But in the end, he slams his hand against the car. And as heavy and durable as the truck is, it reverberates under the hit.
“All right, guess we're doing this the hard way,” he bites out before grabbing my wrists. Again.
The next thing I know, I'm being pulled forward, but not toward his trailer this time.
“What are you doing?” I demand, trying to tug my wrist out of his grip. “Where are you taking me?”
He stops in front of a charming mobile home. One of the ones with a light on in front. It’s two stories with a set of concrete steps leading up to its front door, and it even has rose bushes lining its front. If the head nurse hadn't shown me pictures of the single-wide modular home she and her husband just got installed on Lake Erie for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I might've mistaken it for a traditional house.
“Stay here,” Waylon commands, leaving me at the bottom of the steps.
I'm beginning to wonder if the somewhat charming devil of a patient I met back in the fall was an illusion. This version of Waylon only seems to know how to speak in hard commands.
No charm. All devil.
His back is turned, and I think about running. This is the first time I haven’t been either locked in a room or under the careful watch of Waylon or one of his minions. There's a chance, a tiny chance, that I could run and hide in the woods without him being able to find me.
But I’ve never been on so much as a camping trip. If I’m speaking the truth, the only thing that scares me more than the man who kidnapped me is all this country dark full of I-don’t-know-what in its woods.
In the end, I do as commanded. I stay right there and watch Waylon bang his fist against the door on the well-lit porch.
Lights come on inside the house in an instant. But Waylon’s so tall, I can’t see who’s on the other side of the door when it opens.
He starts issuing commands before whoever it is has the chance to speak. “Got somebody here who needs to stay with you for a while. If you have anybody upstairs, you’re going to have to kick ‘em out.”
The other person must be asking questions I can’t hear because Waylon answers, “No, she's not staying with me…it's gotta be with you…she's making us do this the hard way…no, she doesn't have anything for me to bring in…. Yeah, call Lucinda…you can take it from here. I just needed to make sure the room was empty for her.”
With that, he steps back and waves me forward. “C’mon.”
I widen my eyes when I see the person he's been talking to—not another biker like back at the roadhouse or even a topless groupie.
It’s an old lady. But not the biker slang kind.
A real, certified senior citizen waves at me from the door. She has stark white hair pulled into a long braid, and she’s wearing a thin housecoat.
Her face crumples with pity when she sees me like Waylon’s brought her a starved puppy he found at the side of the road.
“Oh, look at you. Aren’t you a sight? Poor thing!” she says as I walk up the steps. “That must’ve been quite some trip. Now you come right on inside with me, and I'm going to heat you up some of the casserole I made tonight.”
“She already ate. We went through a drive-through a couple of hours ago,” Waylon informs her from where he’s now standing behind me.
She waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, that fast food doesn't have anything on my casserole. Are you sure you’re full, honey? Crazytown—that was my old man—he couldn’t get enough of my potato chip and tuna fish casserole—Lord rest his soul.”
I've heard about it but have never had a casserole. However, potato chips and tuna fish doesn’t sound remotely appetizing. So it’s easy to answer, “I’m sorry, but I'm full.”
“All she needs is a bed,” Waylon repeats.
He throws the older woman an irritated look. But he doesn’t even glance my way before jogging down the steps without so much as a goodbye.
The little old lady doesn’t seem too surprised by his behavior. She just opens the door to her home wider and says, “I've got a nice fresh bed all made up for you, isn’t that nice? Crazytown whispered in my ear this morning that I should make up a bed because maybe I was gonna have a visitor. He's always telling me things like that. Still watching over me. Even from the other side.”
The inside of her home is just as pleasant and inviting as the outside. Peak little old lady— sofa covered in a flowered fabric, blonde-wood dining table with a lazy susan on it dividing the space between the half-kitchen and the half-dining room. She even has figurines lining the windowsill as if to say, “I really am just a sweet little old woman. You don't have anything to worry about from me, Amira.”