Crossroads/Borrowed Lives—2026-07-20 (Patreon)

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THE WEEK AHEAD by Addison Magee

Good morning. The week is about to start, and I’m in the kitchen with my new roommate, Hannah, drinking coffee and pretending we’re awake enough to make biscuits without confusing baking powder with something dangerous.

The moving shuffle is finally finished. In the micro apartments, Merritt and Caleb share a bathroom, Aidan and Jacob share one, and Conner and Devon share one. Two micros are still vacant.

In the two-bedroom units, it’s Hannah and me, Shay—also known as Mara—and Olivia, and Liza and Chloe.

Phase II has its own arrangement. Five of the eight second-floor micros are occupied by Shay’s security team: Eric, Ray, Ethan, Cole, and Logan. The third floor has three two-bedroom apartments, and Melissa Gaines is supposed to move into one of them.

That sounds like a housing report, but it matters because Crossroads keeps changing without losing what makes it Crossroads.

The common-area breakfast is still going. At this point, it’s part of the culture. Merritt offered to “better organize” it, which sounded suspiciously like schedules, assignments, and possibly a clipboard. I said no. The spontaneity is half the fun.

I do like deciding the basic plan the night before. That gives us enough structure to have food ready while leaving room for whoever wakes up first, whoever wants to help, and whatever sounds good once people start wandering downstairs.

Community is people, shared space, shared values, and mutual support.

Crossroads has all of that. It isn’t perfect, polished, or especially quiet. But people notice when someone needs help. They make room. They share what they have. And somehow, a group of apartments becomes a place where people belong.

Now it’s time for that breakfast I mentioned. Today is English muffin, biscuit, and sausage day. Hannah and I are making the biscuits.

We’ve had coffee, so everyone’s chances are improving.

See you next time.

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Chapter 3.1.38: BIG TIRES by Mara Voss

Like every day since he’s been sending them, Mr. Regent’s morning message was the same.

Alert Status: No known threats

Evan and I were planning our departure from Port Aransas. We stopped at a Valero for gas and Big Gulps, then pulled around to the side of the store to agree on a course. We were a couple of sips in when Evan nudged me.

“Situational awareness?”I scanned quickly. I wasn’t sure what had triggered him.

“White van. Five males.”As he said it, a 15-passenger van with five guys had just pulled up on the street. The men got out and were pretending not to look at us.

“Let’s bug out,” I said.

Just then, a pickup truck pulled in behind the van, blocking the driveway.

“Go now,” Evan said.

I was buckled in with my door locked before he got around to the driver’s seat. The Jeep started.

Before becoming decoys, both of us worked in security transportation. 

His training was never about movie-chase nonsense or proving he could make a vehicle do dramatic things. It was about getting people home. He was trained in a bunch of relevant driving skills like civilian defensive driving, skid control, hazard avoidance, low-flying airplanes, route selection, near-Earth orbit configuration. You get the idea.

My thing is movement. Track taught me pacing. Gymnastics taught me balance. Motorcycles taught me that panic is how you make a bad corner worse. Field logistics taught me that speed only helps if you picked the right way out.

That is probably the part people misunderstand. Evasion is not just going fast. Sometimes it is knowing the road you should not take, the parking lot that traps you, the alley that looks open until it is not, or the vehicle that can’t make the turn you need.

Almost none of that applied after we found ourselves blocked in by what we thought could be a threat to our safety. The survival index was up a notch—on the avoid, evade, defend, neutralize continuum, we had failed to avoid.

What applied most were the big tires.

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Evan backed up hard and turned tight. He turned the opposite direction and headed for the back of the parking lot.

Where an eight-inch concrete curb separated the parking lot we were in from the lot of the vet clinic behind it. Evan slowed and crawled over the curb, then gunned it.

I looked back at the men pointing, then turned back to my phone. I had Apple Maps already open. I started giving directions to get us to the highway out of town.

Once we had the cruise control set and the Jeep heading south, we called in to Mr. Regent. We told him what happened.

“Could be a non-Ryder event,” he said. “Nice new Jeep. Pretty girl. Could have been a plot to grab Shay.”Evan added a thought. “We don’t know if the van and truck were together. Could have been a group of day workers stopping in for a soda. Maybe the pickup-truck man had the snack money for the whole crew. But we weren’t about to take a chance.”

Mr. Regent replied, “Smart move. What next?”I answered. “We’re going to go to ground for a few days. Cash only… Stay off the grid. We’re still making our way south to the Rio Grande, then west.”“Baja awaits,” Mr Regent said. “You made a smart decision. Better to jump a curb than get jumped.”

Afterthoughts by Evan Calder

The frustrating part about what happened today is that we will probably never know what almost happened.

It could have been a move to get Shay. We had been in the Port Aransas area too long. Too many small patterns. Too many debit-card transactions close together. Gas, food, motel, another motel, another stop. We try to stay loose, but every decision leaves a footprint. If someone was tracking the right accounts, the right vehicle, or the right face, maybe they found us.

Or maybe it was nothing.

Maybe five guys in a van pulled up because they wanted snacks and cold drinks. Maybe the pickup behind them was just bad timing. Maybe they looked over because Mara and I were standing beside a new Jeep holding Big Gulps like we were posing for a travel ad. People look. That is not always threat behavior.

But the scariest possibility is that it had nothing to do with Shay Ryder at all.

What if they wanted the Jeep? Carjackings happen. Six people against two is bad math, especially if the six decide the two are easy. What if the van boxed one side and the pickup closed the back door? What if all they saw was a nice vehicle, a distracted couple, and a fast chance?

Or what if Mr. Regent was right in the worst ordinary way?

Maybe they wanted the pretty girl.

That sounds ugly to write, but pretending ugly things do not happen is not security. It would have been bold. Stupid, maybe. But bold and stupid still gets people hurt. Grab and go. The pickup blocks pursuit while the van leaves. By the time everyone realizes it was not just weird timing, the road has already swallowed them.

So we left.

No speech. No confrontation. No need to prove we were right.

We will never know what that moment really was, and maybe that is the point. We did not need to know. We only needed enough uncertainty to move.

Still… it is a lot to think about.

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