Page 112 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

Andy grabbed the baseball bat.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa!” Mike’s hands shot into the air as she cocked the bat over her shoulder. “Come on, beautiful. Let’s talk this—”

“You shut the fuck up, you fucking psycho.” Andy gripped the bat so tight that her fingers were cramping. “How did you find me?”

“Well, that’s a funny story.”

Andy jerked the bat higher.

“Wait!” he said, his voice raking up. “Hit me here”—he pointed down at his side—“you can fracture a rib, easy. I’ll probably drop like a flaming sack of shit. Or punch it into the center of my chest. There’s no such thing as the solar plexus but—”

Andy swung the bat, but not hard, because she wasn’t trying to hit him.

Mike easily caught the end of the bat with his hand. He had to step back to do it. His legs were about a shoulder-width apart. Or a foot’s width, which Andy soon found out when she kicked him in the nuts as hard as she could.

He dropped to the ground like a flaming sack of shit.

“Fuh—” He coughed, then coughed again. He was squeezing his hands between his legs, rolling on the front porch. Foam came out of his mouth, the same as Hoodie, but this time was different because he wasn’t going to die, he was just going to suffer.

“Well done.”

Andy jumped.

Paula Kunde was standing behind her. The shotgun was still resting against her shoulder. She said, “That’s the guy from the second drawing, right?”

Andy’s fear of Paula was overridden by her rage at Mike. She was sick of people treating her like a crash-test dummy. She patted his pockets. She found his wallet, his stupid rabbit’s foot keychain. He put up absolutely no resistance. He was too busy clutching his balls.

“Wait,” Paula said. “Your mother didn’t send you here, did she?”

Andy shoved the wallet and keys into her messenger bag. She stepped over Mike’s writhing body.

“I said wait!”

Andy stopped. She turned around and gave Paula the most hateful look she could muster.

“You’ll need this.” Paula dug around to the bottom of the change bowl and found a folded dollar bill. She handed it to Andy. “Clara Bellamy. Illinois.”

“What?”

Paula slammed the door so hard that the house shook.

Who the hell was Clara Bellamy?

Why was Andy listening to a fucking lunatic?

She crammed the dollar bill into her pocket as she walked down the steps. Mike was still huffing like a broken muffler. Andy did not want to feel guilty for hurting him, but she felt guilty. She felt guilty as she got into the Reliant. She felt guilty as she pulled away from the house. She felt guilty as she turned onto the next street. She felt guilty right up until she saw Mike’s white truck parked around the corner.

Motherfucker.

He had changed the magnetic sign on the side of the door.

LAWN CARE BY GEORGE

Andy jerked the Reliant to a stop in front of the truck. She popped the hatch. She found the box of Slim Jims and ripped it open. Nothing but Slim Jims. She opened the little cooler, something she hadn’t done since she’d found it back at Laura’s storage unit.

Idiot.

There was a tracker taped to the underside of the cooler lid. Small, jet black, about the size of an old iPod. The red light was blinking, sending back the coordinates of her location to a satellite somewhere in space. Mike must’ve put it there while Andy was passed out in the Muscle Shoals motel.

She chucked the cooler lid across the street like a Frisbee. She reached into the hatch and pulled out the sleeping bag and beach tote. She threw both into the front of Mike’s truck. Then she grabbed two weedeaters and a set of trimmers from the back and dropped them onto the sidewalk. The magnetic signs easily peeled off the doors. She slapped them onto the hood of the Reliant. Andy thought about leaving him the key, but fuck that. All the money was sitting in storage units. He could drive around in the Maxi-Pad box for a while.

She got into Mike’s truck. Her messenger bag went onto the seat beside her. The steering wheel had a weird fake leather wrap. A pair of dice hung from the rearview mirror. Andy jammed the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life. Dave Matthews warbled through the speakers.

Andy pulled away from the curb. Her brain summoned up a map as she drove toward the university. She figured she had about one thousand miles ahead of her, which was around twenty hours of driving, or two full days if she broke it up the right way. Dallas first, then straight up to Oklahoma, then Missouri, then Illinois, where she hoped like hell she could find a person or thing named Clara Bellamy.