Don't Turn Around

by Jessica Barry

  He looked at her sharply. “I thought you said you hadn’t heard about it.”

  She turned her attention back to wiping down the bar, but she could still feel him staring at her. “I remembered something about it when you were talking.”

  “How do you know he had fifty pounds on her? They don’t know who the girl is who wrote the article. She did it anonymously, which is even worse in my opinion. Cowardly.”

  “I was speaking generally,” she blustered. She felt a trickle of sweat run down the small of her back. “Usually, men weigh more than women, and they’re stronger. I’ve seen a picture of Jake, and he’s not exactly a small guy.”

  “Yeah, fair enough.” Ken’s eyes trailed up to the screen above her head. “Still think it was bullshit, though. Political correctness gone crazy.”

  “I’m going to go on break. You want another before I go?”

  He waved her away. “Nah, it’s fine. You go ahead. Sorry for getting heated. It’s just things like that just really boil my piss.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’ll be back in twenty.”

  She ducked into the break room, a cigarette already in her mouth. She lit it and took a long drag. Her pulse was still racing, and the nicotine made her feel woozy and a little nauseated.

  That was close. Too close.

  Melrose, New Mexico—198 Miles to Albuquerque

  You’re okay, Rebecca told herself, steadying her shaking hands under her armpits. You’re alive. There’s no reason to panic.

  Of course, that was a lie.

  She didn’t believe Cait’s story about teenagers driving that truck. She knew deep down, at the center of her core, that the truck had come after them deliberately. And as much as she wanted to think it might not be the case, she knew it was her they were after.

  She reached down into her bag and switched her phone on. No missed calls. No text messages. Just the lock screen of Patrick’s face pressed against hers, both smiling for the camera. Reception: no service.

  They were out of range. If he tried to call now, it would go directly to voicemail. It wouldn’t even ring—he would think that she’d turned off her phone. She could tell him the battery had died, but if he called the home phone and she didn’t pick up there, either . . . No. She had to hope he was asleep in his hotel room. Dead to the world. She breathed out a long, shuddering sigh and shoved the phone back in her bag. She’d keep it on, just in case.

  “You waiting for a call?” Cait asked. There was no warmth in her voice.

  Rebecca kept her head down. “I just wanted to see if I had any reception,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “How long has your phone been switched on?”

  “I just turned it on.”

  “You sure about that?” Cait’s voice was icy.

  “Yes,” she said, as forcefully as she could manage. “I’m sure.”

  “There’s a reason I asked you to turn your phone off. Do you understand that reason?”

  “I’m not stupid,” Rebecca said. She was hot with shame.

  “I’m not saying you’re stupid,” Cait said evenly. “I’m just wondering if you fully appreciate the dangers of the situation.”

  “Of course I do,” she snapped.

  Cait lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Well, I’m not too sure of that, all things considered.”

  Rebecca wanted to slap her. It was Rebecca’s life that was on the line here, not hers. Cait was just a glorified taxi driver with a chip on her shoulder and an ancient Jeep that smelled like the inside of a gym locker. Rebecca should be doing this on her own, not reliant on some stranger’s charity. She hated the fact that she was in this position, hated the fact that she was weak, hated the fact—most of all—that she knew deep down that Cait was right. She was in danger, and she had to be careful. More careful than she’d ever been in her life.

  She took a deep breath and arranged her features in her best approximation of contrition. “I’m sorry I turned my phone on,” she said quietly. “I just wanted to make sure no one had tried to contact me. If someone had, they might wonder why I didn’t answer and get suspicious.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Cait pointed out. “Why would someone be suspicious about you not answering your phone?”

  She was like a dog with a bone. Rebecca’s palms began to tingle, something they always did when she was nervous. “I don’t know,” she said carefully. “I guess I just wanted to make sure.”

  Cait made a noise that was more like a grunt, and Rebecca saw that she believed her. “Well, just keep it switched off from now on, okay?”

  Rebecca nodded and pulled the phone out of her bag.

  “Wait.”

  Rebecca looked up at Cait, her finger hovering over the power button. “What?”

  Cait ran a hand across her mouth. “While you’ve got it out, can you look up the nearest gas station?”

  She shook her head. “I still don’t have service.”

  Cait cursed under her breath.

  “Are we running really low?” Rebecca asked, a flutter of nerves batting around in her stomach.

  “No, not too bad.” There was a tightness in her voice that Rebecca didn’t like. Her eyes moved to the gas needle. It was deep in the red. Cait caught the look on Rebecca’s face and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ve driven on empty for miles and miles before. The gauge isn’t right.”

  “How long do you think until the next town?”

  “I’m not sure. It can’t be too far, though, and I think the next town along is pretty big. We shouldn’t have a problem finding somewhere to fill up.”

  Rebecca could tell Cait was bluffing. She didn’t like the idea of stopping—not after the man in the diner, not after the truck—but she liked the idea of running out of gas in the middle of the desert even less.

  Her eyes wandered over to the needle on the gas gauge. “Do you have a map in the glove compartment? I could see if there’s anything marked out on it.”

