by Abbie Roads
“How about an Ernie Burger, rare, everything, side of onion rings?” She worked to maintain her light tone. She wanted the twenty-dollar bill he always left for her tip.
“You remembered my usual.” He smiled, his teeth a post-apocalyptic city—abandoned, jagged, decayed. “You know I can’t resist an Ernie Burger.”
She scrawled his order on the slip and then left the table, feeling the slime of more than one man’s gaze on her body. That was to be expected when the uniform requirements were four-inch heels, shorts that barely covered her ass, and cleavage. Lots of cleavage.
Ernie liked his girls barely decent, said it was the best business decision he’d ever made. He was right. Sweet Buns was packed twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. Most days, the tips were great. Hell, there wasn’t anywhere within forty-five minutes where she could earn as much as she made at Sweet Buns.
Ernie met her at the kitchen window with a pair of tongs in his hand and anger on his face. His sharply slashed brows met over his eyes, a scowl constantly gripped his lips, and the strange vibe of restrained violence intimidated most everyone and kept the patrons from being too grabby-feely. He looked like a homicidal hashslinger, but didn’t have any bodies stashed in the freezer. At least none she’d found.
Bald head glistening from working over the grill, he scanned the new order, then turned to flip a burger while he spoke. “Shirl’s in back. Today she’s green.”
“Kermit or neon?” Shirl changed her hair color as often as most people changed their socks.
“Kermit.” Ernie flashed one of his rare smiles in her direction and then hid it behind a frown. “You keeping up the maintenance on that little car of yours?”
Her Miata. The only thing that remained from her old life. Keeping it was impractical, stupid even, but she refused to lose everything. It was her beacon of hope that one day she’d have enough cash to drive it right out of Sundew, Ohio, and never look back. “I haven’t been driving much.” Code for paying-my-bills-and-trying-to-save-money-is-my-priority.
Ernie smacked two quarter-pound burgers on the grill. Flames hissed and sizzled over the meat. He didn’t look up. “After shift tomorrow I’ll change your oil and check it over for you. And I don’t want nothing for it.”
His offer percolated in a slow drip through her ears and finally into her brain.
He gave her a sideways glance. “You hear me?”
She’d forgotten how to flap her lips and make sound to form words so she rocked her head up and down on her shoulders. His unexpected kindness left her muddle-minded. When was the last time someone had been kind without expecting something in return?
When was the last time she hadn’t felt absolutely alone?
Ernie removed a burger from the grill and slapped it in the bun. He motioned with his head toward the back room. “Get out of here. Soak your feet in Epsom salts and stay off them for the rest of the night.”
His words, spoken at the end of every shift to every one of his girls, knocked her out of her stupor.
“Okay.” She started around back.
“Shirl! Order up!” Ernie yelled, his voice loud enough to be heard throughout the diner.
Shirl dashed down the hall, her heels clattering as loud as a shoed horse. Evanee handed her open checks to the green-haired girl like a member of the Olympic relay team passing a baton, then walked out the back door.
The first thing she noticed was the rumble, roar, and release of pressure from the eighteen-wheelers parked behind the diner. The noise was as constant as a heartbeat.
A brisk autumn breeze raised goose bumps on her skin. Sunshine melted them away. Tilting her face to the sun to soak up some vitamin D, she leaned against the building and pried her pumps from her swollen feet. Each shoe came off with an indecent sucking sound and left a deep red cleft around her foot.
Ahhh. The cold pavement was a delight against her hot soles.
She walked across the parking lot, her legs moving in an awkward flamingo step as they recalibrated to being flat-footed.
The hardest part of the day wasn’t the eight hours in the heels. It was this moment, when she had time to remember her belly flop off the cliff of comfort into the cesspool of white trash. From a safe, easy life to this truck-stop waitress existence. From trendy apartment to living behind Sweet Buns at Morty’s Motor Lodge. From privacy to sharing a room with Brittany, the town whore. From profound ignorance to the realization that everything good she used to have came from being a whore too.
