*****
Mary Kilgore felt the car sliding to the left and fought with the steering wheel to bring it under control. She felt a flurry of panic, fearing it would careen into the woods beyond the road. But just as that seemed inevitable and the trees loomed above her, the car suddenly came back to the right.
She pumped the brakes furiously and successfully brought the car to a stop. She sighed in relief at first, happy to be safe. But it occurred to her soon after that something serious had happened to her car and that she might not be able to get it moving again.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car. Certainly she hadn’t hit anything—there hadn’t even been a bump in the road. She wondered if it was the transmission, or engine failure and cursed herself that she didn’t know more about cars. That had always been Donald’s arena and now he was gone.
She sighed again and walked to the front of the car. Mary took one look at the battered front right tire, and even to her untrained eye, she could see what the problem was. The tire looked like it had come apart. She thanked her stars at least she had been able to bring her car under control before she crashed. But when was the last time she had changed a tire?
It took no time for her to think about Donald again. If he were here…
But he isn’t here, Mary told herself. He is not going to come to the rescue this time, or any other time. She felt a wave of self-pity coming on and struggled to throw it off.
She looked back at the road. It was deserted, of course. It was the very reason she had come this way—a short-cut to get to the Middleburg town meeting on time, for once. But now she wished she had stuck with her normal route. If she had, she could have flagged a dozen cars down. Right now, the prospect of any showing up seemed farfetched.
She went back into the car and pulled out her cell phone. She flicked it on and waited to see if she would get a signal. She didn’t. Instead, the phone simply displayed a message, “No service.”
“Damn,” she said. She tossed the phone back in the car and flipped the switch that opened the trunk. She would just have to hope that there was a jack and a spare tire in there. If not, she faced a long, lonely walk in the dark. In Loudoun, there was little to be frightened of, but she still shivered at the thought.
It seemed like just the other day she had read in the Chronicle about someone in Loudoun spotting a mountain lion near the area. What if she ran into it in the dark? What if some bear wandered down this way? Already, she had a disturbing sense of being watched, but dismissed it as paranoia.
The sooner she changed the tire, the better. To her surprise and immense relief, she found both a jack and a spare in the trunk.
“Damn you, Donald,” she said out loud again. “I can do this without you.”
The bastard was probably off with his 25-year-old tart right now.
She stopped herself. That was no help. She needed to stay focused. She returned to the front wheel with a sense of purpose. But as she walked, her foot scraped against something. Bending down, she saw that she had stepped on a nail.
“Crap.” The nail had caused the flat.
Then she saw two more nails on the road. Looking back, she could see a few more faintly glinting in the moonlight.
“Damn it,” she said. Someone had put nails out here. Probably some kid, she thought, and silently she cursed them. They could have gotten her killed. She wondered what kind of little punk had done this.
Mary was still bent over when she heard a sound on the pavement behind her. Wheeling around, she stared off into the darkness and saw nothing.
“Is somebody there?” she asked.
Maybe the kid was here to see what kind of results his prank brought.
“Show yourself, if you’re there?” she called again.
At first there was nothing. Just the sound of a faint echo of her own words. And then she jumped at a voice coming from behind her.
“Sorry,” the voice said. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”
She turned around to see a figure standing on the other side of her car.
“It’s okay,” she said, and smiled in relief. “I just…”
And her smile faded. He said he hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but how was that possibly true? Hadn’t she heard him behind her a second before? Why hadn’t he called out? She looked around and saw nothing near them. Where was his car?
“It’s alright,” he said again, and took a small step forward. “Looks like you got a flat.”
“Yeah,” she said, although she looked at him warily. “Some kid put these nails here and I must have run over them…”
But the words dried out on her lips. Her tongue briefly flickered to the roof of her mouth as her heart seemed to spring directly into her throat. This was no kid.
“Yeah, you have to watch out for stuff like that,” he replied. She could see that he was smiling, but it failed to reassure her. To Mary, the smile appeared distinctly predatory, like some kind of cat (a mountain lion) that had found its prey. Instinctively, she took a step back.
“Yeah,” she muttered, and wondered if her fear was obvious.
He took another step forward and rested one hand on the hood of her car.
“Well, what do you say, let me see if I can help you with that,” he said, but he made no more forward moves.
She could see now in the faint moonlight that he had the other hand behind his back. It made her more nervous. She had no idea what to do. Should she run? Her brain was running through options but coming up blank. Panic was setting in.
“No, I’m okay,” she said, straining to keep her voice calm. “I just called my husband, Donald. He should be on his way.”
“Really? That’s great,” the man replied. “I’m surprised that you would get any reception out here. You know they’ve been debating putting up a cellular tower out here, but the damn environmentalists won’t let them. They say it would ‘mar’ the landscape, I think. I don’t know that much about it, of course. I don’t much care for that kind of news.”
