Page 80 of The Lie Maker

What if this nut had a gun? What if he started shooting? The only course of action was to keep driving. Maybe I’d see a cop I could flag down, or deliberately race past and encourage one to pursue me.

The truck pulled sharply into the other lane and roared past me. We were, at that moment, on a two-lane road with no oncoming traffic. As the huge truck zoomed by, I felt relieved. Okay, big man, show me how much horsepower you’ve got and I’ll happily eat your dust if you leave me the fuck alone.

But suddenly he cut in front of me and hit the brakes, forcing me onto the shoulder. I jammed on my own brakes and steered onto the gravel, narrowly avoiding broadsiding the truck, or sliding under it, given how high it sat off the ground.

The guy was getting out. He was a Marvel superhero in street clothes. Tall, broad shouldered, his head attached directly to his body without any discernible neck. Crew cut, shades, plaid shirt, jeans. He wasn’t carrying a gun, but it didn’t look as though he’d need one. He’d be able to shred me with his hands like I was made of crepe paper.

My window was already down, and I should have had the presence of mind to power it up, but instead, as he rounded the back of his truck, I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, I’m an asshole, I didn’t see you and—”

“You dumb fuck, where’d you get your license,” he said, then reached into my car, grabbed me by my jacket, and started to pull, like he was going to drag me out right through the open window.

It all happened so fast.

There was a shadow behind my attacker. I was looking more or less into the sun, so I couldn’t make him out clearly, and anyway, he was moving quickly. He had something in his hand, something long, and it whipped through the air, catching the pickup truck driver squarely in the back.

He let go of me, let out a “Fuck!” and started to spin around to see what the hell was going on, but before he’d turned all the way he took another blow, this one to the side of his head, and he went down like the sack of shit he was.

I blinked a couple of times and looked at the man who was still standing.

“Hi, son,” said Dad. “Maybe you’d like to grab a coffee or something.”

“Fuck me,” said Lana as I finished that part of the story. “How is that possible? He had to have been following you.”

“He was,” I said. “He’d come for another one of his occasional visits, but I was driving away from my place when he arrived, so he followed, waiting for the right moment when he could approach me. He was behind the pickup truck when I cut that guy off by accident, and he stayed on both of us. When he saw the guy force me off the road, he grabbed the baseball bat he always kept in the back of his car and saved my ass.”

“What happened to the truck driver?” she asked.

“I guess he lived,” I said. “There was never anything on the news about it. I drove past the spot later that afternoon and his truck was gone. Dad put him down but didn’t kill him.” I paused. “But that was just luck on the trucker’s part. Dad wasn’t even ruffled about it. I guess when you’ve done this sort of thing before...”

“Oh, my God,” Lana said. “But this time, I mean, that asshole could have killed you.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“So did you go for a coffee?”

I smiled. “Something stronger.”

We dragged my attacker over to his truck and propped him up against the front wheel.

“We need to call the police,” I said. “He might be dead.”

“He looks too big and stupid to die,” Dad said.

I was less certain. “If he isn’t dead, he probably needs to go to a hospital.”

I glanced around, took in our surroundings. There was nothing on either side of the road but trees, and so far, there hadn’t been any other cars passing by in either direction.

“Get in your car,” he said. “Follow me.”

Without another word, he headed back to his vehicle, parked on the shoulder about ten yards behind mine. A white Honda CR-V, one of those small crossover vehicles with, I noticed, a New Hampshire plate, the “Live Free or Die” state motto above the numbers.

I got into my car, backed up a few feet to get around the pickup, then got on the road behind Dad. I stayed on his tail, more focused on where he was going than where we actually were. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, he pulled off into a roadhouse parking lot. It was a bar and grill joint I’d never been to.

Dad was out of his car first, and was standing by my door when I got out.

“Hungry?” he said.

We went inside, took a table by the window.