Escape: Day 1

Word Count: 6,006

Summary of Events:

Trace stopped for supper at a truck stop and met a man he'd had an unsavoury prior encounter with. Dallis was transferred from her detention cell to a different room despite her best efforts at fighting. Trace ended up an hour beyond Atlanta and stopped at a truck stop he'd never been to before, where he was waited on by Dallis before going outside to sleep . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

"Silently she stared after him. He'd taken her answer and left it at that. She hadn't ever had a customer do that. But then again, he'd been odd all the way around, being so polite, and having an unfamiliar accent.

She watched through the windows as he crossed the parking lot to a rather nondescript truck. The only thing different about the trucks around it was the look of the grille.

Turning away at last, she went back to the kitchen. Lonnie was watching her, his gun in plain sight. She glared at him and strode further back into the kitchen until she couldn't see him.

Quickly she slipped out of the kitchen through the back door and then down the short hall to the north door that led into the chill of the September evening. Wrapping her arms around herself, she shuddered, then looked toward the parking lot and saw his truck again. She wanted to see if she could get close to it enough to see some sort of distinguishing feature.

Seeing one of the other girls striding across the parking lot briskly toward a truck, she quickly started out, keeping as far from the restaurant as possible, but keeping her gaze fixed on the truck.

She soon noticed the license plate on the front of the truck. It said Alberta on it. She read the alphanumeric combination in red characters dominating the plate and worked to memorise it. She'd need to get back quickly, after all.

Turning away, she repeated the plate's information again, checked over her shoulder to make sure se had it right, and then repeated it to herself all the way back to the restaurant.

Inside again, she leaned against the door and thawed out a little bit before slipping into the kitchen, collecting her pad and pencil again, and sliding past a suspicious-looking Lonnie into the dining room again.

She wrote down the license plate number and Alberta onto the top sheet and tore it off, sliding it behind the waistband of her pants — not that it reached her waist — before going over and giving menus to a couple of newly arrived customers.

She wasn't sure why she'd taken the license plate number, but she felt like it might be useful to her in the future. When, she wasn't sure, but there was something about that surprisingly polite man that made her think it would be useful — if not valuable — later on."