The big man grinned, hefted his lug wrench. “Faggot,” he said.
What was all this “faggot” stuff? Gary wondered. It seemed to be the only epithet the mechanic knew.
Gary pushed it up a notch. “I’ll smash your fucking legs,” he said. “Then I’ll crush your ugly fucking head.”
That seemed to get to the mechanic. His grin disappeared, and his bushy eyebrows beetled into a frown. He moved a step closer, swinging his weapon. “Try it.”
“Give me the keys,” Gary demanded. He suddenly wondered if the man had the keys. He could not remember the engine of the tow truck shutting off, and he was instantly sure that the keys were in the truck, which was idling several yards down the road.
If he could just get over there…
The mechanic rushed him.
It happened so fact that the sequence of events came to him in a series of images and impressions. The bearded man’s face, grimacing and screaming. The lug wrench, swishing back and forth, cutting the air before it. The heaviness of the sledgehammer as he pulled it from his shoulder and swung it in front of him. The drag from the weight of the sledgehammer painfully tensing the muscles in his arms. The screaming face. The swishing lug wrench.
And then the jolt of impact as his sledgehammer hit the mechanic midbody, instantly dropping him.
The screaming stopped, the lug wrench flew across the garage and hit something metal with an earsplitting clang, and the big man went down, blood spewing as he lurched sideways and slammed into a workbench covered with greasy car parts. Gary didn’t wait to see how badly the mechanic was hurt. He left the sledgehammer and took off, running for the road as fast as his exhausted, injured legs would carry him. By the time he was out of the garage, he could hear the sound of the tow truck’s engine, a low rumble in the stillness of the desert, and he made his way toward it, reaching the vehicle in a matter of minutes.
He’d seen enough movies to know that he should have made sure the mechanic was permanently incapacitated, but fear and panic had made him run, and he turned back, fully expecting to see the man coming after him.
But no one was there and, grateful, Gary climbed into the cab. He prayed that there was enough gas to get him someplace where he could call for help and saw with relief that, according to the gauge, the tank was nearly full. He had never driven a tow truck before, but there was nothing that unfamiliar on the dashboard, and he easily got into gear and started down the road.
He passed a rock shop several miles up ahead, and later a feed store, but he did not stop or even slow down until he reached the outskirts of a real town some forty-five minutes later.
Thirteen
Gary called while Reyn was in his Saturday screenwriting class.
Reyn’s phone was set on vibrate, and he jumped in his seat, startled, as the silent ringer went off. Quickly, he stood and walked out of class, pulling the phone from his pocket as he strode into the corridor. He’d told both Stacy and Brian not to call unless it was an emergency, and as soon as the classroom door closed behind him, he pressed the TALK button and held the phone to his ear with a trembling hand, assuming the worst. “Hello?”
It was a complete and utter shock to hear Gary’s voice. His friend sounded exhausted, and as he listened to the incredible story he had to tell, Reyn understood why. Gary was calling from a sheriff’s office in Larraine, New Mexico. He’d driven there in a stolen tow truck after he’d gotten into a car crash, escaped from the men who’d drugged and captured him, walked for hours through the desert and fought off a psychotic mechanic. It was so overwhelming and unbelievable that Reyn made him repeat it again, slowly and with more details. Gary didn’t want to, but he did, and when he was finished, Reyn said, “Holy shit.”
“The guys who jumped me, the ones who were hiding in my room, they were dressed in these simple, primitive kind of clothes that they’d made themselves, like old-time farmer’s clothes. They sort of looked Amish. So if you see anyone like that around campus, get away from them, call the police.”
“Do you know who they are?” Reyn asked.
“The Outsiders, I guess. But they didn’t talk to me, and when they talked to each other it was in this weird language. Some kind of code, I think. The thing is, they were waiting for me in my room, like I said, but the door hadn’t been jimmied. They’d either picked the lock or they had a key or they found some other way in without force. And they did it in the middle of the day in a crowded dorm with tons of people around. So be careful. Be very careful.”
“There’s news on this end, too,” Reyn said.
“About Joan?”Gary asked quickly.
“No. Nothing on that at all. It’s about you. You’ve been deleted.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just like with Joan. Someone’s erased your Facebook and MySpace pages. And I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re not enrolled in school anymore.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never more.”
“This is crazy!”
“Yeah.”
Gary sounded anxious. “Listen. You’ve got to go to Admissions and check on this for me. I could lose my grant money. And my scholarships.”
“I don’t think they’ll let me—”
“It’s going to be a day or two before I can get back. By that time, I could be totally disqualified. Check online if you can. My student ID number is 1170. Pretend to be me. I’ll call you back tonight.”
“What if I can’t?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Why do you think—” Reyn began.
There was noise in the background, people talking. “I have to go. My time’s up. I’ll talk to you tonight.”
Gary hung up without saying good-bye, and Reyn stood there, cell phone in hand, staring at the closed door of his screenwriting class, not wanting to go back in, thinking how frivolous and trivial it was to sit around discussing the importance of the three-act structure when his friend had been kidnapped and almost killed.
He headed down the corridor toward the outside of the building, speed-dialing Stacy as he walked. She answered on the second ring, just as he was striding through the doorway. “Gary just called me,” he told her. “He’s in New Mexico.”
“Oh my God! Is he all right?”
Walking toward Stacy’s dorm, Reyn started to describe what had happened. Almost immediately she said, “Meet me out in front of—”
“I’m already here,” he said.
She emerged from the building’s front entrance moments later, hurrying in front of a group of young women who were walking out together. She saw him immediately and ran over. “Tell me everything,” she ordered.
He knew only the broad outlines, so he couldn’t go into much detail, but he repeated what Gary had told him. When he came to Gary’s warning about men dressed in primitive farmer’s clothes, Stacy’s face turned pale. “I think I saw one of those guys.”
Reyn’s heart was pounding. “When?”
“A few days ago. He was hanging around the bookstore. I remember noticing him because of the weird clothes. He was, like, a middle-aged guy. I thought he was an old hippie or something.” She shivered. “But I got a weird vibe off him.”
“Was he watching you? Or… ?”
“Probably. I mean, I didn’t think so at the time, but it makes sense when you think about it now.” She threw her arms around Reyn, hugged him tight. “Maybe I’m next.”
“We’ll make sure you’re not.”