Jon Renard drifted through a fog of near sleep, fighting the creeping sleepiness and trying to find anything to distract him from the hypnotic passing of yellow traffic lines cycling through his vision on the road outside.   He cruised along through the cold stillness of the desert night, his headlights and the slivered moon the only light in the lifeless no man’s land through which he traveled.  Above him the milky way stretched from darkly silhouetted mountains to either side, a dim ribbon of color in the otherwise bleak darkness.

He tried to ignore the near-empty gas gauge, or the engine maintenance light that had been on for the last two hours.  He had no time for car repairs, even if a mechanic existed out here in the black.  He was running, burning out his engine at a hundred and twenty miles an hour to get as much distance between himself and the city he’d barely escaped with his skin intact.  He had no clue how many chased him, or if they still did, only that he had to run, far and fast, to somewhere he could start fresh.

The snow white mustang growled at the strain of maintaining the speed, but he ignored its complaints.  He had to move, to find gas so he could keep moving.  There was a storm coming behind him, the darkness of the clouds swallowed the stars in his rear view mirror, but it was the metaphorical storm following him that he wanted to avoid.  He had wronged many people in the city he’d fled so quickly just hours earlier, and none of them were the kind of people it was wise to wrong.  He had left enough jilted lovers, disgruntled cuckolds, and angry marks in his wake that the only way for him was forward, through the black of the desert night.

Lightning flashed in the sky behind him, illuminating the underbelly of the storm clouds that loomed ever closer.  His head dipped, and the rhythmic patter of his tires on the gravelly edge of the road jerked him awake, forcing him to pull the wheel and overcompensate all the way into the other lane before he stabilized the vehicle.  Tentative had been the second time he’d almost fallen asleep on this drive, but he couldn’t stop yet.

He regretted very little about leaving the city in his wake.  He never had much love for the place, and he rarely stayed in one place for long anyway, but he had left something behind that he never thought he’d miss as much as he did.  He had never let anyone get under his skin that way, never allowed himself to care, but he had cared this time.

He could remember how they met, could remember the way her straw colored hair smelled of roses, of how her pale eyes seemed to sparkle every time she smiled.  It crushed his soul to leave his starry eyed princess behind as he fled, to let her fend for herself when he had promised, not an empty promise he’d given a thousand times before, but truly promised to look after her, to keep her safe.  How quickly he’d abandoned her though.  How readily he’d forsaken his promise.  He had been called many things before; thief, liar, rake, and cheat, brigand and bastard, but he’d never truly seen himself as a scoundrel until he’d walked away from her the night before.

It was as much his own guilt as the men who chased him that he fled from now, and as weary as he was, he had to press on, lest that guilt overtake him.  The storm behind him was growing, black clouds swallowing the Milky Way as silvery flashes illuminated them, and thunderous crashes echoed across the barren landscape.  He watched through the rear view mirror as the black mass approached inexorably closer, and felt chills run down his spine.  The rain would be on him soon, and he’d be stuck in it without gas or shelter if he didn’t find a place to stop soon.

He returned his eyes to the road and jerked the wheel sharply, narrowly avoiding a pale haired girl, dressed in a soiled white dress, who stood blindfolded in the middle of the road a hundred yards away.

The mustang slid out of control as he hit the gravel on the roadside, and his vision went black as the car flipped over and landed in a ditch.