That helped to abate her guilt at least. Or it did right up until the moment a familiar janky brown truck rumbled to a stop next to her.

“S’cuse me, ma’am, do you need…” She turned around and the man’s face lit up in surprise, “Miss Sasha?”

It was Darryl, the kindly old foreman who’d driven her to the House of Miriam on her first day in the Kingdom. Was that really only days ago? It seemed like years. Sasha felt like an old woman, even though she was just on the edge of eighteen.

“Are you hurt?” He slammed the car into park and opened his door, “One sec’, I got a first aid kit in the back. Where’d you get hit?”

Sasha looked down at her chest and realized she looked like she’d been badly injured. The blood wasn’t hers, of course, but Darryl couldn’t have known that. He thought she was hurt, and he was trying to help. Am I really going to rob a Good Samaritan?

She was. Sasha waited until Darryl had closed the door, grabbed his medical kit, and turned toward her. Then she drew her pistol and leveled it at his weathered, grease-stained, and now thoroughly surprised face.

“Wha–”

“I need your truck,” she said.

Darryl dropped the medical kit and put both his palms out.

“Whoa now, girl, alright. Why don’t you just put that gun down? Darryl ain’t gonna hurt you. I’ll take you anywhere you need to go. Let’s just be real calm, real slow about all this. Did somebody hurt y–”

“I need your truck.”

It was so hard to keep her voice even. So hard to do this cruel thing to a man who’d only been kind to her. Sasha could feel white hot tears stream down her face. I must look like a crazy person, she thought. Maybe that will help.

“Now, Miss Sasha,” Darryl said. “I’ma guess you don’t know how to drive a truck. Mine ain’t autonomous. It’s old, stick shift. Please, why don’t you let me take you where you need to go…”

Sasha’s mind raced. It was the same species of nervousness that had always gripped her during major exams and college admissions essays. She ran through and discarded a dozen different courses of action in her head. What if he won’t give me the keys? What if he takes another step forward? What if–

He moved. It started with a single glance. Darryl’s eyes darted toward the driver’s-side door of his truck. She almost didn’t catch it. But for some reason, the gesture rose goose pimples on the back of her neck and forearms.

“I need your truck.”

Her voice was cold, strong, firm. Darryl nodded at her. His body posture stayed the same. But his eyes changed. There was something hard and haunted in them now.