Highway to Hell

The dust storm came out of the west like something biblical.

Marley sat in the shuttle van watching Oklahoma turn yellow. Sand the color of old bone scoured the windows in sheets, wind-driven, relentless, the sound like radio static turned up until it lived in her teeth. The yellow sodium lights of the truck stop bled through the haze—neon ghosts marking diesel islands, restroom doors, the scattered rigs waiting out the weather.

Vernon Crowley's truck sat near the far island. Third day she'd watched it. Third day counting the minutes he spent inside, tracking when he ate, when he pissed, when he checked his mirrors. Pattern recognition. That's what hunting was. Everything else was just pulling the trigger.

The air tasted like grit despite the closed windows. Heat radiated up through the floorboards even though it was January. Desert heat, trapped and recycled. The AM radio hissed between stations—weather warnings, static, fragments of gospel music that dissolved into noise.

She gripped the steering wheel and waited.

"You're doing the right thing, baby."

The voice came soft as cigarette smoke. Southern drawl, the kind that made endearments sound like prayers. Marley's mother had talked like that. Before.

"They killed me. You know they did. This one knows things. I can feel it, honey. He's got answers."

Marley's knuckles went white on the wheel.

"He hasn't killed anyone."

The second voice cut sharp. No drawl. Clipped words like scissors through fabric.

"Look at him. Soft. Weak. You'd kill a soft man now? Is that what we've become?"

"Information first."

The third voice was flat. Military. No emotion, just operational focus.

"Establish what he knows. Then decision. Observe."

Marley's breathing went shallow. The voices overlapped now, arguing, three mothers debating strategy in the space behind her eyes. When they agreed, she moved with purpose. When they fought, her body locked up—hands frozen, lungs tight, caught between three versions of the truth.

She counted seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Waiting for consensus that wouldn't come.

The door of Vernon's rig opened.

Movement broke the paralysis. Marley's breath released. Her hands unclenched.

Vernon Crowley stepped down from the cab.

He looked like nothing.

That was the first thing. The second thing was that the lot lizards knew better.

Vernon was maybe forty-five, soft around the middle with the kind of belly that came from sitting, not living. Computer-pale skin. Thinning hair slicked with product. He wore khakis and a windbreaker—not trucker clothes. Office clothes. The kind of man who looked lost in a truck stop, who should have been behind a desk pushing paper, not hauling freight.

He walked toward the restroom with a shuffling gait. Marley cataloged it. The way his feet dragged. The way his shoulders hunched against the wind. Distinctive. She'd remember that walk in a crowd.

Two lot lizards stood near the diesel island, smoking. They saw Vernon coming.

They moved.

Not obviously. Just a drift to the side, putting metal between them and his path. One of them—dark hair, bruised arms—crossed herself when he passed. The gesture was small. Automatic. The kind of thing you did against evil you couldn't name.

Vernon didn't look at them. Walked past like they were furniture, like they didn't exist.

But his eyes tracked them. Peripheral vision. Shopping.

Marley felt something tighten in her chest. Recognition. She'd seen that look before. Different men, same appetite. Predators didn't need to stare. They just needed to assess.

A rig pulled into the fuel lane—Kenworth, well-maintained, the kind an owner-operator drove with pride. Tommy Patterson climbed down, older man with a limp and kind eyes. Vietnam vet. The good kind. He glanced over, saw Marley in the shuttle van, raised a hand.

She waved back.

Tommy was the kind who looked out for the lot lizards without asking why. Who'd slip a girl twenty bucks and tell her to get coffee, get warm, get gone. Who saw the soft men like Vernon and steered clear.

Vernon reached the restroom. Fluorescent light spilled out when he opened the door. Then he disappeared inside.

"He doesn't hunt."

The accusing mother again, sharp and certain.

"Three days. He returns home every night. He has a mother. A life. He's not like the others."

"The girls know."

Nurturing mother, gentle but firm.

"You trust Jolene, baby. She said something's wrong with him. They don't come back from his truck. Not dead—they don't come back. That means something."

"It means we need more information."

Commanding mother. Cutting through.

"Pattern first. Weakness second. Kill third."

Marley opened the spiral notebook on the passenger seat. Three days of observations. Vernon's patterns written in her small, careful script.

Day 1: Arrived 08:15. Short haul, Oklahoma City to Tulsa. Lot lizard approached. He declined. No aggression. Departed 19:30, residential exit.

Day 2: Arrived 09:00. Same route. Restroom 3x (bladder issue? nervous?). Departed 20:00, same exit.

Day 3: Arrived 08:45. Pattern consistent. Lot lizards avoid his truck. Dark-haired girl crossed herself. Departed—

She checked her watch. Almost time. Vernon never stayed past eight.

The restroom door opened. Vernon emerged, walking that same shuffling gait back to his rig. He climbed in. Lights came on in the cab. Engine turned over—the sound muffled by wind and distance.

Marley wrote: 20:05, departed

The rig pulled out slowly. Tail lights disappearing into the dust storm, heading east on I-40 toward the city. Toward the residential exit he took every night. Toward the mother he lived with. Toward whatever life he had outside this.

