Stella bit her lip.
She was vulnerable. She knew it, and this Drew Baldwin knew it too. If he wanted to attack her, he didn’t need her to agree to get in his truck to do it.
So, if she was already at risk, would it really be so bad to get in his car? He seemed nice enough.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed by now,” Drew added, “but you’re in a dead zone. Cell reception doesn’t come back until another ten minutes up the road.”
Something about hearing him say the words “dead zone” raised Stella’s defenses once again. She crossed her arms over her chest and planted her sandaled feet on the rocky shoulder of the road. “I don’t want to leave my car here, but I’d love it if you could call me a tow truck when you find the elusive reception.”
“You don’t trust me?” Drew’s grin turned amused. But before Stella could even open her mouth to explain, he shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I wouldn’t trust me, either. Sure, Ms.—?”
“Pierce. Stella Pierce.”
“Sure, Ms. Pierce,” Drew said, dipping into a low bow. “I’ll call the tow truck for you. But when it gets here, make sure you mention my name. The driver will tell you who I am, and then when we run into one another again, you’ll be certain you can trust me.”
Drew winked before turning and getting back in his truck, and Stella didn’t think it would be wise to ever trust a man like that. Not because he was a murderer or anything. But Drew Baldwin was a heartbreaker if she’d ever seen one.
3
Drew Baldwin was a liar.
A heartbreaker and a liar.
It had been an hour and a half since he drove away with the promise of calling for a tow truck, yet there was no tow truck in sight. He’d said Willow Beach was only twenty minutes away, but Stella was beginning to wonder if the encounter happened at all.
Maybe she had been stranded on the side of the road longer than she thought. Maybe there was a gas leak in the car and the fumes were making her hallucinate. She propped open the passenger side door a bit more just to be safe. Mosquitoes the size of bumblebees buzzed around her, but the night was too balmy to leave the doors and windows closed.
She’d already changed out of the jeans and T-shirt she’d been in before, opting for a wrinkled cotton dress Brenda must have thrown in her suitcase when she wasn’t looking. She’d bought it without trying it on the summer before, and then had never worn it. The fabric always seemed to cling to her body in the wrong places and accentuated her least favorite parts of herself, but she had never thrown it out. Now, she was glad she had it. Without the dress, she might have had to resort to using the pocketknife from her emergency kit to cut the legs off her jeans.
Stella was chewing on her last breath mint, trying to assuage the rumble of hunger in her stomach and wondering if she shouldn’t start walking down the highway in search of reception when headlights appeared on the road ahead of her.
As the truck approached, she could see the red lights on the hitch and the yellow bar lights running across the top of the cab and along the bumper, and she knew she had been saved.
She climbed out of the passenger seat and waved her hands in the air just in case. Since no one else was around, she found it hard to believe the driver could ever miss her, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance that he might.
The horn honked in recognition, and Stella stood back as the large truck drove past her car and then pulled a U-turn to spin around and park in front of her.
Sam’s Auto Shop was printed on the side of the yellow truck in bright blue letters next to a cartoon drawing of a small man in denim coveralls. The animated figure had a wrench in his hand and a silly grin on his face.
The man that walked around the back of the tow truck looked nothing like the animation. Instead of coveralls, he had on a pair of jeans with a blue button-down shirt tucked in. And instead of being small and silly, the man was broad, tall, and serious. His face was tan and square, dotted with light stubble, and completely and entirely flat. Expressionless.
“Are you Stella Pierce?”
“The one and only.” Stella winced at her lame response but rallied quickly. “Drew Baldwin called you on my behalf?”
The man nodded and immediately began the process of hitching her car to the truck. “He works for me part-time. He said he offered you a ride, but you refused.”
Stella’s face warmed. “I was all alone out here. A woman can never be too careful.”
“You’re still all alone,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her before slipping the hook under her car. “And I prefer doing this in the light of day.”
He was right. She was still alone with a strange man in the middle of nowhere, but something about the official truck made her feel safe. Should it? Was she in just as much danger as she’d been in before?
No. This man might be surly, but he was hooking her car up. Who would haul the car of their murder victim around behind them? No one. Plus, unless he and Drew were in the murder business together, Drew had sent this man to get Stella. He’d recognize her name if she disappeared or turned up dead.
Funny that Drew Baldwin was now Stella’s saving grace, but the fact he knew she existed and was nearby made her feel so much better. Good enough to say exactly what she was thinking to this strange man without mincing words.
“It looks
