The dial tone buzzed in her ear and Ray replaced the handset with an air of duty. Nothing left to do but go back to the table.

That's right. All I have to do is walk over there. Just…move my feet ten steps down the aisle. Twenty feet. All I have to do…

She suddenly felt herself moving forward, that nasty feeling of nausea and despair rising up in her gut with every step she took. Finally, she slid into the seat, as far away from Elwood as humanly possible, who was seated opposite and closest to the window. He was also attacking a plate of dry white toast, which kept him comfortably busy.

Ray ordered a Belgian waffle and not three minutes later, the waitress returned with everyone's food. As each person ate their meal, the stony silence prevailed until Buster broke it with the only subject he knew he would get away with, given the tension between the two people.

"So…you play any instruments?"

Ray raised an eyebrow, started to answer, and then looked away. "Nah. Not enough to brag about."

"C'mon. Everyone plays something. It's a given law of nature."

"Not me. I'm the missing link between primates and homo sapiens when it comes to that."

"Then why'd this receipt fall out of your pocket?"

He held up the note from the music store Ray had gone to only the day before, documenting the two harmonicas she'd purchased. She sucked in a breath and prepared to deny it.

"They were gifts. For my friend. They're…just starting out.

"Doesn't look like that to me," he responded, studying the items on the list. "These keys are a little more advanced. Built for songs one usually doesn't hear."

"Listen, you little peeping-tom!" she snapped as she grabbed it back and stuffed it deep in her back pocket. "What I buy for myself or anyone else isn't your business. I don't play any instruments, ok?"

He shrugged with a knowing smirk. "Alright. Whatever. I was thinking of giving up the harp anyway and getting Matt to teach me some guitar. Guess I gotta keep my job."

This got him back on her good side. "Wait a minute. You mean…you guys still keep up your musical careers? Even with every state trooper in the Northern U.S. looking for you?"

"Heck yeah! What good is all this talent if you don't use it? Plus, half the crowd comes just to see us. They don't really care about the music. They wanna see real criminals!" he laughed.

"What'd you do to get so bad?" she asked coyly.

"Learned it all from Uncle Elwood. 'Specially how to play the blues."

The faith he seemed to have in the ringleader of their crazy circus stupefied Ray. She cocked her head, trying to understand why such a kid would canonize Elwood Blues. Maybe they'd had some sort of history she didn't know about. Maybe he was the guy's kid. Maybe that'd make him her-…

No. She wasn't gonna think that way. If she didn't accept it, didn't even devote one single though to it, it wouldn't be real. She pushed it away and poured more powdered sugar on her waffle.

"Well, we gotta make it to South Dakota before tomorrow. Let's get a move on," Mack commented as she was stuffing the last of her meal into her mouth. They dropped some bills, five dollars of which belonged to Ray, and headed back towards the car.

Well, this was a fine sight! She realized there were many more of them than she had thought. About ten other men were cramming themselves into another gray car with "The Blues Brothers Band" spray-painted onto the side. Two of them, an African-American man and one who looked a little old to be doing this, came over and hopped in the back seat of the police-cruiser. Ray stared, astonished, as the others all pulled a circus-clown stunt and actually all squeezed into the tiny car. Finally, Mack pulled her out of her reverie and tried to talk.

"You want us to leave you here? You can call your mom, you know. We're still not too far from Illinois. There's a pay-phone inside."

She had a tough choice to make. On the one hand, she could try to forget it all happened, go home and spend the rest of the summer counseling the theater camp, hanging with her mother and wondering where she was gonna go in life.

On the other hand, she was already covered on the home front, had plenty of cash, and had a mean desire to stick around. Some inexplicable urge to find out more about the guys. And Lord knew, after eighteen years she deserved to know if this worn-out, twice-indicted felon was really her biological father.

"Mind if I stick around?" she asked.

She could see his eyes widen behind the shades. "You're kidding, right? You wanna tag along with fifteen or so wanted criminals all over the continent? You realize what the heck you're asking?"

She shrugged. "Yep."

He let out a sigh. "Lemme run it by the guys…"

Mack lumbered back over to the car and leaned in the window to discuss it. Apparently, she had some lobbyists in the back seat who explained what a risk she would be…loudly. She could practically hear the "What the hell? Are you crazy?" from where she was standing, thirty feet away.

But after about ten minutes of what looked like serious debate, Mack straightened up, turned to her, and motioned toward the car.

Ray, trying not to look too pleased, jogged over, opened the door and slid in.

"Alright. I'm thinking of an animal."

"Does it have four legs?"

"No."

"Lives in the ocean?"

"Yeah."

"Endangered species?"

"Yeah."

"It's a manatee."

Alan cursed under his breath as Ray grinned and tried to think of a stumper. When he shot her a look, she sighed and rolled her eyes. "You've used the same animal for the past two hours. A monkey would have guessed yours in three questions."

"'Least I don't keep using specific branches of the monkey family," was his reply.

"Hey, just 'cause you don't know what a Golden Lion Tamarin is, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"It sounds like a fancy foreign sports car."

"But it has four legs and lives in the rain forest."

Mack thought hard. "Does a monkey's hands count as feet?"

"They use them to walk."

"But some monkeys hop around on two feet. And as babies, we use 'four feet' to crawl around. Does that make us four-legged?"

"Hey! All of you! Shut up!"

The perturbed voice came from the front seat, where a stressed-out Cab was driving. "I'm trying to concentrate on getting us into the next state and you're back there, distracting me with a monkey that lives three continents away!"

They laughed and Matt apologized. "Sorry, man. Just got carried away."