Eyes of the Predator (15 page)

Lyn looked at the young man and
knew he was trying to say something to her and wasn’t quite sure what. The
fuller her stomach became the more worthy of consideration Clay’s offer became.
Almost, she could see herself saying yes and going off with him to stay with
his mother. Almost. But the boys were from Pritchard, not all that far from
Judge’s Creek. Daddy would find her, and when he did…what? She wasn’t sure, but
whatever it was, she couldn’t drag these boys into it and make them a target
for her father’s anger.

“I don’t know. It don’t seem
right. I just got this picture in my head of Canada, and I can’t get it out.”
She paused and took a breath as if to try to understand for herself, “Sam and
me. It was our way to get away from it all; from the fighting. I guess now it’s
just burned in me. I can’t seem to let it go.”

She glanced over at Cy, noticing
the way he was studying the truckers.

“Besides, your brother is right,
it’s not really a good idea.”

Clay shot Cy a sharp look, and he
quickly looked down at his coffee. “It’s not that,” he said. “It just took me
by surprise. ‘Bout the same as you, I expect.” He looked over at his brother,
“Clay always was quicker to decide on things. Takes me longer to figure them
out. That’s all. You’d be welcome if you wanted to come back to stay with us
and Mama.”

Clay nodded and turned towards
Lyn. “So, now you see we both want you to come home. No strings attached. It
just ain’t right for you to be out here on your own. I don’t feel right leaving
you here.”

Cy looked up and added, “He’s
right about that, you know. I been looking around here, and I wouldn’t know
where to start or who to trust.” He shrugged and then looked her in the eye for
the first time. “It really is chancy to just get in a truck with someone.” He
looked away again and added, “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

She wasn’t used to people
treating her this way and didn’t know what to say. They were good boys. The
older one wasn’t as taken with her as Clay, but they were both good.

She looked back at the younger
brother.

“I don’t know,” she said shaking
her head slowly. “Like I said, it’s just burned in me, Canada. Crazy, I know.”
She shook her head at the irrationality of the dream and her situation.

“So, what are you gonna do then?”
Clay asked. “You heard Cy. He’s right. How you gonna know who to trust?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll
just sit here and try to figure it out. I’ll find someone to trust,” her voice
quavered, “or sit here until I do. I have to give it a try.”

 Damn. Clay realized that
running into this girl at the diner was changing a lot of things for them.
Things didn’t seem nearly as clear as they did when they had said goodbye to
their mother at two in the morning. Then, there had just been the business and
getting to Savannah. Work all day and a few beers, then bed in a cheap hotel
outside of town. Do the same all week, and then drive home with his brother
Friday night. Do the job, build the business, and get things going. Now there
was something else. This distraction. He felt guilty thinking of the girl as a
distraction.

But there it was. They were
caught in a situation that just didn’t seem right, and he couldn’t let it go.
Maybe it was just sympathy. She was so obviously down and out. Maybe it was
more. Whatever it was, leaving her there alone seemed wrong beyond all reality.

He took a deep breath and then
took a napkin from the holder. “Here,” he said scrawling on the napkin with a
flat carpenter’s pencil he had taken from his pocket. “This is my cell phone
number.”

Clay saw the question in her eye.

“Cell phone, one of these,” he
pulled the battered phone from a weathered leather case on his hip. “You know
about cell phones, don’t you?”

She smiled a little, “Yeah. Seen
’em before. Never had one. Never called one before.”

“Well, this is the number to
mine. You take it and keep it. We have to go check in at the job, but we’ll be
off around five this afternoon. Okay?”

She reached out and took the napkin
from him. Their hands touched briefly, and they withdrew quickly, embarrassed.

“We’ll be back this afternoon.
You don’t have to go anywhere. We’ll pick you up after work.”

She was stunned. Things were
completely out of balance as she tried to process this new development. “I’ll
try. I can’t promise. I don’t know,” was all she could say.

“You know, you got to trust
someone sometime. We’re not gonna hurt you. Your choice.”

