Chapter 8: Lullabies and Leather Seats
The desert unspooled before them, a vast, dark tapestry under a ceiling of cold, hard stars. The Charger’s headlights carved a solitary tunnel through the emptiness, the only sound the constant, low growl of the engine and the whine of tires on asphalt. Dominic had been driving for hours, locked in a silence that was now a part of the car, as integral as the steering wheel. Catalina slept beside him, her face turned toward the window, her breathing deep and even.
In the back, Mina slept the heavy, twitchy sleep of a toddler who’d been uprooted.
Then, a sound cut through the monotony—a low, grizzling whimper that quickly escalated into a choked, disoriented cry. Mina was awake, and she was lost in the dark backseat of a speeding car.
“Shh, mija, it’s okay,” Catalina mumbled, stirring instantly, her voice thick with sleep.
But it wasn’t okay. The confused cries sharpened into full-blown, terrified wails. “Mama! Lights out! Dark!”
Dominic’s hands tightened on the wheel. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. In the green glow, he could see her small form straining against the car seat straps, her face crumpled and slick with tears.
“Pull over, Dom,” Catalina said, already unbuckling.
“There’s nothing out here.”
“Just pull over.”
He guided the car onto the gravel shoulder, the tires crunching loudly, kicking up a cloud of fine dust that shimmered in the taillights. The sudden silence after he killed the engine was profound, broken only by Mina’s ragged, hysterical sobs. The desert cold seeped into the car immediately, a sharp contrast to the warmth they’d built up.
Catalina was out of her door in an instant, yanking open the back door. “Hey, baby, Mama’s here.”
But Mina was past reasoning. The unfamiliar shadows, the strange, stale air, the sudden stop after endless motion—it was all too much. She flailed, screaming, pushing Catalina’s comforting hands away. “No! Go! Go car!”
Dominic got out. The night air was knife-sharp, smelling of sage and dry earth. He walked around the car, his boots loud on the gravel. He looked immense and out of place under the enormous, star-strewn sky.
“Let me,” he said, his voice low.
Catalina hesitated, then stepped back, her own frustration and fear evident in the tight line of her mouth.
Dominic leaned into the car, filling the space. He didn’t speak. With practiced, careful movements, his large fingers surprisingly deft, he unbuckled the five-point harness. The moment the last clip released, Mina lunged forward, not toward Catalina, but into his chest. Her small body collided with his, her arms locking around his neck, her face burrowing into the hollow of his throat. Her wails softened into shuddering, hitched sobs.
He lifted her out, standing to his full height, cradling her against him. He began to sway, a slow, rock-solid rhythm. Then he started to sing.
It was a whisper, rough and off-key, a thread of sound barely louder than the wind. A lullaby in Spanish, one their mother had sung a lifetime ago in a different world. His voice broke on the high notes, not from emotion, but from sheer, awkward disuse.
“Duérmete, mi niña, duérmete ya…”
Catalina watched from a few feet away, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold. She’d never heard him sing. Not like this. The sight of him—this hardened man who talked with his fists and ruled a crew with a look—rocking their daughter and whispering a childhood melody under a desert moon, it stole the air from her lungs.
Mina’s fists, clenched in the fabric of his shirt, slowly relaxed. Her breathing, still ragged, began to sync with the rise and fall of his chest. Her crying subsided into quiet whimpers.
“The moon is watching you,” he murmured, shifting to English, his lips against her hair. “She says you gotta close your eyes, or she’ll get shy and hide.”
“Moon hiding?” Mina sniffled, her voice muffled against him.
“Uh-huh. So you gotta sleep. For the moon.”
She pulled her head back, her wet eyelashes clumped together. She looked up at the vast sky, then at his face, so close to hers. “You sad, Papi?”
The question, innocent and direct, hit him like a physical blow. He didn’t answer. He just pressed her head back gently to his shoulder and resumed the slow, swaying dance.
“I want Bunny,” Mina whispered.
Catalina moved then, leaning into the car to retrieve the stuffed rabbit from the footwell. She handed it to Dominic. He tucked it under his arm, against Mina’s side. She clutched it instantly.
“Aunt Mia mad?” Mina asked into the quiet.
