Don't Turn Around Page 4

  Cait was a little bummed that she wouldn’t get the byline, but she was still getting paid to be published, so she took herself for fancy coffee to celebrate. She sat in the café texting Alyssa and swapping stories with her about their night. Alyssa had ended up ditching the tech bro at Cedar Street and then gotten in a limo with a bunch of Israelis who were about to ship back to their home country and start their stints in the national army. “Those guys can really party,” Alyssa typed, along with a long string of emojis. “What happened to you?” she added. “You disappeared! *poof of smoke emoji*”

  Cait filled Alyssa in on the details of her evening and told her to look out for the article later that day. At two p.m., the piece went live under the headline “WORST. DATE. EVER.” The thumbnail was a photograph of Jake’s brooding face with a pair of devil horns Photoshopped on the top of his head.

  Cait clicked on the link with a fizz of nerves. The website wasn’t in the big leagues, but it was gaining some cultural traction, and she was hoping that the article could put her on the ground floor of the new Jezebel or Man Repeller. She skim-read it, making note of what the editor had changed and what she hadn’t. She thought it held up—it was funny and caustic and, yeah, maybe a little brutal, but the guy was a total asshole. He deserved to get it with both barrels.

  She read it again, sent it to Alyssa, put on her uniform, and went to work at the bar.

  When she checked her phone, after the bar was shut and the bottles had been married up and the back mirrors wiped as clean as she could get them, she realized that the piece had blown up.

  It was what every writer wanted, right? As many eyes on the work as possible. But not in this way, not like this. The comment section was filled with his fans calling her worse than he had. A lot of them were women. There were men on there, too, telling her that she was a whore, that she deserved to be raped in order to be taught a lesson, that women like her were dirt, that women like her deserved to die. The word “skullfuck” was used in more ways than Cait had previously thought possible.

  She felt sick to her stomach. Who were these people, and why did they hate her so much? Okay, so maybe she’d played it up a little in the article, but everything she’d written was fundamentally true. He had choked her when they were having sex. She had been scared, though maybe not quite as scared as she’d made herself out to be. Though that was only because she knew how these things usually played out. Jake hadn’t wanted to kill her or even hurt her. He’d just wanted to show her he could, because he got off on the power. He wasn’t exactly a rarity in that respect.

  Still, a wave of shame washed over her, hot and thick. She must have done something wrong for people to hate her like this. It must somehow be her fault.

  She was asking for it.

  She read that line over and over. She had pursued Jake, it was true. She’d known what she was doing when she was dancing in front of him, had known the kind of promises she was making with her body. She had gone home with him willingly, had sex with him without asking any questions. Did she really have a right to complain just because his version of pleasure was different from her own? Hadn’t she always known something like this would happen to her one day? Wasn’t she lucky that it wasn’t worse?

  There was an email from the editor waiting in her inbox. The subject line was “Holy Shit.” “Your story has had more clicks in the past eight hours than anything we’ve published before!”

  And a text from Alyssa. “No one knows you wrote that piece, right? You need to keep it that way, because people are going CRAZY.”

  Cait pulled a glass off the stack, poured herself a few fingers of bourbon, sank it in a few swift swallows. Poured herself another. She’d have to write it off as wastage so JB wouldn’t get pissy when he did the stock take. She felt the liquor slide down into her stomach, warming her fingers and toes, loosening the knot at the base of her throat.

  Alyssa was right: she was lucky no one knew she was the one who’d written that article. Because right now, it was looking like a huge mistake.

