Chapter 19: The Scholar's Heart
The car ride to the State Finals was a mobile tomb, but the body inside was not dead—it was a sleeper agent, waiting for a signal to detonate. Silence, thick and tactical, pressed in from all sides, a stark contrast to the roaring static of their last CB radio conversation. Justin drove the battered ford pickup, his knuckles a bloodless white on the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the highway stretching into a gray, indifferent horizon. In the passe