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“—tires are shredded. Both of them.” She stands up gracefully and walks around to the front of the car, frowning down at the damage. I can sense the suspicion wafting off her, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t waited to clear her off the road. She’s going to tell this person, whoever it is, that something’s wrong. That suspicion will follow them when they come looking for her. It will land, correctly, on me.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Middle of nowhere. You know I always stay off the main highways.”

I blink, startled by that. What? Why would she do such a thing?

“Surely not,” she’s saying, still frowning down at her car. “Why would they strand me here of all places?”

My heart pounds. I shift back on my heels, muscle tensing, ready to strike. Who is she talking about? Who is this “they”? What is my latest Mary involved in?

The thought occurs to me, brief and flickering, that I should let her go. I should crawl backward through the woods and wait for her in the gas station. Offer my sympathies. Make up a story to explain the shredded tires—Oh, the state was doing construction here a few weeks ago. Let her see my face and spend a few precious hours with her while she waits for a tow truck, imagining what might have been.

It occurs to me, yes. But I know I’ll never go through with it. She’s too fucking perfect.

She sighs. My Mary sighs, because I’m not letting her go.

“I don’t really want to wait here,” she says. A pause. Even with my superior hearing, I can’t make out what’s on the other line. “Oh, I don’t know. Bad feeling. The map shows the next town over is Avens. I’ll hitchhike over, and you can pick me up there, okay?”

Bad feeling. Those two words pound in my head.

She senses it, what I am, even if she can’t put it into words.

“I’ll be fine, seriously. Don’t worry about me. I’ll text you when I’m in Avens, okay?”

I breathe out, slow and steady, heat surging into my belly. I can’t decide if this is preferable or not. The person she spoke to will not be coming here. She didn’t even tell them the name of the Gas and Go.

But who are they? Who is already hunting my victim?

She drops the phone from her ear and stares at the screen. Taps on it. A text? Who is she talking to?

I’m afraid she’s going to make another call. Texts are one thing. They are ephemeral. A missive drifting loose on the molecules of the air. I can interrupt a text. A phone call I can not.

Maybe that’s why I act as I do. Why I don’t take things slowly, as I told myself I would.

Why I lunge forward, bursting out of the forest, running straight toward my perfect victim.

3

VICTOR

I’ve only taken two steps out of the woods before she sees me.

My footfalls are light, like all predators, and I was careful not to rustle the branches. It’s important that I surprise her, that I minimize any screaming or attempts at fighting back. I don’t want to hurt her unnecessarily.

But even though I’m careful, this Mary still jerks her head up from her phone and zeroes in on me with those big, dark eyes. And I⁠—

I falter. She looks at me just as the first Mary would, with all that blazing intensity, a kind of haughty sense of challenge and accusation in her expression, as if she expects me to prove myself to her. She’s so much like the first Mary, in fact, that I stumble onto the asphalt, my heart leaping in my chest.

But where the first Mary would always smile after she looked at me like that, her whole face lighting up with pleasure to see me, this Mary drops her phone to her side and says, “Fuck.”

It’s not the reaction I’m expecting, to say the least. But I can’t stop now. She’s seen the gas mask, which means she’s signed the contract that makes her my victim. I have to kill her, whether she runs or screams or fights back or⁠—

Acts deeply put out.

There’s something else there, too. I would almost call it recognition, because it reminds me of the feeling I get when one of my regulars comes into the Gas and Go, Frank the logger or Alice the waitress or any of the others. A sense of familiarity.

But just as quickly as the sensation sets in, it vanishes, because the Mary tosses her phone onto the roof of her car and draws a knife out of her pocket, whipping the sheath away to reveal a six-inch curved steel blade that glints in the sun.

For a moment, all I can do is stare at that knife through the distorted glass of my gas mask. The Mary holds it comfortably, blade pointed in my direction, her free hand up in defense. She’s been trained to fight with this thing.