Chapter Three: Sad and Beautiful

Del Rio, Texas was just a stone's throw from the Mexican border, and similar to El Paso in the way that you could stand on the tips of your toes and look straight into an entirely different culture with tiny rows of adobe and sheet metal boxes for homes. In places like this you could practically smell the barbacoa on the wind as it cooked in underground ovens.

Finding Regina's car was up first. Find the car, track her from there… Emma schooled herself. Calming her nerves and keeping her focus was important. With a bond as high as Regina's, it was imperative that Emma get to her first. After all, she didn't put it past August Booth to double or even triple his chances by running the job past other bounty hunters. That would just be good business. A million dollars is a big hit to take, and Emma was certain that no bail bondsman worth their salt would leave it up to just one person.

Emma pulled up outside of a taqueria and parked to take the time she needed to check her phone, where a quick search engine result listed over a dozen car dealerships just inside the Del Rio city limits. Emma sighed and tossed her head back against the headrest of her driver's seat. It would take her more time than she had to spare in order to check every car lot for signs of Regina, but she wasn't left with much of a choice. Emma began to despair. What if Regina had already crossed over the border? This job was already becoming more difficult than the blonde was prepared for, simply for the fact that the woman she was chasing had seemingly vanished into thin air. With ease, too. Regina was slippery, that much was apparent. Emma would have to be careful from here on out.

No mistakes.

After sifting through all of her assets a third time, Emma realized that there was just nothing else. It appeared that the woman she was hunting didn't even have any friends, not according to the phone log she'd acquired from her service provider. Sounds familiar… Emma thought mindlessly as she scanned each call down the list, which turned out to be quite a short one. Sadly, Emma could relate. The friends she had were all of two people in the world, and that faint but obtrusive voice in the back of her head did well to remind her (and often) that they were only around because of Henry. Whether that was true or not, Emma didn't have the time or the energy to sit around and really think it through. Ruby and Granny Lucas had been heaven sent, and she could at least be grateful.

There seemed to be only one number Regina had incoming calls from, with half as many to the same number outgoing. Emma thumbed through another dossier in her lap of known acquaintances and found the number to belong to a Sidney Glass.

City of Residence: Sugar Land, Texas

Previous Residence: New Orleans, Louisiana

Occupation: Historical Groundskeeper, Archivist

Employer: Empire Sugar Co.

Previous Occupation: Professor of History, Lecturer

Previous Employer: Tulane University

Emma sighed. The chances of this person aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice were slim to none, but she'd keep tabs on their communications going forward. She'd been surprised before, after all. Growing up in foster care had taught Emma many hard lessons. The biggest one being the realization that anyone can do anything, so long as they believe that they can get away with it. It matters not how much of a "pillar of the community" one appears to be. When presented with the opportunity to fulfill some twisted little desire, or to steal, or lie, or cheat… Most people end up doing so.

Her frustration grew as she began to flip back and forth through what little digital and financial footprints she had of Regina. It's like this woman had made it her mission to hide from the world and had been doing so for years. Her only real connection to the system was her husband, and by all accounts of what Emma could find on him, it's no wonder Regina had nothing else. The man was proud and apparently made a habit of putting himself in front of all his dealings, whether it was a ribbon cutting ceremony, clinic donation, or charity ball… whatever the event, he loved the press. Besides her mugshot, Regina's arrest report came with only one glossy, printed photo of her, and by the look of it she hadn't even bothered to look at the camera when it was taken. The woman appeared to consist of a single frown underneath an admittedly beautiful head of the darkest brunette hair Emma had ever seen. Quite the mane… she admired. Emma found herself after several minutes staring at the three by five photo in her hand.

She looks… sad?

Regina's face was angled downwards in the photo and her hand was held up just at her chin, perhaps to tuck her long hair which shone like gossamer strands of freshly damp leather behind an ear. Her eyes were dark and seemed so far away, as if she secretly wished to be anywhere else in the world at that very moment.

All of the other photos Emma could find online showed much of the same. A pot-bellied, silver-haired smiling man standing in a suit probably worth more than Emma's car, and a dispirited looking Regina just off to the side. Emma quirked her chin as she continued to scroll, realizing that Regina never smiled in any of them or even so much as looked up. Emma had spent so much of her own life looking down that it was easy to recognize somebody else wearing the same sort of metaphorical stone necklace. It's hard to lift your sights when your spirit is so heavy.

