Page 65 of Murder Road

“Are you cold?” I asked Trish.

“I’m going home,” Trish said a second time, her tone distracted. She put her foot on the gas and the car sped up.

I was freezing now, the chill numbing my cheeks and my fingers. Outside, lightning flickered high in the clouds again, flashing light into the car. I turned the air-conditioning knob one way and then the other, but nothing changed. I tried to roll down my window, but the roller wouldn’t move.

“You can let me out here,” I said.

Trish didn’t answer.

I tried the window roller again, jerking it, but it wouldn’t turn.

I looked in the rearview mirror and there was the Lost Girl, sitting in the back seat.

I had expected this, possibly even wanted it, but still, when I saw her pale face and long, brown hair, my chest seized with fear. My breath stopped and we locked eyes in the mirror.

She was a girl, but she wasn’t. She was a person, but she was also an empty hole where a person should be, sucking all the air through it and spreading darkness. I could see how thin her arms were, and I thought I could hear her breathe. But she wasn’t breathing, was she? She’d been dead a long time, and this close I caught the faint scent of rot, earthy and sweet. There was blood trickling from her ear.

Then the Lost Girl smiled.

A sound left my throat that was part gasp, part helpless moan. I knew that smile. It wasn’t the amused kind, or the friendly kind. The Lost Girl’s lips formed a pressed line, a smile that said, You’re going to suffer, and I’m going to enjoy it.

“No,” I breathed. And it crashed through me, what I had done, how the Lost Girl had tricked me. I’d thought I would be facing her alone. But the Lost Girl didn’t play by my rules, and she’d never intended that at all.

The car slowed down. “I need to pull over,” Trish said.

“Trish, something’s wrong.” I had to try. I had to get through to her.

The car slowed to the shoulder of the road, and when Trish looked at me, her eyes were black, her pupils blown all the way open. Her features were slack.

“I have to get something from the trunk,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I’ll get out, and you keep driving. Please. Just put your foot on the gas and keep going. Drive to Coldlake Falls and don’t stop for anything you see. She’ll give up and leave, and this will all be over. You probably won’t even remember it. Get out of here. Please.”

Trish didn’t seem to hear me. She had turned back to the road as she stopped the car and put it in park, turning the key in the ignition. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said again.

She got out of the car and walked to the back. I heard the thump of the trunk opening. “You bitch,” I said to the Lost Girl, and when I spoke, my breath curled in the air.

She was gone from the back seat. It was empty except for Trish’s children’s toys. I slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key, which was still in the ignition, my hand slick on the metal—maybe if I could get away, the Lost Girl would follow me and leave Trish behind. Nothing happened. The motor didn’t turn, and there was no sound.

I tried again, cursing. There was another thump as Trish moved something in the trunk. In my mind’s eye I saw the Lost Girl’s smile, knowing and cruel. She had made Trish leave the key in the ignition on purpose. She wanted me to hope, to think I could end this nightmare. She wanted me to waste my time.

How many people had this happened to before me? A lonely hitchhiker gets a ride. The driver says they need to pull over for a minute. How many knew by this point that something was wrong? All of them? How many tried to get away from whatever was going to happen? How far did they get?

Beaten with something curved, possibly a tire iron. Stabbed with something resembling an ice pick. Beaten on the back of the head with something large and blunt, possibly a branch or rock. That was how the others had died—killed with whatever was at hand. The killers hadn’t brought a gun, because when they got into their car that day, they hadn’t known they were going to kill someone. How many of them knew what they were doing, even though they couldn’t control it? How many of them remembered?

I opened the driver’s door and slid out, trying to keep low so that Trish wouldn’t see me.

I had waited too long. From the corner of my eye, I saw a movement. I jumped to my right just as something whistled past my head and hit the pavement.

A tire iron. Trish, her eyes black and her face dead of expression, had swung a tire iron at me. And she was lifting it to swing it again.

I ran.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

My sneakers hit the gravel on the shoulder of Atticus Line as I pumped my legs, sprinting back the way we’d come. I didn’t scream, didn’t utter a sound. I saved all of my breath for running. Overhead, lightning flashed in the sky. The wind, hot and damp, picked up.

I heard Trish’s footsteps behind me, and then they stopped. She didn’t speak, either, didn’t call my name or curse. The Lost Girl had nothing to say about killing me. She just wanted it over with. My death was the point. It always had been.

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