Chapter Ten

Tommy roared along the highway. He had ditched the old lady’s piece-of-crap Chrysler in Alabama, walked three miles to a biker bar, and picked out a machine he liked. He wanted something fast, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off one particular Harley-Davidson with a stylized, devilish red gargoyle painted on the side.

He didn’t know how to hotwire a motorcycle, so he’d waited in the shadows of the abandoned gas station next door. Eventually, the machine’s owner came out, staggering and drunk, a balding man with a long mullet and a long goatee. He was short but very stout. In Tommy’s experience, you had to watch out for the short guys—they were the most eager to fight, as if they had something to prove.

The man sat on the bike and tried a few times to insert the key into the ignition, but he kept missing. Once he got it in, he seemed to have forgotten how to turn the key.

“Howdy,” Tommy said as he approached the man. Then he pulled out a wad of cash. He still had most of the prison guard’s bank account.

The drunken biker eyed Tommy’s cash wad with great interest. Tommy tucked it back into the pocket of his own jeans, which he’d bought at Kmart. The biker’s eyes followed the money.

Tommy stuck out his hand. “Name’s Freddy,” he said. “And I’d like to make you an offer.”

“How’s it going, Freddy?” The biker shook Tommy’s hand.

Tommy squeezed the man’s hand and pushed fear into him.

The biker’s eyes swelled, and his hand trembled in Tommy’s grasp.

“Why don’t you step off that bike?” Tommy suggested.

The biker reached for the keys.

“Leave those there,” Tommy said. He didn’t let go of the man’s hand, so they ended up holding hands over the Harley-Davidson.

“Aw, look, Beater’s got a girlfriend,” another biker hollered. Two of them had just stumbled out of the bar. The shouter wore a Confederate flag do-rag, and his friend wore a very faded T-shirt featuring the band Poison.

“Hell, prettier than his last one!” the guy in the Poison T-shirt yelled, and the two of them laughed. Both men were big, disheveled, and clearly favored denim.

“I’ve just purchased your friend’s bike,” Tommy said, though he hadn’t given the man any money. He shook Beater’s hand again. “Right, Beater?”

“Yeah,” Beater said. “Yeah, man. You got it.”

Beater’s friends stopped laughing when Tommy got on the man’s bike and started it up.

“Hey, that’s not cool,” Rebel Flag Guy said. “You can’t take that.”

“He sold it to me,” Tommy said. “Isn’t that right? The bike’s mine now, right?”

“Yeah, man.” Beater took several steps back. “Whatever the guy says.”

Rebel Flag and Poison T-shirt stepped up to Tommy.

“I don’t think you made a fair trade,” Rebel Flag said, and he poked Tommy in the chest. “I think my buddy’s drunk, you come over and run your mouth, try to steal his bike. That’s what I think.”

“You don’t want to touch me,” Tommy warned them. He tried not to let them see how bad he was shaking. Rebel Flag put a calloused hand around his neck, and Tommy felt the fear move into him. Maybe Tommy could use that.

“Look out!” Tommy shouted. He seized Rebel Flag’s wrist and pushed the fear as hard as he could. Tommy had always imagined the fear as a kind of low-grade current of black electricity, something that flowed out from him when he touched other people. Now he imagined turning up the voltage. He wanted to make the guy panic, lose his mind. People were much more open to suggestion when they were frightened.

“That guy in the Poison shirt, he’s trying to kill you, man!” Tommy shouted at Rebel Flag. Tommy pointed at the biker in the Poison shirt, who was walking up behind him. “Protect yourself! Fight back!”

“What?” Rebel Flag turned on his friend and punched him in the nose. “You ain’t gonna kill me! You ain’t gonna touch me!”

“I didn’t do nothing!” the Poison T-shirt guy yelled, but Rebel Flag kept punching him, so he started fighting back.

While the two of them struggled, Tommy noticed Beater, proprietor of the red-gargoyle Harley, easing back toward the front door of the bar.

“Wait,” Tommy said to him, and Beater froze. “Stay right there. Stay.”

“Okay.” Beater held up both hands. “I’m not doing nothing to you, okay?”

“Right. So just wait there a while. And forget about me. Forget what I look like. Just remember you sold some guy your bike and blew the money.”

Beater broke into a goofy smile. “Hell, yeah, man. I’m happy to do that.”

Then Tommy took the man’s bike and rode across Georgia, and into South Carolina.

Now Tommy approached the town of Fallen Oak. He missed the turn-off onto Esther Bridge Road, but it was a good thing. He saw some kind of roadblock down that way. Not just police, either. It looked like the Army or something.

Tommy kept going. He couldn’t risk being identified as an escaped convict, especially when he was so close to her.

He couldn’t give up his obsession with Ashleigh Goodling, either. His dreams about her grew more powerful, even addictive, so he couldn’t wait to sleep and dream about her. She would know things about him, he thought. She would have the answer to the insane riddle of his life. His intense dreams had convinced him of that.

There was only a small voice, somewhere in the back of his head, suggesting that he might be crazy for letting his dreams control his waking life. He ignored that voice.

He drove on. Nobody was going to stop him. They might block off the roads, but they couldn’t block off every field, pasture and deer path in a place this rural. He had a flashlight and a stack of Google maps in the bike’s saddlebag. He could find his way to Ashleigh Goodling’s house, even if he had to ditch the bike and do it on foot.