  Farwell, Texas—232 Miles to Albuquerque

  Rebecca’s mind kept tugging her back to the dead fox lying by the side of the road back in Sudan. She could see the steam rising from the pool of blood and the dull black beads of its eyes. She had first seen those eyes as a kid, when Bugs, her pet bunny, was mauled by the neighbor’s dog. She saw that dog every day, twice a day, walking to and from the bus stop. His name was Fletch and he would track her the length of his yard, growling, penned in by a chain-link fence. One morning, she heard a commotion coming from the backyard and made it just in time to watch the dog shake Bugs until his brittle neck snapped. Fletch had dropped the bunny and run off when she’d charged at him screaming, but it had been too late. She watched the light go out of Bugs’s eyes, quick and final as a birthday candle. One minute Bugs was her pet rabbit who loved bell peppers and chin scratches and whose whiskers tickled her when he twitched his nose, the next it was just a collection of bones and flesh and fur. That’s why, later, when her mother tried to convince her that Bugs had taken the rainbow bridge to heaven, she knew it was a lie. She’d seen an animal die and now she couldn’t unsee it—she knew that life could go from something to nothing, just like that, and that there was no use pretending there was something waiting beyond.

  She put a hand to her stomach.

  They passed a processing plant on the horizon with a line of silos rising in the dark sky like a row of blunt teeth. On the other side of the road, a restaurant welcomed potential customers: thursdays = steak night.

  A small green sign announced they were leaving Farwell, Texas, and entering Texico, New Mexico.

  “We’re through,” Cait said, nodding toward the sign and giving her a small and gentle smile. “You can relax now.”

  Something tightened in Rebecca’s chest.

  Cait was wrong about danger lying closest to home. For her, crossing the state line meant the threat was suddenly, terrifyingly real.

  San Diego, California

  Patrick sat down heavily on the hotel bed and rubbed his tired eyes. The conference had promised a four-star, but from the feel of the cheap linen, it was probably more like three. It didn’t matter much to him. The places where they held these events were always the same: marble foyers—this one with a tinsel-laden artificial Christmas tree, to mark the season—and long echoing corridors and tiny soaps wrapped in paper. Tomorrow morning, there’d be breakfast with limp bacon and congealed eggs, and he’d eat it while people came up to his table and shook his hand. Some of them would linger, hoping to be invited to sit. He didn’t mind. This was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Connecting with people. Touching lives.

  He checked the clock. Half past ten. It would be after midnight in Lubbock. She’d be asleep by now, or at least in bed. He knew she didn’t sleep much these days.

  He reached for the phone. He wanted to hear her voice, even if it was just for a minute. The way things had been with them recently . . . it tore him up inside, it really did. If he could just make her see things the way he saw them, if he could just make her believe, they wouldn’t have to be like this with each other. He wouldn’t have to be like this. They could be happy, like they were before. Like they’d been back in San Francisco, all those years ago.

  He clicked the call button and listened to the phone ring. She usually picked up on the second ring. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. Still, the phone should wake her up. He waited for the answering machine to pick up, but instead he heard the monotonous drone of an automated service. “We’re sorry, your call cannot be answered at the minute. Please leave a message after the tone.”

  He held the phone in his hand for a second before disconnecting the call. Why hadn’t the answering machine picked up? Maybe the power had gone out and the machine had reverted back to factory settings. But that automated voice . . . he’d heard it before.

  It was her cell phone. She’d tried to set up voicemail when she’d first gotten it, but she’d gi
ven up. “There are too many buttons on this thing,” she’d said, brandishing the Samsung in the air. “I give up. I’ll just have to be a robot.”

  He checked the number he called. Definitely the house phone.

  He scrolled down to her cell number and hit dial. It rang a few times and then the same robot told him to leave a message after the tone. He hung up and tossed the phone across the bed.

  Why would she have forwarded the house phone to her cell? She’d promised him that she would stay at home while he was away. She needed rest. There was no reason for her not to be picking up the phone right now.

  Unless.

  He put his head in his hands. God, no. Please. No.

  He reached over and grabbed his phone off the comforter, scrolled through his recent calls until he found Rich’s number. He’d still be awake. From what Patrick could tell, his campaign manager never slept.

  Rich picked up on the first ring. “Hey, champ! How’s California? Did you knock ’em dead?”

  “The conference went fine. Look, I’m sorry to call you this late—”

  “No apology necessary. You know I’m available to you twenty-four/seven.”

