Dark Pursuit

The woman peered at her as if wondering at her sanity.

Headlights washed across the curve up the road. Kaitlan fingers sank into the woman’s arm.

“What—?”

“Shhh!” Kaitlan held her breath and listened. The car came around the bend. The engine wasn’t —

“Out of the street or it’ll hit us both!” The woman tugged at her.

Headlights lit them up as Kaitlan let herself be pulled to the sidewalk. She hung on to the woman, breathing hard, nowhere else to go. Panic and hope sparred in her veins. Too late, too late if her ears betrayed her, if this was Craig.

The car skidded to a stop. The driver’s door flung open. “Kaitlan!”

Hot relief flooded her. Both knees caved. “Margaret.”

The woman held her up. Kaitlan disentangled herself in a half daze, blathering her thanks and sorrys, but her ride was here now and she was fine, just fine. Her unsteady legs moved beneath her, scuffling toward Margaret’s car, to safety. Margaret was getting out, hands slapped to her cheeks, her mouth a round O.

“Get out of here fast!” Kaitlan threw back over her shoulder at the woman. “It’s not safe.”

Uncertainty stalled the woman on the sidewalk. She stared, eyes wide.

“Go!”

The woman’s hands flew up and she shook out of her mindlessness, a sudden blur of motion. Jumping into the street, she hustled toward her flashing car to escape the crazed scene.

Kaitlan yanked Margaret’s passenger door open and fell inside. She slammed the door shut.

“What hap—?”

“Go, just go!” She scrunched down in her seat, peering over the dashboard. Some thirty feet away the woman had reached the back bumper of her car. “Go around her, don’t wait!”

Margaret hit the gas pedal and carved deeply into the other lane. They passed the woman as she slid behind her wheel, the car’s overhead light spilling upon her head. For a long second Kaitlan’s eyes met hers, the woman’s glazed with fear as if recognizing she’d barely escaped some monstrous nightmare.

Kaitlan fell back against her seat. She wiped her forehead. “Where have you been?”

“I got lost.”

“Heck of a time to get lost.”

“I know!” Air shuddered down Margaret’s throat. “I was just beside myself. I couldn’t …” Her head shook in tiny trembles.

The Jensons’ house glimmered into view on Kaitlan’s right. A sudden, wild knowledge blared in her head. She couldn’t go home again anytime soon. And she had nothing with her, not even her purse. Shouldn’t she go to work tomorrow and pretend to the outside world that everything was okay? Craig couldn’t hurt her at work.

“Turn into that driveway.” She pointed. “I’ve got to get something in my apartment.”

“No! We’ve to get away—”

“Just do it, Margaret!”

“What about Craig? What if he comes back and finds us there?”

If she only knew how close he was. “I won’t be long. But I don’t dare go back there tomorrow morning, and my shears are in my car. I can’t work without my shears.”

“I don’t—”

“Turn!”

Margaret swerved.

They tore down the long driveway, every tree alive and closing in on them as if angered at the spray of headlights.

To think she’d walked this alone, in the dark.

“Keep going to the end.”

Margaret took the curve fast and soon jerked to a hard stop in front of the carport. Kaitlan jumped out. “Turn off your lights and lock your doors. I’m going inside.”

“But you said—”

The door to her kitchen stood ajar. Kaitlan ran inside, mind crackling like wildfire. This was insanity, but she was so close. Better risk it now than in the morning, when Craig would lie in wait for her.

From below the kitchen sink she snatched two plastic grocery bags and sprinted to her bedroom. She threw open her closet door and yanked out three shirts and a pair of jeans. In the bathroom she grabbed handfuls of makeup items and shoved them into a bag. Her brushes, blow dryer. Face cream, shampoo and conditioner.

She hurled back into the kitchen, aiming for the door. At the table she skimmed up her purse, barely slowing. Banging her apartment door shut, she jumped into the passenger side of her Corolla and dug into the glove box for her shears in their case.

By the time she reached Margaret’s car it was turned around, ready to flee.

Panting, Kaitlan fell into the back seat. “Let’s go!” She dropped the plastic bags onto the floor.

Margaret took off.

Kaitlan thrust herself down in the cloth seat, gripping the edge. They were nearly home free. If they could just get to the end of the driveway …

She twisted her neck up toward Margaret. The woman’s back was ramrod straight, not touching the seat. Her hands clawed the steering wheel like talons.

Kaitlan’s body listed as the car swung around the driveway’s curve. She held on tighter. “Turn right onto the street. It’s longer to the freeway, but Craig could be circling back.”

“Circling back?”

“He was here. About two minutes before you came. I hid in the woods. He drove right by me with a spotlight.”

“Are you kidding? And you had me bring you back here?”

Kaitlan felt the car turn onto the road. “See any other headlights?”

“No.”