Cait clicked on the link with a fizz of nerves. The website wasn’t in the big leagues, but it was gaining some cultural traction, and she was hoping that the article could put her on the ground floor of the new Jezebel or Man Repeller. She skim-read it, making note of what the editor had changed and what she hadn’t. She thought it held up—it was funny and caustic and, yeah, maybe a little brutal, but the guy was a total asshole. He deserved to get it with both barrels.
She read it again, sent it to Alyssa, put on her uniform, and went to work at the bar.
When she checked her phone, after the bar was shut and the bottles had been married up and the back mirrors wiped as clean as she could get them, she realized that the piece had blown up.
It was what every writer wanted, right? As many eyes on the work as possible. But not in this way, not like this. The comment section was filled with his fans calling her worse than he had. A lot of them were women. There were men on there, too, telling her that she was a whore, that she deserved to be raped in order to be taught a lesson, that women like her were dirt, that women like her deserved to die. The word “skullfuck” was used in more ways than Cait had previously thought possible.
She felt sick to her stomach. Who were these people, and why did they hate her so much? Okay, so maybe she’d played it up a little in the article, but everything she’d written was fundamentally true. He had choked her when they were having sex. She had been scared, though maybe not quite as scared as she’d made herself out to be. Though that was only because she knew how these things usually played out. Jake hadn’t wanted to kill her or even hurt her. He’d just wanted to show her he could, because he got off on the power. He wasn’t exactly a rarity in that respect.
Still, a wave of shame washed over her, hot and thick. She must have done something wrong for people to hate her like this. It must somehow be her fault.
She was asking for it.
She read that line over and over. She had pursued Jake, it was true. She’d known what she was doing when she was dancing in front of him, had known the kind of promises she was making with her body. She had gone home with him willingly, had sex with him without asking any questions. Did she really have a right to complain just because his version of pleasure was different from her own? Hadn’t she always known something like this would happen to her one day? Wasn’t she lucky that it wasn’t worse?
There was an email from the editor waiting in her inbox. The subject line was “Holy Shit.” “Your story has had more clicks in the past eight hours than anything we’ve published before!”
And a text from Alyssa. “No one knows you wrote that piece, right? You need to keep it that way, because people are going CRAZY.”
Cait pulled a glass off the stack, poured herself a few fingers of bourbon, sank it in a few swift swallows. Poured herself another. She’d have to write it off as wastage so JB wouldn’t get pissy when he did the stock take. She felt the liquor slide down into her stomach, warming her fingers and toes, loosening the knot at the base of her throat.
Alyssa was right: she was lucky no one knew she was the one who’d written that article. Because right now, it was looking like a huge mistake.
Farwell, Texas—232 Miles to Albuquerque
Rebecca’s mind kept tugging her back to the dead fox lying by the side of the road back in Sudan. She could see the steam rising from the pool of blood and the dull black beads of its eyes. She had first seen those eyes as a kid, when Bugs, her pet bunny, was mauled by the neighbor’s dog. She saw that dog every day, twice a day, walking to and from the bus stop. His name was Fletch and he would track her the length of his yard, growling, penned in by a chain-link fence. One morning, she heard a commotion coming from the backyard and made it just in time to watch the dog shake Bugs until his brittle neck snapped. Fletch had dropped the bunny and run off when she’d charged at him screaming, but it had been too late. She watched the light go out of Bugs’s eyes, quick and final as a birthday candle. One minute Bugs was her pet rabbit who loved bell peppers and chin scratches and whose whiskers tickled her when he twitched his nose, the next it was just a collection of bones and flesh and fur. That’s why, later, when her mother tried to convince her that Bugs had taken the rainbow bridge to heaven, she knew it was a lie. She’d seen an animal die and now she couldn’t unsee it—she knew that life could go from something to nothing, just like that, and that there was no use pretending there was something waiting beyond.
She put a hand to her stomach.
They passed a processing plant on the horizon with a line of silos rising in the dark sky like a row of blunt teeth. On the other side of the road, a restaurant welcomed potential customers: thursdays = steak night.
A small green sign announced they were leaving Farwell, Texas, and entering Texico, New Mexico.
“We’re through,” Cait said, nodding toward the sign and giving her a small and gentle smile. “You can relax now.”
Something tightened in Rebecca’s chest.
Cait was wrong about danger lying closest to home. For her, crossing the state line meant the threat was suddenly, terrifyingly real.
San Diego, California
Patrick sat down heavily on the hotel bed and rubbed his tired eyes. The conference had promised a four-star, but from the feel of the cheap linen, it was probably more like three. It didn’t matter much to him. The places where they held these events were always the same: marble foyers—this one with a tinsel-laden artificial Christmas tree, to mark the season—and long echoing corridors and tiny soaps wrapped in paper. Tomorrow morning, there’d be breakfast with limp bacon and congealed eggs, and he’d eat it while people came up to his table and shook his hand. Some of them would linger, hoping to be invited to sit. He didn’t mind. This was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Connecting with people. Touching lives.
He checked the clock. Half past ten. It would be after midnight in Lubbock. She’d be asleep by now, or at least in bed. He knew she didn’t sleep much these days.
He reached for the phone. He wanted to hear her voice, even if it was just for a minute. The way things had been with them recently . . . it tore him up inside, it really did. If he could just make her see things the way he saw them, if he could just make her believe, they wouldn’t have to be like this with each other. He wouldn’t have to be like this. They could be happy, like they were before. Like they’d been back in San Francisco, all those years ago.
He clicked the call button and listened to the phone ring. She usually picked up on the second ring. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. Still, the phone should wake her up. He waited for the answering machine to pick up, but instead he heard the monotonous drone of an automated service. “We’re sorry, your call cannot be answered at the minute. Please leave a message after the tone.”
He held the phone in his hand for a second before disconnecting the call. Why hadn’t the answering machine picked up? Maybe the power had gone out and the machine had reverted back to factory settings. But that automated voice . . . he’d heard it before.
It was her cell phone. She’d tried to set up voicemail when she’d first gotten it, but she’d given up. “There are too many buttons on this thing,” she’d said, brandishing the Samsung in the air. “I give up. I’ll just have to be a robot.”