  “I tried calling Rebecca at the house and she’s not answering. I think . . . I think we might have a situation on our hands.”

  “Leave it with me. The wheels of justice are already in motion.”

  “It might be nothing. She might be at home, asleep. She might have accidentally turned the ringer off or left the phone off the hook . . .” Even as he said the words, he knew they weren’t true. “I’m probably just wasting your time.”

  “You did the right thing by calling. Now go get some shut-eye, okay? You’ve got an early flight tomorrow, and we need you looking fresh for the judge.”

  “Could you let me know when you find her?”

  The line went dead. Patrick cradled the phone in his hand for a minute before placing it on the nightstand and walking across the room to the minibar. He took out a couple of miniatures, poured them into a glass, and bolted the whole thing. And then got down on his knees and began to pray.

  Clovis, New Mexico—222 Miles to Albuquerque

  Cait knew a lot of people who didn’t like driving—they hated the road rage and the boredom and the stiff necks and the pins-and-needles legs—but she enjoyed it, especially once she was clear of the city and out on the open road. There were times when she would be steering straight on one of these wide Texan roads for hours, staring at the dotted white line leading all the way to the horizon, and a Zen-like calm would come over her. It was the closest she’d come to meditating. She had used one of those apps once—a woman’s voice in her ear, telling her to picture crashing waves or fields of wildflowers—but as hard as she tried, she kept thinking about all the shit she could be doing instead, and eventually, she switched it off and made a to-do list and went to bed.

  You could take the girl out of Waco, but you couldn’t make her believe in new-age-wellness horseshit, she guessed.

  Out on the road, her mind would empty until it was just the sound of the engine and the feel of the Jeep hurtling forward through space. Sometimes she imagined herself in the car as a single still point in the universe while the rest of the world rushed past. She liked those moments the best, though after a while it started doing weird things to her head, like one of those Magic Eye paintings they ran in the newspaper when she was a kid, and she’d have to squeeze her eyes shut for a second to reset.

  Mainly, though, she liked the fact that driving was the only time she was ever truly, genuinely alone. At the bar, she was a sitting duck for whatever lonely soul happened to wander in looking for a drink and a little small talk, and when she wasn’t serving customers, she was laughing politely at the manager’s bad jokes or hassling the barbacks for fresh ice. Even in her cramped one-bedroom apartment, she never lost the sense of being surrounded by people. The walls were thin, and every time her neighbors made a smoothie or had sex or went to the bathroom, she could hear it, loud and clear. The sounds of other people’s lives were with her all the time, pushing their way into her head.

  In the Jeep, there was silence. It was like floating in her own little bubble, untouchable, even when she was sharing the road with hundreds of other cars. Even now, with Rebecca sitting silently next to her staring out the window, she could almost pretend she was on her own. Almost.

  Cait pulled off at the exit for the first town she’d seen since crossing the border into New Mexico, then steered the Jeep through the deserted streets to the glowing blue-and-red smile of an IHOP sign. “Here okay?” she asked, already pulling into a space in a lot that was empty except for a pickup truck and a beat-up El Camino.

  When they walked in, the waitress didn’t bother to get up from the stool where she was filling out a crossword puzzle, just pointed at a pile of menus on the greeter stand and told them to sit wherever they wanted. Cait scanned the room, taking in the cook blowing cigarette smoke out through the emergency exit in back and a four-top of shift workers still wearing their high-vis vests. Cait picked a booth by the window and made sure to sit with her back to the wall, so she could keep a lookout.

