Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Another evening, another cheap motel—a dispirited brick lump right at the edge of yet another city.
A truck-stop diner crouched across the parking lot, the vast expanse of pavement to its rear studded with diesel pumps and dozing semis.
The headlights were twinkling stars, taillights blurred rubies, or maybe Holly was just too hungry and tired to focus.
“Are we stopping for the night?” She sounded whiny, she realized, and couldn’t suppress a deep sigh either.
Reese was quiet and thoughtful, a good traveling companion, but he wouldn’t let her drive. I’m fine, he kept saying. You just rest.
“Maybe. Mostly I thought you could use something warm, and to stretch your legs a little.” He cut the engine, set the parking brake, and his gaze roved over the lot. “Not sure I like the idea of sleeping here.”
“Still not going to tell me where we’re going?”
“I don’t want you to—”
“—know where you’re headed, right.” She’d thought about that particular objection, and had her answer ready. “But either one of us can easily go somewhere else if they end up catching the other. So give.”
“South. We’ll slip over the border at a likely place—”
Hold on. “Without passports?”
“You’ll have one by then.” As if it were easy, a preordained conclusion. “Once over, we’ll vanish. Probably live in a city, nice and anonymous. Get to know each other, rent a little house.”
“That takes money.” That was just the first flaw in the plan that she could see. There was a whole cavalcade of others she was too tired to list. Sleeping in a car all day was oddly exhausting.
“Money’s easy.” Reese scratched at his stubble, frowning at the diner’s gold-glowing windows. Incandescents always made the light so warm. “You can learn Spanish.”
“How is money easy?”
“Think about what I’m trained for, Holly. Anyway, it’ll be nice. You’ll get a tan.”
“If I don’t keel over and die first.” Her chin settled. She was sulling up, as her father would have put it.
Dad might have liked Reese. At least, they would get along, in that military-man way. Not while Dad was sick, though.
Before. When he’d still been the brawny, gruff linchpin of the world. Now Holly wondered if he’d ever felt this kind of fear while struggling through chemo. Maybe his withdrawal hadn’t been strength, closing himself off from the world that had treated him so shabbily.
Maybe he’d just been scared.
“You’re not going to keel over.” Endlessly patient. What would it take to make her traveling companion angry?
Did she want to know? She’d better find out, soon. Just in case. “You can’t smell cancer.”
“Some dogs can.”
“You’re not a dog.” You keep calling yourself one, but you’re not.
“Mmh.” That noncommittal sound again. “Why don’t you go in and get us a table. I’m going to check the motel.”
“Okay.” She reached for her backpack, felt for the doorhandle. Was he just trying to get rid of her? Probably.
“Holly.” Very quietly.
“What?” Why can’t I look at him? At least the diner was bound to have something good on its menu, even though hoping for a decent salad or some pasta was foolish in the extreme.
On the other hand, maybe truckers were health nuts.
Barb had worked at a truck stop once—good tips, she said, but be ready to smack a few hands away from your rear.
She would never see Barb again. Tony was probably pulling his hair out in fistfuls, bemoaning her lack of reliability. They would think something had happened to her—which, really, something had. But they’d forget her soon enough.
She probably wouldn’t even be able to eat anything on offer here anyway.
“I am not going to let anything happen to you.” Reese said it quietly, almost as if he could read her mind. Almost as if he meant it.
That’s a nice thought. “Okay.” She scrambled to get out of the car, inhaling sharply as the cold hit. Shouldn’t south be warmer? Of course they were tending westward, too, for whatever reason Reese had in his weird little head.
Her stomach growled, so she closed the car door carefully and headed for the diner.
* * *
It was all too familiar—a hum of conversation, clinking dishes, something hitting the grill with a steaming hiss, hurrying feet in sensible shoes.
Even smelled the same, grease and heat and overcooked coffee, plus a faint tang of chlorine from the bleach rinse.
Holly’s knees almost buckled, but she told herself it was just from spending so long in the car.
“Hep ya?” the waitress on greet duty said, blinking sleepily. Her graying hair, pulled back under a net, was still neatly braided, and though she sounded halfway to dreamland there was a sharp twinkle in her hazel gaze.
“Hello.” Holly tried a tentative smile. “Two, please.”
“Where’s the other?” Rapid-fire, as if the question was repeated several times per day.
What? “At the motel. He sent me to get a table.”
“Just passin’ through?” The waitress—her nametag said Sue—fished out a couple of plastic-covered menus, and slight unease began under Holly’s hair, right at her nape.
“We’re on vacation.” Holly’s tone wasn’t quite cold, but definitely firm. Is it normal to get the third degree when asking for a booth here?
Maybe she looked shabby, or just too tired. Or was this a truckers-only place?
In any case, it must have been the right response, because Sue nodded. “Ah. We get all types here. Smoking or non?”
