A toddler could read the body language – that man was telling her to be quiet, he was telling her to shut up, putting his finger to his lips. It was a gesture that an annoyed librarian might make to a table of giggly teens. But he’d pointed at the back seat. He’d pointed right at …
Maggie!
The thought overwhelmed her and she started to cry as she turned her head to look in the back seat. Maggie was still asleep. Her Cha-Cha had come off her head – probably when she’d hit that garbage can – but she was still clutching Eeyore and her blanket and still sucking her thumb. Her face was buried in the corner of the booster. ‘Maggie, honey?’ she whispered cautiously. ‘Maggie, are you OK, baby?’
There was no response. Faith actually moaned with relief.
What had happened? What had she witnessed back there?
She checked the rearview. The back window was completely fogged.
Who were those people? Where had they come from?
She lowered her window to clear the fog and checked her side view. No one. There was no one behind her. No headlights gaining speed on her in the distance. She listened as the rain and wind rushed in the car. Sweat ran down her face and neck. She reached for her cell phone and remembered she didn’t have one.
A million questions rushed her brain: Where had that girl come from? Were those people watching her when she was asleep? How long had they been out there? Who were those men? What did they want?
She looked back at the rearview. Still pitch-black.
The events of the last five minutes played over and over again in her head. Each scene demanded to be replayed first, and the images quickly tumbled together, as every detail fought to be remembered before it was forgotten.
Help me! She heard the raspy, hoarse voice, the palm slapping against the glass. She saw those crazed brown eyes, that twitching mouth with an earring stuck in the lip. And one in the nose. And two in the eyebrow. The dirty clothes. The tattoos. She saw the disheveled possessed girl from the movie The Ring, climbing through her driver’s side window, trying to get in, that’s what she saw. She shook her head.
What was wrong with that girl? Why was she like that?
Maybe she was on drugs. Maybe she was drunk.
Was she running from that man? From both of those men?
With that heavy makeup and the tattoos and the piercings, and the dirty bare feet she must have been high. Who would be out like that in the middle of the night in a terrible storm unless they were high on drugs? And that town – it had Faith thinking of every freaky horror movie she’d ever seen.
She looked again at the side view. If someone were following her, she’d be easy to find, even miles away. She was the only car on the road.
He’s coming! Let me in! The girl was back in her head. Faith rubbed her temples.
What had the girl meant by that? Was she in trouble? What had that second man, the man in the red shirt, done with her? Where had he taken her? Faith stared ahead into the endless black. There was nothing out here. Nothing at all.
She had smiled at Faith. The girl had smiled at her. And that guy in black had grinned. The two of them had kissed. What was that about? It was all so weird. Now that red-shirted potbellied guy – he was definitely creepy. And he looked angry. The girl had looked scared of him. He’d certainly scared the hell out of Faith.
She ripped off the cuticle she’d been gnawing on before. Blood filled her mouth. The clock read 1:40.
Again she checked the side view, but there was still no one there. No one was following her. If she’d witnessed something really horrible, something like a rape or an attack or – she sucked in a deep breath at the thought – something even worse, wouldn’t someone be following her by now? Bad guys didn’t leave witnesses. If they’d been doing something evil to that girl, those two guys would never have let Faith leave. In fact, the guy in black had actually stopped the red-shirted man from coming over to her car. Neither of them had a weapon. If they had, surely they would’ve used it to stop her – if they were doing something to that girl, right? So they must not have had a weapon. The thought made her feel a little bit better. Until the next question came at her.
Why didn’t you let her in, Faith?
She felt nauseous. Her brain started to sputter out a litany of excuses.
It all happened so fast.
Maggie was in the back seat. She couldn’t let a girl like that – a stranger – into the car with her daughter right there.
What if the girl was a robber? What if the cry for help was a ruse to get those other men in the car?
Jarrod used to be a public defender in Miami. He used to tell Faith all about the horrible crimes his clients had been accused of: carjacking, robbery, rape, kidnapping, murder. The insider stories were enough to scare anyone from ever stepping outside their front door. And when he described how criminals thought the twisted things they thought, why they targeted certain people, how they hunted their victims – it was bone chilling. More than one story had involved home invasions that kicked off with a female accomplice: women posing as sympathetic ruses, claiming they’d been hurt in an accident, begging for help on a doorstep while their armed boyfriends waited in the shadows for the unwitting Good Samaritan to unchain the door and let them all in.
She ran her hands through her hair, trying to hold her thoughts together. There was another reason why she hadn’t opened the door: she was scared. No, she was terrified.
She finally spotted a sign: West Palm Beach, 41 miles. She wasn’t just on the right road – she was almost out of the maze! She knew where she was. A car actually passed her, heading the opposite direction. It was the first car she’d seen since she’d left Highlands County. Up ahead was civilization, even if it was closed for the night. A few miles later she saw the golden arches of a McDonalds and a red-and-white neon sign welcoming people to the Sunland Inn. They had a vacancy. From the looks of the empty parking lot they had more than one room available. She pulled in and sat there for a moment, staring at the glass doors of the empty lobby.
The rain had stopped, the band had moved through, but it was still crazy-windy – the air whistled as it forced its way through the cracked driver’s side window. She’d go in and tell the motel manager what happened and ask him to call the police. That was the right thing to do. Let the law figure out what had happened back there. But as her hand touched the door handle, her brain fired off one final question.
What did you hit back there?
Faith let go of the handle. Nothing. There was nothing there. All the same her hands went sweaty and her heart sped up. She looked around the lit parking lot at the cobra-head lampposts. She’d be able to see the whole car now. The thought filled her with a sense of dread.
You have to look. You have to see. You have to know.
She got out and slowly walked to the front of the Explorer. The wind whipped her hair and she wrapped her arms around herself. She stared at the front end. Her stomach flipped and her knees threatened to give out. She steadied herself on the hood. The bumper was lopsided and dented. Not a big one, but the dent wasn’t there yesterday. The grille was dented, too. She’d definitely hit something, there was no denying it.
The garbage can? Maybe it was that garbage can …
She ran her hand over a smaller dent on the lip of the hood, as if that might tell her something, like where and when it had gotten on