Emma shook herself free of her lingering focus on the other woman's facial features, reminding herself of the minutes that ticked away— one dollar sign at a time. Regina was beautiful, but Emma had much more work to do other than staring at her phone and wasting even more precious time. She just had to hope beyond hope that she could find some sign of Regina here in this last little drop of a Texas border town.

Regina had to be here somewhere.

Dusk crept over the painfully flat, cacti-riddled landscape as Emma parked just on the other side of a gate to the last car lot in town. This was her last hope, she thought, but maybe Regina just decided to ditch her car somewhere else? Would she try her luck with begging a coyote to spirit her across the border for free? Nothing like that comes for free… Emma shivered. She wondered if the woman she hunted was hurt, and what exactly she'd be dealing with if that were the case. A barbed wire fence surrounded the long, corrugated tin sheet walls, making it an effective barrier against trespassers. The looped rows of razor wire that topped the walled perimeter were just an extra "fuck you" and Emma huffed a confident laugh in her chest. A few cuts and scrapes wouldn't stop her. Maybe I should've started with this one… She thought alternatively for a moment.

The button on the hood latch of her bug stuck sometimes, so it took hitting it with the heel of her hand to get it to depress all the way and to pop open. It made a hollow metallic -clack- sound as it did, and she reached for the thick, tattered blanket that lay in a messy pile toward the back. Emma tossed the end of it over the top of the fence, effectively covering the looped razor wire that skirted along it. Then, she stepped up onto a nearby trashcan and swung a leg over. Emma hit the dirt on the other side with a forward step in her high-top boots, stirring up a small, dusty cloud.

"Still got it." She said to herself in a congratulatory tone, dusting her hands on the tops of her jeans. She'd make this quick.

Emma soon realized that this was more of a junk yard than anything with all the half-pulled apart and bare wheeled cars that lay scattered about. It looked as though no one had been around in a while to cut back all of the big, unruly bunches of prickly pear cactus growing in abundance along the inside of the fence. Emma scanned her surroundings with a squint as it was nearly dark now, and suddenly, the sound of a -pop- came from directly above her head, flooding the area with a bright light. Her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. Motion detectors… but why? Emma craned her head around quickly at another noise which came from her left then.

The scrape of paw and nail in dirt grew louder as two massive bully breed yard dogs tore around a corner and ran straight toward her, barking and gnashing their teeth as if they hadn't eaten in days.

"Nevermind!" Emma blurted, kicking up her heels into a sprint back toward the perimeter. For every long stride of her legs, the dogs behind her gained several feet more. In the blink of an eye, Emma was up on top of a mangled pile of cars and hitting the fence hard, rocking it forward with her momentum. She scrambled to throw a leg across and in overestimating the swing of her body over the blanketed top of the fence, the blonde landed flat on her back on the other side, clawing to push herself up from the ground with naught but a vacuum in the place of her lungs. Usually, she was much more graceful when it came to trespassing, but the dogs had been an unexpected variable which made her panic. Emma hated panicking. The internet search results about this place had been less than forthcoming, it seemed. It was more than likely a holding yard for a chop shop in town, and the dogs? Cheap but effective security.

Emma's mouth hung open in an effort to drag in a gasp, but it took a moment longer yet to get it. How long had it been since she'd had the wind knocked out of her? Emma realized that it was definitely an experience that she hadn't missed. Once she caught her breath, she climbed to her feet and pulled hard at the blanket… but something pulled back.

"Let go, you mutts!" Emma hollered and pulled hard again, which did little to help. Pulling it free of the looped razors was one thing, but out of the jaws of animals who can crush bone with a single bite was an entirely separate issue. She'd have to leave it behind, more evidence of her trespass.

"Dammit." Emma grumbled, letting go with a frustrated grunt.

I'm really gonna let my kid down…

I can't believe it.

The blonde kicked at the ground, causing another big cloud of clay, dust, and dirt particles to billow into the stagnant night air. Out of options, she began to turn back and forth on her feet as hooked her hands on her hips. What other lead was there? She'd checked where Regina had swiped her tagged credit card, but there wasn't so much as a snack cake or bag of chips out of place. Nothing out of the ordinary caught her attention, and of course the cameras there hadn't worked in years.

Emma could probably take the time now to hack what else she could find as far as a digital trace, but essentially— Regina was a ghost. It was like she barely existed even before going on the run.

