She risked one more look at her phone. Three missed calls, none of them from known numbers. They could be robocalls, she told herself, but she knew better than that. Robocalls stopped after nine p.m., and it was close to ten. The post had gone up on 4chan an hour ago, which experience had taught her was more than enough time for them to find her new number. She’d have a lot more calls coming her way before the night was over.
“Cheer up, maybe it’ll never happen.” She looked up to see Ken grinning at her. He stopped when he saw the look on her face. “Hey, you okay? You don’t look so hot.”
“I’m fine,” she said, grabbing his empty glass and pouring out a fresh draft.
He nudged Nick with an elbow. “What do you think? Boy trouble?”
Nick grunted. His eyes stayed fixed on the TV.
Cait pushed down a flash of anger. “I’m just having a bad day, that’s all.”
“And what’s this ‘bad day’ called? Joe? Fred?”
“Fuck off, Ken.” She saw the slapped look on his face and instantly regretted it. She’d just broken one of the cardinal rules of bartending: she’d stopped getting the joke. “Sorry, I didn’t mean . . . I’m just having a really shitty day, that’s all.”
He waved her away, but she could tell he was hurt.
She nodded toward his draft. “You want a chaser with that? On the house.”
“Nah, you’re okay. The wife’ll smell it on me.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“Yeah, well.” He took a long swig from his beer and turned his eyes to the TV above her head. He had a strange smile on his face, like he knew something nobody else did, and he found it particularly funny. “I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other.” His eyes flicked to hers. “Hey, I heard you got yourself into a little trouble,” he said quietly. Nick’s eyes had unpeeled themselves from the screen, and he was watching her, waiting.
Dread ran through her like a hot knife. So far, nobody at the bar had connected her to the Jake article, though she knew it was probably just a matter of time. She knew Stacy wouldn’t be happy about it. It was the wrong kind of attention to be bringing to the place, and she’d been looking for a reason to fire Cait since the minute she stepped through the door. The last thing she needed was Ken flapping his big mouth about it. “Oh yeah?” She turned her back to him and started straightening out the bottles on the top shelf. “What kind of trouble is that?”
He paused for a minute and locked eyes with hers. There was something there she hadn’t seen before, a reckless kind of malice. He knew he was putting her on edge, and he was enjoying it. But it was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced by his familiar good-natured bluster. “Came in last week and Stacy told me you’d blown off your shift. Said you had some excuse about having some kind of dental emergency.” He winked at her. “I think you were playing hooky.”
“I lost a crown,” she said. “I was eating a Bullseye and it came straight out.” This was true, though the dentist who’d fitted the temporary crown had told her it was probably from grinding her teeth at night. She’d been doing that a lot these past few days, waking up in a cold sweat with a sore jaw and a free-floating sense of dread.
He blew out his cheeks in a pantomimed version of disbelief. “Sounds like some dog-ate-my-homework shit to me, pardon my French.”
“Have a look yourself.” She leaned over the bar and opened her mouth wide. She pointed to a back molar that was too white and slightly lumpy. “I’ve got to go back to make it permanent next week.”
Ken looked impressed. “Well, I apologize. It seems we were slandering your good name for nothing.”
She wagged a finger at him. “It wouldn’t be the first time. You want another?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, pushing the glass toward her. Nick did the same, eyes already fixed back on the screen.
She hoped they didn’t notice how her hands were shaking when she poured out another round.
Vaughn, New Mexico—110 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait rubbed at the spot on her collarbone where the seat belt had bitten into the flesh. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the road, or what had been the road a minute ago but was now just an endless sea of black.
“I—I think we’ve lost him.”
She looked over at Rebecca, who was squinting into the side mirror, a pained look on her face. Cait’s eyes followed. There was nothing there now, no sign of the truck’s headlights or the silver gleam of its grille. Just darkness, everywhere, enveloping and terrifying in equal measure.
Cait nodded. “I saw him take 60. He’s heading to Vaughn now.” Just like that, it was over. They’d been spared, at least for now. She turned to Rebecca. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. Are you?”
Cait didn’t answer. How could she possibly be okay? A man had tried to kill them. Again. They may have lost him for now, but chances were good that he’d be back. And deep down, she knew she was the one who was responsible for the whole sorry mess.
“I think I need to pull over for a minute.” She was already easing over onto the shoulder.
Rebecca flinched. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We should keep going. He could come back . . .”
“I just need a break, just for a second.” Cait pulled the Jeep to a stop.
The two sat in silence. The radio found a signal, and Van Morrison came on, the car suddenly filled with him singing about marvelous nights. Outside, it was pitch black. Cait flicked the headlights back on, and the scarred tarmac reemerged. “I’m going to get out and check the damage,” she said, already tugging on the handle. She was desperate for some air.
Rebecca reached out and grabbed her wrist. “I don’t think you should get out of the car.” In the moonlight, her face looked pale and stricken. “Please.”
Cait shook her off. “I need to see if it’s serious before we get back on the road. What if the fuel line is nicked?”
“He didn’t hit us hard. There’ll be a dent on the bumper, nothing worse. We should keep driving until we get to the next town. It’s too dangerous out here.”
