“Every time you chase a story — a ghost, a hunch, a ‘feeling’ — I’m right behind you. But I’m not chasing the mystery, Coco. I’m chasing you .” He didn’t look at her when he said it. He stared at his own hands, calloused and still faintly greasy from the car.

He laughed once, a broken, breathy sound. “You’re insane.”

But Coco was smiling. She pointed to the coat hanger. Taped to it was a small, folded piece of paper.

Jax exhaled — relief, disappointment, a messy cocktail of both.

That’s why, when her beat-up sedan coughed once and died on a deserted stretch of Route 66 at 11:47 p.m., she saw it as fate whispering a plot twist. Jax saw it as a loose alternator belt.