Page 74

CHAPTER 74

AT ANY OTHER TIME in my life, the situation might have made me laugh. I’d always appreciated the simple beauty of the universe’s little quirks, the unwritten laws that made sure five people texted or called the phone I’d left on the kitchen counter the very moment I slipped into a relaxing bath. The same laws ensured that if I chose to head to the supermarket makeup-less, disheveled, hung over, I would run into a client or an ex-boyfriend. Having car trouble in the middle of a post-apocalyptically unpopulated highway while I was worried about a stalker made sense within these laws. At least I didn’t need help changing a tire.

I did need help staying alive.

I pulled over, got out, and swore loudly at the collapsing back tire. I didn’t go and inspect it, not yet ready to see evidence of a deliberate puncture, proof that I’d been set up to need assistance from a supposedly well-meaning stranger on a lonely stretch of road like so many murder victims before me. I waited, gripping my phone, staring hopelessly down the two-lane strip of blacktop on my side of a weed-infested island that stretched as far as I could see. Overhead, big dark birds circled, too high up for me to see what they were. I looked at my phone and noticed an error message in the location streaming app. No service. I looked for the reception bars. Nada. I was in a black zone.

Of course I was.

I pulled my shoulders back and went to the trunk of the Chevy, which opened with a wiry yowl from the squeaky hinges. I shoved aside my overnight bag and the other detritus of my life — gym gear, work files, a bottle of chlorine for the rooftop pool at home — and wrestled out the spare tire and the jack. A shiver passed through me as I worked. I dumped the spare tire on the ground and paused to watch the forest beyond the highway, imagining a figure standing behind one of the lonely trees, watching me.

There was no one. I held my ragged breath to listen for cars on the wind — there were none. I told myself that at least I’d broken down on a long stretch of flat road so I would see anyone coming from miles away. I’d have time to get my gun from the front seat. To hide. To call 911.

I didn’t know what I would do if a carful of innocent people came along. Flagging them down might put them in danger, or there might be safety in numbers. It depended on how unhinged my follower was.

If there was a follower.

I got down on the blacktop and inspected the blown tire. My heart soared to see that the break in the rubber was from a roofing nail, not a knife slash. I jacked the car up, applied the tire iron, and loosened the lug nuts, keeping an eye on the road in both directions as I worked.

I wrenched the busted tire off the car, rolled it behind the trunk, and let it tip over and wobble to a stop on its side. I was rolling the new tire over to the axle when I heard a vehicle approach. An SUV appeared in the heat haze on the horizon. I straightened and took a couple of steps onto the road. When the car was within hailing distance, I saw a woman my age in the driver’s seat and a teenage girl next to her. With a pit in my stomach, I let them go, not wanting to draw them into the potential danger.

The hammering of my own heart distorted the sounds around me. I told myself again that I was okay. But my breathing was the giveaway. I knew the thin wheeze didn’t come from changing the tire. I was in better shape than that. I kept working, trying to watch the road as I sweated in the late-afternoon sun.

I heard the rumble of another car approaching and looked up to see a blue pickup. I tried to calm my breathing as I watched it approach. Before it was close enough for me to get a good look at the driver, it veered off the road.

It disappeared into the trees. After a few seconds, it reappeared, taking a dirt road I hadn’t noticed. I tracked the vehicle as it rumbled through the forest, parallel to the highway. It was level with me when it passed the army-green pickup, parked in the shade.

The tire iron fell from my grasp and clanged loudly on the blacktop. As I bent unsteadily to pick it up, my instincts telling me to arm myself and hide behind the rear of my car, I heard a voice.

“Don’t fucking move, Rhonda Bird,” a man said.