Holly dredged up a smile. “I prefer non, but whatever you have free. It looks busy.” You need someone to wipe your board, too. I could have that done in a hot minute, if you’d hire me. Was here far enough away to hide?
“It is.” Sue paused. “Most people go straight on into the city from here, except for the boys. They like to stretch their legs, get a meal.”
“The boys? Oh, we saw the truck stop.” Holly followed, nice and docile, and asked for decaf.
The smoking side was packed, and the counter on the nonsmoking side, too.
Broad backs, T-shirts and heavy jackets, male laughter.
The nonsmoking booths were empty, just a sprinkling of heavyset men, very few women.
A bright spill of jukebox music ricocheted from the smoking side as Holly settled on cracked mauve vinyl, keeping her back stiffly away from the faux-needlepoint cushion.
Nothing was going to make this sad little place look new again, and she put her backpack on the window side of the booth just to be safe.
The decaf came, half-burned by the smell of it. Sue shuffled away. Holly had just picked up her mug when a shadow fell over the booth.
Not Reese. It was a burly man in a flannel shirt, his blue baseball cap settled firmly enough that it might have been glued on and his beard neatly trimmed. His eyes were bloodshot, his jeans were worn, and he looked as though he was having some trouble staying upright.
“Hello there, sweet thing,” he slurred, and the intense, inappropriate desire to laugh burbled up inside of Holly.
“I’m sorry?” she managed politely, frozen with the heavy white mug halfway to her mouth.
“How much?” He leaned over a bit further; she caught a breath of unwashed, sweaty man with more fat than muscle, but still plenty of both. It wasn’t like Reese’s clean healthy haze.
I could smell it on you. What did that mean, really? “I’m sorry?” she repeated. “You seem a little confused.”
The man rested his elbow on the back of her booth, effectively trapping her, and her unease was full-blown shading into fear now. “Give you fifty for a blow,” he semiwhispered. “Pretty mouth of yours, and all. I got a nice truck. Private.”
Several pieces fell together at once. Truck stop. Motel. The waitress’s questioning.
Oh, God, he thinks I’m a hooker. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she managed, with just the right tone—not overly amused, not overly offended—even though her heart had started hammering and sweat prickled under her arms.
Out of nowhere, help appeared. “Hey, sweetheart.” Reese, tall and a little rumpled, smiled benignly at the heavyset man, but he didn’t slide into the other half of the booth. “Who’s your friend?”
“I think he’s confused,” she began, diplomatically.
“Really.” Reese’s open, pleasant expression didn’t change, but something in the set of his shoulders made the other man straighten self-consciously, taking his arm away as well, thank God. “Can we help you, sir?”
“Just asking,” the man mumbled, darting another glance at Holly. “Pretty girl there.”
“That’s one reason I married her.” Reese’s hands were loose and easy, but she suddenly had the idea he was about to do something silly. “What did you want?”
“Nothin’.” Thankfully, the stranger backed off, albeit with one last lingering look.
Holly’s skin crawled. She set the coffee cup down carefully, as if it were porcelain instead of thick heavy industrial china.
Reese lowered himself cautiously into the other seat. “You okay?”
“I think...” Holly coughed into her cupped hand, then managed something slightly above a whisper. “He thought I was a lot lizard.”
“A...” A curious expression drifted over Reese’s face. “Oh.” His dark eyes narrowed fractionally. That was all.
Fifty for a blow. “I’m having all sorts of new experiences nowadays.” She managed a nervous half laugh. “Do I look that bad?”
“Of course not.” Bless his heart, her traveling companion even sounded like he meant it. “You’re just too pretty for a place like this, that’s all. The motel’s a dump. Rents hourly.”
“Oh.” Her skin was tingle-shivering even more now. “Reese, please. I’m not hungry.”
He was already reaching for his wallet. “I don’t blame you. We can find someplace nicer.”
“God, yes.” She all but scrambled for the edge of the seat. Sue the waitress was shuffling back, bright interest all over her avid little face. “I, um... I need to use the restroom, though.”
“Me, too.” A tight smile, and he motioned to the approaching waitress, very friendly indeed. “I’ll wait for you, okay?”
“Okay.” Holly made it down the aisle, and just as she reached the front she saw her erstwhile suitor heading into the men’s room.
Oh, God. It took a little while, locked in an indifferently cleaned ladies’ stall, for the shaking to stop. I want to go home.
She knew she couldn’t, but still. It wouldn’t be that hard to find a pay phone, would it? Reese couldn’t stay with her all the time. Just to hear Barb’s scratchy voice again, or just to tell someone, anyone, that Holly Candless was still alive, still existed.
Funny, I wanted to vanish, but not like this.
At least the water from the sink tap was hot, and there was industrial-grade soap. She scrubbed at her hands a long time, staring at the wan blue-eyed woman in the mirror, and found herself hoping Reese would leave her behind.
If he did, though, what might she be reduced to just to stay fed? Or to get home?
And what might be waiting for her there?