No.

I'll drag her all the way back to Sugar Land by her goddamned gorgeous hair if I have to.

"I'll find you." Emma mumbled to herself as she stared out toward the road. "I swear I will." A loud growl of her stomach then turned her out of her anxious pacing.

But first… tacos.

Feeling nearly defeated, tired and now very hungry, Emma lumbered her way back into the driver's seat of her car and headed down the poorly lit two-laned road until a row of streetlights came back into view. Eating would help to refuel her, but she had to be careful not to eat too much and become sleepy. Sleep was the one thing she couldn't afford. Emma eventually pulled over at the first gas station she came across and was relieved to find a lively looking food truck parked in its lot across from the pumps. The lofty scent of carnitas filled her nostrils, making her stomach cry out at her again. After a trip to the bathroom and to fill up her gas tank, Emma sat under the umbrella of a picnic table, taking big bites of her carne asada burrito while staring yet again at the somber photo of the woman she was after. She thought to take away a bag of tortillas to keep her hunger pangs in check, and when she spun her head around to look back at the food truck, something unexpected caught her eye just off to the side of it. The square-ish back end of an older Mercedes-Benz SL-Class stared her right in the face. It was pristine and well-taken care of, which stuck out like a sore thumb compared to all the other vehicles in the area. A classic sports car amidst a sea of run-down cash cars had a tendency to do that.

"You have gotta be kidding m—" Emma mumbled around a mouthful of food in surprise and scuttled her free hand over her dossier, shuffling through page after page in an effort to find Regina's department of motor vehicles record once more. A photocopy of her car title appeared finally, and Emma cursed when a dollop of guacamole dripped onto the page. With a quick swipe of a napkin, she read the plate number again and flashed her eyes back up, nearly cheering behind a mouthful of burrito.

40F5TH… holy shit—

That's it!

Emma leapt away from the table, making sure to first gather up all the papers back into their folder with one messy swipe and bolted to the window of the truck. Her knuckles rapped obnoxiously against the plexiglass and a young man with a rolled bandana tied around his neck came to open it with a curious look on his face.

"El carro—" Emma began, pointing toward the back of the food truck. "Esta… um, dónde esta mujer?" The cook scrunched his nose with Emma's clumsy Spanish. "La mujer en ese carro! A dónde fue, por favor?" She asked again.

The young man in the window threw his head back into the truck then. "¡Oye! Esta güerita quiere saber de la mujer rica!"

A moment later an older gentleman hobbled to the window and leaned out of it, resting his forearms on the small tray table out in front with a tired grunt.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes!" Emma fired back eagerly. "The woman who drove that car here—" She gave another point with her hand toward the Mercedes and then flashed the photo of Regina toward him with the other. "Where did she go?"

"Ehh…" The old man furrowed his brow, giving her a dismissive wave of his hand to go back inside.

"Por favor! Please—" Emma begged. "I just need to know where she is, she's in some trouble and I'm trying to help her."

This time he came back to stare daggers at Emma, assessing her. Technically, she was trying to help Regina out. Anyone else who came looking for her would likely be much less gentle than Emma. Or patient, for that matter. Regina was a walking fortune.

"The lady says to me—" The old man began to say, "…if anyone come looking, to say nothing. So, I say nothing." He held up his hands with a slight dip of his head as if to absolve himself of a problem that had nothing to do with him.

"Listen, I'm her friend—"

"She says this is not true, pobrecita has no friends." His stare narrowed further.

"I understand, she's scared…" Emma stopped for a moment when the man tilted his head at her. "Asustada?"

"Oh…"

"Listen… take a look at me, huh?" Emma said, taking a step back with her folder. "No soy policía, and you already know I'm way too blonde to be cartel." The man chortled a bit then. "If you can just point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful, señor."

He seemed to be listening to her at least. After a long moment moment of dead silence, the old man sighed and then raised a hand to scratch at the back of his tired neck.

"She leave this way." He said, leaning the top half of his body further out of the window and pointing in the same direction from where Emma had come from.

Emma was surprised. "Are you sure? She didn't go to the border?" She asked, jabbing her thumb the opposite way.

"Sí." He nodded.

Emma whipped her head around to look out at the dirt patch beyond the twinkling chili pepper shaped string lights that dangled from the truck's awning. Emma dropped her jaw, confused. "She went that way?" She asked one last time, ready to read any lie that appeared on his weathered face.

