Anita put the plastic container of pie and the plastic-wrapped piece of olive bread on the passenger seat in her dark-green hatchback. Her mother’s leftovers were the world’s greatest invention.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take anything else?” Marina had put on a thick dark cable sweater to walk her daughter to her car. Anita tucked her chin into the collar of her coat. The temperature seemed to have dropped twenty degrees just in the few hours she had been at her parents’ house.
“No, I’m fine.” Anita kissed her mom’s cheek. “Thank you for dinner. I’ll see you next week.” She needed at least a week, if not another decade, to put the idea of Patrick being in love with her out of her head.
Anita turned on the car and rolled back down the circular driveway to the street. It was nearly pitch-black, the moon barely a sliver and the stars hidden by thick clouds that had appeared with barely any warning. Most of the time she enjoyed being farther away from the city’s bright lights, but on a night like tonight, she wished for a little more illumination. Anita shivered despite her woolen coat and the car’s seat heater. She never quite understood what was meant by a devil moon, but this was certainly a contender.
She turned left out of the driveway and noted distant headlights moving quickly behind her in the rearview mirror. Kids joyriding. Every year, sadly enough, there were terrible accidents on the roads surrounding Lewis. They tended toward the dark and serpentine, and it was particularly easy to misjudge turns when the weather was unfavorable. Or when people had been drinking.
Anita yawned and directed her car into the proper lane. She needed a better night’s sleep. She would absolutely not dream of Patrick tonight.
Curses, why had she even put that thought in her own head?
Lights flashed in her rearview mirror. The car again. Why were they driving so fast? It was aggressive, too fast for the sharp curves and poor visibility.
Anita checked the speedometer. She was going eight miles over the speed limit. “Go around me!”
They did not. The car kept accelerating closer to her, then braking and dropping back. The cycle repeated. Nearing her, almost close enough to tap her rear bumper, then backing off, the glare from their headlights receding.
Assholes. She did not need to deal with this. She put on her right blinker and pulled into the shoulder. Let them pass her. If they were in such a rush, they could flip on Dead Man’s Curve in a quarter mile.
The car roared past her, its engine growling like an angry hippopotamus.
Good riddance.
But then the car stopped about fifteen feet in front of her, its brake lights bright-red eyes.
Anita slammed on her own brakes, pushing with both feet. Her little hatchback squealed in protest. Shit, she could not afford new tires. What kind of asshole—
Her voice caught in her throat.
The car’s rear lights stared at her through her windshield like a goblin in a Halloween movie.
Shit. Anita hated horror movies.
If only she knew more about cars. It was big, like an SUV? It was impossible to determine the color in the dark night, even in the gleam from her own headlights.
If only she could find her phone. She scrabbled on the passenger seat for it, but her hands stilled. The red-and-white rear indicator lights were getting brighter.
Her breath in tight pants, her gaze glued to the rear bumper of the SUV.
What the fuck?
In the middle of the deserted road, the SUV backed up until its rear bumper was level with her front bumper.
Of all the times to be stranded by herself.
Her phone. There it was. She grabbed it off the seat, never so grateful for its giant pop socket with waltzers in silhouette as she was now. Where was the emergency call button?
There. There. She found it.
She inhaled, her muscles contracting, her breath shaky, but she could do this. She poised one finger over the tiny green phone icon. Just one more inch backward, and Anita would call. One more inch. “Come on, dickhead,” she whispered.
Then, almost as suddenly as it had stopped, the SUV’s engine roared, and the tires squealed on the pavement before rocketing down the road at what was clearly an unsafe pace.
Anita dropped the phone onto the passenger seat beside her plastic storage container and put her head between her legs.
What the hell had that been?