Dominic’s swaying stopped for a single heartbeat. Then it continued. “Yeah, rally monkey. Aunt Mia’s real mad.”
“We go back tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow.”
Catalina turned away, staring out at the fathomless black desert. The weight of it all pressed down—the lie they were living, the home they’d lost, the simple, heartbreaking truth in a child’s question.
After a few more minutes, Mina’s body grew heavy, a trusting, warm weight in his arms. Her breathing deepened. She was asleep.
Dominic stood there, holding her, for a long time after she’d gone still. He looked at Catalina, her silhouette framed by the stars. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the way she hugged herself. He saw the weariness that went deeper than a long drive.
Slowly, careful not to jostle Mina, he walked back to the open car door. With painstaking slowness, he bent and settled her back into the car seat. She stirred, her fingers gripping his thumb. “Papi…”
“I’m here,” he whispered, extricating his hand and fastening the harness with silent precision. He tucked the rabbit beside her cheek.
He closed the door softly. He and Catalina stood on opposite sides of the car, the Charger a dark, hulking island between them. The engine ticked as it cooled.
“We can’t keep doing this to her,” Catalina said finally, her voice thin in the wide night.
“Doing what?”
“This.” She gestured at the nothingness around them. “Dragging her through the dark. She needs a bed. A home.”
“She has a home,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s us.”
“That’s not enough!” The words burst from her, sharper than she intended. She took a breath, lowering her voice. “She asked for Mia. She wants to go back. What are we going to tell her when ‘not tomorrow’ turns into never?”
Dominic walked around the front of the car. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the stark planes of his face in the starlight. He smelled of cold air and baby shampoo.
He smelled of cold air and baby shampoo. “We tell her the same thing we’ve always told her. That her dad’s gone. The story’s already written, Cat. We just have to live in it now.” He turned away from the disappointment he saw in her eyes, the disappointment he felt in himself, and moved to the driver’s side. The ignition growled the car back to life.
He merged onto the highway again. Miles passed in silence, the desert moon painting the Joshua trees with silver. Catalina stared out her window. She saw ghosts in the reflection: Mia’s horrified face, Mina’s confused tears. She wrapped her arms tighter around her ribs, feeling the phantom weight of Dominic’s thumb on her cheek from the rest stop.
Suddenly, a faint, muffled chirping cut through the low hum. It wasn’t the Charger’s sound system. It was tinny, digital.
Catalina went rigid. “What is that?”
Dominic’s eyes shot to the mirrors, his foot easing off the accelerator. “You tell me. Check the glovebox.”
She flipped the latch. Inside, among registration papers and a tire pressure gauge, was a slim, black prepaid phone. It vibrated against the plastic, its small screen illuminating the compartment with an eerie blue glow. The name scrolling across the display was a single word: LETTY.
Catalina snatched it like it was a live wire. She hadn’t spoken to Leticia Ortiz in over a year, not since Letty had shown up at their doorstep with a duffel bag and a knowing, non-judgmental look after Mina was born. She’d stayed a week, helping, never asking the prying questions the others did. She was the only one, besides them, who ever knew. Then she’d vanished back into her own nomadic life.
The phone buzzed again, insistent. Dominic gave a curt nod, his gaze flicking between the road and her face.
“Yeah?” Catalina answered, her voice thin.
“Jesus, girl, took you long enough.” Letty’s voice was a burst of static and life, edged with a familiar, gritty warmth. The sound of it, so normal, was a shock to the system. “I got a call from a very pissed-off Mia. It was… illuminating.”
“Letty, we can’t—”
“Talk.I know. Your brother there?”
Dominic reached over and took the phone. He put it on speaker, resting it on the console between them. “I’m here.”
“Toretto. You really know how to blow a life sky-high, don’t you? Mia’s spitting nails. She said some things.” Letty’s tone shifted, the casual edge dropping away. “She mentioned Mina.”
The name hung in the car, charged and dangerous.
“What about her?” Dominic’s voice was flat, controlled.
“Mia thinks Cat’s protecting some deadbeat by running. She’s trying to find him, for Mina’s sake.” A pause, filled only by the hiss of bad connection. “I told her she was chasing a ghost. But Dom… she called Brian.”