She nodded and looked away. Doubt
was creeping in and clouding her plan.

“Okay, we’ll pick you up. It’s
settled.”

At that, she stiffened and looked
Clay firmly in the eye. “Nothing’s settled. I said I’d try, but I’m not
promising anything.”

Chastised, Clay looked away this
time. More softly, he said, “Okay. Sorry, you’re right. No promise, but even if
you get a ride, call this number and let us know you’re okay. Just so we won’t
worry. Fair enough?”

Lyn nodded.

Awkwardly, Cy stood up. There
wasn’t much else to say. She was old enough to be on her own if she chose. He
knew his brother was worried or hurting or something else strange that he had
never seen in him before, but there was nothing to be done about it right now.

He looked down at Lyn. “You take
care girl. Call us if you need something, anything.” He started to walk away
and then turned and said, “See you tonight when we come by, if you’re here.” A
few seconds later, he was across the room and by the door paying the bill at
the cash register.

 Clay stood, slowly. “I hope
you’re here this afternoon.” It was a last plea.

Unable to commit to the end, she
could only mutter, “I’ll try.” Her hand quickly flicked away a tear as Clay
turned towards the door.

The two brothers joined up at the
door and clumped out of the cafe in their dusty work boots. No one paid any
attention to the little drama playing out in the cafe. No one except a heavyset
truck driver sitting in a booth in the far corner.

Henry, the trucker from the I-95
Diner, had watched with keen interest. He was in Savannah waiting for a load,
and the AcrossAmerica Truck Stop was a gathering place for drivers with time on
their hands. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was clear that there
was a lot going on at the table where the girl sat with the two boys.

Two punks, he thought. And the
girl, Kathy’s niece, my ass. That girl was just some straggler on the road, and
Kathy had them two boys bring her down the road. Didn’t trust him to do it.
Well, he’d see about that.

Henry motioned the waitress over
and ordered some more coffee. He didn’t have a load until tonight. Plenty of
time.

An hour north of Pickham County,
a police cruiser, lights flashing and siren wailing, roared south on the
interstate passing the old Chevy in the opposite direction. Animal instincts
surfaced and every nerve ending and sense twitched, testing the air for danger.
They controlled his every movement. His face had the alertly concerned look of
an alley cat caught with its head in a garbage can when the porch light comes
on.

Somewhere in a buried place in
his brain, everything was evaluated to determine what his next reflexive action
should be. Remain motionless? Fight? Flee? Hide? His muscles were taught. Every
sinew strained, waiting for the signal. The instinct for survival controlled
him completely.

The police car did not jump the
median and turn to follow him, but continued south. Gradually, his body
relaxed. The animal alertness, still active, retired to some sublevel of his
brain.

As the alert faded, he pulled
into a gap between two northbound trucks in the right lane. Instinctively, he
became inconspicuous, blending in and becoming a moving particle in the stream
of moving particles; vehicles rolling up the interstate. Camouflaged amongst
the herd, he was anonymous, and anonymity made him safe. He had no idea if
anyone was looking for him or who might be hunting him, but blending in was a
natural instinct.

Predator or prey, he adapted
according to his needs. It all happened with no conscious thought on his part.

After a few miles, he relaxed.
The adrenaline rush from the possible danger gave him an almost narcotic high.
A sense of well-being overtook him completely. It was an almost sexual release.
He lived for these moments. It was all part of the runaround. The game. The
hunt. The kill. The escape. All of it. He savored it.

The steamy miles up the Georgia
coast passed as his mind slipped into a dream-like reverie. Like the drowsy
sleep of the lion basking in the sun after a kill, he soaked in the sun’s rays.
The others on the highway with him were herd animals, unaware of his presence,
and silently unaware of the danger nearby. They moved quietly around him, the
killer, the predator. After the danger passed and one of their own was torn
apart by the terrible fangs, they breathed a sigh of uneasy relief. It hadn’t
been them, and that was good.

