Vance Troughburn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Vance drove the truck east with the heeler asleep on the bench seat and the brass key warm in his pocket. The address on the paper led him out past the dry flats, where the road climbed a low ridge and the sky started to gray. He meant to reach the new car before sunrise, sign for it, and be back on the route by noon. Then he crested the ridge and saw the cairn. It sat in the middle of his lane. Stacked rocks, sun-bleached, a wagon wheel jammed in the top. Vance braked hard and stepped out. The heeler hopped down and sniffed the base. Vance knew the mark. Wheelmen left them when they claimed a route. Someone had heard about his dead coupe at the Bend. Someone was moving on the line while he was off it. He kicked the cairn over and threw the wheel into the brush. The rocks did not matter. The message did. He drove faster after that. The address turned out to be a white mansion set back behind an iron gate, all tall windows and trimmed hedges, the kind of place a man buys when he wants other men to come to him. Vance parked the truck at the gate and walked up the drive in his tuxedo. A houseman met him at the door, took the brass key, and led him around to a side court. The new car waited there under a tarp. The houseman pulled the cover. Vance looked at the low wedge body, the scissor doors, the badge on the nose. A Lamborghini, fresh from the crate, paint still wet-looking in the early light. He signed the paper on the hood. The houseman handed him a fob and stepped back. Vance opened the driver's door and the heeler jumped across his lap into the passenger seat. He took the new car straight for the route. Two miles short of Cutter's Bend he saw the other driver pulled off on the shoulder, hood up, a second cairn half-built beside the front tire. The man turned at the sound of the Lamborghini and his face went flat. Vance did not stop. He held the throttle steady and passed close enough to throw grit across the rival's boots. In the mirror the man stood in the dust and watched the new car go. Vance had the route back. He also had a car he had never driven, a Bend that had killed his last one, and a wheelman behind him who now knew exactly what he was up against.