“I just need to get out, okay?” Cait opened the door, trying to hide how badly her hands were shaking. “I need a fucking cigarette.”
“Fine.” Rebecca scrambled for the door handle. “I’m coming, too.”
Cait opened her mouth to protest but closed it again. There was no point in fighting her on it. She probably needed the air, too.
The night air was icy-sharp. Cait tapped out a cigarette and offered her the pack. Rebecca shook her head before changing her mind and taking one for herself. She took a drag and felt something loosen at the back of her skull, just before her stomach turned and she started to cough.
Cait watched her, bemused. “Not a natural smoker.”
“I haven’t done it in years,” Rebecca spluttered.
The two of them smoked in silence, cigarette smoke mixing with the white fog of their hot breath.
Rebecca turned to her. The tip of her cigarette flared red in the dark. “I couldn’t see his face. Could you?”
“No. It was too dark.” Cait took a long drag. “I’m pretty sure it was the same truck from before.”
“Me, too.”
Cait took another drag and tossed the butt. The red ember flared in the dirt. It was time to pull the plug. She’d pushed it too far now, had taken too many risks with their lives. She may have broken every rule in the book to get here, but she was still part of the Sisters of Service. She had a duty of care to this woman, regardless of who her husband was, or how much of a hypocrite she might be, or how good the story would have been if Cait had been able to tell it. It was time to fix this mess. “We need to call the police.”
Rebecca looked as if she’d been slapped. “We can’t do that.”
“Somebody tried to run us off the road. We have to tell the police.” She took a breath. “We should probably turn back, too. If he’s come after us twice already, there’s no guara
ntee he won’t do it again, especially if he knows my route.”
“But you’re off the route now. We can go another way to Albuquerque, one he won’t be expecting. We can—”
She held up a hand. “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk it.”
Cait felt bad about calling off the trip, but things had gotten out of hand. The guy in the truck, whoever he was—he had scared the shit out of her. She might not like Rebecca, and she sure as hell didn’t want to turn back now, but she didn’t see that she had much of a choice. Their lives were in danger. The protocol was spelled out in the training manual: “Sisters of Service holds the right to terminate a drive at any point if the client’s safety or the driver’s safety is in immediate danger.”
She should have turned back a long time ago. She had held out hope that the dangers and setbacks they’d faced might still somehow end up just a series of misunderstandings, or unfortunate coincidences, and the trip would go back to normal, or as normal as any of these trips could be.
Cait was as upset about calling off the trip as Rebecca. The truth was, if she turned back now, she’d have nothing. She’d end up back on shift at the Dark Horse on Tuesday, slinging Bud drafts to Ken and Nick and a bunch of drunk college guys wearing backward baseball caps and popped collars, and maybe she’d finally ask about management, now that Stacy had moved on to that wine bar on Second Street. Finally stop wearing those dumb Daisy Dukes. She was going to be twenty-six next year. How long could she keep pretending this wasn’t her real life?
Ten hours back the way they came and she’d be back in her apartment in Austin. Back in her tiny yellow kitchen, making herself a good cup of coffee and watching Adam tug the garbage bins onto the street. Back wondering if today was the day someone was going to slip a death threat under her door, or sneak up behind her while she was pumping gas, or lie in wait for her in a darkened parking lot. Back searching her name on the Internet and seeing strangers say the worst things imaginable about her, all because she happened to write an article and a politician she’d never met had turned her into a national symbol worthy of being hated and reviled.
Rebecca shook her head. “Please. If the police get involved, they’ll have to make a formal report, and those reports are searchable. If my name gets out there—”
Cait looked at her. This was it. This was the revelation she’d been waiting for. “You’re scared of your husband.”
Rebecca reeled back, shocked. “No! God, no. It’s just . . . it’s complicated. Please. I’m begging you. No police. I have to get to Albuquerque by the morning. If I don’t . . .” She shook her head and began to cry.
Cait had never seen her look this upset, not even when a homicidal maniac was threatening to run them off the road. There was something going on here, something Cait wasn’t seeing.
Something, Cait realized, that was bigger than any story she could ever hope to write. “Rebecca,” she said gently. “What’s really going on here?”
The woman shook her head and wiped her eyes. “It’s just . . . I need to get there, that’s all. You have to take me there. Please. I know I’m asking a lot from you—I know I am—but . . . I don’t have a choice. You have to help me. You have to get me to Albuquerque tomorrow. It’s my only chance.”
For the first time, Cait saw Rebecca not as some stuck-up politician’s wife, or the subject of an explosive story, or even a client she was ferrying around. She saw her for what she was: a scared, desperate woman who needed her help. She took a deep breath. “Fine. No police. We’ll keep going to Albuquerque.”
Two Weeks Earlier
The doctor’s face was carefully arranged. “I’m afraid we’ve had some bad news,” he said, perching on the edge of the stool.
Rebecca sat up and pulled the paper dressing gown around her. She wished they’d let her get dressed after the scan. She felt exposed sitting on the table half naked, her stomach still slicked with gel, her socked feet dangling over the edge. Like a child.
“The scan shows that the fetus has some . . . abnormalities.”