But she wasn’t going to think about that. Nope. Not going to.
Halfway across the parking lot, she spotted Brittany’s special signal.
The ribbon tied to their doorknob used to be pretty-girl pink, but had long since faded to a shade of old and used.
“Damn it, Brittany.”
The steady stream of truckers kept Brittany bumping around the clock. At least she always made her guys rent another room for the hour. Unless she had a loaded one. Someone with thousands to burn. Being customer service–oriented, Brittany gave those guys a discount by letting them use her room—the one she shared with Evanee. They’d be in there all night, possibly even days.
Now Evanee stood eyeball to eyeball with being homeless for the night.
A weight bore down on her shoulders, threatened to buckle her knees, crush her into the pavement.
She shook her head, flinging the bad thoughts out of her mind like a dog shaking off water. There had to be a bright side. If she looked hard enough, long enough, she could find something good hiding behind every bad thing. Or maybe the search for good was just a distraction from the bad. She’d have to think about that one later.
She wasn’t homeless. Homeless meant no roof over her head, nowhere to go. She had her car and could drive herself anywhere.
She fished through the wads of cash and change in her tiny apron pocket, finding her key ring. Once inside the Miata, she locked the doors and then counted through the day’s tips. Some ones, but mostly fives, tens, even a few twenties from the most desperate of truckers who thought if they tipped high, they’d eventually earn some alone time with her.
With her tips from yesterday, she had enough cash for her car payment with twenty-three dollars left over. Not enough for another motel room. She shoved the money back into her apron pocket and set it on the floor.
The bow on the door fluttered on the breeze, its movement more effective than a neon sign flashing Sex In Progress. Heat scorched her cheeks. She felt like a slow-witted Peeping Tom staring at the ribbon, knowing all manner of sexual acrobatics were occurring inside the room.
Evanee started her car. The motor turned over with a quiet hum that instantly lifted her mood. No matter how impractical or how flashy, she loved her Miata.
With no particular destination in mind, she pulled out of Morty’s and headed toward the country, away from semis and people. She took one winding, hilly road after another until she found an isolated spot.
The road passed through a serpentine valley encircled by low, undulating hills. A barbed-wire fence ran parallel with the pavement. Cows probably grazed there in the summer, but this late in the fall, the grass had shriveled to spikes of straw. The lonesome beauty of the land, the way the hills folded around her, soothed something inside her she hadn’t realized needed comfort until that moment.
See, there was always a bright side. She would never have found this place if Brittany hadn’t confiscated their room for a conjugal visit with a horny trucker.
She pulled over and cut the ignition.
She could spend the night here. It’d be like camping out. Sort of.
Leaning back against the headrest, she let her eyes slide shut. Sometimes she forgot a world existed beyond Sweet Buns, Morty’s, and the constant rumble of semis.
Silence. Pure and perfect. The best thing she’d heard in weeks. The quiet lulled her into r
elaxation, into sleep.
* * *
Evanee startled awake with a full-body lurch. Her heart ping-ponged off the walls of her chest. Breath choked in and out of her lungs.
She’d had a nightmare.
Another nightmare in the infinite string of bad dreams she could never remember. But this time fear walked up her spine while she was awake, like the nightmare was just beginning.
“I thought you might be in trouble.” The words, muffled and muted through the closed driver’s window, didn’t disguise the voice’s sinister chocolaty smoothness.
Junior Malone.
Fight or flight or freeze? She froze, solid as an ice sculpture.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. Junior’s tow truck was parked behind her car. Confirmation. It really was him. She couldn’t remain paralyzed. Fight and flight stood on either side of her, better friends to her than frozen ever would be. She turned her head toward the window to face her stepbrother.
Her molester.
Her rapist.
