The moon kissed the hood of his Peterbilt 389, caressing the long, sleek nose of the tractor, dancing a second on the wide chrome grill and the heavy bull-bar bumper beyond it, then winking at him from the surface of the Payette River out his left window. The road followed the Payette north toward McCall and then joined US 95 for the long haul to Coeur d’Alene. In the moonlight, his truck looked quite black, the same as blood, though it was actually painted red—blood-red, to be sure, but red, nonetheless. He liked that. He liked it a lot.

With a sigh, he reached for the second of the two massive thermoses he carried in a box nestled behind his seat, hooking his finger through its handle and pulling it close. He had a travel mug in the cup holder in the console, and setting the thermos between his thighs, he flipped the travel mug’s lid off. Next, he gingerly opened the thermos, knowing it was filled to the rim with black gold, then poured coffee slowly into the mug, his gaze darting between the road ahead and the mug.

His Pete had almost taken on the status of a loyal friend, of a living being, something he could always rely on—his father had taught him the value of preventive maintenance and repairs, and he’d taken that lesson to heart. It had served him well over his driving career, and he'd taken to carrying a lot of spare parts tucked away in the cab, in a hidden compartment in his wagon, anywhere else there was space, to be honest. He grinned and said, “You can’t ever tell when you might need to replace a broken light, a bent bull bar.” The sentence evoked memories of other nights, other hours spent penetrating the blackness, hunting for a prey, hunting for fun, hunting for—

“JESUS CHRIST!” he shouted as the molten orange Ford Fiesta ST lunged into the road from a parking lot on the left and accelerated hard, crossing all four lanes to drive in the outside northbound lane. The mug of coffee flew across the cab as he grabbed at the steering wheel, cranking it to the right, his foot coming off the go-pedal and hammering the brake, but both motions were wasted efforts, and he knew it.

There was no way he could avoid the stupid little car.

No way in hell.

The driver of the Fiesta seemed to know it, too, and he drifted to the left, dancing along the double yellow in the inside lane. He gave a jaunty little blip of his horn and waved.

The truck driver’s blood came up in an instant, and anger seared him from within. Another four-wheeler who thinks he’s funny, he thought. Fine. Let’s play.

He downshifted and put his foot back on the accelerator, giving the truck the fuel necessary to bring all twenty-one hundred foot-pounds of torque screaming to life, fighting the trailer’s desire to come alongside the tractor, to drag him down, to jackknife or worse. The modified engine roared, the compound turbochargers shrieked, and the Pete lunged ahead with a massive neck-snapping jerk.

He pointed his headlights at the little orange creep and let the beast under his hood eat. Without looking away from the Fiesta, he flicked on the custom lights he’d added to the roof of the Pete, and harsh, bright blue-white lights erased the darkness.

The thin man driving the Fiesta squinted against the rapacious glare and jerked his car away from the Peterbilt’s path. The little Ford’s tires screeched at the abuse.

But not as much as they were going to.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t need to outpace the lighter car, all he needed to do was slide his nose closer to the rear end, and running deadheaded as he was, he could use most of the power to get there. He eased the Pete closer to the double yellows, a feral grin dominating his hate-filled expression. He flicked on the airbrakes and pumped his foot on the accelerator as he pulled next to the Fiesta, making and interrupting the high-pitched shriek each time he touched the pedal. He grinned as the driver fled to the outside southbound lane.

Cranking the big steering wheel first to the right, then even more to the left, he sent the truck careening toward the left side of the road, right foot planted, a low growl rumbling in his chest, and behind him, his trailer danced a jig, taking big swings toward both edges of the road. Though the driver tried to avoid him, the left edge of his bull bar clipped the Fiesta a few inches in front of the rear passenger-side tire with a satisfying crunch. He poured on the power and turned into the compact, shoving the back end of the Ford into a skittering slide to the shoulder of the road and river beyond it.

The pinheaded geek in the bright orange car panicked, jerking his wheel to the right and pounding on the accelerator, trying to get out of the 389’s grill, but the only thing he accomplished against the mass and momentum of the big rig was to lose what little traction he had left on the front tires, and the Fiesta seemed to float in a lazy circle, heading across the nose of the Pete without so much as smudging the chrome bumper as the truck decelerated hard. The molten orange paint winked in his high-powered lights as the car spun across the double yellows.

He cranked the wheel to the right, lining up the nose with the middle of the Fiesta’s body compartment, then slammed the go-go pedal to the mat. He smote the little car hard, lifting the passenger side tires a bit as he used his superior power and mass to shove the compact diagonally across the northbound lanes. The Ford slid from pavement to the gravel shoulder, and something caught on the driver’s side—the lip of the wheel, a low-hanging suspension component, but it hardly mattered what—and the car went ass-over-teakettle across the gravel shoulder. Grinning, the Pete’s pilot lifted his foot off the accelerator, watching the car tumble into the stubble and earth of a freshly mown hay field.

As the Fiesta came to rest on its driver’s side, the passenger side tires still spinning, He pulled his rig onto the shoulder and set his brakes. He climbed down out of the cab, whistling a bright tune from his youth, and fetched his crowbar and a heavy one-handed sledgehammer from the toolbox. He trudged into the hay field, right arm cocked, crowbar resting against his collarbone, sledgehammer swinging in his left.

