“So this house, is it nice?” Susan asked. “Is it okay? I mean, the way you looked at me when I mentioned the address—”
“No, it’s fine,” he said coolly, cutting her off. “There are a lot of rental houses around here, and that’s one of the loveliest.”
Susan gave him a puzzled smile. It struck her as odd that this high school lacrosse player would use the word loveliest. It seemed rehearsed, as if he had been told to describe the house that way to people. Susan automatically tightened her grip on Mattie’s little hand.
“Well, I should take off,” he said after a moment. He glanced toward the gravel lot at the front of Rosie’s Roadside Sundries. “My friends are probably waiting for me. Nice talking to you. Enjoy your weekend.” He smiled at Mattie, made a fist and shook it. “Go, Huskies, right, dude?”
“Go, Huskies!” Mattie enthusiastically agreed, shaking his little fist, too.
Susan watched the young man retreat up the pathway, toward the parking lot in front of the store. She could hear his friends talking, and the girl laughed about something. As Susan retreated toward the store’s back entrance, she heard car doors shutting and the motor starting up, and then the sound of gravel under tires.
Inside Rosie’s Roadside Sundries, the nice woman with the Lucille Ball hair—who turned out to be Rosie herself—let Mattie run wild in the small play area. Susan picked up a few things for the weekend. Allen had probably already stocked the house with groceries and supplies. But Susan figured she ought to give Rosie her business, after they’d used her bathroom and play area.
“I’m staying the weekend at this house on the water,” Susan told Rosie at the counter. The plump older woman was ringing up her items. “It’s—um, Twenty-two Birch Way,” Susan said. “Do you know it?”
“Oh, yes, that’s a very nice house,” Rosie answered, momentarily distracted. She donned a pair of cat’s-eye glasses dangling from a chain around her neck to read the price sticker on a box of Ritz crackers. She kept them on while totaling up the sale. “You’ll like it there, hon. That’ll be twenty-one-oh-five.”
Mattie didn’t want to leave the play area, but Rosie assured him he was welcome to come back and play there any time. She opened her till drawer, fished out a quarter, and handed it to Susan. “That’s for a ride on Seabiscuit outside—for my new little buddy there.”
With a bit of prompting, Mattie thanked Rosie, and then they headed out of the store. The coin-operated pony was pretty tame, rocking Mattie very gently. Still, Susan put down her grocery bag to keep ahold of his arm while he rode the pony. Mattie squealed with delight. He’d only been on the pony for half a minute when Susan noticed a red MINI Cooper turning into the store lot. The car pulled up a few spaces away from hers and parked.
“Gimme up, gimme up!” Mattie squealed. He must have meant giddyup.
Susan turned to him and smiled. “Pretty fun, huh, sweetie? Yippee-eye-oh…” She glanced over toward the car once again. The driver hadn’t gotten out of the front seat yet. Susan couldn’t see him because the late afternoon sun reflected on the windshield. But then some clouds moved in front of the sun, and Susan noticed the driver, sitting alone in the car. She saw his handsome face, the dark hair parted to one side, and the rugged five o’clock shadow. He stared back at her, unsmiling.
It was just a few fleeting seconds, and then the glare on the windshield wiped his image away. Susan could no longer see him, but she still felt his eyes on her. She remembered his cocky grin as he’d sat down next to them forty-five minutes ago. Well, you certainly have him well-trained in case you’re ever separated, he’d said. You folks are a long way from home.
“Yippee!” Mattie sang out, kicking the toy pony’s flanks. “Gimme up! Gimme up!”
Susan tightened her grip on his arm. “Um, honey, that’s enough for now,” she said, pulling him off the pony in midride. “We need to get a move on. Allen’s probably waiting—”
“NOOOOOOO!” he screamed, his legs kicking in the air.
“Enough of that,” she said firmly. Susan managed to grab her grocery bag while wrestling with him. “The pony needs to rest up. He’ll give you two rides tomorrow.” She carried Mattie to the car.
Susan hated turning her back to the stranger in the MINI Cooper, but she had to put down her bag and strap Mattie in his booster seat. Her hands shook as she fumbled with his seat belt. All the while, she listened for a telltale click of the door handle of the car behind her. Any minute now, she expected to see a shadow creeping up on her and Mattie.
“Okay, sweetie, fingers and toes,” Susan said, a bit out of breath. She shut his door, then glanced back at the red sports car. She could see the man, still at the wheel, his head slightly tilted in her direction. Part of her just wanted to scream at him to leave her and her son alone. But instead, Susan hurried around to the driver’s side of her car. Tossing the bag on the passenger seat, she scooted behind the wheel, then shut her door and locked it. Her hands were still trembling as she turned the key in the ignition and shifted into reverse. Then she backed out of the space, turned the car around, and headed out of the lot.
Speeding down Carroll Creek Road, Susan checked her rearview mirror several times. The MINI Cooper hadn’t moved. Finally she took a curve in the tree-lined road, and she couldn’t see the store anymore.
Susan started to wonder if she’d overreacted back there. The man really hadn’t done anything—except come on as overly friendly and solicitous at the Arby’s earlier. Yes, he’d shown up at the store, but fifteen minutes after her. Was he really following her? Maybe he was a local.
Something buckled under the car. Susan glanced in her rearview mirror to see if she’d hit a piece of metal on the road—or had lost some part of the car. But the road was clear behind her.
The car suddenly rocked and wobbled as if it were going over a series of potholes. Biting her lip, Susan clutched the steering wheel. It vibrated from the rough ride. She nervously glanced at the driver’s side mirror—shaking so much the reflection was just a blur.
Mattie was jostled in his booster seat. “Gimme up! Gimme up!”
Easing up on the gas, Susan steered over to the side of the road. The car seemed to be limping. It felt like she had a flat tire. “Oh, I really don’t need this now,” she muttered to herself, a pang of dread in her stomach.
She switched on the emergency blinkers, cut the ignition, and then glanced back at Mattie. “Well, that was pretty exciting, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Wide-eyed, he nodded and put his thumb in his mouth.
“I’m just going to take a look at the damage, okay, sweetheart?” she said. “I’ll be right outside where you can see me.” Climbing out of the car, Susan checked around the back. The rear tire on the driver’s side was flat; the hubcap pressed against the gravel roadside.
“Oh, swell,” she murmured. She remembered that article again: Local police discovered Matusik’s abandoned car on Timberlake Drive in Cullen. One of the rear tires was flat….
Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, Susan took out her cell phone and tried dialing Allen. Her hands were shaking. No signal available came up on the tiny screen.
With a nervous sigh, she popped open the trunk and started to unload their suitcases so she could get the spare tire, jack, and other equipment. She glanced over her shoulder at the empty road behind her.
The narrow highway curved around a wall of tall evergreens, but there was a gap between some of the trees, and she saw another little stretch of road—and a car. Susan was too far away to see the color or the make of the car.
But it was coming