Page 4 of The Stranger
“I know.”
I can practically feel his obnoxious grin without looking over. “Well, I’m Walker. I told you that, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Like the Texas Ranger.”
“Cool.”
He clicks his tongue, patting his thumbs on the steering wheel as if to music, though there is none playing. “Oh, I know! Can I try to guess your name?”
“Only if you’d told me yours is Prince Eric.”
He snorts. “Do you have a pet crab hitching a ride with us that I don’t know about?”
“Why? You going to call the police and tell them about it?” I snap back, cutting a glance at him.
He’s quiet for a long while, staring straight ahead. When he finally breaks the silence, it’s to say, “The storm’s getting really bad.”
I nod my head, my body starting to relax as the heat settles into my bones. “This isn’t even the worst of it from what I’ve heard. More is coming soon. It’s going to be a rough night.”
“Yeah, I know. I was, um, I was hoping to outrun it,” he mutters, his hands flexing on the steering wheel.
The until your stubborn ass came along isn’t said aloud, but it’s heavily implied.
“Are you not used to driving in this or something?”
“Not really. My family is from a few hours west of here, so we get snow, but not a ton. I live in South Carolina now, though. I try not to travel when there’s snow, but I thought I could beat it here and got held up by a few things instead.” He eyes me. “What about you? Are you from this area?”
If he thinks this is going to be that easy, that I’m just going to open up and tell him my life story, he’s wrong. I turn my head toward the window, staring out at the storm without a word.
“I drive through here on the way home sometimes. Whenever I don’t fly, I mean. But I don’t really like flying, you know? Not if I can help it. And especially not when I have all my bags and Christmas gifts for my nieces in the car. You can’t trust airports not to lose everything these days, you kno?—”
“How much longer until we get to town?”
He stops talking, deflating like a balloon. Quickly though, he seems to bounce back.
“An hour?” he grumbles, fiddling with the wipers, though they seem to be on the highest setting already. “Maybe more. Definitely more if the storm keeps up like this. What brings you to the middle of nowhere, Illinois, anyway?”
I don’t look his way as I answer, squeezing my eyes shut as I feel a headache forming at the base of my skull. “Just needed to clear my head.”
I lean forward and turn the radio up without asking, hoping to buy myself the rest of the ride in silence before I say something I’ll regret.
CHAPTER TWO
WALKER
“Really? That’s all I’m getting?” I ask, leaning forward to turn the radio back down as I stare at this strange, mysterious woman sitting in my passenger seat, who is still trying to pretend she’s not shivering underneath my coat.
She folds her arms across her chest without looking my way. “It’s the truth.”
“So, let me get this straight. You needed to clear your head, so you decided to go for a walk down the interstate in the middle of the worst blizzard this area’s seen in a long time?” I scoff. She’s ridiculous and maddening. I should just ignore her, get her to where we’re going in silence, and move on with my life, but I can’t. I need to understand. “This was a choice you made?”
“That’s correct.” She closes her eyes, resting her head against the seat.
Slowing the car down as we come up to a patch of pavement that looks like ice, I maneuver us around it carefully before asking, “Where did you come from, then? Did you walk from your house? Or from a friend’s house? Somewhere I can take you back to?”
“No.”