“What time is it? Where am I?” Terrance pulled the wool army blanket he kept in the Cherokee up around his shoulders and raised the car seat to an upright position. Nothing looked familiar. He vaguely recalled tearing out of the racetrack parking lot after he placed the professor’s wager, with the SUV right behind. He looked at his watch, 2:35 a.m.
His memory of the previous day’s events started to return. He remembered stopping to rest at this interstate rest stop south of Omaha on the Missouri side of the Missouri River. Once he’d given into his usual first impulse after seeing the SUV come closer, his instincts took over. He simply stomped on the accelerator and sped away. But why had he gone in a northerly direction? He didn’t know anyone who lived in this direction and knew little about any of the cities in this area. If he had a destination in mind, shouldn’t he have gotten farther than this? Calculating that his hasty escape started at the racetrack over thirteen hours ago, where had he been during all this time? He’d not slept more than a couple of hours at most.
As the fog lifted from his memory, he recalled the previous day’s wild ride through the northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri countryside. The sight of that menacing SUV behind him again as he left the track caused him to crack. The last several days, commencing with the Harmony City Library visit where he first started worrying about the cartel, had taken its toll. What could he do now? He couldn’t go on like this forever, running away every time he saw a menacing-looking vehicle in his rear-view mirror. One of these days, they would catch him out of his vehicle and then what? The same sense of desperation that set him off yesterday, resulting in his turning the countryside into a stock car race circuit, again assaulted his fragile intellect. Terrance realized the urgent necessity to rein in his overwrought emotions or he might end up anywhere, including dead.
“What should I do?” asked Terrance. Surely a plan more productive than what he’d been doing during the last twelve hours awaited his deliberations. Or did it? He didn’t have any money, except the few bucks in his checking account. What possibilities were open to him without money? He needed to get some money, but where? He mustn’t involve his adoptive parents in this mess. The same thing went for Jess. He didn’t want those horrible people bothering her, for sure. That left only Mrs. Bidwell, but why should he expect her to help? She hardly knew him. All of his other friends were pretty much in the same financial shape as he, meaning they were almost destitute themselves. So whom did that leave? The only person that came to mind was the professor. Then it occurred to him—the Pick Six bet! He still had it in his pocket.
Terrance hurriedly rifled through his pockets trying to find the ticket. “Where is that thing? What did I do with it?” He remembered purchasing it yesterday. When he failed to find it in the usual places, he pulled out his threadbare canvas wallet. There, stuck in the same pocket where he kept his credit card, the card that most likely allowed the cartel to trace him back to Kansas, resided the ticket. Unfolding the ticket to make certain of its authenticity, he experienced a flash of inspiration. “What if this ticket is a winner?” If that were the case, the total value of the ticket after taxes, more or less, probably exceeded forty to fifty thousand dollars. If, as the professor hoped, it turned out to be the only winner, the total after tax value of the ticket could be upwards of three-quarter million dollars. A person wanting to get away faced much less difficulty with three-quarters of a million dollars. Then reality hit him. This money belonged to the professor and his kids. The professor had been counting on this money for a long time. That’s true, reasoned Terrance, but none of those kids is about to be murdered by the Mexican Mafia.
“Wait a minute. What are you talking about?” said Terrance aloud. “Would you actually cheat the professor out of his dream just to save your own butt?” His answer surprised him. “Who knows what a frightened person will do to save their own life.”
Slapping himself to put such notions out of his mind, Terrance admonished himself. “This is ridiculous. The chance of being the only individual to have a winning ticket is practically zero, so quit thinking about something that’s not going to happen. You need to find another way and soon.”
Terrance decided that sitting alongside a noisy interstate, tired, sore, and hungry stifled his best ideas. Starting the Cherokee, he pulled out of the rest stop still heading north hoping to find a well-lit truck stop. Within another ten miles he got his wish—a big travel center with enough lighting to accommodate a nighttime major league baseball game came into view. It made sense to settle in here until he determined how to get out of this mess. Plus, if the cartel showed up here, their presence would be detected straight off. This place provided him with a relatively safe environment, at least for the moment.
