CHAPTER FOUR #2
I get a sudden flash of my first and last relationship, how I spent junior year of high school cuddled up to Jeremy Woods while he cuddled up to Grand Theft Auto.
He never even let me play. I just sat there in his basement after school and convinced myself that I enjoyed watching his blocky dead-eyed avatar jump from car to car and race around pixelated California without me.
Now, with danger nipping at my heels and a fresh wave of determination soaring through me, I remember Jeremy with the briefest spark of smugness and think, My turn, asshat.
“I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY,” I chant as I run up, throw the door open, and yank the bewildered driver out with adrenaline-fueled vigor.
He bellows a stream of obscenities at me and slaps the car door, but I’ve already slammed and locked it.
“I really am so sorry, this is not personal,” I say through the glass, then floor it, red light be damned.
His torrent of curses fades away into the night, or maybe the thundering in my ears just drowns it out.
I’m doing it. I’m escaping a murderer. It’s a thrill like no other, and I can’t help but let out a celebratory shout.
I almost wish Jack would catch up to me so I could run him over. As it is, I have to settle for imagining him shaking with rage on the sidewalk. I don’t let my gaze flick back to the rearview mirror until I’m past the library.
That’s when I realize that I’m not alone.
“Oh, shit,” I breathe.
Those words seem to shock the nice-looking, petrified man in the back seat out of his silence.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Only then do I notice the sticker on the windshield. Of all the cars to carjack, I picked an Uber.
“Okay, I realize this looks bad—”
“Let me out,” he says. It isn’t quite a plea, but not a demand either. Like he doesn’t expect it to work.
“I can’t right now, but—”
“My—my name is Grant Hoffman,” he blurts. “I’m thirty-three. I teach English and creative writing at BU. I’m an adjunct professor, I have no money. Please, I’m just trying to get home.”
I try to explain that this is all a misunderstanding, that I’m not kidnapping him, that I’m not actually the bad guy here, but it’s hard to get a word in edgewise.
The panic-induced autobiography he’s narrating to me is getting louder and louder.
He has a brother named Ted and a sister named Caroline.
He has a cat named Arthur. He’s mildly allergic to pineapple. He wishes he traveled more.
I’m yelling over him now. “Stop shouting humanizing details at me! I’m not going to hurt you!”
He’s not hearing me at all. His monologuing seems to be morphing into some kind of back-seat therapy session. In the mirror, he looks bone-tired and hapless in a way I’m not sure is entirely my fault.
“I was supposed to be a writer!” he shouts.
“I was in the gifted and talented program! I got awards and scholarships and now I just lecture hungover freshmen about story structure and stay late grading papers and then go home and open my laptop and stare at a blank white screen until I give up and bury myself in crime novels instead of actually writing anything of my own!”
I slam on the brake—more to avoid a collision with the car in front of us than for dramatic flair, but it does punctuate the moment nicely. Plus, it silences Grant Hoffman. I turn to face him.
“Crime novels, you say?”
· · ·
GRANT SHRINKS BACK from me as we make direct eye contact for the first time.
Even if he hadn’t word-vomited his life story at me, I could guess a lot about him with one look.
The neatly cut but slightly disheveled brown hair, the vague stubble, the muted sweater and blazer—it all really shouts Exhausted Academic.
But with a sudden burst of energy, he unclicks his seat belt and throws himself at the door, clawing at the lock. It doesn’t budge.
“They’re child-locked?” he says under his breath. He looks at me, horrified, and I raise my hands in a show of innocence.
“That wasn’t me. That’s sketchy as hell.” A car honks behind me and I turn to drive through the green light. “See, if you think about it, you’re lucky I jumped in here.”
He says nothing. I can see in the rearview mirror that he’s slowly reaching into his jacket pocket, and I realize with a lurch that he’s going to call the police.
“Please, before you do anything, just let me explain,” I implore him.
“I’m not a criminal. I wasn’t ten minutes ago, anyway.
I’m running from this guy who wants to kill me.
Like, really wants to kill me. I saw an opportunity and I took it.
I’m sorry that it ruined your night, but I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. I’m just trying to get away.”
In the rearview, I see him jab frantically at his phone’s power button. A fresh wave of horror dawns over him, and I can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy. “It’s dead,” he says numbly to no one.
“Oh man, that sucks. For you, I mean. It’s obviously working in my favor. You understand.”
“Sure,” he says quietly, as if he is mentally far away and desperate to stay there.
“Listen,” I sigh, “all I need is for you to hear me out. And keep an open mind, because we’re kind of in the Twilight Zone here. But I think you might be able to help.”
“Help? How?” The furrowed-brow look he’s giving me in the mirror doesn’t exactly scream open-mindedness. “Where are you taking me?”
I realize, then, that I have no idea. I’ve been following the GPS by force of habit, presumably to Grant’s place. This is only my first kidnapping, but I don’t think you’re supposed to take your victim to their home.
The gravity of this situation finally hits me with an electric jolt.
I stole a car. A rideshare car. Whose driver is almost certainly describing me and the car’s make and model and license plate number to the police at this very moment.
And whose location data is probably being transmitted in real time to a company that I’m sure will have no qualms about releasing it to the authorities.
I tear the driver’s phone from its mount and chuck it out the window, then veer left off our prescribed route. I need to get myself and the witness in the back seat and the giant piece of evidence I’m driving as far away as possible.
I set my mental GPS for the most remote place I can think of.