Page 147 of Rev

My bike is cooled, but I figure I’ll pass the night here. No reason not to. Passed the night in worse places.

I almost miss it—the headlights slowing to a stop. It’s too far to hear the engine. I only catch the headlights in my peripheral, coasting, coasting. Stopping.

I watch for long minutes, but nothing happens. This makes me sit up and turn, watch more closely. You don’t stop out here for no reason, not at night.

The car stays stopped.

Then, finally, the driver’s door opens. A figure moves around the front, pops the hood, stares into it. This distance, can’t see much, only that the figure is female, and she don’t look like she has the first clue what she’s looking at. Confirmed when she closes the hood, goes around to the door, vanishes, reappears, and then starts walking.

Away from the car.

We’re at least two hundred miles from the nearest any-fuckin’-thing, so I don’t know where the hell she thinks she’s going, especially when it’s gonna be full night in about twenty minutes, and the temperature’s gonna drop down to teeth-chatter numbers.

Shit.

Goddammit, shit, fuck, shit.

I curse for another thirty seconds, trying to pretend I’m not gonna go save her dumb ass.

“Fine! Fuck!” I snap, out loud, to the night, as if somebody’d asked. I light my little fire, blow on it till it’s jumping and big enough to light my way back here.

And then I jog after the woman.

All the way there, right up until I’m within distance to make out her features and hear her feet, hear her sobbing, I have a feeling.

A familiar feeling.

This is gonna go sideways.

That’s the feeling. It’s a feeling that says, Kane, boy, you’re walking your country ass into some shit that don’t concern you.

Yet look at me.

“Hey,” I call, softly, when I’m in the scrub not ten feet from her. “Lady.”

She screams, jumps about ten feet vertical, spinning in place.

When she comes back down and finds me in the dark, all the blood in my body drains out of me.

My heart stops beating.

My soul does a twist, a somersault.

Time stops.

She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen in my entire godforsaken life.

One thought pounds in my skull, throbs through my veins in place of blood:

SHE…

IS…

MINE.