Mary took another step back. She had hoped her ruse would cause him to back off. But it was obvious it hadn’t. The terrible truth finally clicked in: this was a trap. The nails, the dead-zone, the lack of any nearby help. She had a brief flicker of a memory of watching a mouse struggle on a glue trap near her stove. She had hated watching the thing slowly die, thrashing and screaming and begging for help. But she was that mouse now, she knew. And she was beginning to think her fate would be even worse.
“Well, it did,” she said, and sounded lame even to herself. “I was surprised.”
“Well, yeah, you would be,” he said. “I mean, you must have a great carrier around here.”
He took his hand off the car and took another step forward.
“Look,” Mary said. “I don’t know what you are doing out here, but…”
“Waiting for you,” he replied calmly, and the smile slipped from his face.
Now that the smile was gone, she found she wanted it back. In the light, he now looked blank and impassive and his eyes appeared dead.
“You put the nails here,” she said. It wasn’t a question. There was no need to ask.
He nodded and took another step forward. Mary took another back. She wished desperately she had taken her purse out with her. There was an old can of mace in it. As she was, she felt helpless.
“Well, I can’t leave everything to chance, can I?” he said.
“No,” she said, though she had no idea what he was talking about. “I suppose not.”
She looked briefly at her shoes. They were pumps, not exactly running sneakers.
“I mean, I was just lucky someone came this way, you know? Not many people bother anymore. Do you know why that is?”
She couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Instead, she backed away again. Her face felt taut and she could feel pain all through her chest. Every muscle in her body had tensed now and she fought the urge to just run blindly i
nto the surrounding woods.
“It used to be a great make-out area, you know?” he continued, taking another step forward even as she walked back. “The kids all came this way and pulled off the side of the road. Sure, it was a shortcut, but it was so dark out here. You could get away with anything and there would be nobody around to hear.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, still trying to think of what to do.
“No, if you had, you probably wouldn’t have come,” he said. “Because you would have known what happened to them. You must be new to the area, Ms…”
“I’m not going to tell you my name,” she said.
“Pity,” he replied. “I’ll just have to read about it in the paper, then.”
“What?” she asked.
“When they find your body,” he said. “They won’t find it for a while, of course. But when they eventually identify you from your dental records, then I’ll see the name.”
“Oh, dear God,” she said, and was startled to find water running down her face. She was crying. She didn’t know a person could cry from terror.
“He won’t help you, my dear,” he said. “Anyway, I put a stop to kids coming out here. Do you have any kids, Ms. Soon-to-be-very-dead? They could have told you how. Twelve years ago—on this very night—I gutted two of them. I mean, I really went to work. Not the way I will on you. No, I was younger then, and didn’t have enough artistry.”
Mary was sobbing now, unable to help herself.
“Anyway, just one couple. That was all it took. And in 12 years, they never came back. I know because I waited to see. But they were smart enough to stay away. Too bad for you though.”
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do this.”
She took another step backward.
“If you don’t put up a fight, I’ll make it quick,” he said. “I promise.”
“No, no, no, no,” she stammered out, and she felt another emotion now. She felt a kind of raw anger coming out of her. These men, she thought. For how many years had she put up with Donald? And now she was finally free of him and this guy comes along? It was unfair. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to die like this. She was supposed to go quietly in her bed, surrounded by grandchildren.
She felt the anger wash over her and was surprised by how good it felt. Anything that broke through the fear.
“If you do fight, well…” he said. “I’m out of practice, but I remember well enough how to inflict pain.”
She heard his words and felt a click in the back of her head. She wasn’t going to give in to the urge to run away. If she did, he would be on her in seconds.
Mary stopped moving back. The fear that had so flooded her had given way. Dim memories of her best friend, Gladys, teaching her a move from a self-defense class, flickered to life. And as she watched this man advance, a plan formed in her mind.
She had stopped crying. She was through crying. Instead, she quickly bent down on the ground and felt along the side of the road.
“Just what the hell do you think you are doing?” he asked, and he was moving, faster than she anticipated.
But not quite fast enough. Grabbing hold of gravel she had felt along the road, she threw it at his face as he approached. He cried out and stumbled back, putting his right hand to his head.
It was a good start, but not enough. Still feeling the anger bubbling inside her, she moved toward him. Remembering what Gladys had told her, she put her hands across him on his shoulder and drove her knee deep into his groin.
He doubled over and fell to the floor, dropping something in his left hand as he did so. She looked to see a long, curved knife—a machete.
“You bitch,” he said.
She stood back, surprised at what she had done. As suddenly as it had come, the anger she felt left her and the fear came running back. She had to get away—get away before he recovered.
Turning on her heels, she ran into the forest, hoping to put distance between them. Sooner than she had anticipated, she heard him cry out.
“I’ll find you, you know that?” he screamed, his words echoing through the forest all around her. “There isn’t anything for miles. I’ll find you. Do you know what I will do then?”
She ran faster, cursing herself for her pumps.
“You won’t get far,” he shouted after her.
She ran for her life. She ran faster than she ever had.
But ultimately, the man was right.
Mary Kilgore did not get far.
Chapter 5