  The waitress eventually came over and took their order—coffee and a slice of cherry pie for Cait, ice water with lemon for Rebecca—and the two of them sat in silence while they waited, the swirl of Muzak filling their heads. The waitress shoved their drinks on the table with a grunt. Not expecting a big tip, then. Cait couldn’t blame her. She knew from her own waitressing days that when you got a table of women, they weren’t usually big tickets—appetizers split four ways and salads-as-mains and single glasses of house white. They tended to split the bill, too, and calculate the tip down to the penny. It wasn’t like serving a table full of men, all dick-swinging and red meat and bottles of Barolo. Not that they’d be serving Barolo in a place like this, but the principle remained. Men wanted to show off for each other, and—if you were lucky—that meant a fat tip for the cute waitress. If you weren’t so lucky, it meant fending off stray hands when you bent over to clear the table.

  Cait always tipped big. She’d give the waitress 25 percent, easy, even though the woman hadn’t said a civil word to them yet. She’d do it to prove a point more than anything else. Maybe next time a couple of women walked in here in the middle of the night, the waitress would be a little nicer to them. “Smile, sweetheart. It can’t be that bad.” How many times had she heard that when she was serving tables? Let the smile falter for one second and they were onto her. They thought she owed them that smile. That she should be grateful.

  Bartending wasn’t as bad. She controlled the alcohol, which meant that she was the most powerful person in the place. If somebody told her to smile, she could tell him to fuck off, and all they could do was laugh it off, because they wanted their liquor. Plus, there was a bar separating her from the customer. She still got the occasional hand reaching over when she bent down to fetch a beer from the fridge, but it was rare.

  Cait poured a long stream of sugar into her coffee and stirred it with a spoon. She didn’t normally take it so sweet, but the adrenaline from the fox was long gone and the exhaustion had set in right behind her eyes and she was left feeling like she was swimming in murky pond water.

  “I’m sorry you’ve got to drive at this time of night,” Rebecca said, scraping with her fingernail at a spot of syrup that had congealed on the table. “You know, I can drive for a while if you’re getting tired.”

  “I’ll be fine once I get some coffee into my system.” There was no way in hell she was letting someone else drive her baby. “I’m basically nocturnal, anyway. This is no big deal.”

  “Do you mind it?”

  “Being nocturnal?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “It’s fine. I’m a bartender, so it’s an occupational hazard.”

  “You are? Where?”

  “Back in Austin.” Cait took a long pull of coffee.

  “There are some nice bars in Austin, I’ve heard.�
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  “Yeah, well, mine is the kind of bar where the bartenders wear Stetsons and Daisy Dukes. Not exactly the height of sophistication.”

  Rebecca looked horrified. “Seriously? That’s so . . . so . . .”

  “Gross? Degrading? Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Why are you working there?”

  “The money’s decent, and my landlord’s pretty attached to getting paid his rent.”

  “Oh. Of course. Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine.” Cait tried not to roll her eyes. Of course this woman would ask her something like that. She’d probably never had to work a day in her life. She’d probably never even set foot in a place like the Dark Horse, or an IHOP, for that matter. She probably assumed the world just ordered itself around her, one long red carpet rolling out in front of her, ready to be stepped on.

  When she was growing up, Cait’s family had been the poor ones in the neighborhood. They’d lived in one of the nicer areas in Waco—her father had inherited the house from his own father—and she’d been surrounded by the children of accountants and doctors and oil executives. She could still picture the look on the popular girls’ faces when it was her mom’s turn to host her Girl Scout troop. Mindy had wrinkled her cute little nose when she saw the linoleum kitchen floor and the ancient toaster oven languishing on the countertop. Cait had overheard her telling the other girls that it was a “trash house,” and the girls had all laughed. She’d never heard that term before, but she knew instantly what it meant and that it was probably true. After they’d gone home, her mom had given her a couple of scoops of ice cream and told her not to listen to “those little bitches,” but of course she had, and from then on she felt like she saw everything in her life through Mindy’s eyes. The couch where she’d curl up with her mother and watch old movies suddenly looked tattered, the bedroom her three brothers shared suddenly seemed cramped and sad—no one else in her class had to share a room, never mind a bunk bed—and her mom’s Friday tuna noodle casserole, which had been her favorite, suddenly tasted weird and cheap. Trash food, she would think as she sank her fork into it.