She didn’t answer. No reason to. She started praying that Annalee would stay asleep. Wouldn’t wake up and believe her momma had left her. She hoped that like most nightmares this one would be over by daybreak and that she could be sitting in the bed next to Annalee as if nothing had happened when the child first opened her eyes.
Clint left the door open to the backseat. He was that sure. He got into the driver’s seat and turned up the radio. Nothing going on. Then he took a phone out of the glove compartment and he dialed.
“Got us some new entertainment,” he said. “Come on out and I’ll show you. Yeah, same spot. Yeah, y’all can both come. Ain’t nothing on the radio. Looks like we got all night. Same deal as always.”
He turned off the phone and set it on the seat next to the gun belt. He looked around at Maben through the safety glass and said me and you about to have some company. I’d suggest you be on your best behavior.
She held her shirt against her chest and he laughed at her modesty. She felt the wild, poisonous vine beginning to choke her. She looked at the door. Wide open. Wanting her to run or do something he could blame her for. She didn’t know if it would be a few minutes or half an hour but soon there would be three of them. At least. And she didn’t believe that she wasn’t going to jail when it was over. She didn’t believe that he thought she had a kid back there and even if he did he didn’t seem to care. At some point Annalee would be discovered by a maid or leave the room and wander around looking for somebody and then there would be a phone call and that would be the end of the only thing she had left that mattered. She looked across the quiet, flat countryside. No lights and no answers.
“Want me to get out and wait for them?” she asked.
He looked around as if he were waiting for someone else to answer. It’d be a good story he could tell one day if he had her sitting on the hood like some sexual ornament.
“Might as well. You gonna have to get out anyway. Don’t put nothing on.”
“It’s off already. Like you told me.”
“Then come on.”
She scooted across toward the open door, her skin sticking to the seat. He got out from behind the wheel and led her around to the front of the cruiser. She sat down on the hood and it was hot on her bare ass and she hopped up. She asked if she could get her shirt to sit on and he said okay and he turned and looked up the road and waited on their headlights. She noticed him looking away and she leaned across the front seat and unlatched the pistol from the belt and when he turned around she was standing there. Her naked body illuminated in the orange glow of the parking lights. Pointing his pistol at him.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said and he was getting ready to laugh again but he didn’t have the chance as she blew a hole in his throat. He went to his knees and she walked around to him and he squeezed his throat with both hands and the blood flowed black in the strange light and he lunged for her and she stepped back and he fell facedown. He rolled over, clutching at his throat. Tried to get back to his knees and she shot him twice more and he fell flat and still.
She lowered the pistol and then dropped the pistol and put her suddenly shaking hands on top of her head but she didn’t have time for that so she grabbed her clothes and shoes from the backseat and hurried to get dressed, starting to cry in heaves but she stopped herself. You can’t start that now and she went back to the front of the cruiser and he hadn’t moved and wasn’t going to and she picked up the pistol. His phone rang in the cruiser and she knew it was them and she looked into the backseat once more to see if there was anything of hers and then she started running down the road. Away from the cruiser she could hardly see her next step but it didn’t slow her and she ran to the end of the road and she hoped she was turning the right way and she kept running as hard as she could run.