Page 173 of What We Burn

I wait a beat longer. He doesn’t stir.

Then I leave.

The hallway is dark. The other four are out on the football-cluster operation. The house is a shell of empty rooms with Milo sleeping at the center of it, and I’m the thing slipping out through the crack.

I take Micah’s keys from the hook by the door because his hatchback is the least recognizable vehicle in our fleet. The engine turns over quiet and I pull out of the driveway with the headlights off until I’m in the clear.

Then I drive.

Dale Stine. Forty-six. Long-haul trucker. Six women at rest stops along the US-101 corridor, three reported, none prosecuted. He’s Knox’s personal project, the folder he keeps separate from the Odin packets, the one Holden slid away when I looked at it too long.

I took it the next morning. Slid it into my tote while Knox was in the shower and Holden was making coffee. I hid it among my things and studied it in the bathroom with the door locked, memorizing routes and rest stops and the specific pattern of a man who targets women traveling alone.

Stine drives a Peterbilt 389 with a custom sleeper cab. He runs a regular route—three days out, two days back, every week like clockwork. His stop tonight is a truck plaza off the highway about forty minutes south. He always parks at the back of the lot, away from the cameras, away from the other rigs. He always goes inside for a meal, then hits the bar across the road. The one right next to a seedy motel.

I know this because Knox’s notes are meticulous. Times, dates, physical descriptions of the women he approached. Knox wasn’t just tracking a target—he was building a prosecution file that no prosecutor would ever see.

The truck plaza appears out of the dark like a low-slung island of fluorescent light. I park Micah’s car at the far end, between a minivan and a U-Haul. Kill the engine. Check my face in the rearview.

I look young. That’s the point. Shirt open enough to show cleavage, hair loose, a cute scarf tied around my neck and a little makeup I put on in the driveway. I look like a girl on a road trip who wandered into the wrong bar—just like every woman in Knox’s file.

The bar is across the two-lane road from the plaza—a cinder block rectangle with neon beer signs in the windows and a parking lot full of pickups. Inside, it’s exactly what I expected: dim lighting, country music, sticky floors, the dense smell of fried food and stale beer. A few clusters of locals sit at tables. A couple plays pool. And at the far end of the bar, alone, nursing a beer the size of his fist—Dale Stine.

He’s bigger than the photo. Thick neck, thick hands, gut pressing against a flannel shirt that’s seen better decades. His trucker cap is pushed back on his head, and he’s watching the room with the lazy, patient scan of a man who’s done this enough times that he doesn’t rush it. He doesn’t need to. He knows how the night goes. He’s written this script a hundred times.

I sit three stools down. Order a vodka cranberry. Don’t look at him.

It takes less than five minutes.

“Traveling alone?”

His voice is flat. Midwestern. The kind of voice that sounds friendly on a surface level and empty underneath.

“Just passing through,” I say. Let my voice go soft. A little tired. A little lost. “My car’s making a weird noise, so I pulled off to deal with it in the morning.”

“That’s smart. Safer than driving on a bad engine in the dark.” He signals the bartender. “Let me pay for that drink.”

I let him. The drink arrives, and he waits until the bartender turns away before his hand passes over the rim. Quick. Practiced. I only catch it because I’m watching him in the mirror behind the bottles.

When I turn back, he’s smiling.

I wrap my hands around the glass and lift it to my mouth, letting the cranberry touch my lips without swallowing. Think about the knife in my boot.

He asks where I’m headed. Tells me about his rig, his route, his dog back home. He’s good at this—the performance of harmlessness. He touches my arm when he laughs. Lets his knee brush mine. Leans in close enough that I can smell the beer on his breath and the sweat underneath.

Halfway through the drink I’ve been pouring into the bar mat every time he looks away, I let my eyes go glassy. Blink slow. Sway on the stool.

“You okay, sweetheart?” He’s got his hand on my elbow now. Steadying me. So helpful.

“I think . . . I’m just woozy is all. Drink hit me harder than I thought.” I let my words slur at the edges. Not dramatic. Just enough. “I should probably go back to the motel. Get some rest.”

He stands up, slow, the way men do when they’re about to block the exit and want you to feel it but not see it coming. “You walkin’ over to the motel by yourself?” He says it like a question, but it’s not. He’s already dropped some bills on the bar, pulling his jacket on with that practiced shrug, grabbing his keys and a battered cell phone.

“Yeah, it’s just next door, I’ll be⁠—”

“I’ll walk you.” He touches my back, just above the waistband. “Can’t be too careful. Lotta weirdos out these days.”

He’s steering me before I can answer, guiding me with that polite, unbreakable gentleness unique to men who always get their way. The parking lot is puddled with light, blacktop glistening from an earlier rain.