Chapter 287

[Cordelia]

There isn't much to see or do in Bakersfield. This isn't a town I'd go out of my way to see. Lined on either side with factory farms and large fields, the growing town has a constant smell of dying animals and manure.

It's the perfect place to hide something or someone you don't want anyone else to notice.

The address took me to a shopping center across the street from a large office complex. The air is dry and dusty, the wind doing nothing to cool the late afternoon heat. The smoggy haze in the distance makes the blue sky look a dingy brownish gray, darkened by the pollution from nearby LA.

But soon I'll have Jasper in my arms and it will be worth it. All of this struggle will finally be worth all the pain.

Atlas should be here any moment. Theo borrowed someone else's phone to text me on her phone that Atlas and Clark were on their way in a beat-up car from the 1980s.

That's what I was expecting to see pull up into the parking lot.

Not a semi-truck with a chicken on the