time around, but seeing her name splashed across the page, all she felt was fear. Tens of thousands of strangers, baying for her blood. There were people asking where she lived, where she worked. “Let’s find this bitch and make her pay.”
She knew then that this would be different from the first time around. The article she’d written was no longer just some stupid clickbait to be hate-read and forgotten. They knew who she was now, and they hated her more than ever.
This was big-time. This was dangerous.
Outskirts of Vaughn, New Mexico—128 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait’s eyes were locked on the rearview mirror. The pickup was a few lengths behind them now, still close enough to pick up the glint of the Jeep’s rear end in the headlights. They needed to get some distance between them, fast.
The fork in the road was getting closer. Cait’s mind whirred. If the driver was after them specifically—and she was sure now that he was—he might know the route she took to get to Albuquerque, in which case he would expect her to stay on 60 and head through the center of Vaughn. She remembered the place, a decent-size town, a couple of motels, a few gas stations.
She might be able to pull into one of those gas stations and call for help, but if the guy in the pickup was carrying, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get inside quick enough to save them from getting shot. She flicked her eyes back to the mirror. He was dropping back, waiting to see what she would do.
There might be side streets in Vaughn that she could hide down, though from what she could recall, the place was pretty sprawling, and flat, too, the buildings mainly single-story concrete boxes hugging tight to the ground. Hiding the Jeep would be a tall order, even in the middle of the night.
She could drop south onto 285 or 54. She could head north on 54 toward Santa Rosa. She could stop and swing around and play a nasty game of chicken with him, use the Jeep’s steel frame as a weapon, catch him at his own game.
She glanced over at Rebecca. No, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk this woman’s life. Not when Cait knew that whoever was driving that truck was after her, and her alone. She’d thought she would be safe. They couldn’t trace the plates to her, and she’d been careful to check that no one was tailing her when she left Austin. But they had tracked her down just the same, and now they were hunting her like a dog.
She had only one option. She had to make them disappear.
“Do you trust me?”
Rebecca looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Do you trust me?” Cait asked again, and this time Rebecca nodded, just once.
Cait killed the lights and punched the gas. The road in front of them went black, just a faint outline in the dark that Cait had to squint to see. The taillights were out, too, but the brake lights would come on if she used them. Which meant she couldn’t use them.
“What are you doing?”
Cait’s eyes were locked on the mirror. He was dropping back a little farther. She’d confused him, at least for a second. Good.
“Hold on.”
She took the turn onto 54 hard, leaning into the curve without touching the brakes. Gravity pushed her against the door before the road straightened out, and she floored it.
Just like that, he was gone.
Two Months Earlier
4chan/Caitlyn_Monaghan
Anonymous: Love that the bitch is getting the attention she deserves. She is a national discgrace.
Cucks_Suck: Patrick McRae should be President after calling her out for the trash she is.
TruePatriot368: she should be in jail for trying to ruin an innocent man’s life. I swear to god one day that girl is going to pay for what she did, just like all the little lying bitchs should pay.
Anonymous: I know where she lives. Maybe somebody should pay her a visit.
Underneath was a screengrab with her home address.
“No phones behind the bar.” Cait swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat and looked up to see Stacy scowling at her from the manager’s office. She raised a hand in apology and slipped her phone in her back pocket.
Since her name had been leaked by the hackers, her life had gone berserk. She’d been hounded by the national media—The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time—and invited on the Today show and The View. She turned them all down,