Intense winds dragged a thick fog across the mountain roads, smothering the world until it felt unreal again. I drove on through the murk, like I was crossing into the fae realms of my old fantasy novels, the ones my father used to sneer at as childish nonsense.

  When the needle dipped to a quarter tank, the question finally caught up with me. Did I stop for gas and leave a trail a bored cop could follow? Or did I ditch the car and let it sit like a confession in the wilderness?

  I tried to think it through. Were the authorities even looking for me yet? How much weight would my father’s death carry? He was a miserable excuse for a human being. A cruel soul who brought tears and pain wherever he went. A man who scorched every bridge he crossed and then wondered why no one followed him. Surely someone else had seen what he was.

  But he had served in the Air Force during the Cold War, helping build weapons meant to end the world. Later, back home, he joined the Volunteer Fire Department.

  In my book, there is nothing braver than a firefighter, especially one who does not collect a paycheck. The men and women on that department did things no sane person should ever be asked to do, and the man who sired me surpassed them all. Because of that, my father was a hero to most people. Few knew him the way I did.

  Few knew what I knew. Few had heard him talk about growing up in New York, listening wide-eyed to stories of firefighters charging into burning buildings. Few heard his bitterness about fighting wildfires in the Rockies, how it never felt real enough to him. Only my mother and I were there the night he noticed a candle burning too close to a curtain in a local restaurant. He said nothing. Just watched it sway. He confessed to us that he hoped it would catch, and he would finally get his structure fire. His chance to be the kind of hero he worshipped.

  The instinct that makes some men heroes twists others into demons. Thrill-seekers chase the rush wherever they can find it. Some join the military for sanctioned bloodshed. That was my father’s truth. He did not serve out of kindness. He served for adrenaline, for praise, and for the women who fawned over him afterward. More trophies to parade past my mother.

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  No one knew him like I did, and that was why I was sure the police would come for me. I could already see the headline. “Local Hero Murdered by Mentally Ill Son.”

  It helped that I looked the part. I wore black almost exclusively. People called me a goth, but the truth was simpler. I was color-blind, and black always matched. I liked trench coats, too. When The Matrix came out, I bought one like Neo’s. Not to make a statement. I just thought it looked cool.

  Even so, my father’s cop friend, Officer Swan, once said I looked like the Archangel of Death. In my town, that was enough. I was the picture of evil. The troubled kid in dark clothes. A convenient villain, so no one had to admit their hero had been a violent man with a rotten soul.

  The empty light flicked on. That settled it. I had minutes, not miles.

  I could bleed the tank dry and vanish into the back roads, or I could refuel and risk being found. I chose the risk.

  I pulled into a gas station in a mountain town and filled the tank. Inside, I withdrew three hundred dollars from the ATM, the maximum it would give me. Cash felt safer.

  I grabbed a protein drink and a bar. Enough to keep me moving. I did not know where I was going, only that I was not done yet.

  Twelve miles later, I pulled over to stretch my legs. The air was cold and clean, and the road had been empty for miles. I told myself I was safe, at least for the moment.

  That was when I heard it. A cry of pain, followed by a desperate call for help.

  I looked out across the field and saw a teenage boy pinned beneath a horse lying on its side.

  Without thinking, I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans and ran. The animal thrashed, its leg bent wrong and bleeding. I knew how this ended. I drew the gun and shot the mare in the head, clean and quick. Then I dug deep, summoning every hour I had spent lifting weights in my father’s basement. Sweat burned my eyes. Pain rolled through my arms. With the boy’s help, I heaved the dead weight aside and freed his legs.

  He stood shakily and laughed, breathless. “Thanks, mister. I thought I was done.”

  “You live close?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, pointing toward a distant house. “Right over there.”

  Against my better judgment, I stepped beside him and let him lean on my shoulder. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”