Wanderlust (10 page)

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?