Face of Death

“Something’s wrong with the car,” he said. He reached forward and tapped one of the dials on his dashboard, as if willing it to work. “I’m just going to pull over. Looks like an access road, so we should be fine at this time of night.”

The wheels slowed to a halt, bumping up and down on the rough, uneven surface of the dirt road as the car stopped. It was fully dark out now, the moon hidden somewhere behind a cloud. All they could see in front of them were the beams of the headlights, illuminating a pathway that trailed into the distance.

The driver checked his GPS, tapping the screen a few times, zooming out and then back in on their position. “I don’t know what’s up with it, but I just lost power,” he explained, leaning forward over the dash again to examine the symbols lighting up. “Sorry about this. It’s a pretty old car.”

“That’s fine,” Rubie said. After all, she could hardly complain. But this wasn’t ideal. She didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere because the one car that agreed to pick her up had broken down. She didn’t have much chance of getting another ride in the dark.

The driver turned the ignition off and then on again, tilting his head to listen closely to the sound of the engine. “How much do you know about cars?” he asked.

Rubie gave a short laugh. “I don’t even have my driver’s license,” she said.

The driver gave her a wry grin, a look that seemed to acknowledge how awkward their situation was but also that there was nothing to be done about it. “I can’t hear the engine properly from inside here. Could you do me a favor? If you pop the hood, you should be able to listen out for a rattle. That might tell me what’s going on.”

Rubie eyed the darkness warily. It looked cold out there, not to mention that they were in the middle of nowhere. She wasn’t an idiot. She had seen movies.

But then again, movies weren’t reality. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice. If she didn’t help him out with getting the car going again, they would be stuck here for even longer. And this guy had helped her out, picked her up off the side of the road and listened to her story. He was sympathetic, pleasant to talk to.

Rubie squared her shoulders and reached for the door handle. “Just a rattle, right?”

“That’s it. I’ll rev the engine when you’ve got the hood up. Then just shout if you hear something.”

Rubie nodded, getting out into the chill air. The whole area around them was quiet, only the small, subtle sounds of bugs going about their nightly business. There was no sound of another engine, except maybe so far away that it was hard to tell whether she was really hearing anything. The road was practically empty. Definitely no chance of getting another ride.

The driver had already popped the hood, and Rubie lifted it, a little gingerly, trying not to get grease on her hands. It wasn’t as though she had enough clothes that she could afford to ruin the ones she was wearing.

She realized, even as she did it, that from this angle she could no longer see the driver. In the silence she heard the noise of his door opening and pulled back a little, concerned.

Maybe this had all been a trap. Maybe he looked at her and knew she was someone he could abuse, push around, take what he wanted from. He was going to get out of the car now and beat her, leave her lying on the ground with her shorts around her ankles when he was done.

“Shout if you hear it,” he repeated, his voice coming from inside the car. The engine revved, making her jump and catch a scream in her throat.

God, she was paranoid. Brent had left her jumping at shadows, suspicious of everyone and everything. It was going to take her a long time to get over this, to stop suspecting strangers of harboring ill intent. The driver was a good man. He’d shown that by picking her up, and by his anger at how Brent had treated her. She had to keep that in mind, and help him out with the engine so that she could get to Lucy sooner rather than later.

Where else was she going to go, anyway? There was nowhere to run. He was the only car who bothered to stop for her, and there hadn’t been anyone else on the road for a long time. Like it or not—and she admitted to herself that maybe she didn’t like it, a shiver running down her spine—she was stuck with him.

Better make the most of it.

She peered down into the dim engine, trying to make something out. It was all darkly glistening metal, most of it greased up and black, not even reflecting a dull glint from the headlight beams still blasting out into the darkness. Rubie was almost blind from the light, the contrast so strong that it blotted everything else out.

The engine stopped revving, the noise fading out into silence. As it did and the quiet of the night returned, her ears buzzed. The loud noise right next to her had blotted everything else out, and just how the headlights left her blind, she could barely hear a thing with the contrast.

“I didn’t hear any rattle,” she called out, hoping it would help. If there was nothing wrong with the engine, maybe they would be able to get going again. It wasn’t a new car—maybe it just needed a moment to rest and it would be good to go again.

Rubie shivered, rubbing her hands over her arms. The driver hadn’t said a thing, and he wasn’t revving the engine again either. She peered down into the darkness of the engine once more as if it could tell her something, and flinched when the reflected light on the engine was blocked by a deep shadow falling over her.

She heard his step behind her, a loose stone moving away from his foot, and jumped upright. “I didn’t…” she began, meaning to say that she’d had no idea he was behind her, but her heart was racing with the shock of his presence and she lost the words.

