Disintegration by Scott Nicholson

had made outsiders wealthy. Jacob was tired and his legs weak from lack of use, but he kept moving in a pitiful yearning for escape.
    But he knew that, no matter how fast or how far he fled, he couldn't outrun himself.
    A car came growling up behind him, slowed, passed. He glanced at its dented green flanks and immediately assigned its driver to the lower class. It was a 1970s family car, a gas-swigging chunk of Chevrolet steel that only a rural American could drive without shame. The windows were tinted so he couldn't match a face to such a metal monstrosity.
    The car slowed again, its brake lights blinking twenty feet ahead of Jacob. The car idled in a throaty rasp of rusted muffler. Jacob kept walking. He moved past the car, looking up the road, wondering where all the traffic had gone. Even along this residential stretch beyond the town limits, there were too few roads to avoid a steady stream of vehicles.
    The Chevy's engine accelerated and its exhaust hung on the damp air. The car eased up alongside Jacob again, and sweat crept beneath his eyes and scalp line. He glanced toward the car, not turning his head, and saw only his own reflection in the tinted passenger window. The car kept pace with Jacob, and he fought the urge to break into a run.
    Maybe this was a robbery set-up. The crime rate was low in Kingsboro, but people were people everywhere and occasionally someone grew desperate. Jacob was dressed in a tailor-cut suit, not the kind of person usually seen on the side of a road. He was out of his element, in a place he didn't belong, pale and trembling due to his long recovery. The predators of every species had a knack for culling the weak, picking out the perfect victims.
    He walked faster, eyes shifting over to the Chevy. Its engine was the only sound in that tight stretch of valley. Even the birds had vanished. The road curved out of sight in both directions, behind hills turning green with spring. The trailer park was around the bend in its own clutter. One lone farmhouse was visible in a carved pocket of the woods, but it appeared uninhabited, shutters drawn and driveway empty, the doors of its adjacent barn bolted and locked. A hand-painted "For Sale" sign was staked in the scraggly yard.
    The car scooted ahead, then paused and idled until he caught up to it.
    If only he had the cell phone. Even if he called for help, though, what would he tell the police? He was being stalked by a car? They couldn't arrive in time to help him anyway. He could leave the side of the road, cut over the ditch, and head between the trees. But the car had issued no overt threat, the driver holding a steady course, not veering from between the lines. The only menace was in its slow crawl, though its motor grumbled in an imagined hunger.
    A robber, that's all. Nothing worse.
    Jacob increased his pace to just short of a jog. Still the car remained alongside him. He didn't have a watch, but the car must have followed him for at least thirty seconds. Surely another car would have come by during that time. It was as if the road had been blocked off at each end of the mountain valley so this showdown could be staged in private.
    His lungs were taut and aching, his legs about to collapse and fold. He was too out of shape. Even if he ran, the driver would have no trouble chasing him down. Fighting was out of the question. How do you fight four tons of blind steel?
    You know it's him
.
    Maybe someone was only trying to scare him. Some of his business competitors accused him of dirty tricks, such as planting money among members of the county planning board whenever he had a variance request coming up. He'd had disputes with a few contractors, and a couple of times he had refused to pay when work wasn't done to specifications. He had an inside track on property that had been foreclosed through mortgage defaults or tax liens, and his deals had put more than one family out on the street, though they always had it coming. Was it his fault that