“Now what?”

“Now you press the gas and go.”

“Which one?”

He hopped off the seat and reached down by my feet as if to do it by hand for himself. “This one!”

“Okay, get up, Bobby. You can’t help me down there!”

“That one!” he said, pointing and climbing up.

“Just press it? What about my left foot?”

“You have to let the clutch out. If you let it out too quick, it will stop.”

“That’s how you stop?”

“Yes. But you have to use the other brake to stop.”

I stared at him, deciphering his speech. Then at my feet. The third pedal was clearly the brake. I thought I had the general gist of it.

“Okay. Hold on.”

The truck did exactly what Bobby said it would on my first try. It jerked to a stop.

“You did it too quick,” Bobby said, smiling wide. To him, our night ride was only another grand adventure.

I tried again, and this time we started rolling forward and gained speed. Too much speed, I thought, and we were pointed at an angle that would take us into the swamp fifty yards ahead.

“What now! What now!”

“Now steer!” he said, pointing ahead. “You have to stay on the road. You have to steer.”

He grabbed the steering wheel to show me how.

“You have to—”

“Let go, Bobby!” He released his grip.

I turned the wheel back and forth and was rewarded with a redirecting of the truck. It came to me quickly and I managed to put it down the center of the road. But the engine was roaring loudly, far louder than I knew it should sound.

Only then did it occur to me that I had the gas pedal pushed all the way down, so I eased my foot off the pedal and we slowed.

“You have to turn on the lights,” Bobby said.

“Where?”

“Here.” He reached forward and pulled a switch. Light flooded the road in front of us.

For a few seconds, neither of spoke. We were driving. With the doors still wide open, and slowly, but down the road.

“We’re doing it,” I said.

“Eden’s driving!” he hooted.

“Is anyone behind us?”

Bobby turned and peered through the back window.

“No.”

We were getting away! There was still Zeke’s house up on the left and his dogs, but they couldn’t hurt us in the truck.

“Close your door, Bobby.”

We both did. And then we were driving down the middle of the road, away from Kathryn, toward civilization. Just like that. It had all seemed too easy. And yet . . . here we were. So maybe God had answered my prayers after all.

My plan was simple. I would drive out onto the main road, stop the first person we saw, and tell them to take me to the police. That’s all. And that was enough.

“You have to change gears to go faster,” Bobby said.

“I don’t want to go faster.”

“You’re in first gear.”

“First gear is fast enough.”

We drove like that, silent for a while, right up the road, right past Zeke’s house, right past the barking dogs who chased the truck for a little while before being left in our dust.

“You’re a good driver, Eden.”

“You’re a good teacher, Bobby.” I smiled.

“I don’t like the dogs,” he said.

“I don’t like them either. But they can’t hurt us now.”

We were going to make it. We were actually going to get away from the compound. A hundred thoughts crowded my mind. What about Wyatt? What would Kathryn do when she found out I’d escaped? How would I explain myself to the police? What if they didn’t believe my story? How much should I tell them? Where would Bobby and I live? How would I get the money? What would I do with the money?

Was what I was doing wrong?

I bit my fingernail and chased that last thought away as we rolled on, seemingly forever. Even if going was wrong, I would find a way to live with it, because I could no longer live as Mother’s precious lamb.

The road was long, as straight as an arrow, and, at this time of the night, empty except for us, which is exactly what I’d hoped.

And then suddenly it wasn’t straight; it came to an intersection directly ahead of us. And it wasn’t empty; there was another truck parked across the road, blocking that intersection. A dirty white truck with big, thick tires, covered in rust.

My heart jumped into my throat.

“That’s Claude’s truck,” Bobby said. He looked over at me. “Is he coming with us?”

“Who’s Claude?”

“He’s Zeke’s friend.”

I shifted my foot and slammed down the brake pedal. Our truck slid to a jerking stop and the engine died, less than twenty yards from Claude’s truck. Zeke’s friend, which meant he was here to stop us. I couldn’t breathe.

“You have to press the clutch,” Bobby said, pointing at the floorboard again.

I searched the road on either side of the truck, thinking through a full-fledged panic. There was room to get by on the right, maybe. I might scrape the other truck, but I might get by. I might still be able to find a way.

But before I could piece together the mechanics of restarting the truck and forcing it past Claude’s, a bright light filled the cab. It came through the back window and I knew before I twisted around that Zeke was behind us.

“Is Zeke going to help us?” Bobby asked, staring back.

No, I thought. No, Zeke’s going to hurt us.

21

I SAT frozen to stone in the truck next to Bobby, who stared wide-eyed at Zeke’s truck, then at the white truck in front of us. My veins were ice. My head throbbed. I couldn’t move.

But my mind was moving, filling me with images of Paul’s beaten face and Zeke’s dark glare. It didn’t stop to consider how they’d found out I was trying to escape, only that they had and now I was going to suffer the same fate as Paul, or worse. Surely worse.

And then my mind wasn’t so much thinking as commanding without thought, reacting out of pure survival instinct.

I grabbed at the key and twisted it hard. The truck jerked and I shoved down the clutch and twisted the key again. The engine tried to start and then fired and the moment that roar filled my ears, I slammed my foot down on the gas and released the clutch, twisting the wheel as far as I could to my right, because I had to get past that white truck, see?

I had to escape now or I was going die.

We surged forward, jerking, and I turned the wheel harder. The lights illuminated a deep ditch to the right of the white truck and it struck me that we might go straight into that ditch, so I yanked the wheel to the left a little, but by that time we had covered the distance to Claude’s truck—we were going to hit it!

Again without thinking through it, I pulled my foot off the gas and somehow managed to cram down the brake.

And then we smashed into the front of Claude’s truck and came to an abrupt halt.

The engine ticked and hissed.

“You hit Claude’s truck,” Bobby said.

The engine ground to a stop.

There were two men in Claude’s truck, both just looking back at me, uncaring it seemed, that I’d just hit them. I twisted back and looked at Zeke’s black truck, expecting to see his tall form stalking toward us. But no one got out—the truck just sat there like a demon panther, lights glaring.

For a few seconds nothing happened, but even that silence seemed to be screaming at me, telling me that I was nothing that could possibly threaten or escape from these men. I was only a slightly annoying gnat that could be easily crushed.

One of the men in the white truck lifted a cell phone to his ear, spoke for a few seconds, then put it away. He pushed open his door, climbed out and walked toward me.

Opened my door, grinning.

“It was a mistake, Claude,” Bobby said in a thin voice. “Are you going to hurt us?”

The man was skinny, with messy red hair and a long tangled beard. His fingernails were dirty as were his plaid shirt and his blue pants.