The driver’s moans became audible as he approached the underside of the Fiesta, but he paid them no mind. The loudmouth pencil—pusher would be silent soon enough. His gaze searched for and found the black high-density polyethylene fuel tank right in front of the spindly rear axle of the vehicle. He ignored the fuel lines for the moment and gave the tank a thump with the bent end of the crowbar, then grinned wide. It sounded almost full.

“Hey, man!” yelled the occupant of the molten orange coffin. “Help me…I’m…I’m pinned in here.”

“Right you are, chief,” said the truck driver in his gravelly baritone. “Trapped, I’d say, if I were one to quibble about words.”

“What the hell, man? Why’d you go all psycho?”

“You cut me off, geek. I don’t like that.”

“I was only having a little fun.”

He swung his head ponderously from side to side. “I wasn’t.”

“Help me! I’ve got to get out!”

“I will.” He paused for effect. “But not yet.”

“What? Why not now?”

“Because I’m not ready yet.”

“Then at least call for help!”

The trucker’s answer was tilting his head back and laughing at the moon, and the driver grew silent. He listened to his echoing laughter, parsing what reached his ears for signs of EMS mobilization but heard nothing untoward.

“What…” The Fiesta driver’s voice clicked as he swallowed.

“Sounds like you’re going into shock, chief.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“What am I going to do to you? I’m going to help you, of course. I’m just making sure the car is safe for me to crawl in there and get you. What kind of man do you think I am?” The man trapped in the wreck said nothing, but the truck driver imagined his unvoiced reply: The kind of man who runs innocent people off the road. The kind who flips cars into hay fields and refuses to help. It was a fair assessment.

Grinning, he switched the sledge to his right hand and the crowbar to his left. He picked a spot and rested the pointed end of the bar against the HDPE gas tank. He drew back his right arm and gave the crowbar a solid, clanging strike.

“What the hell?” yelled the driver.

The trucker swung again, then again, putting more of his not-inconsiderable strength behind the blows and was gratified by the thunk of the crowbar penetrating the tank. Gasoline began to sluice around the tool steel.

“What’re you doing? I smell gas! Oh-my-God-get-me-out-of-here!”

“Nah,” grunted the driver of the big rig. “It’s not safe for me with that gas leak you’ve got.” He jerked the crowbar free of the gas tank and stepped back, away from the stream of gasoline jetting from the half-inch hole he’d made. He hooked the crowbar in his belt and fished in his jeans pocket with his left hand, digging for one of the free matchbooks he always grabbed when he stopped for fuel at one of the giant truck stops.

“Look! I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I cut you off! I’ll never do it again, just get me out!”

“Where’s the fun in that?” The trucker slipped the haft of the hammer through his belt on the side opposite the crowbar, looking for all the world like a gunslinger too stupid to make sure he carried actual guns into battle. He picked out a match, ripped it free, and struck it against the striker-strip on the back of the matchbook. The chemicals did their thing, and the match flared to life, adding the scent of burning phosphorous to the reeking gas fumes. His grin widened as he used the match to light the entire book, then flicked the fireball toward the closest rivulet of gasoline.

It went up with a whoosh and a blast of instant, eyebrow-singing heat. He stumbled toward the molten orange Fiesta, a handful of steps, captivated by the dance of blue and orange flames. Eyes wide, lips distended in a maniacal grin, the freight hauler stood there until the flames had almost reached the car, then he turned and ran toward his Pete 389.

He'd just rounded the front end and was moving toward the toolbox when the whoosh-thump of the gas tank igniting shook the truck, and he changed his mind, yanking the door open, flinging the tools toward the passenger seat, slamming the door, slamming the truck into gear, and spinning the steering wheel hard to take his rig back onto the blacktop. He fed the angry beast under the Peterbilt’s hood, checking his mirrors every few seconds to watch the molten orange fireball consume the molten orange car.

He forced himself to lift his foot, to slow down, to drive normally. Headlights peeked over the crown of the hill ahead, and he reached for his CB radio. “Come on, southbound. You on here?” He was parked, as he always was, on channel 19, the most popular band.

“Ten-four, northbound. You got yourself a black eye if you don’t already know it. Left side.”

“’Preciate it, good neighbor,” he said, though it came out singsong: pree-shade-it. “I’ll get that straightened out right quick. Listen here, some crazy seat cover in a four-wheeler just busted himself up good over my shoulder. Lost control, I guess.”

“That fireball in the field?”

“I’d say yes.”

“You gonna stop and talk to the bears?”

“Hell, no. I got deliveries to make. No time for dumb.”

“Uh…”

“Let the locals deal with it. Where there’s fields, there’s farmers. Plus, he was right across from that wide spot in the road where you rent them kayaks.”

“Ten-four.”

The Pete powered up the hill, the semi’s driver watching the southbound truck hit his brakes and slow as he approached the hay field. It didn’t matter, that pencil-pushing loudmouth in the Fiesta was past talking to anyone. He wondered if it was worth the risk to pull over and change out the headlight the southbound truck had warned him of or if it would be safer to risk getting pulled over. He flicked his overhead lights on. At least that way he could claim he could still see despite the dead headlight.