"Híjole, do you not hear? Sí, si- she leave that way." He repeated.

The only problem was… that way was north.

"Okay- okay. Thank you kindly, I do appreciate it." Emma said, bowing her head in deference. The old man had made no attempt to try and deceive her. If he had, the pitch of his voice would have raised higher, along with his eyebrows. For some reason, "lifting" gestures were small indicators of deceitfulness. But he remained (for the most part) calm and sure of what he had said, if not a little annoyed.

When Emma turned to leave, the man spoke again and stopped her in her tracks. "Excuse me?" Emma turned to face him once again. "This 'scared' woman… She no scared when she talk me." He said slowly, contemplating each word as if to carefully plot out each translation. "Cómo se dice triste—" His hands came up again and circled in front of himself for the word he wanted. "Sad?"

Emma didn't know what to say.

"Such beautiful... No good to see sad. Momentito—" He tucked back inside of the truck for a split second and then reappeared holding a picture frame, handing it down toward Emma. "Mi troca… I give her." He began to explain with his hands gesturing outward. "I keep Mercedes." His head then bobbed toward the sports car parked behind the food truck.

Emma squinted her eyes and peered at the picture in the frame. It was a family photo of the man, and what looked like a wife and several children huddled around him. They all looked happy and healthy, and for a moment it warmed Emma's heart. She'd only ever had the pleasure to look from an outside perspective towards big families like that. She always wondered what that would have been like, if she would like her cousins more than her siblings or if she would have a favorite aunt. Emma stared at the photo long enough to see the people in it standing in front of a faded blue pickup truck. Then she widened her eyes with her realization.

"This truck?"

The man gave her a nonchalant sort of nod. It was a pretty good deal on his end, from where Emma stood. She didn't blame him at all. As she turned to jog back to her car, Emma spun around one more time and darted back toward the tray table under the window where a tip jar sat. August had fronted her a portion of the bounty for her expenses while on the road, and from inside a rubber band Emma unwound a hundred dollar bill to stuff in the jar, nearly knocking it over in her haste. The conversation had been worth it, though if she came back home empty handed, she'd have to pay every bit of it back. All the more reason to stay on track. She'd keep her promise to her son.

As Emma climbed back into the front seat of her bug, it became apparent to her just how little thought she had put into Regina's level of intelligence. Driving like hell toward the nearest border town and then drastically changing course at the last minute was a blatant attempt to lose a tail. Even Regina using her credit card had begun to seem like less of a mistake and more of an intentional means of misleading anyone who was out looking for her. Regina had thrown her for a loop, which was unexpected, to say the least. Emma's eyes shot down to the watch face on the inside of her wrist which barely concealed a small flower tattoo, and she realized that it was just past eight o'clock. Regina had quite the lead on her, but at least Emma hadn't lost her completely.

The police scanner in her car had not made a peep in hours.

After dialing in a late-night favor to Ranger Humbert back home who put out a quiet all-points bulletin for the description of the truck Regina was driving, Emma continued her northerly heading after hearing back that the truck had been clocked at two toll road entrances. Graham would be able to help just as long as Regina was within Texas borders, and after nearly seven hours of chase, Emma could hardly see past all of her yawning.

The hour hand on her wristwatch drew dangerously close to six o'clock in the morning and Emma decided that it would be best to find somewhere to catch at least a couple hours of sleep. Years of experience combined with her hyper-alert state of mind meant that Emma could function on as little as two hours of sleep at a time, for a matter of days even. If Navy Seals could do it, then so could she. She'd just have to hope that she hadn't overshot Regina and passed her up entirely. It was easy for a mind to wander on long stretches of road, after all. Whatever it was about the act of going forward in a straight line at high speeds that seemed to appeal to fugitives, Emma could at least count on that. Unless they were severely unhinged or under duress, it was usually "straight forward" until something stopped them… like a ditch, or a wall, or Emma commandeering a bulldozer and pulling it into the middle of a road.

Her wheels finally rolled to a stop just outside of a truck stop somewhere in the panhandle. Emma's lower back ached something fierce and she continued to yawn, but splashing some water on her face from a sink in the bathroom seemed to get her wits about her. Her chest tightened a bit when she thought of Henry, and how she had left things with him. A guilty pang of her heart had her searching her jacket pocket to check for a text message from him.

