Chapter 17 - Shadows on the InterstateFar away from the glittering skyscrapers of downtown Phoenix, the neon sign of the Desert Star Truck Stop buzzed rhythmically against the pitch-black Arizona night sky.
Inside the greasy, fluorescent-lit diner attached to the fuel station, Trevor Hayes wiped down a sticky laminate table with a rag that smelled faintly of old bleach and stale coffee.
His hair was thinning, his posture permanently slumped, and his cheap polyester uniform bore a grease stain near the pocket that wouldn't wash out. He looked ten years older than his actual age, a hollow shell of the arrogant corporate heir who had once smiled while his wife walked out into the cold dawn.
The bell above the diner door chimed as a pair of truckers walked in, laughing loudly and shaking the desert dust from their jackets. They threw their menus onto the table Trevor had just cleaned without even glancing at him.
“Hey, boy!” one of them yelled, banging a spoon against a ceramic coffee mug. “Two coffees, black, and hurry it up! Some of us actually have places to be!”
Trevor didn't look up. He swallowed the bitter taste of humiliation that had become his daily bread, grabbed the glass pot of lukewarm coffee, and hurried over to pour it.
As he worked, his mind drifted back to that morning four years ago—the smell of bacon, the cold marble floor, the sound of an old navy suitcase being zipped shut, and the quiet, terrifying calm in his wife’s eyes when she said, “Somewhere I’m wanted.”
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He had thought he was stripping her of everything.
Instead, he had accidentally handed her the keys to the kingdom while locking himself inside an endless, inescapable cell of his own making.
