ramp to north Highway 169. She’d been fiddling with her MP3 player, trying to change playlists, and ended up driving an extra six miles west before realizing she’d missed her turnoff.
That’s when she’d spotted the van.
She didn’t know how long it had been in her wake, but it pulled up behind her as she exited the Interstate to turn around, then followed her back east to the ramp she’d overshot earlier. It could’ve been a harmless coincidence—the two of them making the same mistake at the exact same time—but after becoming aware of the van, she’d kept tabs on its location behind her, noticing it would speed up when she did but wouldn’t pass when she slowed. Now she watched the driver copy her lane changes while she weaved through traffic, displaying a new level of boldness that made her neck hairs quiver with unease.
“Prick,” she shouted at the image in the rearview mirror.
She glanced at the Neon’s control panel and cursed again.
The car needed gas.
She preferred to stay on the road, content to let her vehicular stalker remain on her trail all the way to her parents’ cabin in Clearwater Creek—and to her father’s shotgun collection. Unfortunately, her parents’ place was still a good forty minutes away, and the needle of the fuel gage was already tipping precariously near empty. Like it or not, she needed to stop.
Keeping in the left lane, she eased her car alongside a pickup truck towing a horse trailer. It was only a little after ten, but traffic had already thinned out, and she’d made sure to stick close to the few cars still on the road.
The van trailed behind her, less than a car-length away. Up ahead, the next exit ramp flashed into view, its turnoff bordered by signs promoting food, gas, and lodging.
“Okay, asshole,” she said to the image in the mirror, “follow this!”
With the exit ramp almost on top of her, she slammed on the gas and made a hard right, cutting in front of the truck and up the ramp at the last moment. Horns blared from angry motorists behind her, and tires squealed on the pavement.
She looked in the rearview mirror the second she hit the ramp, trying to ignore the ghost of her reflection when she searched the road behind her. She expected to see an empty stretch of blacktop, but she found the van’s driver had anticipated her move and slowed down to avoid the other traffic.
Now he cut onto the exit ramp and raced to catch up.
“Fuck,” she hissed.
She wished she had a cell phone.
She wished she were closer to her final destination.
Sometimes, on hot dates, she wished she had bigger boobs.
A two-way intersection came into view at the top of the ramp, and Penelope spotted a brightly lit gas station and sporting goods store about one hundred yards to the right. She started to make the turn when the Neon went dead.
The lights cut off. The engine died.
“What the hell?”
She had no more than a second to ponder the problem when the van roared up from behind. Its headlights blazed through the back window, blinding her in the mirror.
She screamed.
The van slammed into the Neon’s rear end, the sounds of exploding glass and crumpling metal overpowering her cry.
She bucked in her seat. The car skidded across the blacktop, pushed by the van, then jolted again when it crashed through a massive billboard advertising camping supplies. In a split second of raw terror, a chasm-like drainage ditch opened up before her, looking like a huge mouth ready to swallow her whole.
Unable to tear her eyes from the approaching pit, she clawed at her door with blind swipes. The handle eluded her. Leafless branches screeched across the car’s paneling like fingernails. The front tires went over the ledge, and the vehicle’s chassis bottomed out with a bang.
She rocked forward, instinctively clutching at whatever she could to stay balanced, and the door release seemed to jump into her hand.
Screaming, she threw herself out of the car.
She rolled clear of the two vehicles, falling flat on her stomach while her Neon plunged into the pit and crashed to the bottom. Its taillights glared up at her from the dark.
Beside her, the van slid to a halt at the rim of the ditch. Its front tires sat inches from following her car into the murk.
Penelope looked up.
The driver looked down.
And what she saw triggered the most basic instinctual reaction of survival.
She ran.
Slashing through the weeds and bushes, she scrambled up the embankment, back onto the road. Behind her, the van’s engine revved with furious power. Its wheels spun in reverse, issuing a banshee wail as they cut into the ground.
The memory of the driver clung to her mind.
Penelope sprinted toward the gas station, cutting across the open land that separated it from the roadside. Here, off the highway, away from traffic, the rural farmland surrounding her became an ugly black wasteland in the dark.
She hit the parking lot of the gas station and raced for the entry, glancing over her shoulder before reaching the doors.
Back on the road, the van’s headlights shone on the pavement like a bloodhound’s nose pressed to a game trail.
She whirled around and dashed inside the store.
The Killer growled, clenching the steering wheel.
Judge Anderson’s vehicle had proved more cumbersome than the Killer anticipated, and that error had allowed the girl to escape.
Her strength helped her to survive, aiding her in ways that, like Mallory, she didn’t even realize. Now she ran to the building, where people waited. They couldn’t save her, no one could, but they also couldn’t be left alive to tell what they’d see when the Killer attacked. The hunt had just become a slaughter.
If only the Killer were fully healed; if only there hadn’t been the need to follow this girl so far from Mallory. Time was being wasted.
But it was all necessary.
The Killer needed strength.
And the girl, Penelope, would provide it.
Penelope ran inside the store. “Help me,” she cried.
The building appeared to be the combination of a gas station and a sporting goods retailer. The large main room housed miscellaneous food and travel supplies to the left, various hunting, fishing, and camping equipment to the right, and a three-register checkout island in the center, positioned along the front windows.
She rushed to the service counter. “You have to call the cops! There’s a fucking maniac chasing me!”
A tall American Indian man with the muscled arms of a comic book superhero stood behind the counter. He’d been tallying the purchases of another female customer prior to Penelope’s entrance and now froze in mid- acceptance of a twenty dollar bill. Both he and the woman stared at her with tense expressions, and Penelope tried to imagine what they were seeing: a sweaty girl with dirt-scuffed clothes and purple hair, shouting with each breath.
