Rudy looked at my boots, my jaw, and the motel room key still in my hand. He didn’t ask.
That was why Annette used him.
We drove out of Pine Shadow with the heater off and the windows cracked. The July morning warmed by the minute, but the air still held the night from the pines. Mist hung low in the ditch grass. The highway cut pale through the timber.
“She turned right,” I said. “Likely headed toward Bearclaw. She needed distance before I woke and a place to ditch the truck. She wouldn’t keep it.”
Rudy nodded. “Closed trailhead. Gravel pullout. Service road. Somewhere she can leave keys if she doesn’t want the truck stolen by somebody else.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged. “Annette said she took the truck, not that she was dumb.”
“She isn’t.”
The answer came too fast.
Rudy gave me one sidelong look and then kept his mouth shut.
We checked the first pullout. Nothing but beer cans, tire tracks from the weekend, and a damp fire ring someone had tried to hide under dirt. The second held a Forest Service sign, a chain across a logging road, and no heavy truck impressions fresher than last week. The third sat where Bearclaw Mountain Pass narrowed and a gravel service road bent behind a line of pines.
I saw my tire marks before Rudy stopped.
“Pull over.”
He did.
My pickup sat forty yards down the service road under a stand of firs, black paint dull with dust, nose angled toward a locked metal gate. The front right tire had a key ring resting on top of it.
Relief came so fast it made my ribs hurt.
She’d left it where I’d find it.
She’d known I’d find it.
I got out before Rudy killed the engine. Gravel crunched under my boots as I walked to the truck. The body was intact. No broken glass. No blood. No dent except the old one in the rear bumper. The driver’s seat had been pulled forward. My jacket lay over the passenger seat. My map was still wedged beside the console. My water bottle sat in the cup holder.
She’d left everything she didn’t need.
My paper packet sat on the dash, still closed.
I took the keys from the tire and wrapped my hand around them until the metal bit into my palm.
Rudy came up beside me and looked down the service road. “She didn’t go on foot from here. Not far.”
I looked at the ground.
My boot prints from the truck would ruin anything close, so I stayed back and worked the edges. The dirt near the driver’s side had one set of smaller boot prints, not much depth, pointed toward the main road. At the shoulder, where the service road met the pavement, a second set of tires had stopped at an angle. Narrower. Smaller. A car, not a truck. It hadn’t stayed long. Dust sat over part of the pattern, but the turn mark was fresh enough.
“She had help,” Rudy said.
“She had help before she left the motel.”
“Second vehicle picked her up here.”
“Yes.”
Rudy shifted his cap back. “Want me to call Annette?”