He was looking at her, just looking at her. His expression was almost blank, frighteningly so.

“Wh-what’s that in your hand?” she asked, gesturing down to the wire that was illuminated fully in the headlights. “Will it… fix the…?”

She trailed off, beyond shaken now. In a flash, she remembered something she had seen when he had picked her up off the side of the road. Something she had dismissed at the time when he spoke, friendly enough, and offered her a wide smile.

Something like hunger, or a cruel kind of joy, like a wolf looking down at a trapped rabbit.

Rubie turned on her heel, wanting to get back into the car now, wanting to get back where it was warm and safe. Where he had been a perfect gentleman and empathized with her story and shared his own past, something that made them equal and the same. If she could just get back inside—

Rubie reached up instinctively as something connected with her neck—something light and thin but sharp, hurting her fingers as she grabbed at it. What was that? The wire? She pulled and tugged at it, feeling the source somewhere behind her, the heat coming from a body that was not her own.

She hit out blindly, directing her elbows and feet backward, struggling to find him and catch him off-guard. He was hissing under his breath, cursing, telling her to stay still. She wouldn’t stay still. No. She forced her elbow back again, a desperate aim into the darkness, and felt it connect heavily with something.

The driver grunted in pain, and the force around her neck relaxed for just a second. Rubie dropped down to her knees, then scrambled forward, finding her way clear. Whatever he had wrapped around her was gone. She kicked off from the ground and sprang forward, at a right angle to the beams of the headlights, avoiding the easily illuminated path they provided.

Something was hot and heavy on her chest as she ran, gasping for breath already in the cold air that stung like ice in her lungs. What was that? Her hand flew up, feeling wetness all across her shirt, following it up as her feet stumbled on the uneven ground. She could not hear him coming after her, but she ran as fast as she could, as fast as she dared to trust her feet to manage. The wetness—it was coming from her neck—coming from where she had felt the pressure earlier—a wound that began to pulse with pain as soon as her fingers found it.

There was blood—so much blood—right across her chest, dripping down over her stomach. She felt the hot rivulets running down to splash onto her legs as they pumped desperately for distance, putting as far between herself and the driver as she could.

The blood wouldn’t stop, so much of it. Rubie grasped at her neck with both hands as she ran, sacrificing the added balance and mobility of her arms, trying to hold it all in. There was a line that stretched from one side to the other, wrapping around, oozing and leaking more and more with each passing moment.

Without her eyes or her balance, Rubie stumbled, one foot catching on something that felt like a rock or a hard tuft of ground. She fell heavily, unable to break her fall, the wind rushing out of her as her elbows hit the ground first. At the same time she felt a gush, a feeling like water from a tap bursting out beneath her fingers.

She wasn’t going to give up. No. She had to get away—keep going—as far away from him as she could. She didn’t dare look around to see if he was still standing in the light from the car, or if he was only steps behind her, ready to grab her again. She couldn’t waste time. Rubie got her feet underneath her and pushed up again, only to fall, sagging, her legs refusing to work.

Everything felt strange—loose—like she was made of jelly all of a sudden, her arms and legs flopping like dead fish when she tried to move them. The one thing she knew she could feel was the heat of the blood seeping out of her neck, staining the ground now, pouring in such quantities that she could not comprehend it.

Rubie lifted her head to look into the distance, the lights of the town where her sister lived still just a speck on the horizon. So far away that it might as well have been the stars. The wound on her neck opened like a mouth to pour out another gush of blood, and she felt her face hit the ground, no longer strong enough to hold it up.

She only registered dimly that she could no longer feel the cold before there was nothing left to feel at all.

CHAPTER NINE

Zoe was dismayed to find that the motel was even shabbier on the inside than it had looked from the outside.

“Only the finest for the FBI,” Shelley joked. “That’s why they call us ‘special’ agents, right?”

Zoe grunted, turning back from her examination of the threadbare sofa in the lobby just in time to see the receptionist returning. “Here’s your key,” he said, tossing one plastic card onto the surface of the counter. It slid over toward them, stopping just before it teetered off the edge.

“Thanks,” Shelley said, picking it up and lifting her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment.

Zoe didn’t think his customer service skills warranted even that.

The man said nothing. He slumped back into his chair and grabbed up his cell from in front of him, resuming whatever activity he had been engaged in when they entered.

“You know where we can get a decent bite to eat at this time of night?” Shelley asked.

“Diner ’bout five miles down,” he said, lifting his chin in the approximate direction without looking up.

Shelley thanked him again, to as little response as the first time. They left him where he was, Zoe leading her away before she could try to start another conversation with the world’s surliest clerk, heading back out into the cold night of the parking lot.