Fuck!
He sighed. “So…uh…what now?”
“We stay on the road until dark. Then we find a little motel somewhere and get a room with your credit card.”
Rob thought about that. It seemed to indicate she had no intention of killing him for at least the next several hours. Still, hot babe or not, the notion of being alone in a motel room with this girl scared the shit out of him. Christ, she’d come up to him with a gun in a public place in broad daylight. What might a girl crazy enough to do that do with him with a little bit of privacy and some time to kill? Rob tightened his grip around the steering wheel to quell the sudden tremors in his fingers, which had been triggered by the sudden conviction that he wouldn’t leave that room alive.
She looked at him. Her eyes were cold, pitiless. “You need to stop being such a nervous bitch.”
Rob grunted. “Oh. Right. Okay. I’ll work on that, but I can’t guarantee anything. I mean, go figure, right? Some crazy chick with a gun kidnaps and threatens me. Why should I be nervous?”
The girl stared at him for a long moment, her features fixed, expressionless. Rob couldn’t bear the scrutiny and decided to stare at the road instead.
“Look at me.”
It was a tone that would brook no disobedience. Icy, and carrying an unspoken promise of pain if ignored. He looked at her. “Okay. I’m looking at you. Now what?”
The girl smiled. Just a little one, a slight dimpling of the corners of her mouth. But her eyes stayed cold. “I haven’t decided about killing you yet. That’s gonna depend on a lot of things. There are some things you can do to better your odds. One of them is to do everything I tell you without question or hesitation. It’ll make things a lot easier for both of us.”
Rob nodded. “Right. Because there’s no reason a friendly little kidnapping-slash-carjacking should be anything other than a thoroughly pleasant experience for all involved.”
“The other thing you can do, the main thing at this point, is to cut the sarcasm. It’s making me want to shoot you right now and be done with it.”
Rob frowned. “You’d shoot me right now? Seriously? Doing seventy-five on the interstate, with me behind the wheel?”
The girl’s gaze didn’t waver. “That’s right.”
“You’re crazy. Fuck, you are really fucking crazy.”
“Maybe.” Her smile deepened a little. “But you should take what I’m telling you seriously.”
Rob shrugged. “Okay. Whatever.”
They continued in silence for another several minutes. The Neon stayed in front of them, but Rob soon realized he’d lost sight of the van. The girl was sitting up straight and staring straight ahead now. She had to have noticed, too. Rob briefly considered shifting lanes again and putting the pedal down in an effort to catch up to their quarry, but the girl didn’t seem concerned about this development, so he did nothing.
Unable to bear the silence any longer, he glanced at her and asked, “So where are they going?”
“Myrtle Beach. Same place we’re going.”
“Okay. Well…” Rob had turned his attention back to the road, but now he looked fully at her, astonishment evident in the twist of his features. “Myrtle Beach? That’s…”
He trailed off and glanced at the road again. The Neon swerved and nearly struck a pickup truck in the far left lane. A horn blared and the Neon jerked back into its proper lane. Then it swerved slightly again. Rob began to suspect the driver was impaired in some way. He eased off the gas pedal a bit more and put another car length between the Galaxie and the Neon.
He looked at the girl. “So if I behave, I’ll live to see Myrtle Beach? Is that what you’re saying? Because we won’t be there by sundown.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. One way or another, you’ll find out.”
Rob didn’t press the issue any further, deciding he had no choice but to accept the answer he’d been given, which was at least vaguely hopeful. But he had some other questions. “So I guess you know these people?”
“No.”
Rob’s brow creased. “Huh. But you know where they’re going?”
“That’s right.”
“How?”
“Heard them talking about it at Starbucks. Heard everything I needed to know, down to the street address for the beach house one of their rich daddies rented for them.”
Rob hit the brake pedal as the Neon abruptly slowed down and swerved again. He slapped the palm of his uncuffed hand against the steering wheel. “Fucker!”
“Calm down.”
Rob looked at her and laughed. Once again, he just couldn’t help it. “You’re telling me to calm down? That’s rich. The crazy chick who impulsively decides to follow some rich kids several hundred miles for no apparent reason thinks I need to calm down.” He shook his head and laughed again. “That is awesome. That is fucking awesome.”
Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “There’s a reason.”
“Great. I’d like to hear it.”
Her voice remained almost inaudible as she said, “They were mean to me.”
Rob looked at her.
Her eyes were narrow slits and her lips were pooched out. The childlike pout was a forceful reminder of how very young she was. She couldn’t be any older than twenty. He felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy for her. “Look…whatever they did, and I don’t doubt they were assholes to you, but…it can’t be worth the trouble you’re going to here.”
A corner of her mouth twitched. Her hands curled into fists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not.” He saw the way her clenched fists were shaking and almost kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to piss her off. But he thought he had a chance of reaching her. She was a tough chick, no question, but maybe there was a softness behind the hard-core exterior. “Seriously. Please think this through. Nothing really bad has happened yet. I know you’re mad. You’re right to be mad. But maybe there’s some better way to vent that anger. Right here and now, you’re still okay. It’s not too late to head off some possibly life-ruining choices.”
That corner of her mouth twitched again. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So help me understand.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Oh! And what about your family and friends? Won’t they worry once they realize you’re missing?”
She laughed and didn’t say anything.
He shook his head. “What’s funny?”
“You are. This whole understanding-big-brother bullshit. If you knew anything about me, you’d know how stupid you’re being.”
“So tell me about yourself. Help me understand. Maybe start by telling me your name.”
“It’s Roxie. That’s r-o-x-i-e.”
“Huh. Sounds like a stripper’s name.”
“Yeah. That’s why it’s cool.”
Rob nodded. “So…Roxie…why is my attempt to reason with you stupid?”
She reached between her legs and pulled the tote bag into her lap, then talked as she rummaged through it. “Everything you think you know about me, all of your fucking little guesses, are all wrong as shit. I don’t live locally. There’s no one here to miss me. There’s no one anywhere to miss me. Not anymore.” Her hands came out of the tote bag with a pack of American Spirit cigarettes and a Zippo lighter. She lit up a cig and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I’m not a regular girl under the surface, like you think. And I know that’s what you think. When someone hurts me, I don’t run home and write a fucking blog about it. I’m a bad bitch. A really, really bad bitch. There’s no hidden heart of gold here.” She blew out another stream of smoke, this one right at Rob. “As the stoners in that shitty Neon are about to find out.”
“Say what?”
Rob coughed and waved away smoke. He’d ignored the Neon while listening to Roxie talk, but now he focused on it again and saw that its driver’s impairment appeared to be worsening. The little car swerved yet again as Rob stared at the profusion of faded stickers advertising the owner’s politics and taste in music. Left-leaning and into punk. Though there were also Grateful Dead and Phish stickers, which seemed kind of strange. In Rob’s experience, punks and stoners rarely intermingled.