  Cait shook her head. “I’ve done this route before,” she said. “It’s just a straight shot on 60. I didn’t think I’d need a map.” She had the good grace to look faintly embarrassed. Of course she wouldn’t have a map, Rebecca reminded herself. She’s a kid. Though, saying that, when was the last time she herself had used a map?

  She had a flash of the trips she’d taken with her parents as a kid, her dad driving while her mom wrestled to read one of the huge maps they’d been sent by AAA. Her mother hadn’t liked to fly. No matter how many times Rebecca’s father had explained the mechanics to her, she still didn’t trust the idea of something that big and that heavy somehow ascending into the sky. When her father was still in the navy and scattered all over the globe, her mother had forced herself to fly—she’d pop a Valium, go to sleep, and wake up in a different time zone, groggy and disoriented and faintly surprised by her survival—but once he retired and they settled in Alameda, she declared her flying days were over. “Emergencies only,” she used to say, though she would never be drawn out on what constituted an emergency. She didn’t board another plane for the rest of her life.

  That meant that Rebecca’s childhood vacations were limited to places within driving distance of their house. Not that there wasn’t a ton to see around there—they’d gone to Big Sur and Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon by the time she was ten. These trips were rarely planned. She would just wake up one Saturday morning and the station wagon would be packed and she would be told to brush her teeth and wash her face and be down in the car in ten minutes. She would grab a stack of books and her Discman and the pillow from her bed, and within the hour they’d be driving over the San Rafael Bridge or down through San Jose, the morning light streaming through the windows while U2 played tinnily through her headphones.

  Once, when her mother had declared a desire to see snow, they had driven up through Northern California and Oregon and most of Washington to the border with British Columbia. Rebecca could still remember the
slap of cold air on her cheeks when she opened the car door, and the soft crunch of the snow underneath her unsuitably thin sneakers.

  She felt the familiar ache in the center of her breastbone. God, she missed them.

  Cait was watching her again. The earlier severeness had been washed away, replaced by a careful, solicitous kindness. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked gently, and Rebecca realized that she was apologizing.

  The truth was, she was too hot and nauseated, and there was a headache blooming at the center of her forehead, right between her eyes. “I’m okay,” she lied.

  “Well, just let me know if you need anything.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Thanks.” She let the silence lie between them for a few seconds. “It’s my husband,” she said finally. “That’s why I keep checking my phone. He’s away on business, and sometimes he calls me late at night if he can’t sleep, and if I don’t answer . . .” She waited to see how Cait would react. A lot of people knew her husband—and knew her by extension—and she’d been wondering if Cait was one of them.

  But Cait’s face stayed neutral. “I get it. How about this? You turn off your location information, and I’ll stop hassling you about leaving your phone on.” She shrugged. “I can’t promise he’ll be able to get through if he calls, considering there’s no reception, but it’ll give you a better shot.”

  Rebecca felt a rush of relief. “Would that be okay?” She was already reaching for her phone.

  “Yeah, should be.”

  Rebecca flicked off the little green switch and slid the phone into her bag again. “Thanks.”

  Cait nodded. “No problem.”

  Rebecca waited for the follow-up questions, but none came. If Cait was surprised about the fact that she was married, she hid it well. She felt a swell of gratitude as she turned her face back toward the window and watched the bleached-out desert sail by.

  She felt safer already.

  Two Years Earlier

  Rebecca was eight weeks pregnant when she got the call.

  She didn’t answer it at first—she didn’t recognize the number and assumed it was a robocall trying to sell her insurance—but it flashed up again a minute later, and this time she picked up.

  The woman introduced herself as Kelly. “We live next door to your father,” she explained, and the bottom dropped out of Rebecca’s stomach.

  “What happened? Is he okay?”

  There was a pause on the line. It was only for a second, but it was long enough for Rebecca to know her life was about to change. “There’s been an accident,” Kelly said gently, and Rebecca started to cry.

  A car had hit a dog outside her father’s house. He must have been watching from the window, because as soon as it happened, he was out the door and running down the porch steps to help. In his hurry, he missed a step and fell headfirst onto the concrete sidewalk below. The driver of the car called an ambulance. Kelly followed it to the hospital, which was where she was calling from. “The doctors won’t tell me much,” she said. “They say they can only discuss his condition with family.” Another pause. “I’d get out here quick if you can.”

  Rebecca flew out that night. Patrick was in Aspermont and couldn’t make it back in time, so she went on her own. By the time she got to the hospital, her father had been on life support for nearly twelve hours. He had a DNR on his file, but the EMTs had intubated before they’d had the chance to check, and now it would require a family member to make the decision.

  Rebecca was the only family he had left.

  She gave herself an hour with him, but no longer. She knew if she let it stretch beyond that, she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to let him go. It was what he wanted, though—to be let go. He’d told her as much several times over the years, first when her mother got sick and they’d sat sentry at her bedside and watched the cancer eat her down to the bones, and again a few years later when he had a minor heart attack. “Don’t ever let me rot in a hospital bed,” he’d said to her. “When it’s my time, it’s my time.”

