Running Scared

There has to be some kind of mistake.

The MapQuest directions sat on the truck seat next to Lacey, outlining that this was the right exit. She hadn’t accidentally decided to take a wrong turn. Besides, there weren’t any decisions in her life right now, only directions. She smiled at the thought. Yeah, her attempts at making colossal, life-changing decisions had landed her here, in the middle of nowhere, with no one and nothing around her.

Well, not exactly nothing. There were mountains everywhere. Huge, monstrous mountains, like the kind you could see on the travel channel seconds before some giant paw-waving, open-mouthed, roaring grizzly ate the cameraman.

Oh, yeah, this had to be some kind of mistake. Lacey needed the beach. And people. At this point, she’d settle for a pizza from her favourite beach shack. To hell with anyone else. She needed out of this truck, she realised, surprising herself with a broken mini-sob.

There wasn’t a car in sight when she pulled her truck off the turn lane and stopped a few hundred yards onto the cracked asphalt of the old highway.

Two fumbles at jerking the door handle open, and she jumped down, the map in her hand. Blue sky, a cold November breeze, clean air and mountains filled her senses immediately. One deep breath, two, and half the tension simmering along her skin disappeared. Not the unease, though. The breeze felt different from home. Smelt different. Was different.

This has to be a mistake.

She rubbed her hand through her hair at the thought. Yeah, sure, this had to be a mistake, right? Wrong. Throughout this mess, she’d kept thinking that any time now she’d wake up, that this couldn’t be happening, that there had to be some kind of freaking mistake. Life couldn’t turn from normal to horrible in the blink of an eye. A decision to go outside a club trying to avoid a creepy guy couldn’t destroy everything she’d worked so hard to build.

But, yeah, one look at the rugged, wilderness reminded her that, yeah, one thoughtless decision had ripped her life to shreds.

If she could reverse time, she’d—what? If she’d known that by leaving the bar she’d witness a mob hit, would she have taken her chances with the creepy guy? Probably not.

So here she was, standing on the side of a road on what looked like some crazy Wild West movie set.

Reality sucked. Delusions worked so much better—at least for about ten seconds. Lacey hadn’t witnessed a murder. She hadn’t been beaten to within an inch of losing her life. She hadn’t spent months in a hospital trying to breathe on her own. She hadn’t been forced to testify against some of the nastiest criminals in the world. She hadn’t been left out to dry like this, forced to move, alone, to a place so remote and far from normal she might as well have been on another planet.

She was used to people, sunshine that smelt like the ocean…heck, music and noise, for God’s sake. She was used to delis filled with adorable little old Italian men, smiling at her and asking about her day. She was used to Jewish bakeries with bagels that she’d get up at seven for on a Sunday morning. She was used to coffee shops brewing wicked espresso by the cup. She was used to nice people. Beaches. Safety.

The landscape facing her she was not used to. Big open grasslands, lined with the brilliant colours of fall foliage. Yellow and burnt cinnamon, deep green pines next to the white bark of some other kind of tree—beech or aspen, she didn’t know—all created a wildly beautiful picture.