“So it’s your parents?” This catches the hitchhiker sufficiently off guard. He forgets to put up his tough-guy elusiveness and squirms in his seat at the question. The light has left his eyes, but they remain sunken.

“What is?” The hitchhiker recovers and buys some more time with a question thrown back at the driver.

“You goin ta Mish’gun, right?”

There’s no way to respond to this. He remembers letting it slip about his parents being from Michigan when the driver pressed him about his accent –which he believes to be negligible, but was apparently pronounced enough to give him away.

Yet another question: “How much does this guy know?” It is unspoken, but written across the hitchhiker’s anxious brow. Little does he know that the driver –“this guy”- was just wondering the same thing.

“Ah yeah, but it’s fer a job ya see.” He has to think quick. “They gave us expenses for the bus, but I, ah…” The inside of the car goes from a cold stillness to scorching electricity in no time. “..I had more pressing expenses, you see.” That is followed by one of the weakest grins either of them have ever seen. The hitchhiker is in trouble: he can’t even convince himself. “Oughta do him right now,” is the only clear thought that will make itself felt, and it bears down on the hitchhiker’s skull like a molten weight. It must be contagious. The desperation in the faltering awkwardness of his answers has made the driver equally uneasy, and balmy. The wheel melts under his grip.

“…or when ah had the chance,” goes the refrain.

There’s that Hollister again. Tap tap, not too loud or it will arouse suspicion. It’s a reassuring four inches of metal under his big toe and not two feet from his closest hand. He’d have to fish for it though, and that would eat up precious time: the hitchhiker got a chance to glimpse the handle of the driver’s piece tucked into the rear of his waist.