Wanderlust

by Skye Warren

  “What’s the deal with the book?”

  I glanced at him. “What?”

  “You told me the story from it, about the girl and the canoe. Is that why you keep it?”

  I played at the hem of my dress, distracted and jittery. “Not really.”

  “So what’s the big deal with Niagara Fucking Falls?”

  Despite myself, I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Hunter to be irreverent whenever possible. “No big deal, okay? I’m just curious. Am I not allowed to be curious?”

  He eyed me. “Mouthy, huh?”

  I was mouthy, though I wasn’t sure where the hint of attitude had come from. Was I becoming more comfortable with him? Was I coming to trust him?

  Scary thought.

  “So you want to go there. Then why were you heading to Little Rock?”

  “Didn’t have enough money,” I mumbled. Then stronger, “But I guess you know that, seeing as you already looked through my stuff.”

  He snorted. “Okay, so why haven’t you gone there before this?”

  Because of my mother, I wanted to cry. But that was a lie.

  “Too scared, I guess,” I mumbled. It wasn’t as if I had any pride with him anyway.

  His gaze softened.

  A smile turned my lips. “Don’t imagine you have much experience with that.”

  He squinted into the distance. “Depends on what you’re scared of. Me, I’m scared of standing still.”

  My heart skipped a beat at his confession. Maybe we could open up to each other after all…and then what? What as the end goal? Even Niagara had lost some of its appeal, just another point on the map, a way-station to a true and unimaginable destination.

  I expected us to stop at another fast food restaurant or a diner. But this time, we didn’t pull off the road for him to stash me in the back. Instead we exited the freeway where a large sign had the icons for gas, food, and lodging, and continued on until we were pulling into a truck stop.

  He wasn’t hiding me.

  This truck stop was a lot like the first one, and it made my heart speed up. Maybe it was foolish to hope, but he could let me go here. I’d served my usefulness. I had pried into his life. I had opened up about my hopes and dreams. For whatever reason, he could be finished with me, and now he’d leave me here in a place where he found me.

  So why did I feel disappointment?

  It was premature, I knew, but a spark of hope could conflagrate a wildfire. If I were freed, I would call the cops, file a report, and return to my car. Then I would drive to Little Rock, where hopefully the job was still available, the one at the camera shop where I had never been. I swallowed thickly. So why did it feel like a step backward?

  Faced with the loss of him, I suddenly wanted what Hunter could show me. For all that he was a little unhinged, he saw things—really saw them. I wanted that. Maybe I even wanted him to keep me.

  But that was insane. Completely loco. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see the craziness of that wish—the same way a Kamikaze pilot must have felt in the second after he volunteered, like what did I get myself into?

  Besides, the part of me that could be spontaneous and risk-taking had atrophied long ago. I was like my mother, bound by fear, but instead of being restricted by geography I was restrained by societal conventions. He was a bad guy, a kidnapper, and I shouldn’t want anything he had to offer—not even freedom.

  So I pressed my lips together and ignored the flutter in my belly. Even when he pulled into one of the long diagonal parking spots meant for trucks—right next to another one!—I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even trying to hide our presence here. It was all out there in the open, in the waning late afternoon light.

  He turned to me. “Don’t give me any trouble, okay? Let’s just have a quiet dinner.”

  I blinked. We would eat…and then he would turn me loose?

  “If you can’t be good for your own sake, do it for theirs. Anyone you get to help you answers to me, and they’ll live to regret it. Understand?”

  “You’re not letting me go?”

  He stared impassively for a moment, then he laughed. “I thought we went over this. No.”

  Was that relief? Oh Jesus, it was. I was as crazy as he was.

  “I just thought…you might…”

  His voice lowered. “Sunshine, if you’re trying to look less appealing to me, it’s not working.”

  My heart thumped in response, and I felt my eyes widen. “But the people inside. They’ll see.”

