Unfortunately, those twelve quarters had been the extent of her funds. And so she had zero dollars. Zero dollars to buy more food. Zero dollars to get herself something to drink. Zero dollars to fill up the SUV with gas.
She was fortunate that she'd gotten as far as she had, really. The tank had been full when she'd left Haven Falls, and according to the revolving numbers above the gas gage, she'd managed to drive a total of 376 miles before the vehicle had finally broken down – no more gas left in its tank to make it run.
And so stuck on the side of the road inside a vehicle that couldn't go anywhere, Katherine rested her head against the leather steering wheel and desperately tried to think of a way out of the mess she'd found herself in.
Only one solution occurred to her, and she didn't think she could get around it.
She was going to have to hitch hike.
Bastian would kill her.
The traitorous thought snuck up on her unexpectedly and, unsurprisingly, only strengthened her resolve to do it. "Screw you," she muttered to a man who was – hopefully – hundreds of miles away, before jabbing the unlock button with her forefinger and pushing open the door.
The sun was setting but still provided Katherine with enough light to feel relatively certain she wouldn't be run over as she trudged through the overgrown weeds that grew wildly on the side of the road. She hesitantly threw her arm out and stuck her thumb in the air when she heard the first car approaching.
It zoomed right passed her.
Same with the second.
And third.
Katherine had lost track of how many vehicles had ignored her, the sky growing steadily darker, when she became desperate enough to try to flag down a semi-truck. To her surprise, the big rig slowed to a stop. She eyed the eighteen wheeler warily, second guessing her decision, when the passenger side door was thrown open by a petite woman.
Katherine thanked whatever deity was watching over her.
As stereotypical as it was, she'd pictured an obese man sporting an overgrown beard and grease-stained clothes driving a monster like this. Not the short, bright eyed woman behind the wheel who was waving for her to come closer.
Even she was taller than the forty-something year old broad and was fairly certain she could take her in a fight if the woman proved to be violent. Confident that both her life and virtue would remain intact if she took a ride from the woman, she ventured forward, quickly scrambling up the set of stairs and taking the only other seat available in the front of the semi-truck. "Thanks so much," she offered immediately. "You're the first person who stopped."
The woman shook her head, shifting the massive engine of the truck into gear. "And thank God I was, little missy. I'd have hated to see your pretty face splattered across my television the next time I’d turned on the news. Missing girl's body found in the ditch along Highway 69."
Katherine's face heated at the blatant scolding. "My car broke down," she muttered in explanation.
The woman sighed. "Sorry, honey, I don't mean to sound so harsh. It just isn't safe for a young woman like yourself to be hitch hiking. Asking random strangers for a ride is dangerous. The name's Trixie, by the way. What's yours?"
Her blush cooled at the woman's – Trixie's – apology. “Um… it’s Katherine."
"Alrighty, Katherine. Where were you headed before your car broke down?"
The small brunette fidgeted in her seat. "Uh… Iowa actually. I live," used to live, “in Middletown. It's a tiny speck of a town a bit south of Des Moines."
"Iowa, huh?" Trixie's eyebrows disappeared into her poufy bangs. "You're a long way from home. You aren't in some sort of trouble, are you?"
Katherine immediately shook her head, half afraid the woman would throw her out if she thought that was the case. "No, no, nothing like that." Not unless one counted being on the run from a pack of werewolves led by one undoubtedly enraged alpha as trouble.
Trixie nodded to herself, seemingly coming to some sort of decision in her head. "Well, if that's true then I suppose I wouldn't mind making a pit stop in this Middletown. Des Moines is a bit out of the way of where I'm headed, but I wouldn't feel right leaving you out here to fend for yourself."
Genuine gratitude swelled within her. "That'd be great. Are you sure? I don't want to be too much trouble."
"Sure, sure," Trixie waved off her concern. "Think nothing of it, you remind me of my daughter."