Her head snapped up, alert. He’d been calling it a baby before. Now it was a fetus. Something inside her wrenched and soured. “What kind of abnormalities?”
He looked at her over tented fingers. “Rebecca, are you familiar with a condition called anencephaly?”
She shook her head. She should know this. She should know everything that could possibly happen to her baby. Why didn’t she know?
His frown deepened. “It’s when the brain of the fetus fails to develop properly in utero.”
“What does that mean? Will the baby be okay?”
His eyebrows collapsed. “I’m afraid it’s very serious. If brought to full term, there’s a seventy-five percent chance the baby will be stillborn. For those that do survive the birth, they will likely only survive for a few days, perhaps weeks.” He shook his head. “There’s no cure.”
The world telescoped away from her, the walls of the examination room collapsing like a house of cards. She heard a great rush in her ears, as if she were standing at the edge of a waterfall, and then she felt herself plummet into the dark. When she opened her eyes, the doctor was standing above her, his eyebrows knitted together, the careful mask stripped away, leaving only a sad, helpless man behind. “I’ll get you something to drink, and then we can discuss next steps,” he said quietly, once she was able to sit up again, and the door shut behind him with a soft click.
In the silence, all she could hear was the soft whir of the air conditioner and the far-off beeping of machinery in an adjacent room. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them tight. If she made herself small enough, she could protect her baby. She could heal it just by the force of her will. She pictured the little bean swimming around inside her, the clusters of fingers and toes and the tiny swooping nose and the soft curve of eyes. She had seen it just minutes ago, watched it hovering on the screen. A miracle. A ghost. The nurse’s breath had caught in her throat when she’d seen it, but Rebecca had thought that was a natural reaction to seeing her baby swimming inside her body. How could anyone not be awed by it? But now she could see it clearly: the way the nurse had avoided her eyes when she’d moved the wand across her swollen stomach, her smile disappearing like quicksand. She had known the baby was doomed.
Rebecca dressed quickly, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, her shoes feeling heavy and leaden as she laced them. The paper crinkled as she stood up from the table. She didn’t want to be there when the doctor returned. Maybe, if she didn’t see him again, what he’d said to her would be made untrue. She grabbed her bag and ran out of the office, ignoring the receptionist’s calls to book another appointment. She would never go back, she decided as she unlocked her car door and slid into the driver’s seat. She would go home and stay there until the baby was ready to come, and then she would bring it into the world herself and cradle it in her arms, and she knew—she knew!—that she would be able to protect it. She would be able to make the baby okay.
She turned the key in the ignition but couldn’t bring herself to drive. Instead, she sat there idling in the parking lot, watching other expectant mothers trail in and out of the doctor’s office, faces flushed with excitement or pale with nausea but all of them happy. None of them looked like the face she saw now in the rearview mirror, ashen and devastated.
She pulled her phone out of her bag and Googled it. Anencephaly. Reams and reams of photos came up, babies with heads shrunken and deformed, eyes closed, mouths open. She knew she should stop but she couldn’t, she looked and looked until her eyes felt gritty and sore. She didn’t know how long she sat there. An hour? Two? There was a knock on the window and she jumped, her phone skittering out of her hand and under the passenger seat. When she looked up, she saw the face of the nurse who’d done the ultrasound peering down at her. The woman mimed rolling down the window, and Rebecca pressed the button without thinking. The window whirred down.
“Are you okay?” the nurse asked, though she c
ould see for herself clear as day that Rebecca was not okay, nowhere near it, and she knew exactly why.
Rebecca was silent. Something dark and heavy had lodged in her throat. This grief would live with her now, deep inside her, quietly choking the life out of her. She knew she should cry, but she was beyond tears.
The nurse opened the door and crouched down next to her. “Do you want to come back inside?” she asked. Her eyes were filled with such kindness that Rebecca couldn’t bear to look at them. She shook her head. “Okay, then,” the nurse said, taking Rebecca’s hand in hers. “I’ll sit with you out here for a while, okay? And then maybe, once you’re feeling up to it, we can talk a little. But only if you want to.”
Rebecca nodded and let her hand be held by the woman. She didn’t feel like she was inside her body anymore, she felt like she was floating above it, watching, waiting for whatever this was to end because she knew deep in her soul that it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. In the real world, her baby was growing inside of her, healthy and strong, wiggling its little broad-bean feet and waving its little hands, and soon, in just a few short months, the baby would emerge from her in a flood of blood and pain and love and it would open her eyes and look up at her and she would know her better than she had ever known anyone in her life, including herself. Her baby was not one of those monsters on the screen. Her baby was perfect.
At some point, the nurse reached over and switched off the car engine, and later still she called a colleague and asked that they phone Patrick. When he arrived, Rebecca allowed him to gather her in his arms and then walk her back into the doctor’s office, where she was seated in a hard plastic chair and made to wait while he went inside to talk to the doctor. The nurses kept bringing her cups of sweetened tea that went cold, untouched on the table next to her. When Patrick emerged, he looked older somehow, the lines around his mouth suddenly deeper, the skin under his eyes pouched and dark. He took her hand and led her back to his car, and together, they drove home in silence.
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