Rob carefully reviewed his life's choices up to this point and asked himself very pointedly how he'd wound up in his current situation. Watching naked from the side of the freeway as his truck drove away without him, it was at least some small consolation that the hijacker had left him alive. Couldn't she have left him his pants too?
Conveniently, at that moment a small bundle was tossed out the window.
"Hey Rob, you forgot these!" the woman yelled back at him, then blew the horn while cackling, and continued driving away.
Rushing over, it seemed that she'd left him his pants after all, and thankfully, both his wallet and cellphone were still there. Pulling the phone out and noting that it still had half a charge, he hovered a thumb over 911 on his speed dial list while thinking back on his strange night, wondering how he was going to explain it all to the police. And worse, his employer.
Sighing, he brought his thumb down.
~~~~ An hour prior ~~~~
Rob snuck another glance out of the corner of his eye at the hitchhiker he'd picked up. Dark hair, good looking, a body to die for, and wearing entirely too little clothing to be out in the cold this late at night. If it weren't for the complete lack of makeup to go with her beaten up old denim jacket over her crop top and miniskirt, he might have guessed she was a prostitute. Also the fact that he'd picked her up from the side of an interstate freeway at ten o'clock at night fully twenty miles from the nearest town. At first he'd offered to drive her back to her car and let her use his phone to call a tow, but she explained that she didn't have a car to tow and offered no further explanation as she helped herself to his passenger seat. How she'd landed herself that far from civilization all alone was anybody's guess, but Rob suspected it was an unhappy story that he didn't want to know.
"What did you say your name was, little lady?"
"Lucy," she answered, pulling a small whiskey bottle from her handbag and taking a healthy swig, then offering it to him.
"Uhh, I'm driving."
"It's not like a little will kill you," she shrugged. "Go on. From the look on your face I can tell you want a good stiff drink even more than I do."
The truth was that being on his third week of rehab, he really did want some. Desperately. Not that he had an alcohol problem, not really. But signing up for the program had been the only reason his employer hadn't already fired him for drinking on the job. Long haul trucking and whiskey didn't mix...or so he'd been told. His personal experience suggested otherwise. Unfortunately, his continued employment was a prerequisite for the legal compromise that allowed him visitation rights with his daughter. His ex-wife had taken so much from him. Half his income, his house, and some of the best years of his life. But come hell or high water he wasn't going to let that bitch take away his daughter too.
"I...can't," he said at last, reluctantly. "Thanks, though."
"Suit yourself," the woman smirked, taking another swig herself. "So tell me about yourself. You have any family?"
"I have a daughter," Rob replied, turning the radio volume down a bit, and pointing to a picture of a young girl in a sundress on the dashboard. "Ain't she the sweetest little girl you ever saw? Too bad her mother's a monster. What about you, any family?"
"I used to have a family of sorts," Lucy admitted. "Until my father threw me out."
"That's a damned shame," Rob scowled. "A parent should never abandon a child, no matter what."
"Well, aren't you a sweetheart? So if you're such a family guy, how'd you end up doing long haul? Doesn't all the driving keep you away?"
It was an uncomfortable point. He'd fallen in love with driving from the first moment he'd sat behind the wheel as a teenager, but years of days-long interstate treks had caused irreparable damage to both his social and family life. That he'd been away so much had been a constant complaint of his ex-wife, and contributed in no small part to their eventual divorce. Though probably not as much as the fact that he never seemed to be able to stay employed with any one single company for very long. The drinking probably hadn't helped much, either. But he'd been a good father, hadn't he? Providing for his family? He desperately wanted to believe he'd done the best he could, but somewhere deep inside there was a gnawing dread that no matter how reliably he managed to make his monthly child support payments, they'd always be poor consolation to a little girl wondering why her daddy was never around.
"Yeah," he stared at the road. "But there's nothing I can do about that. Lord knows, driving's the only thing I'm any good at."
"If you say so," the woman chuckled. "Hey, you don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
Without waiting for a reply, she pulled out a long cigar and lit up.
No longer surprised at her boldness, Rob watched with interest as the woman took a deep puff from the cigar, then handed it to him, the tip still burning brightly while she took her third swallow of whiskey. He accepted the cigar and took in a mouthful without even looking at it.
"This is awesome. What brand is it?"
"Treasurer Luxury Black," she grinned. "Best damned cigar you can buy these days."
"Better than Cubans?"
"Cubans are overrated," she scoffed. "Don't get me wrong, they're decent. But it's a country, not a brand. The region became popular because of the US embargo, not because of the product. It was all about having the forbidden fruit, and believe me I know all about that. But even now that you can get them easily again, the prestige stuck around."
Rob just stared. He'd never met a woman who even liked to smoke cigars, let alone knew so much about them.
"Not that I mind that look you're giving me," she laughed. "But you might want to keep your eyes off my tits and on the road."
"What??! No...I, umm," Rob fumbled his words and forced himself to look back at the road. He had been staring, but not because of that. Though now that she'd called attention to her body, it was hard not to peek. She was beautiful. She knew about things that he liked. And there was an unrestrained wildness to her that reminded him of his wife back when they were clueless teenagers fighting together against the whole world, instead of just fighting with each other. She had the same look in her eyes. The same sense of reckless abandon that shouted out to the world 'consequences be damned!' And it was with only slight discomfort that he realized he was steadily growing an erection just from looking at her.
Lucy took another puff from her cigar and held the smoke in her mouth for several seconds, swishing it around with her tongue before slowly letting it out with a satisfied sigh, then looked at him with a devilish grin.
"So are we going to fuck, or what?"
~~~~
It had taken longer than expected for the highway patrol to show up where she'd left him on the side of the road. Not that he had any idea how long it was supposed to take. He'd never had his rig hijacked before. He'd used the downtime while waiting to contact his employer with the news, and unsurprisingly, he'd been fired on the spot. The only part of the night that felt familiar. Fortunately, at least the police had been too amused by the situation to try to charge him with anything.
"So you pulled over and sexed her up right then and there?" the patrolman chuckled. "Couldn't even wait to get to a motel?"
"She was hot, ok?" Rob cringed. "And it's been a long time, alright?"
"How did she manage to get away? From your description, slender girl, unarmed...doesn't sound like she could have overpowered you."
"I had to go around back to pee," he grimaced. "After we were finished."
"Well, I hope it was worth it. I'm going to let you off easy here, but you're a long way from home. I can give you a ride into the next town, but you're on your own after that. And pro tip: next time you have to go pee with someone you don't know in your cab, bring your keys with you. And your pants."
Before Rob could reply, the police radio blared something indecipherable and the patrolman became all-business again.
"Can I get a confirmation of your license plate, sir?"
"Yeah, it's RGH5812," Rob answered. "Washington license plates."
The patrolman repeated the number over his radio and heard an affirmative in reply.
"Looks like you're in luck," he explained. "A truck with that plate was just found abandoned about twenty miles down the road. No sign of the woman though."
"And my cargo?"
"The trailer is still locked up. Doesn't look like she touched it."
Rob sighed in relief. It wouldn't be enough to get his job back, but at least it would save him the hassle of dealing with the insurance companies. Still, it perplexed him. What kind of nutcase steals a truck and leaves it abandoned in the middle of nowhere just down the road from where it'd been taken?
"Serves me right I guess," Rob mumbled. "Should have bought one of those trucker navpads the princess was telling me about. Truck wouldn't even have started if she didn't want it to."
"I have a ponypad in my car," the patrolman offered. "You can ask her to send you one on the ride back into town."