The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(83)

When I look, the truck has rolled past us and come to a stop, almost in the woods on the opposite side of the road. I blink down at my hands. They are still there. I am still in one piece. We are still alive. I swallow down a mouthful of air as Jasper and I stare at each other, wide-eyed.

“For f*ck’s sake!” the driver shouts as he comes around the front of his truck. He’s a big man with a bushy black beard, wearing a blue flannel shirt and a John Deere baseball cap. He rests one hand on the grille of his truck, the other on his heart. “What the hell are you kids doing in the middle of the goddamn road?! I almost killed you.” Then he looks down at himself as if to make sure he’s not injured. “I could’ve been killed myself. Not to mention my truck.” He steps back to inspect it. “I’m a foot away from that goddamn tree.”

“We need help, please.” I sound too frantic. Like someone who’s going to cause trouble, somebody already in too much. Someone on meth, maybe. If he knows this area, that is what he’ll think. “We just need to use your phone.”

“Fuck no!” He’s already headed back around to the front of the driver’s side. “Now, get the hell out of the road or I swear to Christ I’ll roll over you.”

He’s pissed. But he’s nervous too—him, not me. Even though a day ago I would have mistaken it for my own nerves, I actually think they are his feelings. He’s worried about getting in trouble himself. Nothing too bad, not a dead body in his truck. But something he’s not supposed to be doing: driving on that road, cheating on his wife, working past shift to make up time. Whatever it is, he’s lying to somebody about something.

“Let us use your phone now, or we’ll call your company later and tell them we saw you here.” I step back and make a show of looking at the company name on the side of the cab door, and then his license plate. Neither of which I will remember. “This size of truck on this size of a road. There’s no way you’re supposed to be here.”

“Oh, yeah?” he says angrily. “Fuck if I care what you do.” Except it’s obvious that he does care, a whole lot. “There’s no damn signal here anyway. Even if I gave you my phone, it wouldn’t do shit for you.”

But he hasn’t gotten back in his truck. He’s worried enough that he doesn’t want to leave with my threat hanging in the air.

“Then give us a ride. Just to the nearest gas station. We’ll use someone else’s phone when we get there.”

“No f*cking way I’m going to—”

“Or we’ll make that call,” I say. “And everyone will know what you’ve been doing.”

And I know I’m on seriously thin ice here. But the driver grinds his jaw down and narrows his eyes some more, like he is actually buying my stab in the dark.

“Fine,” he says. “But your asses are riding in the trailer.”

Jasper and I sit in silence inside the dark, freezing-cold trailer. Backs against the wall, feet jammed against a tall stack of plastic pallets filled with boxes of crackers and pretzels, we can hear them creak right and then left every time we hit a bump. We drive for longer than I expect. Much, much longer than would seem necessary. An hour maybe. With the dark and cold and the rocking crackers, eventually, I start to wonder if he’s taking us to a gas station at all. And who’s to say this truck driver isn’t some friend of Quentin’s, the way that Officer Kendall was? Or if what he has to hide is so much worse than I thought? Something worth getting rid of us for. I still don’t feel like my thoughts are much more than guesses.

And even if I’m right that he’s doing something he’s not supposed to be, it’s one thing to know enough to threaten someone, it’s another thing to know what will happen after you do. I’m not breathing much by the time the truck finally jerks to a stop, and Jasper reaches over and takes my hand.

“We’re going to make it,” he says when he squeezes my fingers. His voice is quiet and calm, but it’s too dark to see his face. “And your dad’s going to be okay. We’ll warn him in time. I know we will.”

We couldn’t save Cassie, and so we’ll save him. Jasper doesn’t say that, but that’s what he means. It’s what he wants to believe. Except he doesn’t, not really. I can feel that he doesn’t. Jasper is afraid that my dad is walking into a trap, that maybe he already has. And so am I. I’m terrified, actually. But I am trying so hard to stay above it, not to let my panic overwhelm me. Because my dad needs me right now. He needs me not to be afraid.

Jasper and I are still holding hands when there’s a sound at the back of the trailer, the lock being flipped open. A second later, the door rolls up loudly.

Dark still. I was hoping for light, even though I know that would be impossible. We’re still hours from dawn, a whole nighttime stretching between here and tomorrow. But morning would have felt like such proof everything was going to be okay. Even if another part of me knows that it’s already too late for okay. Cassie is dead. Nothing can change that.

“Now get your asses out of there before somebody sees you,” the driver says, waving us out. At least we are at a truck stop like we asked. “And you better not have taken any goddamn crackers.”

I climb out of the truck to the ordinary hum of the nearby, late evening, highway traffic. The parking lot is mostly quiet. A few drivers are filling up their cars, truckers chatting with coffee in hand. Businesspeople, a few families in and out of the building. Life. As if nothing has changed. And I wonder for a second whether it really has, whether we might have imagined everything.