The young blonde woman stood at the side of State Road 50 with her thumb in the air. She was dressed in a simple sweater and skirt combination and had been trying to get a ride to… anywhere. She had seen this done on TV; every time with success, but she was having very bad luck as car after car passed her by. She was losing hope of ever getting a ride and it was beginning to get dark. She could feel it beginning to close in on her; not the darkness but rather the terrible loneliness that came with it. She had spent too much of… how long had it been, maybe years? It didn’t really matter she thought, as a GMC Suburban loomed on the horizon and began slowing as it approached her. The large vehicle pulled off to the side of the road and came to a stop beside her as the passenger side window was lowered.
“You look awfully lonesome out there,” a man’s voice said from within the vehicle. The woman hurried over and opened the door as the window was raised once again. “Where are you going?” the man asked.
She pulled herself into the SUV, and closed the door. As she settled into the passenger seat, she echoed what the man had just asked. “Where are you going?”
“Okay, I’ll play your game. I’m going to Raleigh; now, how about you?”
“Oh, uhh… well, I need to go to Greensboro, but Raleigh sounds fine.” The woman was silent after that, causing the man to wonder what she was up to.
The man, who appeared to be in his early fifties, gave her a rather quizzical look, dropped the gearshift into drive, and pulled out into the scant traffic. “Any particular place in Raleigh that you’d like to go?” he asked, wondering what kind of answer he might receive.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered slowly, “maybe just any place with a lot of cars.”
“All right, I guess I can do that.”
The pair rode in silence for about ten minutes until just after they had crossed the Falls Lake Bridge, when the woman asked, “Do you have any money?”
The man glanced over at her and said, “Well, I guess I might have seen that coming. How much do you need?”
“I don’t know, maybe a hundred?” She stared straight ahead as she said it, as if people asked for that sum of money all the time, then countered with, “Don’t you think I’m worth it?” still staring ahead but slipping her skirt halfway up her thigh and then unbuttoning the top button of her sweater. She turned slightly in the seat to give the man a better look at her body.
Prologue
Just South of Creedmoor, North Carolina
Late Wednesday Afternoon