Page 7 of Protected from Malice
Then release. Continue into the turn. And now that I’m facing the opposite direction, gun it. Foot to the floor, driving as fast as I can.
It all happens in a blink.
All on a held breath.
Only when I’m speeding back down the road, the truck no more than two small taillights in the mirror, do my lungs start working again.
I gasp for air, sucking it in between shuddering sobs.
That wasn’t in my head. It couldn’t have been.
The other stuff, maybe. The other stuff IthoughtI saw could have been paranoia. Nasty, lingering symptoms of PTSD.
But this?
I’m still driving too fast when a new set of lights comes speeding up behind me.
This time, they’re flashing red.
Not the truck. The police.
As I wait for the cop to walk over to my car, hope flickers to life.
Maybe they can find the truck driver. They can go back and somehow… track it. Find traffic camera footage or something. Take a sample of the paint on the back of my car and run it through forensics.Something.
But fifteen minutes later, my hopes have been definitively crushed.
The cop didn’t care about my story.
He took one look at me crying and assumed I was just trying to get out of a ticket.
“If you knew how many times I heard sob stories like that,” he told me with a stony expression. “You were speeding. End of story. No tears are going to change that.”
When I begged him to look at my bumper, he completely dismissed me. “A couple little scratches,” he scoffed. “No paint residue. That could be from anything. Backing into a guardrail. A lamppost.” Then he glared at me. “Go home. Follow the speed limit. And then you won’t have to break out the crocodile tears.”
So that was…
Pretty terrible, really.
This time I take the slower route home. Partly because I’m still terrified the truck will come back. And partly because I can’t stop crying, so with the well-lit roads it’s easier to see. As I drive, I run through everything I know. Contemplate what I should do next.
I could go back to the police. But what if they dismiss me again?
I could call Indy for advice. But that’ll mean worrying him. Scaring him. He’ll want to come out to Oregon right away, and while I’d like that in normal circumstances, these aren’t it.
And what if the truck incident was random? Just me in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if it has nothing to do with the weird feeling I’ve had over the last month? What if the weird feeling is irrational paranoia?
When I finally get home, I pull into my garage—attached, thankfully—and stay in my car until the garage door is closed firmly. Then I get out to look at the rear bumper for myself.
Crap.
The cop was right. There’s no paint. Just some scratches that could be from anything.
And now that I’m thinking about it, the truck had a metal bumper. So it wouldn’t leave paint behind, anyway.
Double crap.
Hurrying into the house, I turn on all the lights and triple-check the doors and windows. Then I check the security cameras at the front and rear doors. AndthenI grab my pepper spray and taser and huddle on the couch, wrapping one of my throw blankets around me while I shiver.