Katherine allowed Trixie to entertain her with tales of said daughter – apparently the girl had recently moved out, leaving Trixie with a bit of a case of empty nest syndrome – as they continued to drive down the highway. Grateful for the distraction from her previously frenzied thoughts, she was disappointed when they hadn't driven for much longer than an hour before Trixie was pulling into a truck stop.
"Sorry, dear, but I've been on the road since dawn. If I don't get some shut eye soon, I'm liable to drive us into a ditch."
"That's okay," Katherine assured, but tried to stop Trixie from dragging her out of the big rig to get a bite to eat at the small diner that shared a lot with the truck stop. "I don't have any money," she protested.
Trixie rolled her eyes. "I'm paying, now move your hiney, girl."
Katherine reluctantly acquiesced, muttering “thank you” a million or so times as she dove into the thick cheeseburger she'd ended up ordering for herself inside. Despite the burger being well done, the protein was still a godsend for her growling belly. As they were walking back to the semi- truck, where Trixie was planning on pulling out a couple of the monstrous vehicle's make-shift bunks, she asked Katherine a question that had her stopping in her tracks.
"Do you need to call anyone to let them know you had car trouble and are going to be a little late getting home?"
She dug out a small, compact cell phone from one of her jean's pockets.
A cell phone.
It'd been seven months since Katherine had seen one of those. And while the one Trixie owned was an older, blockier version of the one she used to have before... well before, it was still an almost surreal experience to see it.
Why the hell hadn't she thought of asking for one until now?
Simply put, the existence of them had slipped her mind.
"Well," Trixie prompted when Katherine had suddenly gone quiet, "do you need to call anyone?"
Katherine didn't need to be asked a third time, quickly snatching the phone from the woman's hand before she could change her mind. "Yes, thank you, that'd be great, wonderful even.”
Trixie frowned at her disproportional enthusiasm, but shrugged. "No problem, I'll give you some privacy," she announced before trudging back up the steps of the truck.
Katherine's hands were shaking so badly the first two times she attempted to dial the number that'd been drilled into her head since childhood that twice she'd mixed up the digits and called the wrong number. The third time, though, she finally got it right, and as she listened to her home phone ring for the first time in months, her entire body trembled in anticipation.
Brrr-ing. Brrr-ing. Brrr-ing.
On the third ring, someone finally answered. "Hello?"
She wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed when the voice on the other end of the phone didn't belong to either of her parents. It took her a moment to respond. "S-Samantha? Is that you?"
A pause. "This is she. May I ask who is calling?"
Katherine nearly choked on her spit. Didn’t her sister recognize her voice? "Sam? Oh my god, Sam, it’s Katherine."
An even longer pause. "Katherine?"
Something was wrong. Sam didn't sound like someone who’d just been contacted by her sister who’d been missing for over half a year. She sounded… furious.
When she spoke again, her voice was ice. "Do you think this is funny?"
Katherine's stomach churned. "I – what? Why would I think this is funny? Sam? Can I talk to mom? Or dad? Please, this is important."
Her sister huffed into the phone. "Look, I don't know what kin
d of deranged pervert gets off on exasperating the pain of two people who've lost their daughter, but we've heard enough lies to last a lifetime. Don’t call here again."
Katherine could feel the bile rising in her throat as panic gripped her. "What are you talking about? Sam, please!"
"I mean it. If you ring here again, I'm calling the police."
"What? No-"
The dial tone rang hollowly in Katherine's ears. Sam had hung up the phone.
Katherine gracelessly vomited onto the gravel, barely missing her cheap sandals. Had people been calling pretending to be her? She was tempted to get sick all over again and bent over at the waist, dry heaving.
"You okay, Katherine?" Trixie was half hanging out of the big rig, frowning in concern.
Hands still shaking, Katherine blithely wiped her mouth with the back of one of them. "Yeah, fine." Not fine. At all. "Must have been the burger."
