Red Stain

Rain hammered the roof of the stolen car. Wipers fought a losing battle against the downpour. Pat kept one eye on the road, the other on the duffel bag in the backseat.

"We're almost there," he said, voice low.

Erin didn’t answer. She stared out the passenger window, her arms folded tight. Her damp hair clung to her cheeks. She hadn't spoken since they left the bank.

Pat glanced at her. "You okay?"

She nodded, then shook her head. "No. I'm not."

They drove on in silence. The back roads twisted through the forest like veins, dark and pulsing. Pat followed them with instinct more than sight. He knew these woods. He'd grown up three towns over, ditching class to drink in these trees.

The hideout was an old hunting cabin miles off the grid. He killed the headlights as they turned onto the dirt path. The tires slid in the mud, but he kept control.

"We're here," he said.

Erin stepped out before the engine stopped. She walked fast, shoulders hunched, not looking back. Pat grabbed the duffel and followed.

Inside, the cabin was musty but dry. A fireplace sat cold under a mounted deer head. Dust coated the floor like snow.

Pat dumped the bag on the table. It landed with a dull, heavy thump. He unzipped it. Bundles of cash. Rubber bands. Stained with red where the dye pack had exploded.

"Shit," he muttered.

Erin leaned in the doorway. "We should've left it."

"We needed it."

"We needed clean money. Not this."

Pat ran a hand through his wet hair. "We’ll figure it out."

Erin turned and walked to the bedroom. Pat didn’t stop her. He stared at the ruined cash. Half of it was ruined. He started picking through it anyway.

They'd planned for months. No screw-ups. No guns. Just a simple smash-and-grab. Get in, get out, disappear.

Then it all went sideways.

The teller tripped the alarm early. A guard appeared. Not part of the plan. Erin froze. Pat panicked. He grabbed the duffel and ran, dragging her behind him. The guard shouted. A gun came out. Pat didn't remember pulling the trigger. Only the sound. Like a door slamming shut.

They made it out. But something stayed with them. Something that wouldn't fit in the bag.

That night, Erin sat by the fire while Pat burned the stained bills. They watched ash drift like snow through the chimney.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked.

Pat didn’t answer right away.

She turned to him. "Why the guard? He wasn't going to shoot."

He met her eyes. "I didn’t have a choice."

Erin laughed, bitter. "Bullshit."

"He saw my face."

"So what? We wear masks for a reason."

Pat looked back at the fire. "You froze. I thought he was going to shoot you."

Erin stared at him. Her voice softened. "You did it for me?"

Pat nodded.

She looked away. "I didn't want this."

"Neither did I."

The fire popped.

They waited three days. Long enough for the manhunt to cool. Then they hiked five miles through wet woods to a parked car under a tarp.

They drove at night. Avoided cameras. No phones. Just radio silence and tension.

In a motel outside Boise, Erin stood by the window, watching headlights pass.

"I want out," she said.

Pat sat on the bed. "Out of what?"

"This. Us. The running."

Pat leaned forward. "You said we were in this together."

"I changed my mind."

"You can’t just change your mind after what we did."

She turned. "I didn’t do it. You did."

He stood. "You were there. You helped."

"Not like you. I didn’t pull the trigger."

Pat stepped back like she slapped him. He sat down hard.

She stayed by the window. "We were supposed to start over. Not bury ourselves deeper."

Pat rubbed his face. "You think I wanted this? You think I planned to kill somebody?"

Erin didn’t answer.

That night, she was gone. No note. Just silence. She took the clean money. Left the rest. Pat drove for two more days. He found a town small enough to disappear into. Changed his name. Took work fixing roofs, digging holes. Whatever paid cash. He never heard from Erin again. He didn’t expect to.

Sometimes, he dreamed of the bank. Of the guard's eyes as he fell. Of Erin's face when she said, I didn’t want this. But more than anything, he remembered what he said —

“I didn’t have a choice.” And how, every time he repeated it to himself, it sounded less and less like the truth.

Six months later, Pat sat in the back of a diner in Idaho Falls, nursing bad coffee.

The waitress was young and polite and had the same kind of cautious eyes Erin used to have. A man in a raincoat came in and sat two booths over. Didn't order anything. Didn't take off his sunglasses.

Pat knew the type. He stood, dropped a twenty on the table, and walked out the back. He was done running. But that didn't mean they were done chasing. He drove west, into Oregon, into a new name and a smaller town. He got a job at a scrapyard.

The owner paid in cash, didn’t ask questions. One night, after a twelve-hour shift, he came home to find a note on his door — He didn’t die. But he remembers your face. No signature. He sat down in the dark, back against the wall, and stared at the note. He read it over and over until the words bled into the paper. Then he set it on fire. Another lie, maybe. Or a truth he had to carry. The next day, he shaved his beard, dyed his hair, and packed again.

Before he left, he stood in front of the cracked mirror and told himself one last time — “I didn’t have a choice.” But this time, he didn’t believe it at all.

Two weeks later, Pat walked into a gas station in a town so small it didn’t show up on half the maps. He needed a coffee, a sandwich, and ten minutes to clear his head. Instead, he found Erin. She stood at the register, ringing up a customer. Her hair was shorter now. Lighter. But the shape of her was unmistakable. She saw him before he spoke. Her eyes went wide. Her hand froze over the keys. Pat dropped the sandwich and walked out. Fast.

"Pat!" she called.

He didn’t stop until he was outside, leaning on the hood of his truck, breath sharp in his throat. Erin followed a minute later.

"I thought you were dead," she said.

"Thought the same about you."

They stood in silence. She crossed her arms. "You should leave."

"I will. Just... needed to see if you were real."

"I'm real. And I'm clean."

Pat nodded. "Good."

Erin glanced around. "They're still looking. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. Got a note. Said the guard lived."

She winced. "I heard."

"You still running?"

"No," she said. "I stopped."

Pat nodded again. "Maybe it's time I did, too."

She shook her head. "You don’t get to stop. Not after what you did."

Pat looked away. "I didn’t have a choice."

Erin stepped closer, her voice low. "That line doesn't work anymore. You had a choice. You just didn’t like the other one."

He didn’t argue. Couldn’t.

Erin handed him a folded piece of paper. "This is a number. Use it only if you really want to stop running. But once you call, there’s no going back."

He took it, slid it into his pocket.

"Goodbye, Pat," she said.

"Take care, Erin." He watched her go back inside, then got in his truck and drove.

He didn’t look at the paper until two towns later. It was a lawyer’s number. A name he didn’t recognize. He stared at it a long time. Outside, stormclouds cracked open above the desert, spilling light on the road ahead.

He picked up the phone.