The bar owner was a decent fellow. He gave them plenty of tacos and hot sauce, and even poured the girl a large glass of hot orange juice, perhaps thinking that giving her milk might carry certain implications.
Although he was suspicious of where this pair of customers had come from, the key to running a bar was not poking your nose into other people's business.
If the girl had shown any sign of being coerced, he might have called the police immediately. But as things stood, she seemed remarkably mature for her age, and she was the one clinging to the man old enough to be her father.
As for whether they were really father and daughter?
Impossible. The owner had run this bar for over thirty years; he had enough experience to tell. The two of them simply did not look like the same kind of people.
The girl's eyes were feverish, as though she were high. It was obvious that she cared about nothing, that her head was probably filled with partying and pleasure, to the point where she did not even care whether she lived or died.
The man, meanwhile, was terrifying. He seemed to have gone through something profoundly dark, something terrible. His very presence was enough to make people feel suffocated.
And he did not seem entirely sane, either. His left eye held the light of humanity and gentleness, but his right eye was utterly cold. When he looked at the owner, it was like a Predator sizing up its food.
Watching how the two interacted, the owner had already imagined an entire road movie.
A mischievous, fallen high school girl, trying to escape a cold family and a prostitute mother, flagged down the man's car beside the interstate, wanting to take a spontaneous