Page 70 of A Future To Remember

The guy audibly gulped. My gaze narrowed, hoping he saw how intent I was to slap it out of him if he continued to stonewall me.

“You said she was abducted six months ago?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then, yeah. Maybe I saw her. She was…with another guy.”

“What guy?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, man. Just some random guy.”

Behind me, the person who’d come in cleared their throat. I turned, seeing a man with a pot belly, salt-and-pepper beard, and greasy hair staring at me in annoyance.

“How much?” I asked him.

“How much what?” he replied.

“How much gas did you put in your car?”

He blinked for a few seconds, then said, “I haven’t yet. I’m here to prepay.”

I glanced out the window and saw his SUV parked at the pump on the other side of mine. I then turned back to the attendant and stripped off three more twenties, laying them on the counter. “For the gray SUV out there.”

The attendant took my twenties and rang up a sale. “Sixty on number three,” he said.

The guy who’d come into the station muttered, “Uh, thanks, mister. Appreciate it.” Then he hustled out quickly, before I could change my mind.

I stared levelly at the attendant. I’d pay for every customer who came in for the rest of the goddamn day, if needed. This guy was gonna tell me what I wanted to know.

“Description of the guy you saw my wife with.” It wasn’t a question. It was an order.

Sweat dotted the skin above the attendant’s brow. “White guy. Tall. Brown hair.”

“How tall?”

“Uh…around our height.”

“Weight?”

He shrugged. “Maybe two-twenty?”

A steel fist clenched around my stomach. The guy was big. My wife, although not tiny and in no way weak, was physically no match for a guy over six feet and two-twenty.

“Did you hear him speak?”

The attendant nodded. “He wanted to know where the bathroom was.”

“She was with him?”

Another nod.

Bile lit the back of my throat. “She was with him when he went to the bathroom?”

Another nod. And a grimace.

“Willingly?”

Another shrug. “She was out of it, dude. Like, drunk or really high.”