“The what?”
She gave him that familiar, almost pitying look. “I’ll explain it to you later. Where are we going anyway?”
That made him smile. “Took you a while to ask.”
“What can I say, I trust you.”
“You do?” he said, not able to hide his surprise.
“Allie did. She gave you my number. If she trusted you enough to do that, that’s good enough for me.”
Hank didn’t know if that should reassure or worry him that a stranger, a woman he didn’t know and hadn’t seen the face of before, trusted him enough to send him to a sixteen-year-old girl staying by herself at a motel in the next state over.
Well, that wasn’t true. Lucy hadn’t been really by herself.
He glanced up at Apollo in the rearview mirror. The animal didn’t look very dangerous, but then you never knew with dogs. He’d seen plenty of examples of how vicious they could be when they or their owners were threatened.
“To answer your question, I’m taking you to my place until Allie makes contact or Jane tells me it’s over,” Hank said.
“Is it nice? Your place?”
“It’s okay.”
“So that’s a no?”
He grunted. “It’ll do, kid.”
“What about neighbors? What will they say when you bring a sixteen-year-old girl home with you in the middle of the night?”
He looked over and saw her grinning mischievously back at him.
“It’s in a park where everyone minds their own business,” he said.
“Wait, you said a park? Like, a trailer park?”
“Well, yeah. I’m staying at a trailer home right now. So what?”
But it’s only temporary, he wanted to add, but didn’t because it would have been a lie. It hadn’t been temporary since four years ago, two years removed from the job and eight years after Diane’s death. Sometimes he wondered what she would say if she could see how he wasted away his days and drank away his nights.
In the front passenger seat, Lucy sighed and said, “I should have stayed at the motel.”
“It’s fine,” Hank said.
“To you, because you’re used to it. But it’s not really fine, is it? An old man living by himself in a trailer park?”
Hank sighed because she was right. It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t fine at all, but when he had a fistful of Wild Turkey in one hand, it was a lot easier to convince himself otherwise.
Eleven
She thanked a big man in a checkered long-sleeve shirt who held the main store door open for her before turning right into the adjoining diner next door. She was already expecting a crowd of people, but she was still surprised by how many there actually were. The noise was so loud she wasn’t sure how the waitresses going and back forth between customers could even hear the orders.
Allie maneuvered her way through the throng of people and slid between the tables, passing the counter and making a beeline for the pay phone at the back. Thank God these places, like the diner earlier today, still had public phones. She stuck her hand into her pocket to make sure she had change. There; just enough for one phone call.
There was no one at the phone as she approached it, which wasn’t surprising. Just about everyone around her either had a cell phone in their hands or on their table within easy reach. Who even used pay phones anymore? She thought about swiping one of the cells — it would be easy with all the activity — but didn’t want to risk it. The last thing she needed was to get into a fight or answer questions.
No, there was a perfectly good phone at the back of the diner, and she was still ten feet away from it when she caught her reflection in a mirror — and at the same time glimpsed a familiar face revealing itself between two men standing near the counter—
Reese, looking around.
Sonofabitch.
She quickly turned left, veering away from the pay phone, and found herself at the hallway entrance into the bathroom. She kept walking, not sure if Reese had spotted her or not, but he had definitely been looking for something.
Don’t kid yourself. He was looking for you.
The question was: Why? Did he suspect her? Had she been unconvincing when she told him she needed to use the bathroom? The man was always watching her, even when she didn’t know it—especially when she didn’t know it. Had she given something away without realizing it during one of those moments?
Dammit.
A woman was pushing her way out of the ladies’ room in front of Allie, and they exchanged a brief nod and smile.
“Excuse me,” Allie said, “do you have a cell phone?”
“My what?” the woman said, reaching reflexively for her purse.
Allie flashed her best smile, hoping it wasn’t too creepy. “Could I borrow your phone? I just need to make a quick call—”
“Sorry,” the woman said, and brushed past her.
“Sorry you don’t have a phone?” Allie said after her.
The woman ignored her and kept going.
Allie sighed. What did she expect? Even if the woman did have her phone in her bag, she wasn’t going to hand it over to some stranger she had just met for less than a second inside a bathroom hallway.
The kindness of strangers, my ass.
Allie turned around and stepped into the bathroom. It was surprisingly clean, with a pair of air freshener dispensers protruding out of the walls. It took her a few seconds to adjust to the overwhelming smell of lilacs while she looked around. All three stalls were currently occupied, so she went to the sink and washed her hands with soap, then spent another minute rewashing them before moving over to the dryers.
She used the long mirror to observe the stalls behind her, biding her time, until finally one of them became available. Allie waited for the woman to wash her own hands, then took her time drying them with a generous amount of paper towels before leaving. Allie stepped inside the empty stall, the last one at the end.
She stood over the toilet and took out the Sig Sauer and checked the magazine, even though the weight of the weapon already confirmed she had a loaded gun. She wanted to be absolutely certain, and having done so, put it back in its holster and considered her options, knowing full well she was going to need the gun for whatever she decided.
Faith.
Sara.
The other twenty-two girls in the back of the rig.
She focused on what she could affect right now, and the choice was obvious. The only thing standing in her way was Reese in the diner and Dwight in the lot. And, of course, the two drivers inside the semi.
Four men. Four armed men.
She didn’t know the two drivers’ history — she didn’t even know their names — but she was certain enough about Reese and Dwight to know that either one, or both of them, were going to be dangerous in a gunfight, especially one where she didn’t have the element of surprise. Which she didn’t at the moment. Not even close.
And there was the diner and store full of travelers and truckers. Innocents. She was in a concealed carry state, so how many of those people had a weapon on them at the moment? Probably not many, and when the bullets started flying she wasn’t going to be able to count on perfect strangers to pitch in. She had learned just a moment ago how unreliable they could be.
But that was assuming shots were even fired. Was there another way? A better way where she didn’t have to put families and people trying to make a living at risk? Maybe there was, but she couldn’t see it right now.
Allie lowered herself to the floor, careful to avoid a small puddle of something down there, and peeked underneath the wall and into the stall next to her. She glimpsed a pair of legs dangling off the toilet, wearing expensive shoes…and the tap-tap-tap of the next occupant playing with a phone.