"I love you, guys!" she cried, her hand reaching for Ryan’s arm.

"I love you!"

"I love you!" her brothers called back. With their eyes glued to the armed men above, they didn’t see the spike strips laid out in the shadow of the overpass. When they hit them, they heard a pop, and then they were rolling over, around and around, the car filling with darkness, then light, dark, then light, Dylan thinking it felt like being a lotto ball, Lee-Grace feeling his body pressed hard against the back of her seat.

When the car smashed nose first into a guardrail, they finally came to a stop. Dylan found himself on the road, shoeless; he must’ve been thrown there, though he didn’t remember flying. He watched as Ryan ran in one direction and Lee-Grace in another. He heard a shot, tried to get up, but three officers were pointing guns at him. He could see Lee-Grace holding her leg and cursing out a cop. So she was alive. He lay back down on the pavement, listening for any sign of his brother Ryan.

Ryan ran and ran. He couldn’t think straight. His head was fuzzy. He saw a restaurant and headed toward the back of it. He stopped; he whirled around—which direction, which direction? When he saw three men approaching him at a crouch, he shouted, "Stay away from me! They’re gonna shoot me!" He loped off unsteadily. One of the men came at him from behind and tackled him to the ground.

It was all over. They lay separate from one another, each guarded by men with guns. Red lights swooped round and round, ambulances rushed in, but all of that bustle faded to a low roar; nobody had ever really existed for them but one another, and that morning they reached out through the chaos and felt one another’s presence, as they always had.

When the siblings were moved from the local hospital to the Pueblo County jail, they were put in solitary cells. As Dylan lay down on the bunk bed, he saw the initials E.D. carved into the metal frame above him, the same initials as his sister Erin. He felt strangely at peace. He had done his best.

Ryan had sprained an ankle in the crash, and while he was being led into the jail, handcuffed and shackled, an officer walking behind him stamped down on the leg chains just as Ryan had lifted his foot—the pain was so severe, Ryan shat in his pants. At night another officer kept coming to his cell, waking him with taunts: "You’re going away forever—you ain’t never seeing sunlight again."

Once they were transferred to Huerfano County jail, the harassment stopped. The staff at Huerfano was professional. Lee-Grace was kept on one side of the jail with the women, unable to see her brothers, but that didn’t stop her from occasionally making birdcalls to them, "Caw-caw! Caw-caw!" Ryan and Dylan were put in separate pods, each with a handful of other inmates; the brothers couldn’t talk, but they could see each other through the Plexiglas. They both began to work out on the gym equipment, play cards, mostly spades, with their cellies, and write letters.

Ryan wrote Amber incessantly and included notes to his baby boy: "Hey Buddy. What you been up 2 suckin your thumb Well it took 22yrs but I quit. haha...I can’t wait 2 Be Free So we can be 2gether. Dress in matchin outfits." He told his son stories of his childhood: "I remember as a kid flying this kite it soared above the trees so high how time drags on son when you’re young. All you want to do is grow up than you get older and you wish the clock would slow down...Every time I’d kiss your mom my heart would beat faster time would slow down and my palms would get sweaty._ Everytime. _That’s how you know your in love It hurts when there not next to you. I hurt real bad. But I’ll live 4 the hope I can be with you and your mom again."