“What is?” I asked.
“This. Going out like this.” She swung her car onto the road and picked up speed. “I never go anywhere this late at night. I’m almost always asleep by now.”
“Me, too,” I said, but I wasn’t really paying attention.
I was preoccupied, just then, with my feelings of relief. Now that we’d left the apartment building behind us, I was finally free of Tony.
I mean free!
He and his car were gone!
Adios, toot-toot, bye-bye!
I would never go near them again, and nobody would ever find out what I’d done.
Not even Judy.
I looked over at her. She kept turning her head, glancing around like an eager tourist. There wasn’t much to see, though, unless you’re fascinated by empty streets, porch lights and darkness.
“It is exciting to be out like this,” I told her.
“Sort of spooky, too,” she said.
“If you think it’s spooky now, wait till we get to the woods.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Do you know how to get there?” I asked.
“I can find Miller’s Woods all right, but I’m not sure about the turn-off to the picnic area. How about you?”
“I’m pretty sure where it is.”
We were nearing the business district, so I said, “You’d better not take Central. When I came through, there were some unsavory characters hanging around.”
“We can do without unsavory characters,” she said.
A block short of Central, she turned onto the same street I’d used earlier. It looked deserted.
“The fewer people see us,” I said, “the better.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Two gals by themselves.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“We just have to be careful, that’s all. You never know who might be out there.”
“Most people are all right,” Judy said.
“Not the sort who are cruising the roads at this hour.”
“We are.”
“We’re the exception. Anyway, it only takes one lunatic to spoil the night.”
“You’re a regular cockeyed optimist,” she said.
“That’s me.”
“Maybe instead of a lunatic, we’ll run into a wonderful, charming stranger.”
“Run over one?”
“Into.” She turned her head and smiled at me. “You’re a trouble maker.”
“Yep.”
“I know ’em when I see ’em. I’m one, too.”
“You? A trouble maker? You seem like such a nice girl.”
“I’m that, too.”
“How can you be nice and a trouble maker?”
“I make benign mischief.”
Normally, I might’ve laughed at that. It was a pretty cute thing to say, benign mischief. But it almost made me cry.
Here Judy was, out in the middle of the night on a mission of mercy. Having herself an adventure. She’s nervous but excited and having fun, saying cute stuff, and she doesn’t have the slightest inkling that I’m going to leave her dead in the woods.
It was awfully sad if you think about it.
And I couldn’t help but think about it, riding along in the car with her.
On her last ride.
Too bad she wasn’t an ugly, snotty, miserable bitch. Then I wouldn’t have felt so bad.
“Are you okay?” she asked after a while.
“I guess so.”
“You’re kind of quiet. Worrying about lunatics?”
“Sure am.”
“Well, I think we’ll be perfectly safe as long as we stay in the car. We really shouldn’t need to get out, I don’t think.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed. “Depending on Tony.”
“With any luck, we’ll find him walking along the roadside before we even have to go into the woods.”
“I sure hope so,” I said.
But I didn’t really think it stood much chance of happening.
We were nearly to the town limits when Judy said, “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“Here comes your lunatic, now.”
“Very funny.” Twisting sideways, I looked out the rear window and saw a pair of headlights in the distance.
“Man,” Judy said, “he’s really barreling down on us.”
“Just drive normal,” I told her. “Don’t speed up or anything. It might be a cop.”
“That’d be fine by me.”
The car bore down on us, full speed.
“What the hell is he doing?” Judy blurted.
The headbeams surged in through the windows and glared off our rearview mirror.
“God!” Judy cried out. “He’s going to ram us!”
But he didn’t.
At the last instant, the car swerved to our left.
It started to roar past us, then slowed enough to match our speed.
It wasn’t a cop car.
Cops don’t drive Cadillacs. Not in Chester, they don’t. Not in any town I’ve ever heard of. This thing looked like a giant old gas-gulping monster that belonged in a junk yard, not on the road. A real old clunker, but its engine sounded hot.
As it tooled along beside us, the guys checked us out.
Two of them.
Judy gave them a glance, then turned her face straight forward.
I was leaning toward the dashboard so I could look past her. I had a lousy view of the driver, but the one in the passenger seat looked like a tough guy. He stared back at us. He looked all of about eighteen years old and had a crew cut. A cig dangled off his lips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Real charming,” Judy said quietly, as if addressing the windshield.
“Don’t do anything. Don’t even look at them.” As I gave that advice, I settled back into my seat and stopped looking at them myself.
A few seconds later, the car sped past us and swerved into our lane, barely missing our front bumper. Judy hit the brakes. As I was thrown forward, she flung an arm across my chest. Her arm didn’t stop me, but my hands did. I slammed them against the dashboard.
The Cadillac pulled away from us.
“You okay?” Judy asked.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Bastards,” she muttered.
We were moving along at a crawl.
The Cadillac kept going, gaining speed, and soon vanished around a bend in the road.
Judy gave us a little gas. As we picked up speed, she took a deep breath. Then she said, “Maybe you’d better put on your seatbelt.”
“Not me.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t use them. I’ll take my chances with the windshield.”
“Yeah?” She gave me a look, but there wasn’t enough light in the car to see whether she was smiling, smirking, frowning, or something else. “I’ll keep mine on,” she said. “Safety first.”
“No faith in your own driving?” I asked.
She laughed.
We glided around the bend. Ahead of us, the road was dark except for the moonlight. No sign of the Cadillac.
“You think they’re gone?” Judy asked.
“Looks that way,” I said. “But things aren’t always how they look.”
“I guess they were just fooling around.”
“Looks that way.”
“Could’ve gotten ugly. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea, after all.”
“What?” I asked.
“Coming out to look for Tony. I mean, what if those two guys had gotten serious?”
“Do you want to call it off and go back?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then she said, “I guess if they’d meant to nail us, they would’ve done it.”
“Probably.”
“Probably just wanted to give us a thrill.”
“As long as they don’t show up again,” I said, “we might as well keep going. We’re more than halfway there.”