“I suppose you’ll be even more scared of me now.”

I was quiet a moment. “That depends. What were you in prison for?”

Surprise flashed in his eyes at my boldness, and good, it was time I returned the favor.

“What do you think?” he asked softly. “It’s not so hard to figure out.”

My throat seemed to swell, and thickly, I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“Come now.” His voice was faintly mocking, but who—who was the target? The answer was made clear with his next words. “I know sometimes I come across the perfect gentleman, but surely you can think of something I might do wrong, something cruel and vicious and inhumane? Say the words, sunshine.”

I shook my head, nostrils flaring as my body prepared for flight, even as my mind knew there was nowhere to go.

“Aggravated rape.”

The air seemed to leak from between the yellow-brown blinds on the windows, through the smudged panes of the door, anywhere but here. I couldn’t breathe.

“Did you do it?”

He shrugged. “Some people thought I was innocent. The ones who counted didn’t.”

I thought of the rosary hanging from his rear-view mirror, of the man who would no longer speak his name. Someone close enough to gift Hunter with faith but who didn’t have faith in him.

“And you.” His mouth twisted in a cruel imitation of a smile. “More than anyone, you know how guilty I am.”

I found my voice. “And those girls. They know too.”

“Do they? I’ll take your word for it.”

I shut my eyes at his cavalier tone. Didn’t he care about them? Sometimes it seemed to pain him when he hurt me. Maybe it was a sickness, an impulse he couldn’t control or a personality shift that took over him at those times. But he seemed fully aware every time he had taken me. I was just making excuses for the man who held my fate in his hands. False hope that he would do right by me in the end.

The waitress returned with our food, setting it down in front of a silent Hunter and myself.

She kept her gaze trained on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”

He reached into his back pocket and she flinched. But he only pulled out a handful of bills.

“This should cover it,” he said. “Keep the change. And don’t come back to the table.”

She snatched the money and scurried back to the kitchen.

Hunter stood without touching his food. He seemed agitated after his confession, far more affected than he wanted to appear.

“We won’t be stopping again until morning, so eat up. Come straight outside when you’re done.” He sent me a dark look. “Don’t make any trouble, sunshine.”

I watched him leave the diner, his confession still roiled through my body. Sometimes it was better not to know. Did he also feel sick to his stomach? Is that why he left without eating? I didn’t know. I shouldn’t care about him anyway.

I looked down at my food as the grease cooled, leaving an unappetizing sheen. He probably wouldn’t know if I didn’t eat it, but I considered it anyway, just to be obedient and to stave off the hunger for the rest of the night. But why was I thinking like this?

He’d left me—unattended.

Sure, I could see his silhouette through the musty curtains right out front. He was blocking the exit, but not the only one. There must be another one out back that the employees used. Here was my chance to get away.

Maybe I could fool myself into going along with him. Consent and cooperate and let myself be used just so I didn’t have to be a victim. But that was all veneer, like the slick coating of grease that formed on my steak and eggs. It changed how it looked, not what it was.

A convicted rapist. I had no choice but to run.

I stood quickly, heading toward the back where the waitress had been. The raucous conversation grew abruptly quiet. I could feel the men’s gazes on me, but I resolutely kept my eyes averted, mimicking the waitress. She’d seemed to inherently understand the dangers of Hunter and the other men. Maybe that had been my problem from the first. I’d seen Hunter leaning against the cab of his truck. I should have run in the other direction but I hadn’t…and somehow that had led me here.

Like stepping through a white trash looking glass, I had ended up in a different truck stop. I’d become a different girl. One who knew how to suck a cock, for one thing. One who knew what the sunset looked like from the tallest hill as far as the eye could see. One with enough courage to run when the opportunity presented itself.

In the back, the girl was washing dishes in a large steel basin.

Her eyes flashed with fear when she saw me. “You can’t come back here.”

“Please. Help me. I need help.”

“Not me.” She shook her head as if I were threatening her. “I can’t help you.”

“Just call the police. Let me call them.”

A large, heavy-set man came out of the back, his yellow-stained wife-beater pulling up short of covering the dark, bulbous skin of his belly.

“What’s going on in here?”

The girl shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Please, that man out there, he kidnapped me. You have to call the police.”

His eyes seemed too large for his head, not out of surprise, just naturally that way. I could see the whites even as he frowned. “I don’t have to do anything.”

I drew in a shaky breath. “He’s…he’s going to hurt me if you don’t help.”

A flash of sympathy lit his bloodshot eyes. Then it was gone.

“If I were to go calling the cops on my customers, I would be out of business in a week. Or wind up dead on my office floor.”

Desperation streaked through me. I ran away from his cold, pitying stare and pushed through the back door. There was nothing but empty fields to my right. On the other side, a short row of trucks. I needed to make a decision. Hunter was still out front. His truck was out there too. Soon he’d come looking for me. I had to make a decision.

Since the fields were wide open, he’d see me in a minute. He’d catch me and what? Punish me? I didn’t know, but there was no turning back now. I almost wished I hadn’t run now that I saw how pathetic my options were, but it was too late for regrets.

A click from the door behind me warned me that it was going to open. I didn’t know who it was, but I ran toward the row of trucks. Footsteps pounded behind me, barely audible above the rasping of my own breath. I reached the first truck and darted behind it, but I was slower than I’d hoped, weakened by days of inactivity and sparse diet. A fist tangled in my hair. I felt myself yanked back against a tall, unyielding body.

Chapter Eight

An estimated 5,000 bodies have been found at the foot of the falls since 1850.

“Lookie what I found,” the man holding me said.

Not Hunter. Suddenly my fear was a hundred times worse. I hadn’t known I trusted Hunter but faced with another trucker, I knew I did. Whether it was a sickness or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I believed that Hunter wouldn’t truly harm me, but this man?

No.

I fought in a wild clash of soft punches and hopelessness. I heard laughing and a curse when I caught something soft beneath my fingernail. Thick fingers grabbed my arms, wrenching them above my head as I was twisted to the ground.

“Let me go.” It felt like a whisper, low and grating the walls of my throat, but through the melee, they heard me.

“Now why would I do that when the fun’s only started?”

“He’ll make you pay,” I said, and knew then that it was true.

The men just laughed.

One of them knelt between my thighs, unbuckling his belt. I closed my eyes against the sight of his thin, glistening erection. Rough hands yanked at my hem, pulling it up. The air felt cool against my heated skin before they grabbed my nipples and twisted.

Something slick poked around my thighs, sliding through the folds of my sex. He was trying to find his way inside. It felt like being violated with a fish. I was going to vomit, and the way they were holding me down, I would probably choke on it.