No siree, there was no place like home.
She’d walked east along Grand Avenue toward the university, hoping to find a college kid heading out of town for the weekend. But she’d waited for three hours now, and it was getting dark.
“Driven to insanity,” she sang softly, “driven to the edge…”
Paying for another motel room would nearly clean her out, and anyway, she was determined to keep going. She started walking again. She felt rattled, jumpy; she had felt this way ever since she crossed the state line. She couldn’t tell if the tightness in her chest came from anticipation or dread. Probably it was both.
Hearing the low hum of traffic from I-540 up ahead, she broke into a light jog. It was never a good idea to hitch at night, but right now she didn’t even care. Whatever she had to do—beg, hitch, or crawl the whole way on her hands and knees—she’d do it.
Vengeance was one hell of a motivator.
Twenty minutes later, AnnieLee was scrambling up the embankment to the interstate. Cars rushed past as she stood on the gravel shoulder, forcing a smile no one would be able to see in the darkness.
When a woman in an old white Pontiac finally pulled over, AnnieLee got in and let herself be scolded for hitchhiking, for being out alone at night, for not having a proper coat, and for every other wrong choice the woman seemed to think she’d made in her life. AnnieLee just nodded gratefully, promising she would start going to church and turn herself around, and two hours later she got dropped off on a rural road barely twenty miles from her final destination.
She fingered Foster’s money in her pocket. He’d said If it means you can take a cab…
But there weren’t any cabs in the boondocks, or at least not any that she knew how to call on a phone she didn’t even have. And so she put out her thumb again. She hoped a kind and decent stranger would stop for her. In a place so small that everyone seemed to know everyone else, she just needed a person who wouldn’t recognize her. Someone who’d believe her name was Katie—or even AnnieLee Keyes.
She walked along the side of the road, sticking out her thumb whenever she heard a car approaching. After an hour or so, a battered Chevy passed by and screeched to a halt twenty yards in front of her. She ran up to meet it.
When the man—he was around her age, and alone—pushed the passenger door open, AnnieLee felt a humid cloud of beery air spill out and surround her.
She’d never seen him before, and this was such a relief that she overlooked the fact that he’d been drinking, and that she’d just promised that nice old lady that she wouldn’t ever take a ride from a random man again. She got in. She was so damn close to where she needed to be, and she didn’t know when the next car would stop, and already it felt like she was in enemy territory. She needed to keep moving.
“I thought you were a deer at first,” he said. Then he laughed. “Shoot, woulda hit ya and turned you into steaks.”
“Not a deer,” AnnieLee said. She looked down at the empty beer cans in the cup holders. “You’re going to keep us between the ditches, right?” she asked, buckling in. She pulled the man’s coat out from behind her back and tucked it down by her feet.
“Pretty sure I can do that,” he said.
“I hope so,” AnnieLee said. “I’ve had enough near-death experiences for the week,” she added, but she said it so quietly that he didn’t hear her.
“Where you aiming to get?” he asked.
One of his headlights was out, and the other was dim and yellow. “A bit outside Jasper,” she said. “On the way to Rock Springs.”
“You from the hills?” he asked.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see that he was looking closely at her. “I am.”
“Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve been gone a long time.”
“Welcome back, then,” he said. “You party?”
“Not so much,” she said.
“Too bad.”
He was quiet after that; he seemed to be concentrating on driving. AnnieLee sat as close to the door as she could get, with the window cracked to bring in fresh air. She wasn’t worried about him running off the road anymore. But she couldn’t say the same about what the next few hours would hold. Could she get this half-drunk hillbilly to take her right up to the door? Would the house be dark? Would anyone be home? Could she find the rifle that used to be hidden underneath the front porch?
She was trying to imagine what might happen next when she felt the pressure of a hand on her leg.