Arthur would learn that lesson by eight o’clock.

I snapped the brass locks on my suitcase.

The sound was sharp and loud in the empty room.

I pulled on my black trench coat and walked down the back stairs.

The kitchen was dark and smelled of stale coffee.

I placed my brass ring of keys on the granite counter.

The metal hit the stone with a dull clink.

I slipped out the heavy side door into the wet night.

The rain hit my face, freezing and sudden.

My car sat in the gravel driveway, a modest grey sedan Arthur’s men never paid attention to.

I threw my suitcase into the passenger seat and started the engine.

The headlights cut through the heavy downpour, illuminating the pine trees lining the estate.

I drove down the winding driveway, past the security gate.

The guard on duty recognized my car and raised the barrier without looking up from his phone.

He assumed I was running another late-night errand to pay off a local precinct.

The city skyline loomed in the distance, a gray mass of concrete and blurred neon.

I drove toward the interstate that led to the coast.

For five years, my phone had buzzed every twenty minutes with Arthur’s demands.

Now, the device sat completely dark on the passenger seat.

The silence in the car was absolute, broken only by the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers.

I reached the state line just as the sky turned a bruised, dark purple.

I pulled into a small, empty rest stop to buy a cup of black coffee from a vending machine.

The paper cup was hot against my palms.

As I stepped back into the car, the screen of my personal phone illuminated.

It was not Arthur.

It was a number I had kept blocked for three years.

The text message appeared on the screen, bright and green.