Shadow Prey

after they crossed the Minnesota line, Lucas pulled into a roadside diner. They were the only customers. A fat woman worked in the kitchen behind a chest-high stainless-steel counter. They saw only her head. The counterman was a thin, big-eyed man wearing a dirty apron. He had two days of beard and rolled a Lucky Strike, half smoked and now unlit, between his thin lips. Lucas ordered two hard-fried eggs and bacon.
    “I’d recommend that,” he said to Lily.
    “I’ll have the eggs, anyway,” she said. The waiter yelled back to the cook and then stumped off to a chair and picked up the local weekly.
    “Have you been here before?” Lily asked quietly when the waiter’s back was turned.
    “No.”
    “So how can you recommend the bacon and eggs?”
    Lucas looked around the diner. Paint was peeling off the ceiling and a black mold was attacking the seams of the aging wallpaper. “Because they’ve got to fry it and that ought to sterilize it,” he said under his breath.
    She glanced around and suddenly giggled, and Lucas thought he might be in love.
     
    After breakfast, when they were back in the car, the talk slowed and Lily moved her seat to a reclined position. Her eyes fell shut.
    “A nap?” asked Lucas.
    “Relaxing,” she said. Her breathing grew steady, and Lucas drove on. Lily dozed but didn’t sleep, opening her eyes and sitting forward at turns and stops. After a while, she found the steady soft vibration of the car had become arousing. She opened her eyes just a crack. Lucas had put on sunglasses and was driving with a steady, relaxed watchfulness. Now and then he turned his head to look at passing attractions that she couldn’t see from her low position. She reached out and put a hand on his leg.
    “Uh-oh,” he said. He glanced at her and grinned. “The animal is alive.”
    “Just thinking,” she said. She stroked his thigh, her eyes closed again, letting herself feel the coarse weave of his jeans.
    “Dammit,” Lucas said after a few more minutes. “My dick is going to break off.” He pushed himself up in the seat, reached down the front of his pants and changed things around. She laughed, and when he sat down, she put her hand back in his lap. He was erect, his penis reaching up beneath his fly to his belt.
    “Ooo, too bad we’re in a car,” she said.
    He looked over at her, grinned and said, “You’ve played this game before?”
    “What game?” She stroked and he pushed her hand away.
    “You’re done,” he said. “It’s my turn. Take off your panty hose.”
    “Lucas . . .” she said. She sounded shocked, but she sat upright and looked out the car windows. They were alone on the rural highway.
    “Come on, chicken. Off with the pants.”
    She looked at the speedometer. A steady sixty miles per hour. “You could kill us.”
    “Nope. I’ve played before.”
    “Mr. Experience, huh?”
    “Come on, come on, you’re bullshitting now. Off with the pants. Or live with the consequences.”
    “What consequences?”
    “Deep in your heart, you’ll know that I know you’re chicken.”
    “All right, Davenport.” She pushed herself off the seat, and with some difficulty pulled off her panty hose.
    “Now the pants.”
    She pushed herself up again and took off her underpants.
    “Here, I’ll take them,” Lucas said. Without thinking, she handed him the pants; he quickly dropped his window and threw them out.
    “Davenport, for Christ’s sakes . . .” She was looking back down the highway where the underpants had disappeared into a roadside ditch.
    “I’ll buy you new ones.”
    “Goddamn right,” she said.
    “So now you lean back and close your eyes.” She looked at him and felt a blush crawling up her face. “Come on,” he said.
    She leaned back and his hand touched her thighs, the fingers just trailing along, from the joint of her hip to her knee, and back again. It was warm in the car and she felt the blood moving to her groin. Her mouth dropped open and the warmth continued to build.
    “Oh, boy,” she said after a few minutes. “Boy . . .”
    “Moan for me,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Moan for me. One good moan and Davenport stops the car.”
    She reached over and touched him. He felt huge under the jeans and she giggled. “I’ve got to stop giggling,” she said lazily. She reached out again; then Lucas hit the brake and she rocked forward.
    “What?” She looked wildly out the window.
    “Jeffers petroglyphs,” he said. “I’ve heard