She hardly slept the remainder of the night, tortured by the picture her sister had painted. She'd known, of course, that her parents would have been worried about her all these months, especially with the events that had led up to her disappearance, but she wasn't quite ready to face the reality of the pain that they'd surely been in. Pain undoubtedly similar to what she had endured when she’d thought she had lost them. Pain that could have been soothed, worry eased, by Bastian if he wasn’t such an unconjurable liar. Burying her face into the lumpy pillow that Trixie had borrowed her, Katherine screamed.
She was a spacey mess the following morning, half-heartily participating in conversation that Trixie forced her to engage in. Katherine knew she should have been making more of an effort to be friendly – the woman was doing her an enormous favor after all – but she could hardly help herself as the phone call she'd made the night before played on repeat inside her head. She grew more and more nervous – her tremors increasing – as they got closer and closer to their destination. She'd nearly gotten sick again when they'd passed a Welcome to Iowa sign, going as far to ask Trixie to pull over on the side of the road. While she hadn’t vomited, she had yanked off the necklace she’d suddenly remembered was still around her neck and nearly threw the stupidly pretty thing into a cornfield. She couldn’t quite bring herself to do it, though, and shoved it roughly into a pocket instead.
Unbelievably understanding, Trixie had let her rest under a light blanket in blessed silence the rest of the way to Middletown.
It was late in the evening when they finally arrived, and Trixie graciously let her out in front of her parents’ house. It looked like the woman was waiting to make sure Katherine got safely inside, so she hesitantly approached what she used to think of as her home. It looked exactly the same as she remembered it. She stared at the door, debating on whether or not knocking would be appropriate.
In the end, she couldn't quite bring herself to walk in unannounced, and so raising her hand, she gently rapped on the wooden slab behind which her unsuspecting family awaited.
Knock. Knock.
CHAPTER SIX
It was Katherine's father who answered the door.
Her breath was sucked from her body – she could physically feel her lungs deflating in her chest – as her eyes took in Benjamin Mayes.
He wasn't looking at her, his neck straining as he twisted his head and hollered into the area of the house Katherine knew to be the kitchen. "Yes, dear, green olives sound fine."
Even from his profile, however, she could see that the man she proudly called her father had changed in the seven months she'd been gone. His dark hair, which only used to have a gentle sprinkling of gray, was now almost completely covered in the washed out color. New worry lines had taken residence on his forehead and around the corners of his mouth as well.
"Extra pepperoni?" Over the loud palpitations of her heart, she dazedly recognized her mother's voice as the soft tenor reached her ears from where its owner resided, apparently somewhere in the kitchen.
Benjamin's head turned, his mouth already open to either answer his wife or greet whomever he thought it was at the door, when their eyes finally connected. A meeting of dark hazel and bright green.
It was almost comical the way his black pupils dilated, nearly completely covering his colorful irises as they were blown wide in shock.
Almost being the key word. Katherine's stomach, which was already twisted in all sorts of knots, somehow tightened further.
"K-Kit?"
Katherine forced herself to gulp in some much needed oxygen, blinking back tears at the nickname she hadn't heard in far too long. She tensed when one of her father's hands came up and slowly – ever so carefully – brushed a lock of disheveled hair out of her face. He rested his palm against her cheek. "Is it really you?"
She nodded jerkily. "Yes, it's me. D-dad-" she choked on the word, but it hardly mattered because she wasn't allowed to get out any more than that before her whole being was swept up into a hug so familiar and comforting that she could do little but melt into it.
She sniffled as her father pressed frenzied kisses into the crown of her hair. Words flew from his mouth so quickly that she was unable to catch them all, but they were some variation of "you're okay, you're okay," and "thank God" and "I love you."
She had missed her dad so much.
After a long moment, he pulled back, but didn’t remove his hands from where they had come to rest on her shoulders. "Elaine," he muttered as he stared into Katherine's eyes. "Elaine!" he called again more vociferously when no one answered.
And then her mother was there.
