later, in a more familiar backdrop with the sun shining down on a series of parked cars, three people leaned against a dark car, tone of voice not matching the topic at all.

“You think those two girls shot him?” Yeri laughed. “They were the nicest girls we met all night. All smiles. Plus, they’re tiny, wouldn’t have stood a chance in a fight. The two of them stacked on top of one another wouldn’t reach Sooyoung’s shoulder. What even makes you think they were out here starting ?” She paused. “Plus, they gave a great tip.”

The officer shook his head, hands on his hips. “They’re the only ones that were seen with him last night. Seungwan’s husband said she left yesterday afternoon and never came home.”

“She has a husband?” Joy blinked. “Could’ve fooled me.”

The officer stared, not equipped to handle that comment as Yeri tapped her chin, exaggeratedly contemplative. “I do know two things for certain, sergeant. The first is that those girls aren’t guilty.”

He sighed, pulling off his sunglasses. “I need evidence, girls, not the flimsy word of my two favorite bartenders. What’s the second?”

“Well, the second is that I don’t know who did it, but it’s a damn shame I hadn’t gotten to him first,” Yeri laughed, leaning dangerously close the officer. “If you’d seen him as often as we do, you’d know what we meant. It could’ve been anyone—a past lover, the husband of a past lover, a total stranger looking for a fight—he’s not exactly a popular guy around here.”

“Come on, girls, got anything useful for me?”

Joy leaned in on his other side. “What kind of things are you thinking, sergeant?”

“Sooyoung--one day, you’ll be serious when you say  like that to me.”

She slapped the back of his head, knocking off his cap and beaming like a cat playing with its prey. “Oh, in your dreams, Henry. Get back to work. Send Captain Kang my best, would you?”

He waved with his fallen cap, sending them a wink before he slid his sunglasses back on. “Have a nice day, ladies. Give me a call if you find anything out, you know where to find me.”

“Trust me, Officer Lau! I'd be very surprised if they did it.” Joy called out as he walked away. “They’re just not the murdering type.”

Time somehow became unsubstantial after the first few inns and motels they checked into. Her foot on the pedal was starting to ache, and since the sun had gone down, Wendy was starting to suspect her arm closest to the window had gotten sunburnt. She couldn’t believe her brain still had the capacity to be annoyed by something like a sunburn.

“We’re going to need money soon,” Irene said, in the tone a person should use for doing the morning crossword, or inquiring about the weather. She was absentmindedly skimming the contents of her car’s glove compartment. “I don’t know what to do.”

The thought had crossed Wendy’s mind, too. She had run through a lot of potential scenarios, none of them reasonable. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, hoping it wasn’t a lie.

“How?” Irene murmured, holding an outdated map of the east coast, but not really looking at it. “Rob a bank? Shoot up a convenience store? What options do we even have, Seungwan?”

Wendy smiled faintly. “We’re not going to add ‘armed robbery’ to our list.” A shabby billboard for ‘The Best Inn in Town!’ whipped by, and Wendy briefly thought it might be the only inn in town. If it wasn't, she was concerned. “We can stop for tonight, get some ideas, and rest up.”

Irene nodded, folding up the map she hadn’t spared a glance at. She closed the compartment, leaning back in the seat. “How are you taking this so well?”

It wasn’t as if Wendy hadn’t gone through multiple stages of breakdown to get to this point, and she told Irene exactly that. “I figure, worrying isn’t going to do me any good,” she added, pretending she wasn’t always worried about something, anything that could go wrong at any given moment. “And—hey, fake it ‘till you make it, right?”

That got a laugh from Irene. “Right. Fake being a convict until you are one. We have a bright future ahead of us.”

“You’re not a convict until you’re found guilty,” she pointed out, tone not coming out quite as lighthearted as she had intended. So instead of letting the conversation veer into the sobering territory, she took the exit for this so-called Best Inn in Town.

It would have been quaint, maybe even cute, Irene thought, if the older and somewhat unpleasant man sitting in the lobby hadn’t been staring at her and Wendy since the moment they walked in.

As they waited at the desk to be checked into a room, Irene leaned toward Wendy’s ear, softly saying, “Don’t look, but that man has been staring at us this whole time.”

