Mean Streak
Page 6
“Very.”
“Head hurt?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I had a concussion once. Didn’t amount to anything except a really bad headache, but that was bad enough.”
“I don’t think mine is serious. My vision is a little blurry, but I remember what year it is and the name of the vice president.”
“Then you’re one up on me.”
He’d probably meant it as a joke, but there was no humor either in his inflection or in his expression. He didn’t come across as a man who laughed gustily and frequently. Or ever.
She sipped once more from the glass and then set it on the small table at the side of the bed. “I appreciate your hospitality, Mr.—”
“Emory Charbonneau.”
She looked up at him with surprise.
He motioned toward the end of the bed. Until now, she hadn’t noticed her fanny pack laying there, along with her other things. One of the earpieces on her sunglasses was broken. There was blood on it.
“I got your name off your driver’s license,” he said. “Georgia license. But your name sounds like Louisiana.”
“I’m originally from Baton Rouge.”
“How long have you lived in Atlanta?”
Apparently he’d noted her address, too. “Long enough to call it home. Speaking of which…” Not trusting herself to stand again, she scooted along the edge of the bed until she could reach her fanny pack. Inside it, along with two water bottles, one of them empty, were two twenty-dollar bills, a credit card, her driver’s license, the map she’d used to mark her trail, and, what she most needed right now, her cell phone.
“What were you doing up here?” he asked. “Besides running.”
“That’s what I was doing up here. Running.” When she tried unsuccessfully for the third time to turn her phone on, she cursed softly. “I think my battery is completely out of juice. Can I borrow your charger?”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
Who doesn’t have a cell phone? “Then if I could use your land line, I’ll pay for—”
“No phone of any kind. Sorry.”
She gaped at him. “No telephone?”
He shrugged. “Nobody to call. Nobody to call me.”
The panic that she had willed away earlier seized her now. With the realization that she was at this stranger’s mercy, a baffling situation became a terrifying one. Her aching head was suddenly packed with stories of missing women. They disappeared and often their families never knew what their fate had been. Religious fanatics took wives. Deviants kept woman chained inside cellars, starved them, tortured them in unspeakable ways.
She swallowed another surge of nausea. Keeping her voice as steady as she was capable of, she said, “Surely you have a car.”
“A pickup.”
“Then could you please drive me to where I left my car this morning?”
“I could, but it—”
“Don’t tell me. It’s out of gas.”
“No, it’s got gas.”
“Then what?”