  She held his hand and talked to him. She told him about Texas, about the big house he’d never gotten the chance to see and the tamale place down the road he would have loved. She talked to him about Patrick’s work as a congressman and imagined him rolling his eyes.

  He’d never warmed to Patrick. On her wedding day, right before he walked her down the aisle, he’d held her back and told her there was still time to call it off. “I love him,” she’d told him, laughing. She was his little girl. She understood that letting go was hard. “This is what I want.” He’d leaned over and brushed a kiss against her cheek and said, “Okay, sweetheart. Whatever you want. Just know I’ll always be there for you, okay?” Patrick later told her that her father had shaken his hand so hard at the top of the aisle, he thought he could hear bones snap.

  Now she told him her favorite stories from when she was a kid. Him and her mother swinging her through the surf at Crown Beach. The time they went to Disneyland and she’d made him ride Big Thunder Mountain with her and he’d thrown up in the garbage can as soon as the ride finished. The cake they’d made for her mother’s birthday, lopsided and Pepto-pink and tasting somehow of sawdust.

  She tried not to look at his face, slack and pale, or notice how small his body looked in the bed. He’d been a big man, her father, broad-shouldered and six feet even. A military man to his core. But, she realized, age had started to chip away at him. She allowed herself to feel grateful that he wouldn’t have to suffer through the indignities of being elderly. He would have hated it.

  Right before she signaled for the doctor, she curled herself around his body and hugged him close. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re going to be a granddad.” She was sure that she saw his eyelids flutter, but when she looked again, his face was as still and placid as a lake.

  She watched them pull the tube from his throat and listened to the heart monitor flatline, and then she’d taken a cab back to her father’s house and curled up in the bed he had shared with her mother and tried not to think about the fact that she was an orphan now at the age of thirty-three. The house smelled like him, and she found herself burrowing her face in an old sweater of his, trying to breathe him into her.

  At some point, she fell asleep.

  When she woke up in the early hours of the following morning, she was cramping, and when she stumbled into the bathroom, her underwear was spotted with blood.

  Outskirts of Tolar, New Mexico—180 Miles to Albuquerque

  The engine gave out twenty minutes later, letting out a sad cough before coasting them to the side of the road.

  Cait ran a hand across her face. “Shit.”

  “Do you have a gas can in the car?” Even as the words left her mouth, Rebecca knew the answer. If there was a gas can, Cait wouldn’t be swearing.

  Cait winced. “I usually do, but . . .”

  Rebecca felt a prickle of irritation. She knew she was meant to feel grateful to this girl—and yes, that’s what Cait was, a girl, not a woman, not a grown-up—but this was irresponsible. How could she have been so careless? Now they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of flagging someone down to help, and even if they did see someone, how could they be sure it wouldn’t be some maniac? The man in the diner, whoever had been driving that truck . . . they were coming for her, right now, and there was no place to hide.

  The air inside the Jeep suddenly felt stagnant and soup-thick. The seat belt was tight on her shoulder, and the skin underneath chafed. The world outside started to recede, frame by frame, and her field of vision filled with black stars. Her hand scrambled at the door. She had to get out. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Wait, Rebecca—” She heard Cait’s voice behind her shoulder, but it sounded faint and far away. The black stars were getting bigger. She had to get out of this goddamn Jeep. She had to get away.

  The handle popped open underneath her grip and the door swung open. The night air was like a glass of ice water thro
wn into her face: cold enough to shock her out of her own mind. She took a few deep lungfuls of clean, crisp air, so sharp they almost hurt.

  “What are you doing? Are you okay?” Cait had climbed out of the car, too, and was watching her with a combination of bafflement and concern.

  She took a deep breath. The stars were receding, and her mind had cleared. “Sorry, I get a little claustrophobic sometimes. I just needed to get some air.”

  “You are really pale. Do you want some water?”

  “I’m fine now, honestly.”

  “Okay. Just let me know if I can get you anything.”

  How can you get me anything if you can’t even get us where we’re going? “What are we going to do?”

  “Call a tow truck, I guess. See if they’ll send someone out with a gas tank, or tow us to the nearest station,” Cait said, biting savagely at a cuticle. “I’m so sorry about this. I don’t understand what happened. I filled up the tank before I picked you up, so we should have been fine.”

  “Do you think there was a leak?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember hitting any big bumps or anything, though, so I don’t know how that could have happened.” Cait ducked back into the Jeep and started rummaging around in the glove compartment. Rebecca heard a muffled curse. “No signal,” Cait said, holding up her phone. “What about you?”

  Rebecca checked her phone. “Me, neither.”

  Cait kept her face neutral, but Rebecca could see the panic in her eyes. “Oh well,” she said, her voice unnaturally high. “We’ll just have to rely on the kindness of strangers. I’m sure someone will come by soon enough.”

  Rebecca felt a flicker of fear. This was the person who was responsible for getting her to Albuquerque alive, but right now she looked like a scared little kid struggling to keep it together. She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “We don’t have a choice. Anyway, flagging someone down can’t be any more dangerous than sitting on the side of the road in the middle of the night, waiting to freeze to death.”