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“I can drive, you know,” I told him as he climbed in. “Obviously, not when I’m in exhaustion-related hysterics, but we could switch off, to make it easier on you.”
He leaned across the seat to open my door, informing me solemnly, “No one drives my truck but me.”
“Well, you didn’t seem to mind when I was hauling your ass away from explosions and gunfire,” I muttered, slamming the passenger door.
“Special circumstances.”
I gave him a weak glare while nudging his bag of law-enforcement equipment with my foot. “Do I get to play with your big bag of toys?”
“No, you do not.” I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned, so he added, “But you can keep the baton, as a gesture of good faith.”
“You noticed I took it, huh?”
I would have described the over-the-sunglasses eye roll he sent me as a “bitch, please” gesture, but so far, he didn’t strike me as the type of guy to use that sort of facial-expression language, so . . . I would just stick to being embarrassed at being caught so easily.
Clearly, I needed to brush up on my sleight of hand.
“Someone looking for you?”
“None of your business.”
He rolled his eyes, but continued as if I hadn’t answered. “Do you want them to find you?”
I stared at him, my expression completely flat, prompting another werewolf eye roll.
“OK, then. Well, before my little detour at Flapjack’s, I was on my way to scoop this guy, Jerry Stepanack, up from Flint Creek. That’s about two hours from here, so you didn’t cost me too much time,” he said, ignoring the way I rolled my own eyes at that statement. “Jerry’s none too bright, and there’s a pretty healthy price on him.”
“What did he do?” I asked. “And I am assuming this is not an assignment from legitimate law-enforcement authorities?”
“To answer the first question, you don’t want to know, and to answer the second, you really don’t want to know,” he said. “But a word to the wise, sweetheart. If you borrow lots of money from bad people to buy a couple of tow trucks so you can steal cars and sell them for parts, don’t default on the loan and sell the trucks for parts. It makes those bad people cranky.”
I frowned, sliding my oversized sunglasses onto my nose, and settled back into the seat. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
4
All the Best Friendships Start with Lost-and-Found Underwear
It turned out Caleb’s job was mostly driving around and talking on his cell phone.
I spent the first fifteen minutes of our “business arrangement” gathering the foam coffee cups and jerky packets from the floorboards and stuffing them into an empty grocery bag. Caleb insisted that I keep the gas receipts, as he needed them for expense reports, so I stacked them in the glove compartment.
Cue the wolfy eye roll.
“I just don’t want to spend the next few days sitting around in filth.”
The drive reminded me of why I’d fallen in love with living in Alaska in the first place. After spending so many years closing myself up into safe, cramped corners, the wide-open spaces were a welcome remedy to my growing claustrophobia. I loved the crazy patchwork of foliage across the landscape, the expected greens mixed with a riot of purples, golds, and grays. All of this would be buried under a dense blanket of blinding white in a few weeks, but even that would be beautiful and welcome.
I finally got to see some of the country, now that I wasn’t always on the run. Some of it looked too beautiful to be real—purple stone mountains and trees that seemed to swallow the road whole and forests so thick no light could break through the evergreens. I loved never knowing when a little town was suddenly going to pop up around a bend in the road. Caleb seemed to know this road like the back of his hand. I had the idea that if he’d driven down a road just once, he would still be able find his way back and tell you in detail what sort of rocks he’d seen by the side of the road.
I would miss this landscape. I didn’t know where my new identity would take me. I knew it wasn’t likely that I would stay in the Great North. And the southeast was definitely out—too close to Glenn. I could only hope that I wouldn’t end up in the desert somewhere. I had come to love the snow. I just couldn’t handle one-hundred-plus-degree summer days and scorpions in my living room.
We wound through rolling, low-lying mountains lightly dusted with snow, the landscape laid out before us like an endless Christmas card. I wrestled with the fatigue I’d kept at bay over the last twenty-four hours. But between the warm truck, the full belly, and the late-afternoon sun beating through the window on my face, I fell asleep long before we arrived in Flint Creek. It had been a long time since I’d simply ridden along in a car, and the exhausting events of the last few, well, years caught up with me. I still slept lightly, waking with every turn Caleb made, checking to make sure he hadn’t driven us to Tijuana or taken liberties with my ChapSticks. But he hadn’t even changed the radio station. He just glanced in my direction every few minutes, frowned, and then turned his attention back to the road.
Resting my forehead against the warm glass, I wondered if there would be an opportunity to send an e-mail to my Network contact, “[email protected]/* */.” I needed to explain that my situation had deteriorated quickly and ask for a rush job on my new identity. Red-burn was pretty good about responding to e-mails within twenty-four hours, so all I had to do was come back the next day to buy more Internet time.
Although I’d never met her, Red-burn had been instrumental in my move to Alaska. She worked as part of the Network, a widespread group of people who helped women escape from abusive domestic situations, particularly when those situations involved stalking. Operating beneath the radar of law enforcement, the group arranged for new, untraceable driver’s licenses, social security numbers, and birth certificates in new names, not to mention securing employment and housing. They were discreet, well funded, and frighteningly good at making people disappear.
After leaving Glenn, I’d bounced around the country for nearly a year before I heard about the Network from a fellow waitress. Red-burn was the one to connect me with the Crescent Valley job, informing me that the people in Crescent Valley, Alaska, needed a new physician, as the old Dr. Moder had retired.
