“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!  The jaws that bite, ...

Their trip to the bus station had been unreal, a cold ride in a jolting old car with a stiff, unsmiling Caitlin at the wheel. When they got out, she’d hesitated barely long enough for them to grab the pack and guitar before taking off with a squeal of tires. Terry had stared after her, grinning. “She’s at a charming age.”

They’d timed it so closely they walked right into the line waiting to board the bus, the night air bitter cold and biting. There was snow on the ground and flurries in the air. The bundled, shuffling passengers around them looked like refugees. Terry handed over their tickets and then they were down the aisle and into their seats, Jenny by the window, Terry on the aisle.

In her absurd costume and the absurdly handsome Terry beside her, she felt like she’d simply traded one unreality for another: the unreality of flight and the grim unreality of capture for the unreality of play-acting and dress-up. She didn’t believe she was going home, nor that she’d been rescued. It felt more like Halloween, dressing up in funny outfits and running around in the night. A silly interlude between dark adventures. In her current state, the prospect of a mindless interlude was appealing, but a wary part of her mind warned her not to trust this.

She hoped he wouldn’t expect her to talk. She wasn’t comfortable with strangers, especially handsome strangers everyone stared at. She meant to use the long journey to make a plan. Instead, they’d barely gotten underway before her head dropped against his shoulder and, soothed by the muted roar of the engine, she fell asleep.

When she woke, dry-mouthed and disoriented, the bus was stopped and Terry wasn’t there. For a moment she panicked, looking frantically around until the woman across the aisle leaned toward her. “He said if you woke up to tell you he went to get something to eat.”

It seemed like a good idea to stretch her legs and see if she could shake off this haze. “I was asleep when they announced the stop,” she said. “Do I have time to get off the bus for a few minutes?”

The woman checked her watch. “Go ahead, honey. You’ve got another ten minutes.”

She was stiff and sore. When they got to Boston, she wanted to move swiftly, so she decided to get her pain pills from Terry’s pack. The pills weren’t on top, so she dug down. What she found, beneath the top layer of clothing, was a gun. She found the pills and stuffed them in her pocket, feeling like her head was wrapped in cotton. A fierce wind snatched at her hat and carried snow under her short coat, piercing the thin shirt and crocheted vest.

The rest stop had the cold, uninviting blue-white light that makes night seem bleaker and makes you feel lonely and sad. She passed Burger King and wondered if she should eat something—those eggs seemed long ago—but the smell of food turned her stomach. Besides, she didn’t have any money.

Terry was on the phone with his back to her. As she passed, he said, “Evans is on the bus keeping an eye on her but she won’t wake up. Those pills worked like a charm. She was out like a light before we’d left Albany.”

She didn’t wait to hear more. She hurried into the bathroom and locked the stall door with trembling hands, recoiling with shock. The Trask brothers made all the other bastards she’d met recently seem like Boy Scouts. And she was the fool who’d been conned into another game of “See Jenny Run.”

She struggled to get herself under control, her mind taunting her with pictures. She saw herself sitting on the floor beside Trask. Him helping her out of the bath, wrapping her in a towel. Bandaging her feet. Tenderly tying her shoes. Remembered the cheerful way he’d composed her costume, conspiring with his brother and sister to help her escape. Letting her go so they could follow her home to get the tape.

Revulsion shook her. She bent over the toilet, the muddy water from many feet pooling around her feet, being sick. When she was finally wrung dry, she rose and went to the sink. Awful as she’d looked before, it was nothing compared to this. The stricken eyes of a terrified creature stared back from a dead white face. Everything about her screamed desperation. With shaking hands, she cupped some water and rinsed her mouth.

She couldn’t get back on that bus and sit beside the perfidious Terry for hours, but panic had frozen her brain. She clutched her poor fuzzy head between her hands. Oh, brain. Please, please work. She had no ID. No money. Nothing of her own. Not even the clothes she wore were hers. They had stripped her of everything. Family, friends, identity, pride, privacy, bodily integrity. She laughed bitterly. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And aiming at life as well. It was time to get mad. Come alive. Rescue herself.

An older woman at the next sink said, “Excuse me, but are you all right, dear?”

“Oh. Thanks for asking. Someone on the bus stole my purse. You know what a shock that is. I can’t get back on the bus. Not after that. So I have to call my mom to pick me up, and I don’t have a quarter for the phone.”

