It was damned near eleven o'clock at night and cold enough to re-freeze the puddles of melted snow that formed on either side of the street, but<a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FFPY6qKf.jpg&amp;hash=235b6785d12dacd85dc5c07c7a7d192a" href="https://i.imgur.com/FPY6qKf.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Billy Bishop</a>had his windows down and a single hand out the window as he drove. One hand on the wheel, the other surfing invisible waves on the breeze, his attention snapped to the rearview mirror only when he noticed a sudden change in light. It wasn't the sudden appearance of headlights that had spooked him: it was the sudden<i>disappearance</i>. Squinting in the dark he was near-positive he could see the frame of the pick-up truck rolling along behind him; whoever was behind him a moment ago was still there, they'd just killed their lights. Dangerous move this time of night, unless they were interested in remaining unseen more than they were afraid of plowing into the side of a tree.<br/><br/>And here he thought he'd lost his pursuer some fifty- or forty- miles back. Well,<i>shit</i>.<br/><br/>Billy hit the gas, and the rustbucket sedan groaned its protest but sped up nonetheless. He swerved to one side of the road and then the other, out here there weren't a whole lot of connecting paths but traffic was light enough he could fake-out like he was going to turn off the road at any moment. The pick-up—he was sure it was there, now, he could see its outline in the negative space against the backdrop of bone-thin tree branches that wallpapered the horizon—tried to keep up but wasn't able to rev up quite as quickly. Heavier load, maybe.<br/><br/>Foot almost all the way down to the floor, now, engine making some godawful noises he'd never heard before—grinding, gnashing, straining—but flying; Billy came to a turn-off and took it immediately. Could've sworn his front wheels came up off the ground for a minute. There was an ugly little brick of a building called RAY'S BAIT & TACKLE up ahead, Billy whipped around it and cut his headlights off as soon as he was hidden from the main road.<br/><br/>A minute passed, then two, then three. He hoped he would've been able to hear the truck passing when it went by, but evidently he hadn't. He watched the digital clock on the car's console. Two more minutes, then five, then ten.<br/><br/>It was probably safe to get going.<i>Probably</i>.<br/><br/><div style="border: 0px;font-color:transparent;height: 1px;background-image:linear-gradient(to right, transparent, #FFFFFF, transparent); margin: 7px 0px 7px 0px"></div><br/>Four or five miles down the road from Ray's was a place called the Moss-Lawn Motel, which didn't strike Billy as a particularly appealing name for a place of business, but it was cheap and he was broke (and tired). So when his heart had settled from a near-miss with the jilted man in the black pick-up, he parked outside of the motel and checked himself into room thirteen. Kid behind the counter didn't so much as look up from the pale yellow blocky computer monitor, tossed him the key.<br/><br/>A dark, dreamless sleep came to him quickly.<br/><br/><div style="border: 0px;font-color:transparent;height: 1px;background-image:linear-gradient(to right, transparent, #FFFFFF, transparent); margin: 7px 0px 7px 0px"></div><br/>The next morning Billy rose with the sun and assessed himself in the smudgy bathroom mirror, slapped his cheeks, pulled down on his eyes, stared at himself. He was tired and he looked it; travel was an everyday thing for him,<i>lamming it</i>was something else entirely. His stomach churning and growling reminded him he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast two days prior, so he gave the parking lot a once-over from behind his blinded windows and exited.<br/><br/>Fortune smiled on him—the sign out in the parking lot, one that he'd missed the night before, said: COMPLEMENTARY (wrong word, but he'd forgive them for their mistake) BREAKFAST.<br/><br/>Then fortune frowned on him—when he entered the breakfast room (calling it a "room" was generous, "closet" perhaps more apt) he found a dirty-looking counter lined with some slick metal coffee decanters and some doubtlessly expired single-serve boxes of cheap kids' cereals. But calories were calories so he took a cup of coffee (strong, black, bitter) and two miniboxes of cereal (sticky, rock-hard, saccharine) and sat at one of the tables directly abutting the room's sole window. He watched the cars in the parking lot, nervously; and he watched the handful of other motel patrons filtering through for breakfast, curiously.