Page 12 of You Can Leave Your Hat On

“I told you, I don’t know! I… No! Please! Please don’t! Please…”

As she felt herself falling, the visions and sounds faded from Maisey’s consciousness, and she found herself leaned back against Aaron, staring up at the sky. “Babe, you back?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m back. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Learn anything?”

“Yeah.” Maisey sat up and stretched her neck back and forth. “Whoever he is, he’s looking for someone. And she doesn’t know where he is.”

“The person being looked for?”

“Yeah. She keeps telling him she doesn’t know, but he says she has to be gotten rid of because he can’t take a chance on the person he’s looking for knowing he’s there and looking. Which she tells him won’t matter, because she doesn’t know where that person is and they’re not together anymore. But he doesn’t believe her.”

“No sign of who she is or where they are?”

“No. Weird light source. And there was something pressing into her back.”

“Like a pole or something?”

“No. Like horizontal bars. Or beams. I’m not sure.”

“Anything else? Like temperature? Or wind?”

Maisey thought about it for a second. “Yeah. There was a breeze. A stiff one.”

“Hmmm.” She could see the gears turning in Aaron’s mind. “But it was dark, right?”

“Yeah. You know what the old folks say. ‘Evil does its work in darkness.’ That sure seems to be true.” Maisey sat for a minute, thinking. There were no other details she could recall. Aaron asked her something, and she turned. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I said, another hoodie?”

She thought about it for a second. “Actually, no. This time it was a ball cap.”

“Well, that’s a new twist.”

“Yeah. It is, isn’t it?” It was the only new twist, but it was something. Maybe with another couple of tries, she’d have more. But right that minute, all that mattered was sleep.

Fun as it was, it had been an exhausting weekend. Too bad the end wasn’t as great as the beginning.

“I’m going to the Garrisons’ house. Probably be back by two thirty,” Maisey said as she picked up all of her paperwork and stuffed it into her messenger bag.

“Okay. If Blair asks, I’ll tell her where you are,” Christa told Maisey and waved her out the door. Christa had been their case manager coordinator for as long as Maisey had been there, but as a boss, Blair was fairly new as the office manager. Still, she and Blair got along, and as long as she got her work done, Blair didn’t seem to care what Maisey did.

She set out for the Garrisons’ house, but not before she stopped at a fast-food place and gobbled down a child’s-size sandwich and a small drink. Back in the car, she turned on the stereo and cranked it up. Nineties rock. She loved it. The sun was out, it was pleasant and not too hot, and the morning had gone well. She’d managed to get a young mother enrolled in a program that would help pay for childcare while she worked, and found an adult learning program for a father coping with a grown disabled daughter. The drive to the Garrison house wasn’t long, and she sang along with the songs as she drove.

Dinner was in question, and she was thinking about what kind of meat to have when she suddenly slammed on the car’s brakes in the middle of the road. The car behind her skidded too, and the sound of the horn blaring brought her to her senses. As they pulled around her, the passenger popped her a bird and yelled something, but Maisey didn’t really pay attention. Her focus was elsewhere.

It was as though she couldn’t go forward. There was nothing in the road; there was nothing wrong with her car. But Maisey was frozen. She glanced around, frantic to figure it out. There was no one behind her and no traffic coming toward her. But dead ahead was the bridge over the Laurel River. As soon as that thought registered, a sense of nausea overwhelmed her. What the hell was going on? She tried to pull off to the side of the road, but the car wouldn’t go forward, so she slipped it into reverse, backed up for about fifty feet, and pulled off. That worked fine.

Once she was parked, Maisey got out and looked around. There was nothing unusual there. A car whizzed by, and it didn’t even slow, just powered on down the highway, so she walked in that direction. But when she got to the same spot as the car had been, she stopped. Her feet just wouldn’t let her move forward. “What the hell is going on?” she asked herself aloud. There was no explanation. None. It didn’t make sense. When she got backin the car, she pulled forward, but the same thing happened?the car stopped cold. That was the moment when she realized her foot was on the brake, but try as she might, she couldn’t move it onto the accelerator.

Maisey sat there behind the wheel, staring ahead. What was it that was stopping her? She backed down the highway again and onto the shoulder, then sat there, looking around. There had to be a clue there somewhere. Several cars passed her as she sat there, and they seemed to have no problem at all. Whatever it was had to do withher. But what was it? And how the hell was she going to explain it to her supervisor?

The ringing of her phone startled her, and she pulled it out. “Hey, babe.”

Aaron’s voice was chipper. “Hey, honey! Having a good day?”

“Actually, no. I’m not.”

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