She didn't follow. Not tonight. Following now would get her spotted, remembered. She'd already marked the exit. Mile marker 142. Suburban sprawl, ranch houses, the kind of neighborhood where people mowed lawns and complained about property taxes.

Vernon Crowley had a home. A mother. A routine.

He wasn't hunting out here. So what was he doing?

"The lot lizards know."

Nurturing mother, humming now. Something low and familiar. A lullaby Marley remembered from childhood, before everything broke.

"They always know, baby girl. They can smell wrong even when they can't name it."

Marley stared at the empty space where Vernon's rig had been.

Three days watching. Three days waiting for him to make a mistake, to show his hand, to confirm what the lot lizards already knew in their bones.

But he just drove home. Every night. Like clockwork.

"He's not hunting."

Accusing mother, quieter now. Almost sad.

"If he's not hunting, what is he?"

The question hung in the dust-thick air.

Marley picked up the notebook again. Flipped to a new page. Wrote slowly:

Lives with mother. Returns nightly. Not hunting. Then what IS he doing?

The three mothers had no answer.

But Jolene did. Two weeks ago, smoking outside a Flying J in Amarillo, she'd leaned close and whispered it like a secret that might bite back.

"Something wrong with that one. Girls go to his truck sometimes. You know, when things are slow and they need the money bad. They go up, they knock, he opens the door."

"And?"

"And they come back down. Won't talk about it. Won't say what he wanted. Just… won't go back. Ever. Even when they're hurting for cash, even when they got nothing else. They won't go back to his truck."

"He hurt them?"

"No marks. That's the thing. No bruises. No blood. But something in their eyes after. Like they seen something they can't unsee. Like he showed them a door they didn't want opened."

Marley had pressed. "What door?"

Jolene had just shaken her head. Stubbed out her cigarette. "Don't know. But it ain't killing. It's something else. Something worse."

The dust storm intensified. Visibility dropped to maybe twenty feet. The van rocked in the wind, sheet metal groaning. Other rigs hunkered down, drivers inside waiting it out with coffee and CB chatter.

Marley sat in the dark cab and listened to the static.

Channel 19 crackled to life. Trucker voices warning about conditions, talking routes, asking about bears and roadblocks. The usual traffic. She half-listened.

Then: "Any you girls working the Love's tonight?"

Silence. Then a woman's voice, careful: "Storm's too bad, honey. Try again tomorrow."

"What about that guy in the blue Peterbilt? He still around?"

Another silence. Longer.

"Vernon?" The woman's voice had changed. Gone flat. "He left. Don't bother."

"Heard he pays good."

"He don't pay good enough. Trust me."

The conversation dissolved into static and weather reports.

Marley clicked the radio off.

The three mothers spoke in unison for the first time all day:

"Find out what he is."

Nurturing, accusing, commanding—all agreeing. The clarity was immediate. Certainty flooded her veins like something pharmaceutical. When all three voices aligned, there was no doubt. No hesitation. Just purpose.

She started the engine.

Not to follow Vernon. Not yet. That would come later, when she had more pieces. Right now, she needed to talk to the girls. The ones who'd knocked on Vernon's door and come back down changed.

They wouldn't want to talk about it. They never did. But Marley had something most people didn't.

The lot lizards trusted her.

They didn't know why. Didn't know about the four men who'd preyed on their sisters and disappeared. Didn't know about the wire, the planning, the careful execution. They just knew that some girls went missing and never came back, and then certain trucks stopped coming around. Certain men stopped hunting their corridors.

The girls didn't ask questions. They just talked to her. Warned her. Helped her.

And tonight, they'd help her understand Vernon Crowley.

She put the van in gear and pulled out into the storm. Headlights cutting through yellow haze, illuminating nothing. The world reduced to twenty feet of visible road and everything else just wind and dust and the promise of violence waiting on the other side of the weather.

"Good girl."

Nurturing mother, warm and approving.

"You're doing what needs done, baby. Just like always."

"This feels different."

Accusing mother, quieter but persistent.

"He's not like the others. You know that. This is new territory."

"Reconnaissance complete. Intel gathering next. Protocol maintained."

Commanding mother, already planning three steps ahead.

Marley drove through the storm with three mothers arguing in her head and the taste of dust in her mouth. Somewhere out there, Vernon Crowley was going home to his mother. Somewhere out there, lot lizards were telling stories about the door that shouldn't be opened.

And somewhere deeper—in a place she didn't let the voices reach—Marley felt the familiar hunger tightening around her ribs.

She needed Vernon to be guilty.

Not because of justice. Not because of her mother. Not because of the mission.

Because she needed to kill again. The craving had shortened. Eight months since Mitchell Cross drowned in that baptismal font. Eight months watching the calendar, feeling the pressure build, the addiction demanding to be fed.

Vernon Crowley was soft, computer-pale, wrong in ways the lot lizards couldn't articulate.

He had to be guilty.

He had to be.

The storm swallowed her tail lights, and the night closed in like a fist.