Extract from Don't Turn Around by Jessica Barry

My thanks to Graeme Williams for the Don't Turn Around blog tour invitation. I’m delighted to be joining the road trip this lunchtime with an extract and my review will follow later this week. 

TWO STRANGERS. DANGEROUS SECRETS. THEIR ONLY CHANCE IS EACH OTHER.

Cait's job is to transport women to safety. Out of respect, she never asks any questions. Like most of the women, Rebecca is trying to escape something.

But what if Rebecca's secrets put them both in danger? There's a reason Cait chooses to keep on the road, helping strangers. She has a past of her own, and knows what it's like to be followed.

And there is someone right behind them, watching their every move...

CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, NEW MEXICO
217 MILES FROM ALBUQUERQUE

They’d been silent for the first couple miles back on the road, eyes trained on the mirrors, watching out for headlights, waiting for the man from the diner to appear on the road intent on killing them, but the lights of Clovis had faded and the road behind them had remained stubbornly empty. Rebecca felt herself breathe again.

Cait looked over at her. “Did you recognize him?”

“No.” It was the truth: Rebecca hadn’t recognized that man in the diner, but she’d known as soon as she’d seen him that he was there for her. The look in his eyes, caught in a fraction of a glance, was enough to tell her that.

Patrick must have called the house phone and realized she was gone. But how would he have found her so quickly? She looked at the dashboard clock. They hadn’t been on the road longer than a couple of hours. It wasn’t enough time for him to have sent someone to the house, let alone track her down like this.

Unless he already knew where they were headed.

Cait shook her head. “I didn’t recognize him, either. Well, he’s gone now, anyway. Are you okay?”

“A little shaken up. You?”

“I’m fine,” Cait said, a little too quickly. She was still rattled and trying hard to hide it. “Honestly? He was probably just some creep.” She sneaked a glance Rebecca’s way, testing out whether she was buying it.

“Probably,” Rebecca said vaguely. She didn’t want to let Cait in on her suspicions, not until she knew for sure what was out there. She couldn’t risk Cait deciding it was too dangerous. They’d read a disclaimer to her over the phone when she’d set up the appointment. “Sisters of Service holds the right to terminate a drive at any point if the client’s safety or the driver’s safety is in immediate danger. If a direct threat is made to the client or driver, Sisters of Service will contact the authorities immediately.” Rebecca had agreed to the terms because this was her only choice. She couldn’t afford to lose it.

“There are a lot of creeps in this world, but most of them are harmless. We get them at the bar all the time,” Cait said. “Guys who think that just because you’re serving them a drink, it means they own a piece of you. I had this one guy who spent the whole night tipping a buck on five- drink rounds. The bar closes, I’m walking to my car, and the guy staggers up to me and offers me a hundred bucks for a blow job.”

Rebecca was horrified. “What did you say?”

“I told him I wouldn’t touch his dick for a million bucks, and to get the hell away from me before I called the cops.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Of what? The guy could barely stand up straight.”

“I would have been worried about making him angry. He could have hurt you.”

Cait shrugged. “Like I said, he could barely walk, let alone take a swing at me. Besides, I grew up with three brothers. I can take care of myself.”

Rebecca didn’t challenge her. She knew Cait was saying it so she felt safe in her care, but something about the bravado rubbed Rebecca the wrong way.

She tried to remember herself at Cait’s age. She’d been teaching by then, putting in fifty- plus hours a week in a dingy classroom and still working weekends at the bar for extra cash. Had she met Patrick by then? Probably. She’d been— what— twentyfive? So maybe a little younger than Cait. Twenty- five and waiting for her life to start.

It was his smile she saw first. It was blinding white, like something out of a toothpaste ad, a row of perfect teeth grinning at her from across the room. She looked away— that’s what she’d been taught to do if she saw a man she was interested in, make eye contact and look away— and when she looked back, he was still smiling. With something close to awe, she watched him walk across the room.

Square shoulders, crisp button- down, that smile that led to a pair of deep dimples. He had eyes that could be credibly described as sparkling. He extended his hand and she reached for it without looking, and as soon as their palms touched, a thrill ran through her that she’d never felt before. “I’m Patrick,” he said, and she said her name in a voice she barely recognized.

She was used to men approaching her. She was blond and thin and pretty— she acknowledged this about herself, she didn’t engage in the false modesty that most pretty women insisted upon— and, despite her mother’s worries, her air of detachment worked like catnip on men. She could sense it inside them when they looked at her, this desire to know what she was thinking. There were times when she caught a man she’d been talking to sizing her up like she was a specimen awaiting dissection and he was wondering which tool to use to pry open her skull. Sometimes she would give them her number, and sometimes she would even answer when they called. Mostly, though, she kept herself separate. Love, in her mind, was something powerful and all encompassing, an earthquake or a hurricane. She was waiting for it to strike her.

With Patrick, it did, full force. By the end of the evening, he’d kissed her. She couldn’t remember when she’d been kissed like that, his hands cupping her face, his eyelashes brushing against her skin as he pulled away, and she knew immediately that she was a goner.

Later, she’d ask herself if she’d had a choice in the matter. The more she knew him, the more she realized that Patrick had a singular vision for his life, and when he saw her from across the room at that party, she slid into it like fingers into a glove.

My co-host today is Linda's Book Bag with an author feature and tomorrow head over to Reader Dad and On the Shelf Book Blog who are also sharing extracts. You can follow all the stops from the banner below which started with A Little Book Problem.