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If she made it to the bus station alive, she was never, ever throwing her leg across a bicycle again. They were instruments of torture.
Pedaling steadily, she tried to distract herself by thinking of the satisfactory ways in which she could get rid of the bike. Simply leaving it on a sidewalk had no real payback; she wanted to do something that brought revenge, and closure. She wanted to shoot it. No pistol, so that was out. She wanted to set fire to it. She wanted to take a hammer and beat it to tiny little pieces. Both of those were viable options, because she could buy gasoline and matches or she could buy a hammer. Which one would be better, and less likely to get her arrested as being a danger to herself and others? The hammer, probably. People tended to notice fires, even small ones.
Traffic was light. Several cars passed her, but minutes would go by without anyone in sight. Up ahead she saw a three-way intersection, with a service station set square ahead. The sign for the road she was following indicated she should take the left. Oh, yeah, she remembered seeing a kind of dog-leg turn on the map; the road should be turning back to the right within a mile of the intersection.
But that service station was the most welcome sight she’d seen in a while. Her thigh muscles were killing her. She wanted some aspirin, a bottle of cold water, a protein bar, and she wanted to pee. Pee first, in fact.
It was the good kind of service station, with the public toilets inside. She wheeled the bike off to the side, and took the precaution of tucking it behind the trash bin so it couldn’t be seen from the road. Then she took off her sunglasses and limped into the station.
The clerk, a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and a warm voice, was talking to a younger woman who held a toddler on one hip and a little boy of about three by his hand. “Don’t go anywhere, stand right here,” the mother warned the boy, because she had to release his hand in order to pay for their fruit juices and her bottle of sweet tea. He squirmed and jumped up and down, but didn’t wander from her side.
There were two other customers, both men; one was looking at candy, the other was in the back dragging a six-pack of beer from the refrigerated case. Neither so much as glanced at her.
The cool air from the air conditioning was more welcome than a prayer. Lizzy went into the women’s bathroom—a single, so she locked the door behind her—and heaved a giant sigh of relief at the coolness, at walking instead of pedaling, at the fact that she was still alive and well away from the D.C. area. The small bathroom could use some updating and smelled heavily of bleach, but it was clean, so she included that in her relief.
Aft
er doing what she had to, she washed her hands and dried them, then pulled the helmet off and held it between her knees as she massaged her head. The helmet was ventilated, but she’d still been putting out a lot of effort and her hair was sweaty. Her ponytail had suffered during the day, too, and was hanging messily to one side, with a lot of escaped strands.
She pulled the band off and shook her head, rolling her neck from side to side, loosening her shoulders. She wet one of the paper hand towels and washed her face, reveling in the coolness, before restoring her hair to a much neater ponytail and wedging the helmet back on her head.
When she left the bathroom, the young woman with the two kids had checked out and left, the beer-drinker was paying for the six-pack, and that same guy was still trying to make up his mind about what candy he wanted.
That struck her as a little strange, because men usually had an idea what they wanted and went straight to it. Women were the browsers. She eyed him suspiciously, but he seemed like an ordinary guy, in jeans and a tee shirt, a ball cap on his head. He certainly wasn’t X. She gathered up a bottle of cold water and the aspirin, which, holy hell, cost twice what it would in a drugstore, and looked for the protein bars. The selection was small—one brand, chocolate or peanut butter. She got one of each.
As she checked out, the candy man finally selected what looked like a couple of Hershey bars, then moseyed into the pretzel and potato chip section. Maybe he had difficulty making decisions. Maybe he had some time to kill.
Lizzy slipped her sunglasses on as she stepped out into the glare and circled toward the back. Standing behind the trash bin, she opened the bottle of aspirin and popped two into her mouth, then twisted open the water bottle and washed them down. Maybe the aspirin would help; it couldn’t hurt. She also ate the chocolate protein bar while she was standing there, so the aspirin wouldn’t upset her stomach.
Checking her watch, she saw that she’d killed twenty minutes. She needed to be on the road.
Muscles that had relaxed began protesting again within a quarter of a mile. Once more she began trying to think of the most diabolical thing she could do to the bike when she didn’t need it anymore.
She took the turn to the right, pedaling deeper into the rural countryside. There were hay fields filled with giant round bales of hay, pastures with cows in them, some horses. She’d known that this route would take her through the rural area, away from most of the towns and communities, but she hadn’t realized it would be quite this empty. If she’d been in a car, she wouldn’t even have noticed. Being on a bicycle, however, she was suddenly, acutely aware of how alone she was, and how helpless if some yahoo tried to mess with her.
No, she wasn’t helpless. That was Lizette-thinking. She was Lizzy, who had taken some intense martial-arts training, who knew how to fight and fight dirty, how to protect a client from a carjacking, a kidnapping attempt, or a simple mugging. Yeah, she’d been armed then and she wasn’t now, at least not with a handgun—a situation she intended to remedy pretty damn soon. But she did have a knife, and the willingness to use it.
She caught the deep, rumbly roar of a motorcycle, coming up behind her.
Briefly, for a split second, she considered just staying on the road. After all, she’d decided there was no way X could be tracking her now. She’d shaken him off her trail. This was just another motorcycle rider; the hills of Virginia were popular with cyclists.
No. She couldn’t take the chance.
Frantically she looked around; she wasn’t in a great place. There were hay fields on both sides of the road, fields that had recently been mowed and baled. Off to the right about a hundred yards was a big shed under which the owner of the hay probably intended to store the bales, but that was a long hundred yards and the motorcycle was closing in fast.
Crap! All she could do was try to make it to the shed. No—one of the big round bales was closer, and she could hide behind it.
She didn’t have time to get off the bicycle and push. Instead she turned it into the hay field, bumping across the rough field so hard it jarred her teeth, bent forward, pedaling as hard as she could. She had to fight to keep the bicycle upright, the ground was so rough.
She reached the first bale and jumped off the bike, crouching down, her heart pounding from exertion and fear even though she knew it was nothing, knew the motorcycle was going to blow right past her—
The loud rumble throttled down. It was slowing.
Her back against the bale, she rolled her head around for a fast peek. She saw the Harley. She saw the big man riding it, effortlessly holding the big Harley up across the rough field that had almost unseated her, black tee shirt clinging to his muscled torso, face hidden by a black helmet with a complete face shield.
X.
Chapter Twenty-three
