He pulled over after five minutes. I still couldn’t move, but I was trying to gather my energy. I had no idea where we were. Twyla lived in a suburb, maybe Doraville’s only upscale housing development. Five minutes from it would take us almost anywhere: into the older part of Doraville or out into the country. Past Barney’s head, I could see ice melting off a pine tree, one of a stand of trees. There are trees all over in North Carolina.

“We had it all,” he said. He was looking down at me, and his big black-framed glasses magnified his eyes, so he was not just looking, but glaring. “We had it all, until you found them. I’d spot them at the hospital and mark them for the future, or Tom would see them out walking or hitching, and we would pick them up and then we’d just…use them up.”

Oh, Jesus, I thought.

“We’d use every bit, all the pain, all the sex, all the fear. We’d consume them. Until they were nothing.”

I was strangling behind the tape, gurgling and gasping.

“We had the second place, the place in the barn, in case we had two boys at the same time. It was like a holding cell. We’d never really had to use it. But I guess Tom just couldn’t resist, even though the last thing he should have done was pick up another boy.”

Having made his point, which was that I was the snake in their paradise, he put the SUV in gear and glanced in his rearview mirror. He pulled back onto the road.

“But Tom couldn’t give it up, thought it would be his last time, I guess, and a hitchhiker, they’re just like apples falling into your lap.”

I couldn’t just huddle there on the floorboard and fear. I had to think of something to do. I might manage to open the door and roll out, but the car was going so fast that I didn’t think I’d survive. I would save that for a last resort. Dying that way would be better than dying the way the boys had.