Free Stranded by Alex Kava Page A

VOLUNTEER STATE
WELCOMES YOU
    Then he started to look for the rest area he’d use before he reached Memphis.
    He’d rather drive straight through the night. Grace wouldn’t mind. His dogs always needed fewer bathroom stops than he did. The coffee made that difficult. But stopping wasn’t about losing travel time. The truth was, he didn’t like rest areas or truck stops.
    Actually, they called them truck plazas now. They’d become miniature towns with cafés, small grocery stores, and what was called “convenience retail.” Some even had a twenty-four-hour, full-service barber shop. There were places for truckers to shower, watch TV, use the Internet, and rent a bed by the hour to catch some sleep outside of their trucks. There were also places to buy drugs, if you knew where to look. And late at night there were women who went from truck to truck, knocking on the cabs.
    Unlike the rest areas, the truck plazas were busy night and day, big rigs pulling in and out, motors constantly humming, brakes screeching.
    Creed avoided the truck plazas.
    Rest areas, however, were no less a challenge. No matter how many years had passed since his sister had gone missing from one, he couldn’t stop—especially in the middle of the night—without memories of that night. All it took was the smell of diesel and the sound of hydraulic brakes.
    Creed knew subsequent panic attacks could be triggered by a slight reminder of the original one. Something as simple as a smell or a sound. He hadn’t experienced a full-blown attack in yearsbut lately he felt one simmering close to the surface. Exhaustion, stress, anxiety—all were contributing factors. He had worked three homicide scenes just this month. All young women. And each time the assignment came in, Creed had insisted on taking it himself rather than sending one of his crew.
    Maybe he needed to avoid these cases for a while. Take only search-and-rescue requests. Focus on some drug cases. Devote his time to training. He had a way with dogs. He could train them to sniff out just about anything from lost children to cocaine to bombs. Dogs, he understood. People, not so much.
    What had started as a desperate search for his missing eleven-year-old sister’s body had turned into a successful business, success beyond his expectations. He had a waiting list of law enforcement agencies across the country that wanted his dogs or his services. He could afford to hire more handlers and scale back or redirect his time and energies. Most important, he knew he needed to take a break, rest, and rejuvenate, and do it soon, for his own peace of mind. The panic attacks weren’t the only feelings he kept at bay. There was a hollowness inside of him that threatened to suffocate him if it continued to grow.
    As soon as Creed left the interstate, Grace sat up. The exit ramp to the rest area curved down and around, taking them into a wooded area that immediately shielded them from the interstate’s traffic. The road forked: right for cars, left for trucks.
    Creed was familiar with this one. He’d stopped here on several other trips. But he’d barely pulled into a parking lot when he saw something that made his skin prickle. Beyond the one-story brick building Creed could see a big man holding hands with a little girl, leading her to the truck parking lot, where big rigs filled every slot.
    Creed sat back, tried to control his breathing. His palms were sweaty and his hands fisted around the steering wheel. If hecould just breathe, he could ward off the panic. But he didn’t stop watching.
    Was the man leading her? Or dragging her?
    How could he tell in the dark?
    The pair walked from shadow to shadow, illuminated only now and again by a shot of light from the pole lamps. And those got fewer and fewer as they headed toward a rig at the back of the lot.
    Creed told himself that he needed to settle down. He couldn’t afford to interfere every time he saw something that he didn’t think looked right. And