Free Fear Has a Name: A Novel by Creston Mapes

gotten his plates when she was behind him?
    Stupid, stupid …
    She had to reach the phone. Get Jack. Call the police.
    The bridge was blocked. Other cars were still there. Jack would be there soon. Surely someone had called the police.
    His car inched closer.
    Pamela’s heart coiled like a tension-riddled steel spring. She slammed her left palm on the horn and kept it there.
    If she didn’t move her car, he was going to plow it into the steel rails of the bridge. But if she was going to drive, she had to get hold of the phone …
    She jabbed the button for the overhead light, spotted the phone on the floor, bent, stretched, and snatched it.
    His car was so close to hers she couldn’t even see its headlights.
    “Jack?” She put the phone to her ear.
    The connection was gone.
    The rain had slowed. Just as she was about to lift her foot from the brake and drive forward over the bridge, the man reappeared at the front of her car, lit up by headlights like a villain on stage.
    Something flashed in his hand.
    Knife.
    He bent at her front-right fender and his elbow began flailing, as if he was beating someone …
    Had someone approached to help, and he was pounding the tar out of him?
    She didn’t want to move the car because she thought someone was up there, close to the front fender.
    But, no …
    The car rocked, then a hiss …
    Just as the villain stood, winded, and stuck his mammoth chest out with a proud smirk, she realized he had punctured her tire.
    He pointed the blade directly at her, with his fist above it, like a fencer preparing to spear his victim. His wet head moved back and forth in the rain. He shouted, “Pamela, you were the only one!”
    Go!
    Her brain sent the message to drive— Run him down! Get away while he’s out of his car!— but her body bogged down. She examined the phone in her hand, but everything in her was crisscrossing and misfiring, and she just sat, immobilized, like an overmedicated blob.
    His eyes moved from her and settled on something to her right.
    She followed them to her still-open passenger window. “No!”
    His arm was in. He patted savagely for the unlock button. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he yelled.
    Pamela lifted both knees, swiveled on her rear, and bashed his arm with every muscle she could recruit. Drawing her legs back quickly, like machine parts, so he couldn’t grab her, she did it again … bam … and again. Like a shovel smashing a rotten log.
    One after another, the kicks landed.
    Don’t slow down … he’ll grab you …
    Suddenly—like a shark inexplicably turning and swimming away from its prey—the arm slinked out of the window.
    Everything slammed eerily still.
    Blue lights danced off the bridge like the reflection of water by a pool at night and filled the interior of the car.
    Police.
    Pamela had kicked her way onto her back. Drenched in sweat, she forced herself to breathe, grabbed the steering wheel, and pulled herself up.
    His car hurled backward, did a one-eighty, and spun to a stop facing the opposite direction.
    She made out three letters on the Ohio license plate: CVJ.
    But with a slight skid and a squeal, the car’s tires found road, gripped, and sent the stranger sailing into the night, past two Trenton City police cars just arriving at the bridge.

10
    A day and a half had passed since Pam’s run-in with the stalker at the bridge. She’d barely eaten since, and she looked it. She and Jack had been chilled to the bone to realize the man knew Pam’s name, and the girls’, which made the crimes eerily personal.
    Police were running the letters Pam had remembered from the guy’s plates, and the report about Jack’s laptop was still forthcoming. Cecil had not only kept good on his promise to run the sketch of the intruder in the Dispatch , he offered to let Jack work from home temporarily.
    Jack went to say good-bye to Pam before heading out for his appointment with Pastor Satterfield and found her alone in the study, curled up with one