Catalina’s stomach dropped. “Is he—”
“He’s confused.Worried. He believes in family, you know that. But he’s a cop, Dominic. Even a parking enforcement cop’s got channels.” Letty’s sigh crackled through the speaker. “The point is, they’re looking. Mia’s got a description of the Charger and a direction. They’re not cops yet, but they’re motivated.”
“You calling to tell us to turn ourselves in?” Dominic asked, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“I’m calling to tell you the fire’s spreading behind you. And to ask… where do you think you’re going?”
Dominic and Catalina exchanged a look. Rhode Island. A safehouse from a guy he’d hauled engines for a decade ago. It suddenly felt flimsy, a child’s drawing of a fort.
“East,” Dominic said, noncommittal.
“East is big.” Another pause, longer this time. “You remember Tej in Barstow? He runs a legit garage now. Mostly. Has a couple apartments out back for his… ‘mechanics’. He owes me.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “Barstow’s a pit stop.”
“It’s a pit stop with walls, a roof, and a guy who knows how to keep his mouth shut for five hundred cash and a case of oil.” Letty’s voice turned blunt. “The kid doesn’t need another night in that car, Dom. She needs a real bed. You need to stop moving for a second and think.”
The truth of it was undeniable. Mina’s exhausted cries still echoed in the cabin.
“What’s the address?” Dominic asked.
Letty rattled it off. “I’ll text it to this burner. You ditch that phone after, you hear me? Use it for nothing else. I’ll find another way to reach you when I know more.”
“Letty… why?” Catalina asked, the word loaded with twenty-eight years of complicated friendship and one immense, unforgivable secret.
A low chuckle came through the line, tired but real. “Because family’s more than blood, hermana. And that little girl in the backseat? She’s the most innocent part of all this mess. You keep her safe, you hear me? Whatever it takes.”
The line went dead. The sudden silence was a vacuum. Dominic picked up the burner phone. A moment later, it chimed with a text. He read the address, memorized it, then powered the phone down completely. He didn’t throw it out the window. Not yet. He’d drown it in gas later, grind the SIM card to dust.
“Barstow,” he said, his voice a rough scrap of sound.
He didn’t ask her opinion. He just signaled and took the next off-ramp pointed west, back toward the sprawling, anonymous inland empire. It wasn't running forward anymore. It was ducking into a side alley to catch their breath. The Charger’s headlights swung across a new stretch of barren landscape as Dominic pushed the accelerator, the car humming with a renewed, desperate purpose. They had a destination now, however temporary. A place to hide, and for the first time, the very real understanding that the people they loved were now the hunt.
The Charger devoured the dark road back toward Barstow, its engine a steady promise of distance. The desert gave way to scattered outposts of civilization: a lonely gas station, a shuttered diner, then the faint halo of town lights staining the low clouds. Dominic navigated with a grim focus, the GPS on the burner phone silent, its destination already etched in his mind.
Catalina watched the signs blur past. “Tej,” she said, the name feeling foreign. “We haven’t seen him in years.”
“He was straight-edge,” Dominic replied, his eyes fixed ahead. “Mostly. Knew how to keep a secret if the price was right.”
“The price is us now.”
He didn’t answer. The truth of it settled between them, another weight. Letty’s words replayed in her head: the people they loved were now the hunt. Mia’s face, twisted and heartbroken, surfaced in her mind, followed by Brian’s kindly, confused eyes. She squeezed her own eyes shut, trying to block the images out.
Barstow announced itself with a shudder of potholes and the sickly orange glow of sodium-vapor lights. Dominic turned off the main drag, the Charger nosing into a grid of narrow streets lined with low, flat-roofed buildings. It was a place of transients and mechanical coughs, where things were fixed or forgotten.
He found the garage where a faded, peeling sign read “Tej’s Custom Automotive.” It was closed, the main roll-down door sealed tight. Around the side, a single bulb illuminated a scratched metal door and two shadowed apartment entrances above a weed-choked lot. “Stay here,” he said, killing the engine.
He was gone before she could protest, melting into the shadows near the side door. She watched him knock, a pattern of raps that sounded deliberate. After a long minute, the door cracked open. A sliver of yellow light cut across Dominic’s face, then widened as the door opened fully.