Junior’s straight nose, his plump lips, his sharp, handsome features captured the best of Zac Efron, Tom Cruise, and a young Robert Redford in a body that everyone in Sundew was irresistibly drawn to. Women fought for his attention, men wanted to be him, and everyone adored him for his wholesome nice-guy personality.
No one saw the real him, except for her. Junior Malone was nothing more than a beautifully wrapped package. Gorgeous on the outside, but inside he was something more vile than maggots squirming and writhing on rotting roadkill.
“Fuck off.” Anger and a childhood full of pain—caused by him—dictated her volume.
“Darlin’, I was worried about you. You’ve been out here awhile.” Sincerity, kindness, concern all sounded in his voice—all bullshit. His voice might be the sweetest siren’s song to everyone else, but she knew the real him. He didn’t have any feelings, except for the sadistic kind.
“How do you know how long I’ve been out here?”
He raised his palms in the air. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea. I swear. Tiffany at Sundew National wanted me to make sure you didn’t skip town with their car.”
Their car? What kind of bank freaked if the payment was only a few days late? The kind in Sundew where the loan officer knew every mistake Evanee had ever made and expected her to dive head first into the shallow end of stupid. Again.
But what if Junior’s words were chock-full of lies and designed to manipulate her behavior?
Had he been tracking her? Had Tiffany told him to? Tomorrow, she’d get answers when she went to make her payment.
Evanee started the car, shifted into gear, and then slammed her foot down on the gas pedal. Her hip punched off the seat from the force. The Miata’s tires spun, she heard gravel flying, imagined the stones hitting Junior’s perfect face. Ha!
The engine sputtered. Died. The car coasted forward only a few feet.
Her heart sank down, down, down, until it rested on the pavement beneath the Miata.
Damn her and her genius idea to save money by canceling her cell phone service.
Hands in his coverall pockets as if he were out on a nature jaunt, Junior strolled the ten feet—all the further her Miata had gotten—to her. Each step closer squeezed the air from her lungs until the only sound was her wheezing.
“You got a leak in your fuel tank.”
“You did it.” She knew that as well as she knew his name.
“I’ll patch it for you. But I need you to get out of the car so I can jack it up.”
“I’m not getting out of this car.” She wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. Her.
“Aw…now don’t be that way. Come on out here. We can chat—you know, catch up on things—while I fix your car.” He paused, waiting for her to capitulate to his wishes.
She had never given in passively or politely, and she wasn’t going to start now.
“I saw Matt in town the other day.” His tone was innocent gossipy, but the words were a barbed whip, lashing her, raising painful welts of memory—of her choosing to stay in town for Matt, of her deluding herself into believing sex and money equaled affection, of him randomly casting her off like a used napkin.
“Dad’s watching Matt. Looking for that special moment when Matt sticks a toe out of line, and then he’ll arrest him. He’s not going to be passive like Sheriff Bailey was.” Junior and his dad hated Matt solely because being with Matt had made her untouchable. Matt was rich, prominent, and good friends with both the old sheriff and the mayor.
“Leave Matt out of this.” She didn’t want Junior’s dad, the shiny new sheriff, to cause Matt any problems.
“You shouldn’t be defending him.” Junior lashed the barbed whip again.
She heard the quiver of anticipation in his words—a warning. He pulled a tool from his coveralls pocket and held it in the middle of the driver’s window. The glass shattered. Shards sprinkled over her legs like glittering confetti. The glass hadn’t even stopped falling, and she was already scrambling across the console to the passenger side. Grabbing for her shoes, she jumped out the door.
Her heels were her only weapon. Fight her only friend.
Chapter 2
Who would’ve thought death could smell so good? Lathan maneuvered the Fat Bob down the curvy country road. The aroma of autumn streamed over his face. Decaying leaves, emaciated grass, burning wood. The best-smelling time of the year was full of the scent of death.
