On Earth, it was much more dismal. The farmland was brown and flat. Even someone as clueless as I knew that was a bad sign in terms of producing crops. And there were no houses, no people. Not that I could jump out of a moving vehicle even if I saw someone. We were so high off the ground, almost flying, with a tint strong enough that no one would see me wave for help.

I had traded one prison for another, this one mobile but absolute. Inescapable even as it sliced through the countryside. Neither my mother’s home nor this eighteen-wheeler were gilded, but I preferred the view in this cage.

Except to the left of me, where Hunter sat, tapping the wide steering wheel in a restless beat. His legs were long, reaching leisurely to the floor. His whole body was slouched slightly, clearly quite comfortable. In contrast, my own knees were pressed together, my fists balled together right on top.

“So tell me about yourself, sunshine.”

Tell him…about me? He couldn’t really care, and I couldn’t really want to tell him—could I? Sadly, I wasn’t so sure. I had spent most of my twenty years with one person. Here was a new one. The novelty was too much to resist.

“I’m not sure what there is to tell. I’m not…anyone special.”

His insouciant expression slipped slightly as he looked at me. “How about you let me judge that? Tell me what you do. You in college?”

He kept that gaze trained on me, even though we were hurtling over the road. Nervous, I glanced ahead. We were still in the lane, still steady, and he seemed unconcerned.

“Um, not anymore. I graduated…but just with an associate’s degree. In graphic design.”

“Oh yeah, you an artist?”

“No, it was just something good to do from home, because…” Because I was a loser who had listened to my mother for far too long. And I had stopped listening at the one moment I should have heeded her safety advice. I couldn’t seem to win.

I stared at the rushing pavement as it slid under the truck. “But I was moving out. I was going to Little Rock, Arkansas. I had a job there at a camera shop.”

My voice had lilted up at the end in a small challenge. We both knew why I was no longer on my way to Little Rock. I didn’t even know where we were anymore, but I wasn’t on track to Niagara because of him. Bringing it up had almost been an accusation, the closest I could come to things better left unsaid: Why did you take me? When will you let me go? How could you do this to me when I had finally broken free?

Terrified of his anger or retribution to my impertinence, I slid my gaze over to him. He didn’t look mad, just thoughtful.

“A camera shop, huh? You ever been there before?”

“No.”

“You know anyone who works there?”

“No.”

“You like cameras?”

Despite my fears, a small smile played at my lips. I liked scenery and majesty. I liked angles and lighting. I liked seeing in a photo what I yearned to see for real. I wanted to take a picture of Niagara Falls.

“Yeah,” I said. “I like cameras.”

“Yours looks pretty fancy. Heavy, too.”

My eyebrows snapped up. Had he looked through my stuff back at the hotel? Of course he had. And he must have been disappointed to find less than a hundred bucks. What did he think of my book?

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Got no destination.”

I blinked. I had expected him to have some delivery or route or something. Wasn’t that the point of an eighteen-wheeler, to transport things?

He chuckled. “I like to drive. Sometimes I do jobs, but in between them, I keep driving.”

It seemed…well, inefficient. It also seemed wonderful, like a ball without friction, with nothing to slow it down, just rolling around, seeing everything in every direction but not having to participate. Not really being able to join in, always separate.

How lonely that must be. Almost as lonely as I had been, locked up in my mother’s house. That was when I realized—if this was a cage, then he was caged too. Even though he could go wherever he wanted, he couldn’t escape these steel walls. My mother was trapped too, even if it was by her own fears.

Maybe we were all held captive by something.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I was just thinking…” I paused, wondering if it was wise to speak so openly with him. He didn’t seem to get angry with me when I did, but it could be I exposed myself this way, made myself weaker by my own speculation. “I was thinking it seemed a little lonely.”

He was quiet so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “Sometimes we do things only because they are better than the alternative.”

“The lesser of two evils?”

He grinned. “Exactly.”

And I thought, what could have been so bad to make him avoid all human contact?

He was not so unlike my mother, and that thought should have made me hate him, but instead just made me sad.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” he continued. “I know a lot of people. People who live along some of the main lines. I’ll stop by for dinner or even overnight. I know the other truckers, and I can talk to them over the radio or my cell phone, if I wanted to.”

My heart beat a little faster, although I struggled to hide it. A radio? A cell phone? Methods of communication, means of escape. There was no obvious device on his dashboard, just a high-tech panel of flat screens, currently black, and buttons. Where would he keep his cell phone? His pocket? Somewhere else? Luckily he didn’t seem to notice my frantic plotting.

“Besides, I have you to keep me company now.”

Something about the extra emphasis on the word company raised the hairs on the back of my neck. He grinned, and I closed my eyes against the lust that glimmered there. But even with my eyes closed, I could feel the charge in the air, setting off little sparks against my skin, strumming awareness into body parts that had been well handled recently.

“If you’re going to stay up here, you might as well make yourself useful and keep me awake. Tell me something new about you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said caustically, “I haven’t had a very interesting life so far. That was what I was trying to do before you—”

“Fine. What’s the deal with your book? About Niagara Falls.”

I didn’t want to tell him what it meant to me, how it had been my goal for so long and how it tore me up inside to be battered off course.

“I can tell you a story from the book,” I offered. “It’s called the Maid of the Myst. A Native American myth. Have you heard it before?”

“Why would I have heard it before?”

“Right. Well, the people used to listen to the thunder, and it would teach them about the world, how to grow food and be kind to each other. But then they stopped listening, and the god of thunder grew angry and went to live under the waterfalls.”

“So he just left them. Kind of immature for a god, huh?”

I ignored him. “The people suffered and they decided to sacrifice this girl, but she ran away. She takes a canoe down the river, but the rapids take over and she can’t control it. As the boat fell over the waterfall, the god of thunder caught her in his arms and saved her.”

“Very romantic.”

“Yes, it was romantic. They fell in love and lived together underneath the falls.”

“Hmm. Happily ever after, just like that?”

“Well, not exactly. She wanted to see her home one last time, so she convinced the god to let her go. There she realized how much she missed it so she decided to stay. In his anger, the god of thunder destroyed his home, flooding it with water from the falls.”

“Anger issues. He’s really not much of a catch, is he?”

“Back with her people, the girl realized how much she had changed and could no longer live among them. So she returned to the god of thunder. Since their home under the falls was destroyed, he carried them up to the sky where they watched over their people.”