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“No,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ll go to my grave checking for one every time I get on.”
I swung a leg over the bike behind him. “Better safe than sorry.”
His rumbling laughter was replaced with the rumble of the engine as we drove away.
There was something about being on the bike with Jayce that made me feel more free than any other point in my life. The cool morning wind in our hair, the endless road rising up to meet the wheel of the bike. I could feel Jayce’s muscles rippling underneath his shirt as he steered us down the deserted Georgia road. It was just the two of us out here. Like we owned this small slice of the world and nobody else was allowed in.
I pressed my cheek to his back and savored the feeling, wishing it would last forever.
We drove south for a while. Jayce had mounted his phone between the handlebars, and after almost half an hour he turned it on and opened up an app with numbers on it:
32.04, -82.35
The right number remained stationary, but the left number was slowly ticking down. 31.03, 31.02, 31.01…
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Something we need.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Does it annoy you when I ask so many questions?”
“It does.” He reached down to pat my thigh. “It’s a good thing you’re hot as fuck.”
We drove and drove until we came to a bridge raised twenty feet above a marshy area. Jayce slowed down gradually, until finally pulling across the other lane of traffic and parking on the left shoulder. A cement divider was all that separated us from the ground below. Up ahead was a sign that saidAltamaha River.
I looked at Jayce expectantly. “Well?”
Wordlessly, he pulled his phone off the mount and handed it to me. I stared at the numbers.
31.94, -82.35
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
Jayce stared at me with a knowing smile. He crossed his muscular arms over his chest, which made the tattoos bulge out.
And then it hit me.
The first tattoo on his arm was 3194.
The tattoo below it was 8233.
His app was a compass.
These werecoordinates.
“Holy shit!”
“Damn, Peaches,” Jayce said as he took the phone from me. “Watch your mouth.”
I followed him to a service ladder and we climbed down to the ground. Jayce went slowly since he couldn’t put too much weight on his right arm. I expected the ground to be muddy, but it was more like a dry forest floor. Jayce took the backpack from me, pulled out two flashlights, and then shouldered the bag.
We walked along a thin trail that ran directly away from the road. Our two flashlight cones scanned the path ahead and to either side, sending ghastly shadows swinging through the trees. It would have been terrifying if I was alone, but with Jayce leading me, I was fearless.
He held his phone out as we walked. Even though the second coordinate number was just two digits off, it took alongtime for -82.35 to change to -82.34. By the time it finally hit -82.33, we had been walking at least 15 minutes.