Not a word. Not from anyone.

Emma was used to a solitary life, but it was wide open spaces much like the parking lot of the truck stop she stood in that had a habit of making her feel lonely. Such a strange thing, loneliness…. She had been alone for her entire life and yet somehow it managed to get under her skin from time to time like it actually hurt.

Her exhaustion forced her to recline her driver's seat as far back as it would go, and she settled in to get some sleep. A timer on her phone had been set for two hours, which was enough to get her through another full day if that was what it took to come face to face with her bounty. Though, Emma thought to herself that it might be best not to assume too many more things about the woman she hunted. Regina trying to lose her at the border was a good trick, even compared to a lot of bail jumpers Emma had chased down in the past. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something about Regina had the blonde feeling very uneasy. She supposed that it was the utter lack of information she had to go on… but for whatever reason Emma simply couldn't get her off her mind.

She groaned as she turned to lay sideways in her seat. The flickering light from a vending machine next to the restroom facilities flashed on top of her eyelids and she covered her face with the top of her red leather jacket to ignore it. She'd driven long and hard that day and had danced with two particularly unfriendly guard dogs… Sleep would do her some good.

So, why was she still awake?

"Well… shit." Emma grumbled. Her mind, damn the fool thing, it just wouldn't shut off. Instead, it seemed to be a never-ending revolving door of all things Regina White. What she looked like, how she dressed…

I'll bet her voice is a lower register…

Gravelly, maybe.

Too tired to express even to herself her shock at the mere fact that she was still thinking about a woman who allegedly murdered her own husband… Emma dug into her jacket pocket where she kept Regina's photo. Before she knew it, she was staring at it again.

Sad… and beautiful.

Emma was what you'd call a "people expert". It usually took less than five minutes or so of being around someone to know two things about them, at the very least. One: what they want, and two: how far they're willing to go to get it. These were just things she could tell about a person, especially when they were presented with the opportunity to talk about themselves. Most would oblige her attempts at conversation, her boundless charm being the thing she often used to her advantage. Sometimes she could even tell a lot about a person by how they held themselves, or by how they smiled in a photo. Smiles could sometimes be disingenuous. They could of course ring of happiness, but could also be laced with guilt, fear, and even sadness. Emma flattened out a bent corner of the photo in her hand as she continued to study it. No, Regina didn't seem to be concerned with smiling. Not in this photo or any of the others that Emma found of her. Why did that bother her so much?

The longer Emma looked at the photo and memorized every line of every feature on Regina's face, the heavier her eyelids became and finally, after several more minutes, she succumbed to the hard pull of sleep at last.

"Yes what?"

A hand slammed flat against the tabletop, rocking a pair of drink glasses dangerously close to its edge. Emma jumped, tears stinging her eyes.

"Yes sir." Her voice was quiet, small almost.

"Don't let me hear about you doin' that sort of thing anywhere near here again. We respect God in this house, do you understand me?"

Emma shook from head to toe, scared, but at least thankful that she didn't have to pack all her belongings back into her one bag again. Whatever was left of them, anyway.

"Yes sir."

The faint sound of snickering from the hallway darted her eyes to the left, where small fingers fell away from the corner of a wall and with them traveled whispers and footfalls toward the back of the house. Emma's gut suddenly twisted tighter into several, painful knots.

"I don't want you at my dinner table while you're here. You can eat in the living room."

"Okay."

"Now get out of my sight. I can't look at you anymore."

"Yes sir."

The weight of Emma's heart made her feet feel heavy as she shuffled them one after another forward into the hallway, down to the last door on the left and into a room that fit two bunk beds and a small writing desk. Another girl her age was rifling through her slightly torn backpack when her voice found its way out of her mouth again.

"Hey- that's mine…"

The girl stood at the edge of a bottom bunk where a small pile that looked an awful lot like Emma's clothes and sweater sat. She held a wrapped chocolate bar between her teeth when she looked up at Emma and spat it back into her hand to speak.

"Daddy said I can have the top bunk now, since you're a homosexual and its safer for me up there at night."

The white hot, searing pain that shot through Emma's chest was indescribable. She couldn't understand why on earth this girl was being so cruel to her after being so friendly at first. Emma had lost count of how many foster homes she had lived in by now and was used to other kids just helping themselves to her things —no matter how well she tried to squirrel them away— but the part that escaped her was the sudden shift in this newfound friendship. She had been so nice…

"Why?" Emma asked.

