Chapter 2 - The Cab of Rig 404
The silence that followed was more frightening than our argument. Cold wind cut through my coat, and my fingers began aching almost immediately. I pulled out my phone: twenty-one percent battery remained. The signal was weak, but I managed to open the map. A twenty-four-hour truck stop was located approximately a mile and a half away, near the next county-road junction. It was far from ideal, but it was my best option. I was wearing ankle boots with small heels, hardly suitable for walking along an icy roadside. Still, I had covered longer distances before, just never in freezing weather, surrounded by darkness, after ten o'clock at night. I tightened my collar and took my first step, the frozen gravel crunching beneath my boots.
Suddenly, a pair of headlights flicked on behind me, cutting through the swirling Iowa frost. My heart skipped a violent beat. Had Todd come back so soon? But the engine sound was far too deep, a low, thrumming diesel growl. An eighteen-wheeler was idling just sixty yards back in a gravel pull-off by an abandoned grain silo. The driver’s side door swung open, and an older man in a heavy flannel jacket, high-visibility vest, and work boots stepped down. He held a flashlight pointed at the ground, being careful not to blind me. ""Ma'am!"" he called out, his voice weathered and calm. ""Don't mean to scare you, but I saw what that fella in the SUV just did. It’s twenty-eight degrees out here, and this road gets black ice real bad. You need to get out of the wind.""
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I stood frozen, every self-defense instinct warring with the biting cold numbing my ears. ""I’m walking to the Flying J up by the junction,"" I said, my voice shivering. ""That’s over a mile,"" the man said, keeping a respectful distance. ""My name’s Samuel Pritchard. Been hauling grain and dry goods across the Midwest for thirty-four years. I’m shut down here taking my mandatory thirty-minute log break. My rig’s warm, and I’ve got hot coffee. You can sit inside with the door unlocked, call whoever you need, or I can pull up and drop you right at the front doors of the truck stop once my clock clears in ten minutes. Leaving a woman on the shoulder in this weather is downright criminal.""
Looking at his kind, lined face and the steady warmth radiating from the idling Peterbilt, I made my choice. I climbed up the metal steps into the passenger seat of Rig 404. The heat inside hit me like a physical wave, thawing my stiff fingers. Samuel handed me a clean insulated mug of black coffee. As I sat catching my breath, he gestured toward a small digital monitor mounted beside his windshield. It was connected to a dual-lens, high-definition commercial dashcam system that recorded both the road and high-fidelity audio from an exterior perimeter microphone. ""My cameras run twenty-four-seven while the master switch is on,"" Samuel remarked quietly. ""Saw the whole thing. And look out the side mirror right now. Looks like your boy thought better of his stunt.""