  “They’ll see that you’re mine and if they’re smart, they won’t lay a finger on you.”

  I had been up-close-and-personal with this man’s cajones and not even realized how huge they must be. He had no fear, none. He was going to walk into a non-empty place of business during the day with a captive in tow. And judging by the disturbingly self-aware smile that played at the corner of his lips, he wouldn’t even break a sweat doing so.

  It was strangely attractive. My own lips pursed in restraint, but I wanted to smile too, without fully understanding the humor. We could laugh at the people we would see, blind to the egregious crime happening in front of them, or maybe we’d chuckle at his chutzpah. But I feared that the joke was really on me. Stupid, naïve girl who’s too afraid to cry for help in a public place. I’d show him. Hopefully.

  This diner was similar in feel to the last one, both grungy and aging poorly, but this one had at least tried to be homey once. Cherry wood paneling lined the walls and formed booths over brick-colored linoleum. Fake ivy along the walls was coated in thick layers of dust. A young black waitress poured coffee at a table where three men sat.

  We walked inside hand-in-hand, so I knew that his hands weren’t sweating. Mine were, though, and clammy, trembling, as if I were the one doing something wrong instead of him. Hunter didn’t wait for the waitress to look up. He just tugged me over to a booth.

  He gestured me inside in what could have been mistaken for a courtly gesture. I scooted in and he sat beside me, hemming me in. As the waitress walked over to us, he pushed up my skirt, slipped his hand over my thigh, and slid his fingers into the crevice between my legs. I tensed.

  If the waitress noticed, she didn’t show it. After a quick glance at Hunter’s face then mine, she turned to her notepad. “Can I take your order?”

  “We’ll have steak and eggs. Medium rare. Two over easy. I’ll have a Coke.”

  He turned to me. “What do you want to drink?”

  “I…I…” My lips were numb, tongue tied in knots. I could barely function on my own but now there was pressure. What if I messed up, and this girl got in trouble? She was about my age. What if he took her too? Of course, all these thoughts swirling around were making me mess up, and I sat there with my mouth open like an idiot, until she looked up from her pad.

  “Orange juice,” I said weakly.

  After she left, I glanced over at the men, but they were engrossed in their meals. Hunter’s thumb brushed over my skin—back and forth, and it sparked something very near there. I felt my skin almost ripple beneath his, as if it could urge him closer to that heat.

  Abruptly, he stood and slid into the seat opposite me.

  “There,” he said. “Now we can talk.”

  The air beside me felt uncommonly cool, my thigh bare. I missed his presence, I realized with dismay. He sent me a vague smile that said he knew exactly what I felt.

  “Prison,” he said succinctly. “That’s what I did before I started trucking.”

  My lips parted in shock. I mean, sure, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was.

  He grinned briefly, running his finger along a crack in the table. Then his expression turned serious…troubled. “Predictable, really. The ex-con driving a semi, preying on innocent young women. I’m a stereotype.”

  I frowned, perpetually unnerved by his penchant for plain-speaking. It would have been easier to take if he had sex with me in a moment of lust-madness, then walked away with the forgetfulness of the
unkind. But he seemed to know exactly what he was doing with me, and though sometimes it seemed to bother him, he had no plans to stop. He wasn’t lacking in morals, he was willfully going against his morals just to have me, which was terrifying but also sent a small thrill down my spine.

  “I suppose you’ll be even more scared of me now.”

  I was quiet a moment. “That depends. What were you in prison for?”

  Surprise flashed in his eyes at my boldness, and good, it was time I returned the favor.

  “What do you think?” he asked softly. “It’s not so hard to figure out.”

  My throat seemed to swell, and thickly, I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Come now.” His voice was faintly mocking, but who—who was the target? The answer was made clear with his next words. “I know sometimes I come across the perfect gentleman, but surely you can think of something I might do wrong, something cruel and vicious and inhumane? Say the words, sunshine.”