A man stood there, taller than Dominic but lean, his hair a close-cropped cap of curls. Tej. He looked older, wearier. He didn’t smile. He exchanged a few quiet words with Dominic, then glanced past him toward the car. He gave a single, slow nod.
Dominic returned, moving quickly. “Second door. Top of the stairs. He says it’s empty. Keys are under the mat.” He opened Catalina’s door, his hand briefly on her arm. “Grab what we need for the night. I’ll get Mina.”
The apartment was a single room plus a closet-sized bathroom. It smelled of stale cigarettes, old grease, and industrial cleaner. A lumpy sofa bed dominated one wall, a small table and two mismatched chairs another. The ceiling fixture cast a bleak, buzzing light on beige walls.
Dominic laid Mina, still deeply asleep, on the sofa bed. He covered her with his own jacket. She sighed, clutching her rabbit, and sank deeper into dreams.
Catalina stood in the center of the room, her bag at her feet. The silence here was different from the car. It was stagnant, heavy with the ghosts of other people’s desperate stops. The adrenaline that had propelled them for hundreds of miles finally drained away, leaving a hollow, shaking fatigue in its place.
She heard Dominic lock the door, the solid thunk of the deadbolt a final sound. He tested the window latch, then pulled the thin curtains closed, blotting out the view of the garage roof. Each movement was methodical, a ritual of securing a perimeter. When he finished, he just stood there, his back to her, shoulders slumped.
The emotional dam she’d been reinforcing since Mia’s kitchen finally cracked. A choked sob escaped her, harsh and sudden in the quiet room.
He turned. In the ugly light, he looked ravaged. The day’s stubble was darker on his jaw, his eyes shadowed and ancient. He saw her standing there, shaking, her hands clenched into useless fists at her sides.
“Dom,” she whispered, the single word breaking apart.
He crossed the room in three strides. He didn’t hug her. He simply stood before her, a solid wall of heat and tension, waiting.
She put her hand in his. Her fingers were ice-cold, trembling. His hand enveloped hers, calloused and furnace-warm, completely still. The contrast was shocking. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t pull her closer. He just held her hand, anchoring her to the spot, to him, to this terrible reality.
She looked down at their joined hands, his so large and capable, hers looking small and lost within it. This simple, forbidden point of contact sent a current through her, more intimate than any kiss they’d never allowed. It was a confession. It was a plea. It was the only truth they had left.
Tears she hadn’t known she was holding back spilled over, tracking hot paths down her cheeks. She didn’t make a sound. She just let them fall, her gaze locked on their hands.
He raised his other hand slowly, as if moving through deep water. His thumb brushed a tear from her cheek, his touch unbearably gentle. He wiped it away, then let his thumb rest against her skin, a point of searing warmth.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice a gravelly whisper.
She forced her eyes up to his. The intensity there wasn’t just protective or fierce. It was naked, stripped of every defense he’d ever built. In his eyes, she saw the same canyon of fear and desire that yawned inside her. She saw the reflection of their ruined life, and the only person who could possibly understand its worth.
“We’re not going back,” he stated, the words final as a judge’s gavel.
She nodded, a tiny movement. She knew. There was no back to go to.
His hand tightened around hers, finally, a firm, decisive pressure. “Then we go forward. Together.”
He released her hand. The loss of the contact was a physical ache. He stepped back, breaking the spell, the practical leader reasserting himself. “Get some sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
“You need to sleep too,” she said, her voice raw.
“I’ll sleep when we’re safe.” He walked to the door, leaning his back against it, sliding down to sit on the floor. He positioned himself where he could see Mina on the bed and the locked entrance. He pulled a faded switchblade from his boot, flicked it open, and laid it on the floor beside him. A silent sentinel.
Catalina lay down next to Mina, pulling a thin blanket over them both. She watched Dominic, his profile etched against the dark wood of the door. He wasn’t just watching the lock. He was guarding the only world he had left, the one contained in this shabby, terrible room.
She closed her eyes, the ghost of his hand still burning in hers, the memory of his thumb on her cheek a brand. Outside, Barstow slept. Somewhere to the west, their old life was waking up, and it was looking for them. But here, for a few stolen hours, there was only his vigil, and the fragile, breathing truth of their shared silence.
