Man gives hitchhiker a lift home-and is shocked by the news the next day

 The threat on the phone turned Carter's growing anxiety into cold, certain fear. The idea that he was being watched, that his brief interaction with Avery had somehow made him a target, felt like a trap slowly closing in on itself.What had initially been intended as a simple gesture of help now seemed to have dragged him into the center of something far more dangerous, a pressure he hadn't anticipated and was unprepared for.