  I shook my head, nostrils flaring as my body prepared for flight, even as my mind knew there was nowhere to go.

  “Aggravated rape.”

  The air seemed to leak from between the yellow-brown blinds on the windows, through the smudged panes of the door, anywhere but here. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Did you do it?”

  He shrugged. “Some people thought I was innocent. The ones who counted didn’t.”

  I thought of the rosary hanging from his rear-view mirror, of the man who would no longer speak his name. Someone close enough to gift Hunter with faith but who didn’t have faith in him.

  “And you.” His mouth twisted in a cruel imitation of a smile. “More than anyone, you know how guilty I am.”

  I found my voice. “And those girls. They know too.”

  “Do they? I’ll take your word for it.”

  I shut my eyes at his cavalier tone. Didn’t he care about them? Sometimes it seemed to pain him when he hurt me. Maybe it was a sickness, an impulse he couldn’t control or a personality shift that took over him at those times. But he seemed fully aware every time he had taken me. I was just making excuses for the man who held my fate in his hands. False hope that he would do right by me in the end.

  The waitress returned with our food, setting it down in front of a silent Hunter and myself.

  She kept her gaze trained on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”

  He reached into his back pocket and she flinched. But he only pulled out a handful of bills.

  “This should cover it,” he said. “Keep the change. And don’t come back to the table.”

  She snatched the money and scurried back to the kitchen.

  Hunter stood without touching his food. He seemed agitated after his confession, far more affected than he wanted to appear.

  “We won’t be stopping again until morning, so eat up. Come straight outside when you’re done.” He sent me a dark look. “Don’t make any trouble, sunshine.”

  I watched him leave the diner, his confession still roiled through my body. Sometimes it was better not to know. Did he also feel sick to his stomach? Is that why he left without eating? I didn’t know. I shouldn’t care about him anyway.

  I looked down at my food as the grease cooled, leaving an unappetizing sheen. He probably wouldn’t know if I didn’t eat it, but I considered it anyway, just to be obedient and to stave off the hunger for the rest of the night. But why was I thinking like this?

  He’d left me—unattended.

  Sure, I could see his silhouette through the musty curtains right out front. He was blocking the exit, but not the only one. There must be another one out back that the employees used. Here was my chance to get away.

  Maybe I could fool myself into going along with him. Consent and cooperate and let myself be used just so I didn’t have to be a victim. But that was all veneer, like the slick coating of grease that formed on my steak and eggs. It changed how it looked, not what it was.

  A convicted rapist. I had no choice but to run.

  I stood quickly, heading toward the back where the waitress had been. The raucous conversation grew abruptly quiet. I could feel the men’s gazes on me, but I resolutely kept my eyes averted, mimicking the waitress. She’d seemed to inherently understand the dangers of Hunter and the other men. Maybe that had been my problem from the first. I’d seen Hunter leaning against the cab of his truck. I should have run in the other direction but I hadn’t…and somehow that had led me here.

  Like stepping through a white trash looking glass, I had ended up in a different truck stop. I’d become a different girl. One who knew how to suck a cock, for one thing. One who knew what the sunset looked like from the tallest hill as far as the eye could see. One with enough courage to run when the opportunity presented itself.

  In the back, the girl was washing dishes in a large steel basin.

  Her eyes flashed with fear when she saw me. “You can’t come back here.”

  “Please. Help me. I need help.”

  “Not me.” She shook her head as if I were threatening her. “I can’t help you.”

  “Just call the police. Let me call them.”

  A large, heavy-set man came out of the back, his yellow-stained wife-beater pulling up short of covering the dark, bulbous skin of his belly.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  The girl shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes.

  “Please, that man out there, he kidnapped me. You have to call the police.”

  His eyes seemed too large for his head, not out of surprise, just naturally that way. I could see the whites even as he frowned. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  I drew in a shaky breath. “He’s…he’s going to hurt me if you don’t help.”