But here, for a few stolen hours, there was only his vigil, and the fragile, breathing truth of their shared silence.
The room was still dark when the nausea hit, a sudden, oily surge that had Catalina bolting upright. She clamped a hand over her mouth, the other fumbling for the edge of the lumpy sofa bed. Her bare feet hit the cold linoleum as she staggered, vision swimming, toward the bathroom.
She made it just in time, collapsing to her knees as her stomach violently emptied itself into the stained toilet. The convulsions left her shaking and weak, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain. The sound of her retching was loud and ugly in the small space.
A shadow filled the doorway. Dominic stood there, the switchblade now absent from his hand. He didn’t speak. He simply moved into the cramped bathroom, his large frame making the space feel microscopic. He knelt beside her, one hand finding its steadying place between her shoulder blades.
He held back her hair with his other hand, his touch impersonal and necessary. When the worst had passed, he flushed the toilet. The roar of water echoed in the tiny room.
“Sit,” he murmured, not a request. He guided her to sit on the edge of the chipped bathtub. He wet a corner of a thin, scratchy towel under the tap, wringing it out before pressing it into her hand.
She wiped her mouth, her hands trembling. The taste was sour and metallic. She felt hollowed out and exposed, this new vulnerability a fresh layer of crisis.
Dominic sat back on his heels, studying her face in the weak light filtering under the door. He looked at the pallor of her skin, the fine sheen of sweat on her temples. His gaze, always so assessing, tracked over her as if reading a familiar map with a newly discovered flaw.
He’d seen this before. Three years ago. The memory hung between them, thick and unspoken.
“How long?” His voice was low, stripped of all inflection.
She shook her head, the towel clutched in her fist. “I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe. I thought it was just… the stress.”
He absorbed that, his jaw working silently. The dawn was beginning to bleed a grimy gray light through the gaps in the bathroom curtain, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air between them. He looked from her face down to her flat stomach, then back up, his eyes holding a terrifying, crystalline clarity.
“The next thing we do,” he said, the words final and measured, “is find a clinic. Somewhere anonymous. We need to know how long.”
Catalina stared at him, the implication settling like a stone in her gut. It wasn’t just about confirmation. It was a timeline. A countdown. “Dom, we can’t just walk into some place. They’ll ask for names, insurance—”
“We’ll pay cash.” He stood up, looming in the small space, his decision already hardening into a plan. “We’ll find one of those places in a strip mall. In and out. We need the information.”
“And then what?” The question was a whisper.
He didn’t have an answer for that. He reached down, his hand rough but his grip gentle, and pulled her to her feet. She swayed, and for a second, she leaned into him, her forehead against his chest. He didn’t embrace her. He just stood solid, letting her borrow his stability.
“First, we need to know,” he repeated, his voice vibrating through her.
From the other room, Mina’s sleepy voice called out, “Mama?” The normalcy of it was a piercing shard.
Dominic’s posture shifted instantly, the intense focus on Catalina shuttering away. He stepped back, creating a respectable, sibling-distance gap just as Mina’s small, sleepy face appeared around the doorframe, her bunny dangling from one hand.
“Mama sick?” Mina asked, her brow furrowed.
Catalina forced a smile, pushing damp hair from her face. “Mama’s okay, sweetie. Just a little tummy ache.”
Dominic moved past her, scooping Mina up. “Hey, rally monkey. You hungry? I saw a place that might have pancakes.”
His tone was light, almost normal, a complete facade woven for a two-year-old. Catalina watched him carry Mina back into the bleak main room, his broad back a wall between her and their daughter. He was already compartmentalizing, slotting this new, seismic problem into the framework of survival. A clinic. Cash. Information.
She splashed cold water on her face, avoiding her own gaze in the smudged mirror. The reflection showed a woman on the run, pale and haunted. Now it also showed a woman with a secret growing inside her, a secret that tied her even more irrevocably to the man standing in the other room, making promises about pancakes he couldn’t possibly keep.
She took a deep, shaky breath. The nausea had receded, leaving a cold dread in its wake. Dominic was right. They needed to know. Every day, every week, was a currency they had to account for now. She walked out of the bathroom, the decision made, the new fear a concrete weight in her chest, settling right beside all the old ones.