Last Exit

The Desert Sun depot office smelled like diesel fumes and burnt coffee. Marley parked the Nova in the yard lot just past five a.m., engine ticking as it cooled. Dawn wasn't for another hour, but the fluorescent lights inside the dispatch office blazed like noon. Phoenix didn't believe in darkness. Just the hot and the hotter.

She grabbed her thermos from the passenger seat and headed for the office.

Betty looked up from the clipboard as Marley pushed through the door. "You're early."

"Always am."

"Yeah, but you don't have to be." Betty circled something on the assignment sheet. "Most of our drivers roll in five minutes before shift. You show up like the building's on fire."

Marley shrugged. "Traffic's easier."

"Traffic." Betty snorted. "At five in the morning. Sure." She tore a yellow slip from the pad and slid it across the counter. "Freightliner pickup at the dealership on Van Buren. Drop it at the Tucson yard by noon. Should take you three hours if you don't stop for lunch."

Marley scanned the slip. Standard haul. Nothing interesting. "Sounds good."

"You sure you don't want me to set you up with Tommy Patterson?" Betty leaned on the counter, grinning. "He asked about you again. Nice guy. Good teeth."

"I'm good."

"Come on. He's got his own rig, steady routes, doesn't smell like onions—"

"Betty."

"Fine, fine." Betty raised both hands. "But I'm telling you, you're gonna end up a cat lady. And I don't even think you like cats."

Marley didn't answer. She folded the assignment slip and tucked it into her jacket pocket. Betty meant well. She always did. But the woman saw loneliness where there wasn't any. Saw isolation and figured it needed fixing.

Marley wasn't lonely.

She was just waiting.

"Got some routes lined up for next week too," Betty said, back to business. "If you want them."

"I'll take what you've got."

"Always do." Betty made a note on the clipboard. "You need a break one of these days, Marley. Take a weekend. Go see the Grand Canyon or something."

"I've seen it."

"Then see it again. You're gonna work yourself into the ground."

Marley managed a small smile. "I like working."

"Yeah, well. Try liking something else too." Betty waved her off. "Go on. Get your rig and get out of here before I start matchmaking for real."

Marley left the office and crossed the yard toward the Nova. The air already carried heat, even this early. By noon it'd be a hundred and ten, the kind of dry that cracked lips and baked asphalt soft. She didn't mind. The heat was honest. It didn't pretend to be something else.

She climbed into the Nova and sat for a moment, hands on the wheel, not moving.

Inside her head, it was quiet.

Not empty. Just… still. The voices that used to pull her in different directions—shuttle driver, damsel, lot lizard, the girl who wanted her mother back—they weren't fighting anymore. They weren't screaming for control or tearing her apart from the inside. They just were. All the same woman. All her.

The realization had come a few weeks ago. She'd woken up one morning and noticed the silence. Not the absence of something, but the presence of something whole. Like walking into a room and realizing the argument you'd been hearing your whole life had finally ended.

It should have scared her.

It didn't.

She turned the key and the Nova rumbled to life.

The Freightliner sat in the dealership lot like a green metal monument, cab gleaming under the early sun. Marley signed the transfer paperwork without reading it and climbed into the driver's seat. The interior smelled like new vinyl and air freshener—lemon-scented, industrial. Nobody had driven it more than a test lap.

She adjusted the mirrors, checked the gauges, and pulled out onto Van Buren.

I-10 opened up ahead, six lanes of asphalt cutting east toward Tucson. Early traffic was light. Sedans and compacts, people heading to jobs they hated but couldn't quit. Marley merged into the right lane and settled into the rhythm of the highway.

The CB crackled to life, a trucker somewhere behind her complaining about a blown tire outside Quartzsite. Someone else responded with directions to a garage. The chatter faded into background noise, familiar as breathing.

She thought about Betty's question. You sure you don't want me to set you up?

It was a kind offer. Betty didn't know what she was offering to. Didn't know that the woman sitting across the counter from her every morning had killed twelve men. That she'd driven their trucks hundreds of miles with their bodies cooling in the sleeper cabs. That she planned to do it again.

The personas weren't fighting because there was nothing left to fight about. Marley the shuttle driver, the one who apologized for taking up space and flinched at loud noises—that was a mask. A good one. But a mask. The damsel who flagged down trucks with a broken car and a helpless smile—another mask. The lot lizard who walked away from crime scenes and hitched rides back across state lines—mask number three.

Underneath them all, there was just her.

And she knew exactly what she was.