Skeleton Key(2)

“You could always get someone to drive you,” Margaret Anson had said, in that pinched-face, salt-of-New-England way of hers. “A car like that would only be calling attention to yourself.”

Some men marry for love, and some men marry for position. In Kayla’s father’s case, it had definitely been for position. Margaret was the last living descendant of two signers of the Declaration of Independence and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, as well. She had roots in Boston and Connecticut and Philadelphia and social connections everywhere. Kayla had always thought that if her father had lived long enough, he would have divorced and married again, this time for sex. God only knew there was never much to do with sex around Margaret Bell Anson.

Kayla looked in the rearview mirror again, but the vehicle was still there. In fact, it was closer than ever. She was really beyond it now, on that long stretch past White Flowers Farms with nothing in the way of buildings on it at all. Even the Halloween decorations were missing. No one had thought to come out here to scatter straw corpses on the grass. No one had thought to use this empty place to play a practical joke. No one was walking by the side of the road, hoping for a ride. Kayla felt a thin line of sweat make its way across her neck and swiped at it. She tried looking in the side mirror and got only the vehicle’s headlights. She thought of the way her mother was always trying to get her to carry a cell phone and how she always refused, because she hated cell phones, and because they seemed like such a rich-snot thing to have.

The Beach Boys had become the Supremes, singing “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Kayla pressed down even harder on the accelerator. She heard the vehicle come up even closer behind her, its unmuffled engine making a sound like spitting nails. This was beginning to feel crazy. If he wanted to pass her, he should pass her. The road was empty. There was nothing holding him back. She tried to pull over a little to the right-hand side of the road, without actually stopping. It didn’t work. He came closer still, and then he bumped her from behind.

Kayla’s little BMW did a shudder and a jerk. It was incredible that she’d never realized how dark it got out here. Every once in a while there were streetlights, but they seemed to do more harm than good. Mostly there were trees and grass and bits of rock littering the edges of the blacktop. Kayla was sure it couldn’t be all that far to Litchfield from where she was. In Litchfield, there would be lights and people and restaurants that stayed open into the night, so that she would be able to get to a phone.

The vehicle came up behind her and bumped her again. This time the bump was hard and deliberate. The force of it made Kayla’s back wheels sway as if she had hit an ice patch. She tried to put her foot on the gas again, but when she did the car seemed to go out of control. The vehicle stayed right behind her anyway. Then suddenly it swerved out to her left and came up on her side. Kayla thought it was going to pass. Whoever it was would turn out to be just some local yokel, all pissed off because the rich girl hadn’t been going fast enough on the Litchfield Road. When he got in front of her, she would get his license plate number and be sure to remember it. Tomorrow or the next day she would go into the Department of Motor Vehicles and have his ass.

The vehicle drifted closer and closer to her on her left. It bumped against her sideways and made the BMW rock madly. Kayla thought she was going to turn over. The vehicle got its nose a little ahead of hers and began to edge into her lane—except that he didn’t have enough room to go there. Kayla couldn’t just slow down and let him in. She couldn’t go sideways in either direction. To her right there was a ditch. To her left there was still the vehicle, flanking her, boxing her in.

Kayla pumped the horn.

The vehicle got closer.

Kayla pumper her horn again, long and loud.

Up ahead there was a side road, on her right. She had never noticed it before. There was no sign on the road and no lights to light it. It looked like one of those town access things where the paving only went a few feet from the main blacktop and then stopped. Kayla put the flat of her hand on her horn and held it there, letting out a long, wailing shriek. There had to be someone around to hear this. There had to be. This wasn’t the middle of nowhere. This was Connecticut.

“Crap,” Kayla said again, but this time it was a whisper. She was so frightened, she could barely breathe. The vehicle was coming closer and closer on her left. It hit her broadside again and again. Its wheels were bigger and thicker than ordinary wheels. It didn’t even rock when it hit. The BMW did dances all over the road.

“Son of a bitch,” Kayla said, and then, because there was nothing else she could do unless she wanted to die right there, she pulled off to her right, onto the dark side road.