I glanced at him. “What?”

“You told me the story from it, about the girl and the canoe. Is that why you keep it?”

I played at the hem of my dress, distracted and jittery. “Not really.”

“So what’s the big deal with Niagara Fucking Falls?”

Despite myself, I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Hunter to be irreverent whenever possible. “No big deal, okay? I’m just curious. Am I not allowed to be curious?”

He eyed me. “Mouthy, huh?”

I was mouthy, though I wasn’t sure where the hint of attitude had come from. Was I becoming more comfortable with him? Was I coming to trust him?

Scary thought.

“So you want to go there. Then why were you heading to Little Rock?”

“Didn’t have enough money,” I mumbled. Then stronger, “But I guess you know that, seeing as you already looked through my stuff.”

He snorted. “Okay, so why haven’t you gone there before this?”

Because of my mother, I wanted to cry. But that was a lie.

“Too scared, I guess,” I mumbled. It wasn’t as if I had any pride with him anyway.

His gaze softened.

A smile turned my lips. “Don’t imagine you have much experience with that.”

He squinted into the distance. “Depends on what you’re scared of. Me, I’m scared of standing still.”

My heart skipped a beat at his confession. Maybe we could open up to each other after all…and then what? What as the end goal? Even Niagara had lost some of its appeal, just another point on the map, a way-station to a true and unimaginable destination.

I expected us to stop at another fast food restaurant or a diner. But this time, we didn’t pull off the road for him to stash me in the back. Instead we exited the freeway where a large sign had the icons for gas, food, and lodging, and continued on until we were pulling into a truck stop.

He wasn’t hiding me.

This truck stop was a lot like the first one, and it made my heart speed up. Maybe it was foolish to hope, but he could let me go here. I’d served my usefulness. I had pried into his life. I had opened up about my hopes and dreams. For whatever reason, he could be finished with me, and now he’d leave me here in a place where he found me.

So why did I feel disappointment?

It was premature, I knew, but a spark of hope could conflagrate a wildfire. If I were freed, I would call the cops, file a report, and return to my car. Then I would drive to Little Rock, where hopefully the job was still available, the one at the camera shop where I had never been. I swallowed thickly. So why did it feel like a step backward?

Faced with the loss of him, I suddenly wanted what Hunter could show me. For all that he was a little unhinged, he saw things—really saw them. I wanted that. Maybe I even wanted him to keep me.

But that was insane. Completely loco. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see the craziness of that wish—the same way a Kamikaze pilot must have felt in the second after he volunteered, like what did I get myself into?

Besides, the part of me that could be spontaneous and risk-taking had atrophied long ago. I was like my mother, bound by fear, but instead of being restricted by geography I was restrained by societal conventions. He was a bad guy, a kidnapper, and I shouldn’t want anything he had to offer—not even freedom.

So I pressed my lips together and ignored the flutter in my belly. Even when he pulled into one of the long diagonal parking spots meant for trucks—right next to another one!—I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even trying to hide our presence here. It was all out there in the open, in the waning late afternoon light.

He turned to me. “Don’t give me any trouble, okay? Let’s just have a quiet dinner.”

I blinked. We would eat…and then he would turn me loose?

“If you can’t be good for your own sake, do it for theirs. Anyone you get to help you answers to me, and they’ll live to regret it. Understand?”

“You’re not letting me go?”

He stared impassively for a moment, then he laughed. “I thought we went over this. No.”

Was that relief? Oh Jesus, it was. I was as crazy as he was.

“I just thought…you might…”

His voice lowered. “Sunshine, if you’re trying to look less appealing to me, it’s not working.”

My heart thumped in response, and I felt my eyes widen. “But the people inside. They’ll see.”

“They’ll see that you’re mine and if they’re smart, they won’t lay a finger on you.”

I had been up-close-and-personal with this man’s cajones and not even realized how huge they must be. He had no fear, none. He was going to walk into a non-empty place of business during the day with a captive in tow. And judging by the disturbingly self-aware smile that played at the corner of his lips, he wouldn’t even break a sweat doing so.

It was strangely attractive. My own lips pursed in restraint, but I wanted to smile too, without fully understanding the humor. We could laugh at the people we would see, blind to the egregious crime happening in front of them, or maybe we’d chuckle at his chutzpah. But I feared that the joke was really on me. Stupid, naïve girl who’s too afraid to cry for help in a public place. I’d show him. Hopefully.

This diner was similar in feel to the last one, both grungy and aging poorly, but this one had at least tried to be homey once. Cherry wood paneling lined the walls and formed booths over brick-colored linoleum. Fake ivy along the walls was coated in thick layers of dust. A young black waitress poured coffee at a table where three men sat.

We walked inside hand-in-hand, so I knew that his hands weren’t sweating. Mine were, though, and clammy, trembling, as if I were the one doing something wrong instead of him. Hunter didn’t wait for the waitress to look up. He just tugged me over to a booth.

He gestured me inside in what could have been mistaken for a courtly gesture. I scooted in and he sat beside me, hemming me in. As the waitress walked over to us, he pushed up my skirt, slipped his hand over my thigh, and slid his fingers into the crevice between my legs. I tensed.

If the waitress noticed, she didn’t show it. After a quick glance at Hunter’s face then mine, she turned to her notepad. “Can I take your order?”

“We’ll have steak and eggs. Medium rare. Two over easy. I’ll have a Coke.”

He turned to me. “What do you want to drink?”

“I…I…” My lips were numb, tongue tied in knots. I could barely function on my own but now there was pressure. What if I messed up, and this girl got in trouble? She was about my age. What if he took her too? Of course, all these thoughts swirling around were making me mess up, and I sat there with my mouth open like an idiot, until she looked up from her pad.

“Orange juice,” I said weakly.

After she left, I glanced over at the men, but they were engrossed in their meals. Hunter’s thumb brushed over my skin—back and forth, and it sparked something very near there. I felt my skin almost ripple beneath his, as if it could urge him closer to that heat.

Abruptly, he stood and slid into the seat opposite me.

“There,” he said. “Now we can talk.”

The air beside me felt uncommonly cool, my thigh bare. I missed his presence, I realized with dismay. He sent me a vague smile that said he knew exactly what I felt.

“Prison,” he said succinctly. “That’s what I did before I started trucking.”

My lips parted in shock. I mean, sure, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was.

He grinned briefly, running his finger along a crack in the table. Then his expression turned serious…troubled. “Predictable, really. The ex-con driving a semi, preying on innocent young women. I’m a stereotype.”

I frowned, perpetually unnerved by his penchant for plain-speaking. It would have been easier to take if he had sex with me in a moment of lust-madness, then walked away with the forgetfulness of the unkind. But he seemed to know exactly what he was doing with me, and though sometimes it seemed to bother him, he had no plans to stop. He wasn’t lacking in morals, he was willfully going against his morals just to have me, which was terrifying but also sent a small thrill down my spine.