Opening paragraphs.............

He'd never know why he stopped.  Kelly pulled his Scout over to the shoulder without a conscious thought.  She hadn't had her hand out soliciting a ride.  She'd just been standing by the side of the road, watching the cars speed past in a spray of highway grit and a wake of fumes.  Her posture was that of a hitchhiker, one knee locked, the other bent.  Her clothes were clearly well used and a backpack was loosely slung over one shoulder.  Her tawny, shoulder-length hair moved about in the rush of air from the traffic.  Her face showed nothing, but Kelly didn't see that until he was already pressing his right foot on the break pedal and angling onto the loose rock of the shoulder.  He wondered if he should go back into the traffic, then decided that he was already committed, though to what he didn't know exactly.  The girl's eyes followed the car and, as he looked in his rearview mirror, she shrugged without any particular enthusiasm and walked towards him.  The passenger window was down already, and in a few seconds she was there.
-Tom Clancy, Without Remorse