“That’s dreadful,” the woman said, rummaging through her purse. She handed Jenny several quarters, and then added a ten dollar bill as well. “Just to be safe, you know.”

It was almost time for the bus to leave. If she didn’t appear, Terry would look for her. Or the person he’d referred to as Evans. She had to find somewhere to hide. Fast.

Four laughing girls burst through the door. Two headed for the stalls and two came up to the mirror. They were wearing matching athletic sweats from some high school team. Maroon and black and white. They looked healthy and happy and so carefree it hurt. An idea forming in her head, she waited until the girls weren’t watching, then snatched a jacket lying on top of a duffel bag, balled it up under her arm, and went into a stall. She shucked the leather jacket, crocheted vest, and hat, put her hair in a ponytail, and stepped out of the stall again, the stolen jacket tucked under her arm.

She left the bathroom, heading toward the rear, where another door led into the parking lot used by trucks, slipping on the jacket as she stepped into the cold. A cluster of men stood just outside the door, smoking. She scanned the group, looking for someone she might approach. Farthest away, to her right, was a man bigger than the rest of them. A man who looked familiar. She stepped up to him and said, “Got time for another rescue, Jerry?”

His face split in a grin. “Dunno,” he said. “Are you a hooker?”

Jenny matched his grin. “Whatever it takes to hitch a ride home,” she said. “It’s been a bad bunch of days since we last met.”

“Cops catch you?” he said.

Jenny realized the other men were staring. “I’ve been caught and gotten away so many times I feel like a prize trout in a catch and release pond,” she said.

“I was just heading out,” he said, dropping the cigarette. “You can come along, if you’re going my way.”

“Boston? Maine?” she asked, wishing she’d stolen a warmer coat.

“Boston. Then Maine. Let’s go.” He started off across the lot so fast Jenny had to trot to keep up. She was going around to her side of the truck when she heard a metallic pin and then felt something sting her shoulder. In the distance, she heard a gunshot. She scrambled up the side and into the truck, slamming the door as Jerry started moving.

Someone shooting at her was very bad news. It wouldn’t be Trask, he wanted her alive. Buxton’s people must have found her.

Jerry was on his radio, talking to other truckers, giving a description of the car the shots had come from. Jenny was pretty sure he was getting assurances that the car’s progress would be slowed by other trucks on the road and fellow truckers would notify the police about the gunshots.

“If I call it in,” he told her, “I’ll be stuck for hours. We both will.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Now I need another favor.”

“Why am I not surprised,” he said.

“I need to get in touch with the Masons, and I think their phones are tapped. I’m supposed to meet Hugh in Boston, but it’s a trap.”

“They gonna arrest you?”

“Follow me back to Maine. There’s a tape they want. I think I know where it is. They plan to follow me there and grab it.”

“All sounds like something from TV to me,” he said.

“I wish it were just on TV. Someone shooting at me feels way too real,” she said.

“I shoulda asked,” he said, cursing a driver who drifted into his lane and shifting to another. “You okay?”

She wasn’t okay. Whoever shot at her hadn’t missed. But it only felt like a bee sting, and after what she’d been though, a bee sting was nothing. Besides, Jerry didn’t like trouble and he’d already gone through enough for her. She just hoped she wasn’t getting blood on his seat. She didn’t have anything to mop it up with. “I’m okay.”

“I can call Hugh on the radio, let him know that I’ve picked up the package he was supposed to get, and I’ll be delivering it.”

“Thank you, Jerry.”

“You don’t sound so good,” he said. “You aren’t over there bleedin’ on my truck, are ya?” He reached behind him, grabbed a blanket, and shoved it at her.

“I didn’t mean to.”

His laugh was huge. “You sound like my little granddaughter.”

It hurt to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. “Sorry, Grandpa.” Then she said, “Can I use your phone?”

“Now you sound like my other granddaughter. She’s ten.” He gave Jenny his phone. She did a search, and made a phone call.

When she was done, Jerry said, “You’ve been through a lot. I shoulda taken you with me back when I first picked you up. But I never thought—”

“Me neither, Jerry. I had no idea people could be so ruthless and anyway, I couldn’t go home. But people are also kind. Like you. And now I kind of have a plan.” She gave the phone back. Her “thank you” as she wrapped herself in the blanket was barely audible, and it wasn’t long before the thrum of the engine put her to sleep.