Edge of Midnight by Charlene Weir

the rain-sluiced window. On the road, wind whirled up small funnels like miniature tornadoes. The bus interior reflected in the glass showed huddled figures trying to find a comfortable position in ungiving seats.
    In the front, a young woman juggled a fretful baby while keeping an arm about a toddler asleep with its head on her knee. A teenage boy kept time to music coming through headphones. An older man, maybe a farmer, with leathery skin from constant exposure to weather, swayed, dozing in his seat. Overhead light shone on the book of a young teen sitting with her father. They all looked real and ordinary, like the rain and the wind, real and ordinary. Only Cary sat at odds in their ordinary world, unreal and unbelonging.
    Wind blew a flurry of rain against her window. She focused on her image in the glass. Her stomach protested the length of time she’d gone without food. Why hadn’t she brought more sandwiches, maybe an apple or two? Mitch might have noticed. She hadn’t dared take anything that might suggest she was running. It had to seem as though she had simply disappeared.
    A sob threatened to break through her clamped teeth and she pressed a fist against her mouth to hold it back. Once started, she feared she’d never stop. She was so scared. Totally alone, no one to offer her help, give her a ride, give her a bed, give her clothes, give her food. Through her small tunnel of vision, she watched the wet highway roll by, felt the turn as the bus arced in a curve, each mile taking her farther from everything familiar.
    She dozed, woke when the bus stopped, dozed when it moved on, woke more completely at someplace called Colby, Kansas, where she looked at her watch. Three-forty Wednesday morning. She got off and stretched, got back on and dozed. In Salina, she bought cereal and coffee. At Topeka, a young woman got on and took the seat next to her. Barely twenty, Cary judged, with a curly cap of chestnut hair and four tiny turquoise earrings in her left ear. Her fingers were covered with turquoise rings.
    â€œHi.” The young woman poked through her backpack and brought out two textbooks.
    Cary brought up a smile. It had been so long since she’d talked easily to a stranger that she felt Mitch’s shadow looming. He didn’t like it when she talked to people. Males made him jealous, females made him suspicious. He questioned her later and questioned her until he found something that made him angry, then he’d hit. It was safer never to talk to anybody.
    â€œMy name’s Ida.” The young woman stuck out her hand.
    Cary shook the offered hand and stifled the urge to say her name. She must not leave even the tiniest trace for Mitch to discover that a woman named Cary had been on this bus. She nodded at all the textbooks in the backpack. “Are you a student?”
    Ida rolled her eyes. “Not full-time. Taking classes.”
    â€œWhat are you studying?”
    â€œClasses to help me with my job. I missed a bunch today because Mom wanted me home. Family thing, you know? Niece’s third birthday, but a buddy will give me notes.”
    Cary’s niece would be seven in January. Cary would miss the party, and couldn’t even send a card.
    Ida dug through her backpack, brought out a bottle of water and took a slug. “Where you headed?”
    â€œHampstead.”
    â€œMe, too. You staying long?”
    â€œI haven’t decided yet.” Cary tried a smile. “Till my friend gets tired of me.”
    To her relief, Ida didn’t ask any more questions. When she mentioned she needed to study before her class tonight, Cary picked up her own book and stared at the pages as though she were actually making sense of the words, remembering to turn a page now and again. Nerves crawled up and down the back of her neck the closer the bus got to Hampstead.
    What if Mitch had somehow managed to follow her? What if he was waiting? What if his face was the first thing