Page 1 of Quarter Miles (Runaway 3)

Prologue

“Are you sure about this?” Aria asked. She’d buckled her seat belt but hadn’t closed the passenger door.

The ocean breeze drifted inside the cab and caught the flyaway hairs by my temple. One strand tickled my nose and another stuck to the gloss on my lips.

Was I sure about this?

No.

I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. But that’s what happened in life. You endured the moments of excruciating pain. A death. A heartbreak. A betrayal. You made decisions that would alter the course of your life in the hopes that there was something good waiting for you at the end of the road. You survived today to get to tomorrow.

Yesterday, I’d had a home. I’d had a job. I’d had a family.

Yesterday, I’d been in love.

But a lot had changed since yesterday. Even more had changed in the past five days.

My only wish was that tomorrow, some of this crippling heartache might fade. That the urge to scream and cry would wane.

There was only one way to find out.

I jammed the key into the ignition. “Close the door.”

Chapter One

Katherine

Five days earlier . . .

Eight hundred and thirty-one miles.

My heart thumped harder as I stared at the number on the map. My breath caught in my throat. It was only a road trip but my stomach was in knots.

I hadn’t left Montana since the day I’d arrived. As a fresh-faced and eager eighteen-year-old, I’d found safety here. A home. I’d rarely left the Greer Ranch and Mountain Resort, let alone the state, but I had to get out of here.

I needed every one of those eight hundred and thirty-one miles.

Excitement mixed with anxiety as I closed the GPS app on my phone with trembling fingers. Scanning my office, I racked my brain for anything I’d forgotten to do in my whirlwind attempt to prepare for this no-notice, yet overdue vacation.

The staff had my number in case of an emergency. Emails could wait until I stopped at a gas station or when I was in my hotel room each night. They’d be fine without me for a couple weeks, right? Besides a natural disaster or fire, I could handle almost any emergency remotely.

The resort ran like a well-oiled machine, at least when I was behind the wheel. I’d refined processes and procedures, training my subordinates with precision. My capable team could handle anything that came up for two weeks. As long as no one quit.

Oh God, please don’t let anyone quit. My heart thumped again. Was this how parents felt when they sent their children off to college? No wonder mothers cried and fathers loitered on drop-off day. It was disquieting.

This resort was my baby. My everything. I worked ten-hour days, six days per week. I came in every other Sunday morning to approve payroll and stayed late on Tuesday nights to meet with the chef and go over his upcoming meal plan.