Page 7 of Dozer

She didn’t say anything, so I tried again. “Same person who taught you how to steal them? My steering column’s intact. Thanks for that. I’m guessing you went into the starter relay?”

Silence, but her scent told me I was right.

“If you were a man, I’d beat the fuck out of you for stealing my truck.”

More fear, and her heart rate picked up.Fuck, but I needed to make sure the bitch wasn’t a kid, and that pissed me off all over again. If she was fifteen, I’d spank her ass and maybe even belt her, but then I’d have to figure out who to give her to. Hopefully there’d be parents, but I was in a world of shit if there weren’t.

“How old are you?”

Still no answer. Rather than get on the interstate, I drove towards Lookout Mountain and went around to the east side of it, which took me partway up the mountain before I could head back down. I pulled onto a road with no cameras and very little traffic, opened the glove box, removed the dot, and tossed it out the window. I put some rubber gloves on I had in the console, dragged the large duffel onto the passenger seat, and went through it. I used the little bitch’s finger to unlock her phone, and looked through the pictures first. Lots of pictures of her with a biracial man. Three months before, lovey-dovey selfies, but not so many of them recently. Trouble in paradise. I used my burner phone to get a few pictures of him, as well as a Hispanic woman who showed up a few times. I took pictures of the contacts she texted with the most, and read through the texts.

Someone named Dray was pissed at her when she first left, demanding she come back, but then he apologized and said he was just trying to scare her, he didn’t mean it – but he didn’t say what it was that he didn’t mean. He asked why she’d uninstalled the program they used to keep track of each other — he couldn’t find her, and he was worried about her, but it sounded like bullshit to me. My guess? He’d made some kind of threat, and she’d run.

She had a little over two hundred dollars in cash stuffed in the side of her duffel, and another eighty in her wallet. Ileaned down and checked her pockets, and found another twelve dollars, along with a tube of chapstick. Clearly, she left with enough money to get her wherever she was going. I put all the cash onto the passenger seat.

I took pics of what I thought I might need from her contacts, messages, and pictures. She’d only had this phone three months, so I didn’t know what’d come before. There was no email address, no shopping apps, no food delivery apps. The history on the phone’s browser didn’t show shopping or delivery activity, either. When I was certain I had everything off the phone that might tell me something, I tore it open, removed the battery, and tossed the phone out the window, down an embankment where it wouldn’t likely be found. I’d dispose of the battery somewhere else. I hate littering, but there was no way I was tossing all this in a dumpster because too many of them are under surveillance these days.

I went through her duffel next. Jeans, shirts, some sexy underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, eyeliner, mascara, a contour palette, a few makeup brushes, some chapstick, and a dozen ponytail holders. She was wearing athletic shoes, and there were no other shoes in her duffel.

There was no ID. Dray called her Daisy, but I had no way of knowing if that was a nickname or her real name.

It’d be safest to toss everything, in case he’d put a tracker in the bag, or in her clothes. Odds were, he’d do it with an air-tag, though, and I’d be able to find that. Plus, he hadn’t found her yet, and he was pissed she’d uninstalled the tracker on her phone.

With a sigh, I took a picture of all the makeup, the size tags on the jeans, shirts, and undies, zipped everything into the duffel, and pushed it out the window. I turned to look, saw the blanket and shirt she’d been using to sleep, and she finally spoke when she thought I was going to toss the blanket.

“No, please. Not the blanket.”

“Everything has to go in case Dray tagged it. I don’t want anyone to come looking for you and actually find you. The clothes you’re wearing will have to go, too. That’s next.” I stopped and said, “Unless you’re, like, fifteen, in which case I’ll consider handing you over to your parents. How old are you, Daisy May?”

A sob caught in her throat. “Don’t call me that.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

A lie. “When were you born? Month, day, year.”

I counted to eleven slowly in my head before she supplied a date that worked, and the rotten scent of a lie gave her away.

“What year were you supposed to graduate high school?”

A sigh. “I was homeschooled. I’ve already graduated.”

Another lie.

I opened my knife, leaned down, and pulled her shirt up so I could slice it off without risk of cutting her. She tried to move and fight me, but it was tight quarters and she was hogtied, lying on her side. I cut her shirt and bra off, and then squeezed down on the nipple I could get to.

“Wanna try answering with the truth this time?” Her body was likely proof she was over eighteen because she had some impressive tatts — clearly professionally done. Still, I needed to know for certain.

“You’re hurting me! Ooowwww!!! Stop!!!!”

“Actual birthday, Daisy May.”

She gave me a date that would make her nineteen, and I released her nipple.

“You weren’t homeschooled, were you?”

She shook her head, and I asked, “Did you finish high school?”

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