She wanted to slap her forehead as Wendy immediately turned, giving the man a polite smile and wave. Her arm was twisting Wendy back around, and she hissed, “What are you doing? ”

Wendy had the audacity to look offended, and Irene was having none of it. “I’m being polite! We don’t need to be making enemies everywhere we go, too! Don't we have enough on our plate?”

“What are you up to?” Irene asked, narrowing her eyes.

“What?” Wendy scoffed, folding her arms. “Nothing! Why—”

“Please,” Irene muttered, voice rising drastically to thank the girl at the desk as she was told about the complimentary breakfast and the checkout time. Then her register dropped again, customer-service-persona long gone. “Just don’t get us into any more trouble than we’re already in, okay?”

She bit her lip, giving half a grin. Irene wished it weren't so contagious, because she was trying to be stern, here, and this wasn't helping. “Well—no promises, but I just have an idea. I won’t do it if you don’t want me to do it, just say the word.”

Irene stopped, looking at Wendy’s face. She reached out, fixed a few locks of hair that had fallen in front of Wendy’s eyes, and sighed. “You haven’t told me this idea that you may or may not be doing,” she said, letting her hand drop. “Am I going to like it?”

Wendy shifted her weight, and, no, that means I’m absolutely not going to like it , she figured. “I think it’s going to help,” she said, instead of really answering the question. “I’ll let you know how it goes in the morning. Go ahead first, I’ll meet you in the room,” Wendy was saying, and Irene didn’t think she liked the sound of that.

But she trusted Wendy, so she was nodding and handing her the second room key, and then she was walking through the hallway alone to their room. With the amount of exhaustion lacing every fiber of her being, she wished she could have fallen asleep immediately.

It wasn’t until a few hours into the night, when Irene was on the verge of unconsciousness, that the bed dipped and a familiar warmth crawled in next to her—and Irene realized she had become accustomed to this. What a twisted turn of events, she remembered thinking, as Wendy made herself comfortable, to only be able to fall asleep next to her.

Whatever Irene had expected to hear over her complimentary orange juice and bagel in the morning, it wasn’t that.

“He really didn’t have a lot on him, unfortunately, but here—” Wendy was saying, pulling a tattered envelope from her purse.

Irene didn’t move to grab it, and instead, stared at it blankly. She lowered her voice, although no one else was in the room. “Christ, Seungwan. Did you kill someone for that?”

Wendy looked affronted. “Of course not!"

“Seungwan, what did you—whose—what—”

“The creepy man from downstairs!” she explained, holding the envelope towards her. Irene continued to gape at it. “From yesterday?”

"No, right, I know who you mean, it's just—" Truly, she was at a loss for words, and her mind was jumping to a thousand conclusions. Wendy looked so bright . If she didn’t kill him—“Oh my god. Did you sleep with him?”

“He needed a little persuasion,” Wendy was saying, and oh my god did Wendy just sleep with the creepy old man from downstairs, but then she added, “But I didn’t sleep with him!” A beat, and then, “Oh my god, I promise I didn’t. Who do you think I am?” When Irene still hadn’t fully formulated a response, Wendy sighed, tilting her head side to side in exaggerated contemplation before offering the vital piece of information, like a punchline to a joke. “And maybe I knocked him out with the bedside lamp. Maybe.”

Irene covered her face with her hands. “.”

“He’s also definitely in some sort of shady business deal, because he had a lot of cash on him. No normal person should carry this much. Thankfully, really, for us. But yeah, just so you know, that’s very possibly drug money. I don’t know if that was lucky or really, really unlucky, actually."

“Jesus Christ, Seungwan.”

“Look,” she said, putting down the envelope and pulling Irene’s hands from her face. She rubbed the backs of her hands with her thumbs, and Irene let out a long, exhausted breath. “We needed money, and now we have money. What's done is done, right? We should just get out of here before he...” Her eyes flicked toward the ceiling as she seemed to scour her internal dictionary. "Well, before he... tells someone."

Irene had nowhere else to look, so she looked from the small fridge, to Wendy, to her plate. “Christ. Okay. right. Sure.” She looked at Wendy again. “You’re sure you didn’t sleep with him?”