Death. He should’ve stayed at the presentation, waited outside to talk to Dr. Jonah when it was over. Why hadn’t that twenty-four-karat thought occurred an hour ago? Thirty-eight kills by the Strategist, and Lathan had fucking walked away from his chance to prevent number thirty-nine. The real kick in the ass—he only worked cold cases. How many active cases were the work of the Strategist?
His insides turned into a cavernous tomb. Guilt echoed off the walls.
He opened the throttle on his Fat Bob and surged forward at a reckless speed, full concentration locked on navigating the twisting roads. Countryside blurred by him. Bad thoughts left behind, replaced by the thrill.
A tow truck parked in the middle of the narrow pavement forced him to slow.
Vehicles rarely traveled this far out into the country. Probably horny teenagers, frantic for a place to screw, had broken down and needed a tow. He skirted the edge of the pavement and started to pass.
The lollipop-red Miata on the other side of the tow truck grabbed his attention for only a second, but the woman standing in front of the car, waving her shoes at him, completely captured him.
Her skyscraper legs ended in a pair of miniscule black shorts. The neckline of her shirt plunged to the valley between her breasts. And those shiny black shoes she gestured with were hooker-sexy in her hands—he didn’t dare imagine what they’d look like on her feet.
Pressure built inside his torso like a dangerous case of indigestion. The air flowing over his face stung like a charge of electric current. His grip on the handlebars faltered. The bike wobbled. He felt unsteady as a kid without training wheels.
When he drove by her, the pungent scent of garlic permeated the air. Fear. Fear always stunk.
Was she frightened of his appearance? Typical reaction. One he counted on to keep people away. He steadied the bike, continued forward without increasing his speed.
Something was peculiar about her. Something felt peculiar within him.
No SMs.
No SMs tugged at his concentration or battled for his attention.
It was like they never existed, like he was…normal. Normal. Almost. He could still smell her fear—her emotions; he just didn’t get any SMs from her.
He had to meet her, discover what made her different from every other human being.
He gripped the brake. Hard. His Fat Bob fished around on the pavement. He turned the bike in
a tight U-ey in the middle of the road and saw what scared her. A guy crouched in the ditch, nearly hidden by her car, creeping toward her as stealthy as a hawk stalking a rabbit.
“Behind you!” As he shouted the words—words he wasn’t certain she could hear over the roar of his bike—the guy sprang. Grabbed her arm. She whirled around, awkward in her movements, her limbs loose like a rag-doll ballerina. She pushed at the guy, tried to pull away from him, but the asshole shook her, shoved her. She fell to the pavement, landed on her ass and elbows, shoes bucking from her hands. Pain hacked across her face.
Every muscle, every tendon, every cell inside Lathan clenched. Fury zipped along his neuro pathways, then outward to his extremities. He shot forward on his Fat Bob, closing the distance between them in mere seconds. He didn’t even stop the bike, just dropped it and launched himself at the asshole, tackling him, driving him back until the car stopped their momentum.
Underneath him, the asshole’s muscles strained like a slingshot pulled back, ready to snap. Lathan tensed, bracing for the blow, the swing toward his ribs the only move open. “Go ahead. Fucking try it.”
The guy punched. Lathan blocked, then mashed his fist into the guy’s ribs. Lathan stepped back, watched the guy fold over, clutching his side. A plug to the ribs hurt, but it wasn’t on the scale of a knockout. Someone who buckled from a simple rib shot probably only picked on women and the weak. When confronted with someone he couldn’t easily dominate, this guy pussied out.
Lathan turned to the woman sprawled on the road.
She didn’t quite wear the holy-shit expression he expected, but she gaped at him with wide doe-eyes the color of the sky on a full-moon night. Flecks of gray twinkled in the irises. Her eyes drew him in, engulfing him in their depths. He swore he glimpsed a shard of heaven.
His heartbeat shifted to a lackadaisical rhythm. His breathing relaxed until the metallic mineral tang of blood mixed with the garlic of her fear. She was injured and still scared.
