The alternative was to take 166 straight into Santa Maria and pick up Blosser on the outskirts. The problem was Padgett Construction and A-Okay Heavy Equipment sat on Highway 166 between me and the town. My car was conspicuous. If Padgett were looking for me, all he had to do was wait for me to pass. I shifted from second to third, engine whining in a high-pitched protest. I tried to picture the roads that connected the 166 and West Winslet. There were three that I remembered. The Old Cromwell and New Cut were now behind me so scratch that idea. The one choice remaining was a road called Dinsmore.

I leaned on the gas until I spotted the sign and took a hard right-hand turn. It was black as pitch out here. I kept scanning for headlights, my eyes flicking back and forth from the darkened road ahead of me to the darkened road behind me, spinning away in my rearview mirror. On my right, lengths of thirty-six-inch pipe were lined up along the road, in preparation for who knows what. An excavator and a bulldozer were parked across the road. I was guessing they were laying gas lines, collection mains, something of the sort.

I was on the verge of making a U-turn when a set of headlights popped into view behind me, filling the oblong of mirror with a glare that made me squint. The vehicle was closing rapidly, coming up behind me at a speed far greater than I could coax out of my thirteen-year-old tin can. I pressed down on the accelerator, but my VW was no match for the car behind. I picked up a blend of silhouettes as the car swung wide and passed me with a crew of teenage boys inside. One of them tossed an empty beer can out the window, and I watched the aluminum cylinder bounce and tumble before it disappeared.

The red of taillights diminished and winked out.

A minute later, I saw a fork in the road ahead where Dinsmore split. One arm continued straight ahead and a second road shot off to the left. There was a row of four barriers across that arm. The devices were hinged like sawhorses with a two-by-four-foot panel across the top, painted in series of diagonal orange and white stripes. Each had a reflecting light on top that seemed to blink an additional caution. I slowed to a stop, remembering Winston’s description of the barriers he’d seen the night he’d spotted Violet’s car.

I had two choices: I could take the barrier as gospel, warning of repairs or obstructions on the road ahead, or I could assume it was as a ruse, drive around one barrier and straight onto Winslet Road. I flicked on my brights. I could see the front end of a truck parked about a hundred yards away. I understood the game. At that point the angle of the two roads was probably no more than forty-five degrees, the distance between them widening over the course of four hundred yards. Padgett could be waiting in between, biding his time until I chose one or the other. It really made no difference which I picked. I backed up and yanked the steering wheel hard to my right. I completed the turn, shifted from reverse into first, and headed back the way I’d come.

I checked my rearview mirror, expecting to see some sign of a vehicle. Nothing. I thought I might be okay until I heard the whap-whap-whapping of my tires. I struggled with the steering, which was suddenly clumsy and stiff, trying to control the car as the pressure in my tires diminished. I slowed to a stop. I was right. Padgett had stopped off at Mrs. Wyrick’s earlier that night. An ice pick would have been the perfect instrument to create four slow leaks. Not as dramatic as his tire-slashing methodology at the Sun Bonnet Motel, but he wanted to make sure I could drive on the tires for a while. At least long enough to find myself out here.

That’s when I saw the headlights behind me.

Padgett took his time. My engine was idling, but I knew I couldn’t outrun him. I wanted to open the door and flee, but I didn’t think I’d get far. Even if I ran as swiftly as I could across one of the wide dark fields, I wouldn’t be hard to catch as long as he was driving his truck. I reached for my handgun and pulled the slide back.

He pulled up behind me and slowed to a stop, his engine idling as mine was. He waited for a minute and then got out of his truck. He left his headlights on, flooding my car with an unearthly glow. He strolled along the road, coming up next to my car on the passenger side. He knocked on the window despite the fact that I was looking right at him.

“Flat tire?” His tone was conversational, his voice faintly muffled. I hated his smile.

“I’m fine. Get away from me.”

He leaned back and in an exaggerated display of skepticism as he checked the tires on that side. “Don’t look fine to me.” He rested his arm on the roof of my car, watching me with interest. “Are you afraid of me or what?”

I pulled the gun up and pointed at him. “I said get the fuck away from me.”

He said, “Whoa!” and put his hands up. “I believe you have the wrong idea, Missie. I’m here to offer help…”

I should have shot him right then, but I thought there had to be another way out, something short of killing the man where he stood. I simply couldn’t sit there and blast him in the face.

I stepped on the accelerator and the car jolted forward. This threw him off balance, but far from becoming angry, he seemed amused. Maybe because he recognized my fleeting moment of cowardice. I put the gun in my lap and pressed on at a much-reduced speed. I knew I was ruining my rims, risking a broken front axle, and god knows what else, but I had to reach civilization. As I shuddered my way forward, I could see Padgett shake his head, bemused. He ambled toward his truck.

He got in, shifted into gear, and followed me, taking his sweet time, knowing his vehicle was always going to be the faster of the two. My rims were now cutting through my tires, trimming off streamers of rubber. My rims ripped along the pavement, throwing up a rooster tail of sparks. The steering was almost impossible to control, but I hung on for dear life. We continued this slow-speed pursuit, Padgett riding up against my rear bumper, giving me the occasional quick bump just to remind me he was there.

I could see Highway 166 in the distance. It was 10:00 at night and there wasn’t any traffic to speak of, but there had to be a business open, a gas station at the very least. Cromwell was closer than Santa Maria and if I could make it as far as the highway, I’d head in that direction. Padgett had slipped his gear into neutral. I heard him revving his engine and then he popped it into first again and lurched into the back of my car with a thunderous bang. I clung to the steering wheel, my knuckles white with the tension of my grip. I spotted the construction site ahead, the bright yellow bulldozer and an excavator parked on the left. Padgett slammed into me twice, doing as much damage as he could, which turned out to be plenty. I smelled burning oil and scorched rubber, and something made a scraping sound every time my tires flopped around. Black smoke roiled across the rear window. My car limped along, like some sad, crippled beast while I listened to the screech of metal like the howling of the dead.

He tried another one of his gear-popping tricks, but he outsmarted himself and his engine stalled. He turned the key and I could hear the starter grind. Once the engine coughed to life, he backed up, veered around me and eased on down the road. I thought he’d given up, but that was just my inner optimist rearing her sunny little head. He pulled onto the gravel berm, cut the lights, and got out of his truck. I watched him as he proceeded at a casual pace, crossing to the bulldozer. He grabbed a handhold on the side and pulled himself up, using the track as a foothold as he climbed into the cab. He settled in the seat and leaned forward. He turned the key and the bulldozer grumbled to life. He flipped on the headlights and I watched him reach for the levers that controlled the big machine. I couldn’t figure out what his intention was-beyond the obvious, of course-until I spotted the mound of dirt in the middle of the field to my right. He’d dug a hole for me.