Page 5 of The Devil's Advocate

Hogg’s Bar was on Union Highway, two miles outside of Buckstown, beside a gas station.

Skylar stood by the highway, thinking about what to do.

She could walk into town. She’d done it before. But it was hot tonight, and she’d been on her feet for ten hours straight. The highway always had traffic, and it slowed here coming into Buckstown to thirty-five miles an hour. She could get a lift, easy.

She’d done it before. There was one cab company in town. None of the digital taxi companies had made it this far into Alabama just yet. People drove around here, even when they were drunk.

Skylar stood by the side of the road, waiting for a sober, friendly driver.

She started typing a text message to her father, telling him not to wait up, when a semi-truck began to slow down. It flashed its lights, stopped beside her and the passenger door opened. Skylar took hold of the handle on the door, climbed the steps so she could see into the dark cab.

The driver wore a cap, so it was hard to see his face. He had one hand on the wheel, the other on his thigh.

‘Need a lift, little lady?’ he said.

There was something off about this man. A smell in the cab. Her father was a truck driver, so she was used to the odor of sweat, chewing tobacco and coffee. It wasn’t that. It was something else. Something foul.

Her father hated her doing this. He worried about her a lot. Said she was too trusting. She would need to toughen up or folks would walk all over her, or worse. Of course, Skylar dismissed this, but right about now she thought her father may have a point. She could imagine getting into the truck, and then, in the few minutes it would take to get into town, a hand moving across the seat toward her. And then the truck not stopping in the town, and she wouldn’t get to meet Gary, and she would never get engaged, and her face would end up on a milk carton. Then again, she wasn’t sure if people her age got their faces on milk cartons. Maybe they didn’t do that anymore, or maybe it was just for kids.

Then the analytical part of her brain kicked in. The odds of something happening to her on a short trip with a stranger were low. Very low. Like, a million-to-one. She had to stop worrying, and just get into the goddamn cab.

The driver reached out a hand to help her inside.

His skin was ingrained with dirt, and she could see the sweat on his palm, and the slight shaking, perhaps with excitement of having a young woman in his cab. And a pretty one, too.

Something inside her yelledNO.

‘You know what, it’s fine. I’m sorry, sir, I just got a message from my boyfriend, he’s gonna pick me up,’ she said as she stepped back down onto the blacktop at the side of the road.

The driver swore, but she didn’t catch it as she shut the door to his cab. He gunned the engine and took off as Skylar got her breathing under control.

And then she heard a vehicle pull up, right where the semi had stopped. She looked inside, saw the driver.

This was okay. This wasn’t a stranger. It was perhaps the last person she expected to meet. And there was no worry about getting into this car. She knew the driver. She’d heard him talking in Hogg’s Bar not twenty minutes ago, while she collected the dirty glasses.

Of course, he offered her a ride.

Skylar got into the passenger seat, said she was just going into town, and began texting her father.

Don’t wait up for me. I got a ride into town with

Skylar didn’t finish the message.

As the driver punched her in the face, her phone slid down into the gap between the passenger seat and the console of the vehicle. And there it stayed.

Skylar didn’t get time to scream, or think, or feel.

She would never reach Tori’s house. Would never get to kiss Gary again, or hear his proposal, or give him her answer and her heart.

THREE MONTHS LATER

CHAPTER ONE

EDDIE

I don’t go looking for trouble. I don’t need to.

It has a way of finding me all by itself.