AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I think somebody is following me, but I’m also wildly paranoid now and I don’t know if I’m just losing my grasp on reality a little more with every day that passes.”
“So, is this like an I need to look into something for you kind of phone call? Or more of a having an existential, quarter-life crisis kind of phone call?” She asked.
“I don’t even know how to answer that, because both? It feels like both.”
“What can you tell me about who you think is following you?” She asked. I could actually hear the girl trying not to laugh at me.
“It’s a blue Mercedes. Maybe someone at that gas station I stopped at recognized me,” I said.
“You know how little that tells me?”
“I do.”
“Would you be able to stop somewhere to see if they also stop? Put yourself in a position to get a license plate number?”
“And here I called you thinking you would have a way to get me further away from this person,” I said and sighed.
She did laugh that time. “Just stop at the next gas station or restaurant, literally anywhere. Don’t get out. Pull into a parking lot and sit there. See what they do.”
“Okay, but what if they actually do something?” I asked. “I’m not Jersey. I don’t just do this kind of shit for fun on the weekend.”
“No matter what they do, you’re sitting in a car that comes stock with over a thousand horsepower, Trista. It has an eight second quarter mile time. I can guarantee that you’re in the faster vehicle. All you have to do is drive away if you feel like there’s a problem. Just maybe don’t put your foot all the way down if you don’t know how to handle it because you’ll roast the tires right off of it and end up in a ditch.”
“What the fu —? Why do you even know that?” I asked.
She sighed. “I, unfortunately, have come to know everything that there is to know about that car. What do you think Jersey talks about when he gets bored?”
“Oh, God. I’m going to have to figure out how to listen to car talk and look interested in it, aren’t I?”
“Welcome to the club, sister. I’ll make us T-shirts,” she said. “Now, find a place to stop. Stay on the phone with me.”
There was a sign for some family-owned restaurant at the next exit from the interstate, so that’s where I was headed. It was right off the next road, so I pulled into the lot and waited. I left the car in gear while my heart pounded loud enough to drown out any other noise. Memphis must have been able to hear the sharp intake of breath that happened without my permission when I watched the Mercedes pull into the opposite end of the lot and park where they could sit and stare at me through their windshield too.
“Okay,” she said quickly. “I need you to slowly drive toward them. If that car moves at all when yours does, you leave. Don’t stop again, don’t even slow down. Back to the interstate and just go. If they just sit still and wait, drive all the way around it until you see a license plate number and read it out to me as you go by. Still don’t stop, even if you miss a number or letter. Just tell me what you see as you see it.”
I’d never been less certain of my ability to simply read numbers or letters than I was in that moment when I eased off the brake to start rolling forward. The Mercedes shifted into reverse and started to move backward the moment I applied the slightest pressure to the accelerator to advance toward them.
“Nope,” I said and cut the wheel all the way to the right to head back for the road. “I’m out. They’re definitely following me.”
Memphis laughed again. “Just stay calm. You’ve still got another couple hours of just driving. We’ll try to lose them, and if it doesn’t work, I’ve got a couple other ideas we can look into when you get closer.”
“Why are you laughing?” I demanded. “Why are you calm?”
“This is where I excel,” she said, like it was quite literally the least exciting thing she’d ever done. “I’m safely on this side of the phone call. I make the decisions calmly and quickly for you so that you don’t have to worry about making irrational ones based on your emotions since you’re the one in the moment.”
“Fuck,” I said. “You were what made Jersey good at his job, weren’t you?”
She didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t need my praise or my reassurance.
Memphis spent the next hour guiding me through a never-ending series of “turn here, and then here, and then there” instructions to get me off the interstate, all over several backroads, and then back to the interstate. But none of it worked. At some point in every side trip, the Mercedes popped back up.
“Alright,” Memphis said impatiently now. “I’m going to mute this call because I need to talk to someone else real quick about the next steps. Scream bloody murder until you get my attention again if you really need something over the next few minutes. Otherwise, just stay on track and keep moving.”
I tried to think about absolutely nothing for what had to be the longest six minutes of my life while Memphis was on the phone with somebody else. I put all my effort into just reminding myself to keep breathing. She needed whatever we were trying to retrieve. She would’ve told me to just turn around and call it quits, to just drive somewhere else until this Mercedes gave up if she didn’t truly need whatever was being delivered for me to pick up.
“So,” Memphis said through the speakers again and giggled nervously. “You’re probably not going to like this.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