  A flash of sympathy lit his bloodshot eyes. Then it was gone.

  “If I were to go calling the cops on my customers, I would be out of business in a week. Or wind up dead on my office floor.”

  Desperation streaked through me. I ran away from his cold, pitying stare and pushed through the back door. There was nothing but empty fields to my right. On the other side, a short row of trucks. I needed to make a decision. Hunter was still out front. His truck was out there too. Soon he’d come looking for me. I had to make a decision.

  Since the fields were wide open, he’d see me in a minute. He’d catch me and what? Punish me? I didn’t know, but there was no turning back now. I almost wished I hadn’t run now that I saw how pathetic my options were, but it was too late for regrets.

  A click from the door behind me warned me that it was going to open. I didn’t know who it was, but I ran toward the row of trucks. Footsteps pounded behind me, barely audible above the rasping of my own breath. I reached the first truck and darted behind it, but I was slower than I’d hoped, weakened by days of inactivity and sparse diet. A fist tangled in my hair. I felt myself yanked back against a tall, unyielding body.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  An estimated 5,000 bodies have been found at the foot of the falls since 1850.

  “Lookie what I found,” the man holding me said.

  Not Hunter. Suddenly my fear was a hundred times worse. I hadn’t known I trusted Hunter but faced with another trucker, I knew I did. Whether it was a sickness or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I believed that Hunter wouldn’t truly harm me, but this man?

  No.

  I fought in a wild clash of soft punches and hopelessness. I heard laughing and a curse when I caught something soft beneath my fingernail. Thick fingers grabbed my arms, wrenching them above my head as I was twisted to the ground.

  “Let me go.” It felt like a whisper, low and grating the walls of my throat, but through the melee, they heard me.

  “Now why would I do that when the fun’s only started?”

  “He’ll make you pay,” I said, and knew then that it was true.

  The men just laughed.

  One of them knelt between my thighs, unbuckling his belt. I closed my eyes against the sight of his
thin, glistening erection. Rough hands yanked at my hem, pulling it up. The air felt cool against my heated skin before they grabbed my nipples and twisted.

  Something slick poked around my thighs, sliding through the folds of my sex. He was trying to find his way inside. It felt like being violated with a fish. I was going to vomit, and the way they were holding me down, I would probably choke on it.

  An unholy sound rent the air, sending chills along my exposed skin. It sounded like death. Was it me? But no, I was still on the ground. It was the man between my legs who had moved. Pain shot through my limbs as I curled in on myself, rolling to my side though one person still held my arm.

  There was a shout, and the hand holding down my right arm was lifted. I flailed, hitting and scratching, though it didn’t move them. Dimly, I registered the sounds of flesh on flesh—not mine though.

  The sound of flesh hitting flesh was punctuated by grunts. My vision cleared. Hunter was poised over one of the guys at his feet, raining down blows onto a man. As I watched in horror, the man twitched and then laid still, his face already too bloody to be recognizable.

  Hunter looked like some kind of avenging angel, but an angel would never pull a knife from his shoe with a glint in his eye. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what happened next. I heard it instead, just the whisper of sound as sharp metal sliced through the air, its abrupt quieting as it met some solid object, and the thud of a body as it was dropped.

  The final man was pulled off me, practically lifted into the air above me before being thrown a few feet in a spray of gravel. The man fought back, but he was no match for Hunter, who pummeled him until his head fell with a thud.

  I sat there, open-mouthed with shock, my body still lewdly exposed. Hunter came to stand over me, breathing hard, his face a grotesque mask of violence. His hands were covered in blood and bruises. Not an angel—a demon, and somehow sweeter that a beast so savage had saved me.

  “I told you not to start trouble,” he ground out, his broad chest heaving.

  Tears slid down his throat. Would he hurt me now? If he hit me like he’d just beaten them, I’d die. In fact, I thought for a minute that they were dead, but low groans in the air proved otherwise.