The coffee alone made the trip worthwhile. Hot, fresh, and emitting an aroma that brought forth fond memories of him as a kid helping his adoptive mom freshly grind the coffee at the local supermarket. He savored those memories and the aroma as he sat there. He had also ordered a donut, but for some reason, the thought of eating held no interest. He asked the waitress to put it into a bag for later. The word later brought him back to the primary reason he stopped at this million mega-watt caravansary in the first place. He needed to devise some sort of plan or possibly, there wouldn’t be another later.
What to do? That had already been pretty much decided. He intended to get up and run, again. The only matter presently before his mind’s escape committee concerned itself with financing his pending ultra-marathon. Absent adequate financing, out running this group of heavy hitters became almost impossible. These people never quit coming. They have already invested twenty-two years in this particular pathetic display of human depravity, so why would they quit now?
Terrance put forth no conditions as he racked his brain for ideas. He must come up with something because failure wasn’t an option. His life, most probably, depended on it. After several more cups of coffee, no suitable idea yet presented itself. He sensed that feeling of utter desperation coming back.
“Think man. There’s got to be something you can do. Come up with something, anything.” The desperation in his voice would have been apparent to anyone in the restaurant within hearing range, except that a large semi-truck passed by the front of the restaurant at the same time he expressed his frustration out loud. Not a single person heard his plea, except one, himself. He detected the desperation in his voice and understood the seriousness of the situation. Some sort of escape plan had to come to him, and fast.
Without thinking, he pulled the Pick Six ticket out of his pocket and looked long and hard at it. Next, he extracted another piece of paper from his wallet that listed the 800 number for the twenty-four hour hotline made available to check on race results at anytime of the day. Lastly, he pulled out a cell phone he seldom ever turned on, much less used. During the early morning hours, it took but a few minutes to find out the race results. Slowly and with deliberation, he dialed the number.
“Ho-ly crap! Ho-ly crap! Ho-ly crap!” repeated Terrance in disbelief not more than five minutes later.
“Did you say something, hon?” asked the puzzled waitress as she passed by. “Do you want some more coffee? Maybe I should just bring you your own pot. Are you okay?”
“No, yes, I’m okay. I don’t want any more coffee. Thanks. I’ve got to get going.” His legs wobbled, and he felt faint as he rose from the booth. “He did it,” he whispered, incredulity in his tone. “He did it. That old son-of-a-gun did it.” Then suddenly aware of his changed status from that of a pauper on the run to a person of means—exactly three hundred forty-three thousand five hundred eighty-three dollars worth of means—he realized the necessity of being more discrete. It would be best not to let anyone know he had in his possession a single ticket worth such a huge sum of money, less, of course, Uncle Sam’s share.
Back in his Cherokee after fumbling around for an eternity trying to pay the cashier, he felt relieved to be alone again. The thought then occurred to him, that of late, his trusty
Cherokee provided him with the only place where he felt any sense of security. Feeling safe for the moment, his thoughts returned to the small betting token he held tightly in his hand.
“Okay, now what are you going to do? No more games. Make up your mind. Are you going to do it? Are you going to steal the professor’s money and hit the road forever? He couldn’t prove anything, as it would be my word against his. I’m the one who made the bet—with cash. If I want it, it’s my money. No one can do anything about it. No more cartel, no more worrying about the future. I can go to any school I want, anywhere I want.”
He took a break from his personal debate as he recognized the nearness of a line that once crossed never allowed you to cross back over again. Whatever road he traveled from this point never came back this way again. If he stepped over this line his current life, family, and friends forever became part of his past never again to be revisited.
“But, what kind of a life can I expect here now? None! My life here is over anyway. I’ve got to leave no matter what. I can’t go back, or I’ll just put the people I care for in danger. I only have two choices. I can leave broke without any prospects for a better life somewhere, or I can leave with this money, ensuring myself a chance of building a successful life somewhere far away.”
Terrance considered his options. In the end, it came down to but a single issue—did he stand prepared to destroy the professor’s dream to protect his own life? The answer came more quickly than he expected. He placed the key in the ignition, started the Cherokee, and pulled out of the parking space heading back towards the interstate.
“Well, okay then, how far am I from the closest major airport?”
CHAPTER THIRTY