"What do you mean 'why'? You're gross. I saw you kissing that girl at the arcade after school."

Lily… Emma realized. Lily Page was another foster kid who lived nearby and had become glued to Emma's hip after sharing several classes a day with her at school for nearly two months. Maybe this girl she shared a bunk bed with was jealous? Had she really seen her kiss Lily earlier that day? Emma thought she had acted strangely after they left Lily at the arcade to walk home. She tried hard, but she still couldn't wrap her head around it.

Emma shook her head, confused. "I meant why are you being so mean?"

The girl took her time folding a blanket, waving her chin as if to justify her actions. "I told you I wanted the top bunk."

The air in the room smelled of stale cigarette smoke, and Emma stood there deeply rooted in the doorway wishing for just a single gust of freshness from the air conditioning. Her lungs ached as she did her best to pull in another breath, shocked beyond belief.

"You did all of this just because you wanted to sleep on the top bunk…?"

Her backstabbing "friend" gave a shrug and then tossed the folded blanket up onto the mattress where she had removed all of Emma's things. "Doing stuff like that with other girls is wr—"

"That's my blanket, I brought that with—"

"Daddy said I could have it."

Emma blinked rapidly at the blatant lie. "No, he didn't, that's mine—"

"Daddy said—"

"He's not your dad! He just wants us to call him that- it's weird…" Emma lunged forward to grab her backpack off the bottom bunk. The other girl reached out then and tried to yank it back from her. "Let go." Emma warned.

"Let me finish looking in it or I'll tell Daddy that you touched me."

Emma's mouth immediately ran dry, and she released her death grip on her backpack. The other girl hummed loudly in an obnoxious sing-song sort of tune as she took her time pulling one item after another from Emma's bag, laying them in piles that appeared to be what she wanted, and what she didn't. Emma, feeling absolutely helpless, backed into the wall opposite the bunk beds and slid down to the floor to cry.

She cried until it felt like she was going to throw up. Later, the bland, unseasoned food on her dinner plate didn't help her nausea either, and it didn't bother her as much when smaller pairs of grubby, unwashed hands took fistfuls of beans and corn bread from it. She cried when she crawled onto the springy mattress of the bottom bunk that night, doing her best to cover as much of herself with her thin sweatshirt as she could now that she had no blanket. She cried and cried until at last it felt like she was about to drift off toward the sweet relief of sleep when something pulled at the pillow beneath her. Emma lifted her head and blinked blearily through her swollen eyes for a moment until she saw the shape of her used-to-be friend standing over her, who had her hands gripping Emma's pillow as if she were about to rip it out from underneath her.

"Daddy said I could have this too."

The girl gave an evil smirk and then yanked. Hard.

Emma's head snapped around violently. A sharp, screech of a breath entered her lungsf and she shot upright, her brow drenched with sweat.

It was daylight, and the alarm on her phone was blaring its looped, high pitch tone. Frazzled, Emma swiped blindly at the noisy device to cease its godawful racket. Now that she was definitely awake, she pulled in a deep breath to remind herself of where she was. First and foremost, she was safe, and so was her son. Emma wasn't hungry, and nobody could harm her. Not with the small armory of weapons tucked away under the hood of her bug, at least.

Her panic averted now; Emma climbed out to stretch in the fresh morning air for a moment. When she pulled at the toes of her boots behind her, she could feel how stiff her legs were. With both feet back on the ground again, she bent forward to touch her toes and a sharp whistle came from behind her near the visitor's center of the rest stop. The unintelligible garble of catcalls and wolf whistles made her roll her eyes for a second, and she decided to cut her stretching short to get back into her car. It was too early to have to defend herself from pig-headed men. She'd rather just get back on the road.

After checking the notifications on her phone and tearing into a pack of roasted peanuts, Emma pulled back onto the highway to catch up to Regina, whom she prayed had slept for a number of hours as well. Sleeping meant that Regina was less likely to drive into a ditch and kill herself, but it also meant that Emma stood the chance of having gotten that much closer to her. Not many could run on two hours of sleep like she could. She'd catch up to Regina and drag her kicking and screaming back to Sugar Land if she had to, and then her and Henry could finally live a life free of worry.

Everything would be alright, just as long as she stayed focused.