The Worst Best Friend: A Small Town Romance

My chin quivers.

Carson is right. No one will know I’m gone for hours, days, weeks. It’s Halloween flipping night, when the few people who aren’t busy with their kids and parties are creeped out enough to bed down early and wait for morning to banish all the imaginary ghoulies.

“Do we really have to kill her?” the driver asks reluctantly. “Fuck, man, I don’t know if any payday’s worth that. Bad karma. Can’t we just like...let her go if she doesn’t know anything?”

If I weren’t chilled to the bone, I’d laugh at the irony.

This gruff, horrible man might be the only thing between a knife and my throat, pleading my case with his own selfish worries.

“Let her go?” Carson echoes slowly, like he doesn’t understand the words.

“Yeah. Just toss her out somewhere in the boonies and let her find her way home hitchhiking or somethin’.”

“She knows who you are, you idiot. She knows what we did. She damn sure knows who I am, despite working under an alias,” Carson says.

“So what? You really planning to come back to this town after we’re paid? You couldn’t give me a million bucks to come to North Dakota again. The thought of busting my hump all winter for the oil company was shitty enough before you came along. You said you’ve got a shipping container waiting for us, right?” Muddy Boots snorts. “The Corvette will be outta the States in twenty-four hours, and we’ll have a cool million clams. That’s plenty to fuck off with and lay low. Just disappear.”

“It’s one more deal,” Carson spits, sinking back in his seat with a sigh. “I have more inventory to unload besides these autos. I thought I’d gotten right fucked when that stupid meteorite turned out to be nothing more than fool’s gold. If it were real...it would make what we’re getting for these cars look like trifling pocket change. My uncle nearly had a one-of-a-kind Martian rock worth millions, once.”

“Nearly? What happened?”

“Let’s just say he was crossed by one of the local-yokels in a shitty little town a lot like Dallas,” Carson says, venom in his voice. “Fortunately, I didn’t walk away empty-handed with those lying rocks. I saw the Corvette in the photos with the old woman who runs Amelia’s when I broke in. Didn’t take me long at all to find it in the barn.”

I’m going to be sick.

It was the pictures Faye posted for her garage sales that brought him to Dallas. The not-meteorite that was a total insider joke lured him just like I’d thought.

Like West thought, too.

My stomach flips over, hating that I’ll never get a chance to talk to him now and tell him how right he was. I’ll never find out if he had an apology waiting for me, either.

“You hit the jackpot, all right,” the driver says.

“You have no idea, sir,” Carson says, the first time I’ve ever heard him excited. “A million-dollar car in Nowhere, North Dakota. You can’t retire on it, but it’s a start. Sometimes I wonder if old Uncle Gerald was looking down on me after all.”

Carson chuckles while the other man shifts awkwardly in his seat.

Dear God.

My heart might just sink to my knees. What the hell do I do?

There’s no way Weston can save me this time. Without my phone, I can’t even communicate.

I need something I can use as a weapon...

Carefully shifting my eyes, I scan the inside of the sleeper cab without moving.

It’s too dark. I can’t see anything.

I don’t dare move more than my neck.

The slight jostling motion at my feet tells me I lost a sandal at some point.

Pathetic.

I’m armed with a single frail leather shoe against two grown men who are very willing to murder.

In D.C. at least I’d have my purse with a can of mace tucked away.