Elaine Mayes popped into the room, concern puckering her brow. She had undoubtedly heard the same tremor in her husband's voice as Katherine had. When she saw why his voice had been shaking – when she saw Katherine – she stopped in her tracks, dropping the phone she’d been holding in her hand in the process. It landed with a dull thud on the carpet.
Katherine greedily took in the sight of her mother. Much like her father, she’d aged considerably in the time she’d been missing. While Elaine had always been thin, her cheeks were now alarmingly hollow, and dark bags pulled at the sagging skin under her eyes. Her blonde hair was pulled back tightly from her face, making the unhealthy changes even more prominent.
Irrational guilt churned Katherine's stomach.
Before she could submerge herself too deeply in the horrible feeling, however, her mother was in front of her, two bony hands grasping either side of her face as she stared, disbelieving eyes shining in amazement as they took Katherine in.
Then she was crushed into a hug even fiercer than the one her father had pulled her into.
Too soon, her mother pulled back. Mirroring her father’s earlier actions, however, her hands refused to leave Katherine’s shoulders. It was like her parents feared she'd disappear into thin air if they let her go. Her heart throbbed painfully inside her chest as the realization that that was exactly what they were afraid of dawned.
"Katherine," her mother spoke, her gravelly voice a dead giveaway of the fact that tears were trapped in her throat. "Oh my God, sweetheart, we've been out of our minds with worry." Her hands fluttered around Katherine helplessly. "Are you okay?" She shook her head violently. "What am I saying? Of course you're not okay! You've been missing for months! What I mean is, are you hurt?" Her mom didn't even wait for an answer before ordering her dad to start the car. "We're taking you to the hospital."
Alarmed, Katherine caught and held onto her mother's restless hands. "I'm fine," she told her, injecting as much confidence as she could into the declaration.
Her mother's responding stare contained a hefty dose of skepticism.
"Truly," Katherine tried again, looking directly into her mother's eyes, both of which were sporting a thick sheen of tears. She hoped her mom could somehow sense the truth in her words as she said them. "I'm not hurt. I don't need to see a doctor."
Elaine took a deep breath, clearly fighting the urge to grab Katherine and drag her to the nearest hospital whether her daughter thought
she needed to go or not. "Okay," she finally acquiesced. "Okay. The hospital can wait."
Katherine cringed at the implication that she would indeed be forced to see a doctor at some point. There was no way they’d be able to tell that she wasn't exactly human anymore... right?
She comforted herself with the fact that her parents had taken her to Hayfield Medical the night she'd been bitten by Bastian, and the doctor she'd seen then hadn't noticed anything odd about her.
Not that she had noticed anything odd at that point either. She certainly hadn’t known she was a werewolf.
"But honey,” Katherine shook the memory off, focusing instead on her mother, who was addressing her. The woman had maneuvered her hands so that they were now the ones holding onto her daughter's. "Where in the world have you been?"
"Oh. Um, well...” Katherine’s lips were suddenly very, very dry, and her tongue felt ridiculously large in her mouth. So wrapped up in the turbulent emotions that the news of her parents' survival had evoked, it hadn't even occurred to her to come up with a cover story.
What was she going to tell them?
The truth? Not likely. She was liable to end up tucked away in an asylum by the end of the night if she spouted off that she was a werewolf.
"Elaine," Benjamin spoke up, unknowingly rescuing his daughter from having to answer the loaded question right then, "I'm sure Katherine will tell us everything, but look at her. She's dead on her feet. Let her rest, maybe take a shower. When Sam and Chad get here with the pizza, Katherine will tell us what she can remember, and we'll figure out what to do from there, okay?"
So it was Sam her mom had been on the phone with. She was more than a little nervous about the idea of reuniting with her sister after their blotched telephone conversation the night before.
Elaine reluctantly nodded in allowance of her husband’s suggestion. “I suppose that makes sense.”
"Okay with you, Katherine?"
Latching onto the opportunity to gather herself and think of a believable story, she immediately agreed as well. “A shower sounds wonderful.”
Shy (Once Bitten, Twice Shy, #2) Page 7
