Cars flashed by like thunder and lightening on the highway, loud and fast and unrelenting. Callie was covered in mud and debris and still had only a tenuous foothold on the hillside. There was hardly a shoulder to speak of on the crooked moutain road, and no proper lights.  She was little more than a paper target in a shooting range if she tried to cross the road, but she couldn't very well stay perched on the side of a fast-eroding heap of earth.

She grapled her way over the gaurdrail and did something she would never have imagined herself doing. Callie stuck out her thumb.

It was ludicrious, not to mention unsafe and probably wouldn't even work, but what were her other options? To play Frogger across this jagged stretch of highway and hope that she could find her way in the dark? She brushed the dripping hair from her eyes and squinted through the blinding headlights, praying for someone to slow.

It had started to rain in earnest. Before long her clothes were stuck to her skin and most of the mud had been washed away. Her fingers were numb and her teeth were chattering but she kept her feet planted in the gravel. Someone would stop, they had to.

It was a truck, a semi, judging by the height of the beams. She couldn't believe the irony of getting picked up by a trucker, but she wasn't about to turn it down. When he had stopped the passenger door swung open and she climbed in without a second thought.

It was only in the light and stillness of the cabin that Callie saw who it was that had picked her up, saw his unabashed interest in the secrets her wet shirt was giving away, and wished that she had decided to walk.