As if any of that would keep him safe.
"How do I know you're not some psycho?" Donaldson asked. He knew that was pushing it, but he liked the irony.
"There's a gas station across the street. I can top off the tank, pay with a credit card. All gas stations have cameras these days. Credit card is a paper trail. If anything happens to you, that would link me to your car, and I'd get caught."
Smart kid. But not that smart.
The really smart ones don't hitchhike.
"Won't need gas for a few hundred miles." Donaldson took off his Cubs baseball hat, running a hand over his gray, thinning hair. Another way to disarm the victim. No one feared grandfatherly types. "Until then, if you promise not to sing any show tunes, you got yourself a ride."
Brett smiled, hefted his pack onto his shoulders, and followed his ride into the parking lot. Donaldson unlocked the doors and the kid loaded his pack into the backseat of Donaldson's 2006 black Honda Accord, pausing when he saw the clear plastic covers on the front seats.
"My dog, Neil, usually rides up front with me," Donaldson said, shrugging. "I don't like him messing up the upholstery."
Brett flashed skepticism until he noticed the picture taped to the dash: Donaldson and a furry dachshund.
"Sheds like crazy," Donaldson said. "If you buy a dog, stick with short-haired breeds."
That was apparently reassurance enough, because Brett climbed in.
Donaldson heaved himself into the driver's seat, the car bouncing on its shocks.
"Buckle up for safety." Donaldson resisted the urge to lick his lips, then released the brake, started the car, and pulled onto the highway.
The first ten miles were awkward. Always were. Strangers tended to stay strangers. How often did a person initiate conversation on a plane or while waiting in line? People kept to themselves. It made them feel safe.
Donaldson broke the tension by asking the standard questions. Where'd you go to school? What do you do for a living? Where you headed? When'd you start hitchhiking? Invariably, the conversation turned to him.
"So what's your name?" Brett asked.
"Donaldson." No point in lying. Brett wouldn't be alive long enough to tell anyone.
"What do you do, Donaldson?"
"I'm a courier."
Donaldson sipped from the Big Gulp container in the cup holder, taking a hit of caffeinated sugar water. He offered the cup to Brett, who shook his head. Probably worried about germs. Donaldson smiled. That should have been the least of his worries.
"So you mean you deliver packages?"
"I deliver anything. Sometimes overnight delivery isn't fast enough, and people are willing to pay a premium to get it same day."
"What sort of things?"
"Things people need right away. Legal documents. Car parts for repairs. A diabetic forgets his insulin, guy loses his glasses and can't drive home without them, kid needs his cello for a recital. Or a kidney needs to get to a transplant location on time. That's the run I'm on right now."
Donaldson jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the backseat floorboard. Brett glanced back, saw a cooler sitting there, a biohazard sticker on the lid.
"No kidding, there's a kidney in there?"
"There will be, once I get it." Donaldson winked at the kid. "By the way, what's your blood type?"
The kid chuckled nervously. Donaldson joined in.
A long stretch of road approaching. No cars in either direction.
"Sounds like an interesting job," Brett said.
"It is. Perfect for a loner like me. That's why it's nice to have company every so often. Gets lonely on the road."
"What about Neil?"
"Neil?"
Brett pointed at the photograph on the dashboard. "Your dog. You said he rode with you sometimes."
"Oh, yeah. Neil. Of course. But it isn't the same as having a human companion. Know what I mean?"
Brett nodded, then glanced at the fuel gauge.
"You're down to a quarter tank," he said.
"Really? I thought I just filled up. Next place we see, I'll take you up on that offer to pay."
It was a bright, sunny late afternoon, clean country air blowing in through the inch of window Donaldson had open. A perfect day for a drive. The road ahead was clear, no one behind them.
"So seriously," Donaldson asked, "What's your blood type?"
Brett's chuckle sounded forced this time, and Donaldson didn't join in. Brett put his hand in his pocket. Going for a weapon, or holding one for reassurance, Donaldson figured. Not many hitchers traveled without some form of reassurance.
But Donaldson had something better than a knife, or a gun. His weapon weighed thirty-six hundred pounds and was barreling down the road at eighty miles per hour.
Checking once more for traffic, Donaldson gripped the wheel, braced himself, and stood on the brake.
The car screeched toward a skidding halt, Brett's seatbelt popping open exactly the way Donaldson had rigged it to, and the kid launched headfirst into the dashboard. The spongy plastic, beneath the veneer, had been reinforced with unforgiving steel.
The car shuddered to a stop, the stench of scorched rubber in the air. Brett was in bad shape. With no seatbelt and one hand in his pocket, he'd banged his nose up pretty good. Donaldson grasped his hair, rammed his face into the dashboard two more times, then opened the glove compartment. He grabbed a plastic zip tie, checked again for oncoming traffic, and quickly secured the kid's hands behind his back. In Brett's coat pocket, he found a tiny Swiss Army knife. Donaldson barked out a laugh.
If memory served, and it usually did, there was an off ramp less than a mile ahead, and then a remote stretch of farmland. Donaldson pulled back onto the highway and headed for it, whistling as he drove.
The farm stood just where he remembered it. Donaldson pulled offroad into a cornfield and drove through the dead stalks until he could no longer see the street. He killed the engine, set the parking brake-the Accord had transmission issues-and tugged out the keys to ensure it wouldn't roll away. Then he picked a few choice tools from his toolbox and stuck them in his pocket.
His passenger whimpered as Donaldson muscled him out of the car and dragged him into the stalks.
He whimpered even more when Donaldson jerked his pants down around his ankles, got him loosened up with an ear of corn, and then forced himself inside.
"Gonna stab me with your little knife?" he whispered in Brett's ear between grunts. "Think that was going to save you?"
When he'd finished, Donaldson sat on the kid's chest and tried out all the attachments on the Swiss Army knife. The tiny scissors worked well on eyelids. The nail file just reached the eardrums. The little two-inch blade was surprisingly sharp and adept at whittling the nose down to the cartilage.
Donaldson also used some tools of his own. Pliers, for cracking teeth and pulling off lips. When used in tandem with some garden shears, he was able to get Brett's tongue out in one piece. And of course, there was the muddler.
Normally wielded by bartenders to mash fruit in the bottom of drink glasses, Donaldson had his own special use for the instrument. People usually reacted strongly to being fed parts of their own face, and even under the threat of more pain, they'd spit those parts out. Donaldson used the plastic muddler like ram, forcing those juicy bits down their throats.
After all, it was sinful to waste all of those delectable little morsels like that.
When the fighting and screams began to find down, the Swiss Army knife's corkscrew attachment did a fine job on Brett's Adam's apple, popping it out in one piece and leaving a gaping hole that poured blood bright as a young cabernet.
Apple was a misnomer. It tasted more like a peach pit. Sweet and stringy.