 Warm air blew in from the
open window. Lylee puffed a cigarette contentedly, a glow of satisfaction
radiating from him.

The smoke from the generic
“no-name” cigarette that he always bought from different convenience stores
whisked out the window so that the car would not smell of it. He wouldn’t want
to inhibit some health conscious, young lady from joining him for a ride.
Another small detail.

The close call that morning with
the young blond and the two truckers who had surprised him with their arrival
was careless. Stupid, he told himself. No excuse. He would have to be more
careful; get his head back in the game. The thrill of the night’s kill had
still been with him. Intoxicated by it, his judgment had lagged. He knew the
danger from past runarounds.

Sometimes the bloodlust overcame
all reason, not that anything he was doing was in anyway reasonable to a normal
person. But for him, that lust for blood had a way of controlling his actions
in the way that alcohol controls a drunkard or drugs an addict. The taste of
the kill created the need for more. If there was not a sufficient cooling down
period after the kill, the animal in him would go on killing, and the risk of
detection from his recklessness would rise accordingly. He was aware of this
and tried to guard against it by giving himself a cooling down period before
seeking the next kill.

It had been too soon with the
girl at the gas station that morning. The rush from the kill had still roared
drunkenly through him. Kills, he reminded himself. First the old man at the
church, an unexpected but welcome appetizer, and then the girl, the main
course. If the truckers had not arrived, the blond might be seated next to him
in the old Chevy at this moment. He smiled at that thought.

The I-95 traffic was mostly
trucks with a few cars interspersed. He liked running with the trucks. They
knew what they were doing, usually. They knew how to go fast and how to avoid
the police. The old Chevy looked run-down with its faded red and primer gray
paint job, but it was in good driving shape. He was careful to keep it that
way. Car trouble with a load in the trunk to dispose of, or with one of his
projects sitting beside him in the front seat, could be more than a bit
inconvenient. It could mean survival. Never get careless. Never get caught.

Sometimes it came down to pure
luck. At times in the past when his judgment had been overpowered by the blood,
his survival had depended on luck. He had always been lucky, if not in birth
and family, then in deceiving others about his true persona and in his ability
to escape danger. He believed himself to be a predator at the top of the food
chain and knew that successful predators must be skilled in the stalk, powerful
in the kill, and cunning in the escape. When cunning failed, they had to be
lucky.

Sometimes, as on this runaround,
he got lucky in finding his prey. He had run across the young girl within a day
after his arrival in Florida.

He had driven straight through
from Texas. He never conducted a runaround near home. They were always in
another state and at least two states away from home. Staying on the wonderful
interstate highway system that Dwight Eisenhower had given to the country, his
Texas plates did not draw much attention and he could roam freely.

Taking I-10 across the Florida
panhandle, he had ended up at the Atlantic Ocean. A few brief hours in a cheap
hotel near Jacksonville, and the runaround had officially begun. Thinking back
twenty-four hours, it surprised him how quickly he had found the girl. Some
runarounds it took days to find the right situation, the right prey. His early
success meant that there might well be another opportunity before he had to
return to Texas.

Here on the interstate, in the
bright light of day, the memory of the previous night’s encounter caused a
smile to twitch across his narrow face. The eyes of the girl, terrified, then
hopeless, then fading into a blank nothingness, danced in his mind.

 A pleasant shiver ran
through him. There would be another. He would make sure of it.

Lighting another cigarette, his
eyes followed the smoke whisping out the window. Gray eyes gazed across the
landscape. The stretch of highway between the small towns dotting the Georgia
coast appeared barren. The green coastal plains looked empty, but he knew
better. There was prey out there. He would find it. It was his runaround. This
was his time.

Tom Ridley stopped in the bare
dirt of his yard and put his foot up on the bumper of his truck to tie the lace
of a dusty, scuffed boot. He leaned back, hands on his hips stretching his back
in a long arch then gave out a long burp. Margaret’s breakfast of ham, eggs,
grits and biscuits with gravy sat heavily, but pleasantly in his gut.