Wendy snorted, and there’s the smile Irene had wanted to see. “ No , god. Definitely not my type, anyway,” she added, cheeky, despite everything.

Irene rolled her eyes, trying to take all of this in stride, because what’s petty theft, next to murder? “What, shady criminal on the lam not strike your fancy?”

“A shady criminal on the lam could strike my fancy,” Wendy grinned, crinkling her nose, “but definitely not that one.” She was looking at Irene, and whatever she was going to say next, she chose not to, because the bell above the door chimed pleasantly, and Wendy suddenly swore under her breath. She grabbed Irene’s hand, using it to point at the small group walking in—a woman and two men she didn’t recognize, clad in casual, fashionable outfits.

“Cops,” Wendy hissed, turning her body away from the entry. “You know I love our fun banter, but we have to go, now.”

“How can you tell?” Irene’s eyes were wide, her half-eaten bagel forgotten. She was already moving to stand, and Wendy pulled her back down, frantic.

“, it’s Officer Kang.”

Irene was still reeling from their previous conversation, and she was about to implode from information overload. “You know her?”

Wendy looked back at Irene. “Not personally, no. The creepy old dude hadn’t bothered to turn off his TV last night, and she was certainly the officer talking about the case she’s the head of. Two women on the run, black retro car headed south, wanted for questioning. Sound familiar?”

“That could be anyone,” Irene tried, helplessly. There was an approximate zero level of conviction in her voice. “And it’s just for questioning—”

“They’re coming this way,” Wendy interrupted, pulling Irene out of the seat. “We have to go.”

They got up, throwing their paper plates in the trash as casually as possible while walking twice a normal walking speed. 

“Hey, excuse me,” the other woman started, picking up her pace in time with Wendy and Irene. Irene's heart was beating through her chest, and it was impossible to act casual. She could hear blood rushing in her ears as the adrenaline kicked in. They were not going to be caught today. “Hey!”

Irene looked at Wendy, and Wendy looked at Irene. Irene nodded, and they both broke into a sprint for the back door.

“Dammit, why do they always run?” came a male voice, and a rapid group of heavy, clunking footsteps pursued Irene and Wendy down the hall. They burst through the double doors, Wendy scrambling into the driver’s seat, and, when Irene had half a foot in the car, she sped it out of the lot and onto the highway.

Irene couldn’t help but look back at the inn, and watched one of the two men hold out his pistol at the car. He was shouting something as he pointed the barrel at the body of the car, then a tire, then the rear window. She watched as the woman—Kang—shake her head vigorously, and then as the man holstered his weapon. As if she could see into Irene’s soul, the woman continued to stare as the car, unharmed and unpursued, receded into the distance.

His hand still on his holster, Henry asked, “Why aren’t we chasing them?”

Seulgi chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t think they want to be caught.”

Henry and the other officer looked at the each other, a step behind Seulgi. “With all due respect, Captain—”

“Don’t be stupid, Henry,” she snapped, but not unkindly. Her dark fringe was beginning to reach past her brows, and she had to brush them out of her eyes. “I meant, something tells me those two won’t be caught alive, if they can help it. I don’t want to force it to get to that point.”

The other two were silent for a moment, before the third snorted. “Yeah, Henry, don’t be stupid.”

Henry scowled. “Shut up, Jaehyun.” To Seulgi, he said, “So what? They’re wanted for murder. They’re not what I’d call, you know, ‘upstanding citizens’ or anything.”

Slightly miffed, the other grumbled, “I’m Mark,” which fell upon two pairs of deaf ears.

“They’re just people, and I think there’s more going on here that we’re not seeing,” Seulgi explained. She put her sunglasses back on. “You said it yourself—they don’t strike me as the type.”

“This isn’t some ‘oh, I forgot to buy the eggs!’ mistake, Captain. They killed someone. You saw their car—they brought so much with them. This might have been premeditated. We know they're armed, and that makes them automatically dangerous.”

“I know, Sergeant, Deputy,” she sighed, nodding at Henry and Mark. She unlocked the police car they had come in, opening the front door. “But I want their trial to be fair, and no one wins if those two are dead.”