Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) Read Online Free Page B

gravel, the right back tires spun slightly, and then she was heading back the way she had come, peering intently out the windshield. She turned off the stereo. She hadn’t realized how loud the stereo had been, and the wind, until now.
    There was no one.
    She peered hard, sticking her head out the window, but there was absolutely no one alongside the road or in it. No one and no car anywhere.
    Getting very nervous now about possibly losing her mind, she retraced her route almost a mile, then once more turned around and came back slowly. She had begun to tremble but would not raise the windows for thinking she should get fresh air to clear her brain.
    Then there he was . She hadn’t been imagining things after all, which came as a flash of relief, quickly surpassed by rising concern as she watched him in the beam of her headlights, bent over, dark sport coat, darker slacks, and loafers, appearing to be getting to his feet.
    Coming to a stop much faster than she should have andprobably causing Lulu to scramble for balance, she slammed the truck into park, slipped her daddy’s little Colt .25 from its pocket on the side of the seat and hopped out of the pickup, ready to deal with what had every appearance of a crisis.
    Rainey had a talent for dealing with crises, a point upon which many agreed. Charlene was one to say that crises just seemed to find Rainey. She was always cautious, but not fearful. Her mother used to tell each one of them, “You are a child of God and not given a spirit of fear,” which didn’t speak to stupidity at all but had succeeded in instilling a certain amount of confidence for dealing with demanding situations. Rainey had held her own with green colts, wild college boys and rowdy cowboys, so one slender man in a sport coat and slacks on a road in the middle of nowhere did not overly frighten her.
    “Are you all right? Did I hit you?” she called to him from a position beside her truck fender.
    He lifted his arm against the glare of her headlights. She stepped back to the truck and cut the headlights down to the parking beams, then slowly went forward, the pistol held discreetly, and politely, down at her side.
    Her eyes adjusting quickly, she saw he now stood looking off at the land. The thin moonlight shone on the top of his head, but the rest of him was deeply shadowed and colorless. Her impression was of a tall, thin, youngish man.
    “Are you okay?” she asked again, finding her voice on the lonely road sounded a little startling.
    “I wrecked my car,” he said hoarsely. “It’s down there.”
    She stepped forward a few more feet and saw that the land dropped away sharply some feet past the graveled roadside. The roof and rear end of a car, a sporty type, glowed in the thin moonlight. There came a faint hissing and the smell of stirred dust.
    “It’s not comin’ out of there as easy as it went in,” she said, which was the first thing that came to her mind.
    He said he didn’t think she had hit him.
    “I was just getting up to the road, and your headlights startled me,” he said. “I slipped back down.”
    “I didn’t hit you?”
    “I don’t think so. I think I slipped on the gravel.”
    He seemed a little confused, which she thought would be natural, given the situation, although she did not discard the possibility of him being under the influence of something.
    Nevertheless, she took it as good news that she had not run him down. She felt redeemed. She had not been a totally irresponsible driver after all. Feeling very expansive, she immediately offered to give him a ride, and he accepted.
    The next instant, she wondered if she might have been a little foolhardy, but there really wasn’t anything else she could do. She couldn’t very well leave him there twenty miles from anywhere and vulnerable to any crazy who might come along, such as drunk cowboys looking for mischief or a carload of illegals looking for a good suit of American clothes. And it could very well be all