Of course it was.
Emily sat there in the sudden terrible silence and looked at the dark windows, the unlit pump signs, the empty parking lot, and felt something inside her go very, very still.
It’s okay. Everything’s okay.
She had her phone. She would call… who would she call? She would call AAA, or she'd call Chloe, or she'd figure it out,because she was a grown woman who had been handling her own problems for years without anyone's help and she wasfine.
Then she saw the truck.
It had pulled off the highway and parked at the far edge of the lot. Just sitting there. No one getting out. No one checking a phone or looking at a map. Just a big black truck with its engine running, and she couldn't see the driver through the dark windshield, and she told herself it was nothing, it was coincidence, there were a million reasons why?—
It had been behind her on the highway. She remembered it now with a cold, lurching certainty. She'd noticed it without really noticing it, the way you clock things without cataloguing them, but now her brain was pulling it up like evidence: the truck had been there when she turned out of Marcus's driveway. Had slowed when she slowed at the station entrance. Had pulled in after her.
Emily picked up her phone.
Her hands were shaking. Not a little. A lot.
She stared at her contacts, and something happened. It wasn’t a thought, not exactly, but a shift, a sliding sensation behind her breastbone, like a door swinging quietly open. It happened sometimes, when she was scared enough, or tired enough, or when the world pressed in from too many directions at once. The edges of her got soft. The part of her that always had a plan and a backup plan and a contingency for the backup plan went very quiet, and what was left was justEmily— younger, smaller, the one who needed someone to answer the phone and sayI've got you.
She called Chloe.
It rang twice. Three times.Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. She chanted to herself.Please, pick up!Emily was already starting to breathe wrong, too fast, not enough air, when?—
"Hey, what's up?"
"Chloe." Her voice cracked right down the middle. "I need help."
"What's wrong? Where are you?" She heard the concern in her best friend’s voice.
"I'm on Highway 285. About twenty miles outside Grand Ridge. My car died and there's a truck that's been following me for the last ten minutes." She pressed her back against the seat. Her voice dropped to something small, something she didn't mean to let out. "They kept slowing down when I slowed down.” She paused before she said her feelings outloud. “Chloe, I'm scared."
"Are you somewhere safe?"
"I pulled over at a gas station, but it's closed. Empty. And this truck just pulled in behind me and—" Her throat seized up. "There are two guys getting out. Chloe, what do I do?"
"Stay in your car." Chloe's voice was steady and firm and it was the most beautiful sound in the world. "Lock the doors. DO NOT, open your door for anyone."
Emily hit the locks. Both hands on the door now, watching the two men cross the lot toward her with that unhurried, certain walk that made her stomach drop.
"They're coming toward me?—"
She could hear Tyler's voice in the background. Low. Urgent. Then Chloe's, murmuring something she couldn't quite make out. Then: "Help is coming. Rampage is mobilizing the club. They're seven minutes out."
Seven minutes. That might as well be eternity.
Emily watched the men stop about ten feet from her car. They looked at each other. Looked at her. One of them, the heavy-set one with a ball cap pulled low, smiled at her. She felt nauseated.
"Hang on, baby," Chloe said, and Emily didn't know if she meant it as anything other than reassurance, but it hit hersquare in the chest anyway, warm and grounding.Baby.She held onto that.
"Emily, listen to me. Rampage is coming. He's bringing help. You need to stay in your car with the doors locked. Do you understand?"
"They're knocking on my window." The heavy-set one had come around to her side. His knuckles rapped against the glass. He knocked, not hard, almost friendly, which was worse somehow. "One of them is trying the door handle?—"
"Breathe, Emily. Focus on my voice. Help is coming. Seven minutes."
"I don't have seven minutes?—"
"Yes, you do." Chloe's voice didn't waver. "Keep your doors locked. If they break a window, you lay on the horn. Make as much noise as possible."
