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Nash eased his Honda, all one hundred and fifty-three thousand miles of it, onto the exit ramp, moving like a mesmerized insect to the three mercury vapor lamps high on their stanchions over the single octagonal building. A men’s and women’s restroom, a map on the wall, a few brochures for what passed as tourist attractions around these parts, and a row of vending machines beside a broken drinking fountain. It all seemed like an oasis to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves on this lonely stretch of highway, especially at night. To Nash, it was only the last gasp of his stupid hometown. Small, inadequate, useful only for pissing and shitting and then moving on down the road.
Only one other vehicle, a cube truck with a big storage area in back, sat parked under the lights. Smaller than a semi, it reminded Nash of the U-Haul he rented when he moved apartments last fall. Finally, he owned things. Not like when he left town with nothing more than a half-filled suitcase and a broken guitar.
Nash brought the car to a rolling stop, making sure not to jerk to a halt so as not to wake up Jacy. She stayed asleep as he turned the key and let the motor rest. He watched her for a few seconds, the deep calm settling over her as she took relaxing breaths for the first time in years, finally free from the fear her bedroom door might open, and Brian might slip inside.
Nash pushed gently on the door until it clicked shut. He headed for the small building, thinking he would get one can of Coke and down it quick, here, then get another for the road. He opened his wallet and dug out a few singles to feed the machine. He hoped like hell some ex-con state-worker had remembered to restock the soda cans, or that the damn thing wasn’t waiting inside to mock him with an Out Of Order sign.
As he stepped onto the curb, he could see the front end of the cube truck. Both doors were open, and he saw a dark shape half in and half out of the passenger side. He stopped and listened. The truck’s engine was off, he heard no other traffic from the highway, no voices in the night. He figured the driver must be in the toilet. With no one around and virtually no traffic, it must have seemed safe to leave the doors open while he took a piss.
Then Nash looked closer at the shape. The body was upside-down, which is why he didn’t recognize it as a person at first. Feet clad in worn Timberland boots pointed up into the truck’s cab while the slumped figure of a man rested on his head against the asphalt of the parking lot. The open door cast a shadow over the body, so Nash couldn’t tell if it was a young man or an old man, black or white, alive or dead. He could at least make an educated guess on the last one.
He folded the dollar bills in his hand and pushed them into his front pocket as he began walking toward the truck.
“Hello?” he said. No one answered.
As he got closer, he saw the man’s head was turned away, staring at the underside of the truck like he had engine trouble, and he stumbled out of the cab going to check it. But the body didn’t move.
Nash stepped closer, smelled something he didn’t recognize, and bent low.
“Hello?” he said again. He felt foolish doing it.
He knew for sure he was looking at a dead body, but he wanted to check before he called someone. An ambulance or the police, the choice would be decided by a quick check for a pulse.
Nash slid two fingers around the back of the man’s neck and walked his middle and pointer fingers forward to hunt for the artery on his neck facing the underside of the truck.
Nash felt something wet.
He jerked his hand away, and it came back stained red. As he tore his arm back from the body, he bumped the corpse, and it slid the rest of the way down from the cab until it lay on the flat pavement of the parking lot, half the body sprawled over into a handicapped spot.
Nash could see the wide opening on his neck. Without thinking, he wiped his hand on his jeans, smearing the fresh blood across his thigh. And it was fresh, he thought, still warm, in fact. This man hadn’t been dead for long.
Nash looked more closely and saw a knife a few inches away from the man’s shoulder, as if he had it tucked under his chin when he fell. The blade was long and blood stained, the ebony handle Nash expected to be inlaid with the words Murder Weapon.
He knew he should call the cops, but when the local jurisdiction involved a late-night wake up call to the man he least wanted to see in the world, the one whose stepdaughter was currently being kidnapped in Nash’s front seat, he decided a phone call could wait. The man from the truck wasn’t going to get any deader. Nash could drive on a ways and call the state troopers from a gas station or diner. Some place where he could use a pay phone, and his cell wouldn’t get traced.
It was the first time he thought that what he was doing could be considered a kidnapping. Nash always considered it more of a prison break. As far as Brian would be concerned, though, damn right it’s a kidnapping.
A minor, stolen away from her home, under cover of night, without prior knowledge of her two legal guardians. Yep, that about fit the textbook definition.
Nash asked Jacy if Mom knew of her plans, back when he first got the phone call for help. She said no. He agreed it would be too risky. She might tell Brian. After all, she married him. Neither Nash nor Jacy knew where their mother’s loyalties rested anymore.
Nash squinted at the dead man’s pockets. No wallet that he could see. He didn’t want to touch a corpse, so the dead man’s identity would have to wait to be revealed until the professionals got there. Nash went to the driver’s side of the truck. No second body there. Whoever had been driving was long gone by then, hopefully with less blood on him than Nash.
The whole thing was too surreal for him. It didn’t feel like a crime scene. The quiet calm both emboldened him and lit his curiosity. He wanted to know what the hell happened. He knew truck drivers sometimes kept their license in the cab with them, so he checked the glove box, but found nothing. He turned down the visor over the driver’s seat and found a copy of the registration rubber banded in place. He moved it to read the name and address and a small, hard object fell out from behind the paper. A high pitched ting sounded in the cab as a small piece of metal bounced off the turn signal stick and landed in the cup holder beside the gear shift.
Nash looked down. A key, small and silver. Nash looked between the seats to something he’d overlooked before. A strong box. He passed over the metal box pushed down between the big bucket seats, thinking it held tools or some other truck driver’s friend like jumper cables.
On top of the box was a small keyhole. The box would have held a decent amount of wrenches or sockets, enough to repair a faulty engine, he supposed. Or maybe a change of clothes for a long haul night. But no, this wasn’t a semi. A truck this size is for moving things short distances. Small items, small trips.
And besides, it’s not like the guy on the pavement outside would get offended if Nash took a peek inside his secret box.
Nash picked up the key and had a premonition of how stupid he would feel once the key didn’t work in the box. He’d laugh to himself and then move on down the road, the can of Coke unnecessary, now that adrenalin raced through his veins, faster and stronger than caffeine.
The key fit. He felt the silence of the night outside. Still no traffic from the road. The lamps high overhead gave off a steady electric hum, but otherwise, there were no nature sounds. No birds, no insects in the trees, no barking dogs far away. Nash was as isolated as he’d ever been, and the cab of the truck felt more and more like a coffin.
His curiosity won out over his fear. He lifted the lid on the metal box.
Inside was a worn canvas bag in army green, stuffed inside until the fabric coiled over itself in rippling waves like intestines packed tight in a gut. He didn’t lift the bag out but unzipped it. Inside were stacks of money. Tightly bound stacks in rows also bound together by plastic wrap. Every bill staring at him was a hundred. The row of tiny Ben Franklins seemed to all gasp for air at the same time, free from their dungeon.
Nash