The truck’s cab hums like a tired animal, warm against the cold night pressing at the windows. Mile markers tick past in a steady rhythm: green flashes in the dark, proof that the world is still counting even when you feel like you aren’t. On the passenger seat, your logbook lies open, a name underlined so many times the paper has thinned: Alice.

Bay & Creek’s logo glows on the dispatch tablet, throwing corporate blue light across your hands. Another route, another long haul threaded through towns too small for news reports and too weird for postcards. You should be used to this by now—the isolation, the coffee, the way the highway starts to feel like a repeating dream.

Then the CB crackles on a channel you swore you’d never touch again. A woman’s voice, warped by static, says your name the exact way Alice used to when she was annoyed but trying not to smile. Three seconds of sound. Then silence.

The road stretches ahead like a question. Do you chase the voice… or convince yourself it was nothing and keep the wheel steady?