Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 35507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 178(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 178(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Oakley sits forward. "This is it?"
"This is it."
"I expected more gunfire and less pie advertising."
"Keep expecting. Helix doesn't need a skyline to work. They need a quiet street and a woman who thinks a camera makes her invisible."
"I never thought I was invisible. I thought I was far enough. There's a difference."
"There isn't. Far enough ended when they stitched that bead in your jacket."
I take the first right off Main and roll past the diner, then the empty lot behind the hardware store. I don't park under a light. I don't park where the mountain road can see us. I let the truck idle at the curb across from a faded mural of the falls, engine ticking, wipers smearing what's left of the fog.
Oakley looks from the mural to me. "So what's the plan, mountain man? We hide in plain sight? We steal pie? We wait for your brother to text us a gold star?"
"We get you off this street before somebody recognizes the yellow. Then we figure out who in this town sold your name up the mountain."
"I didn't tell anyone my name."
"You didn't have to. The jacket did the talking."
She unbuckles and reaches for the door.
"Don't," I say.
"I'm stretching my legs."
"You're staying in the truck until I say otherwise."
"There it is. Management."
"There it is. The reason you're still talking."
She leaves her hand on the latch anyway, eyes on the diner window where a waitress is pouring coffee for a man in a dark jacket who hasn't touched his mug. Oakley sees it the same second I do. Her voice drops.
"Hawthorne."
"I see him."
"Helix?"
"Or a local who got paid to watch the road. Either way, he clocked the truck."
The man in the window turns his head. Our eyes meet across Main Street like the fog decided to pick a side.
I put the truck back in gear. "Stay belted. We're not done moving."
"I thought town was the safe part."
"Town is the crowded part. Safe is a word I don't use until I put you somewhere I control."
Oakley sits back, camera in her lap, mouth curved in a way that isn't sweet. "Then drive, Colt. And try not to enjoy giving me orders."
"I don't have to try."
I pull away from the curb and take us deeper into Woodbridge Falls, past the diner and the watching window, toward the side streets where a blue truck can still disappear if the mountain man driving it doesn't let a photographer open the door first.
4
Oakley
Colt doesn't take us deeper into town for long. He loops the block once, slow enough that I can count the parked trucks, then cuts behind the diner and kills the engine where the dumpsters hide the faded blue hood from Main Street.
"We're going in," he says.
I stare at him. "The man in the window. The one who clocked us. That diner."
"That diner has a back booth and enough locals to make a clean grab sloppy. We're regrouping where I can see every entrance. You're leaving the yellow in the truck."
"It's cold."
"It's visible from the street. Hoodie stays. Jacket stays here."
I want to argue because arguing with him is the only thing I still own. I peel the jacket off anyway and drop it on the seat. The navy hoodie is thinner. The air off the river finds my wrists. I keep the camera. I keep the drive in the pocket of my hoodie. If he tries to separate me from either one, we're going to have a louder conversation than this alley deserves.
He peels off his jacket. “Here,” he says, thrusting it at me.
“Wow. How chivalrous.”
He watches me put it on, and then tuck the camera away, jaw tight, that heavy mountain-man scowl doing overtime. "You follow my lead inside. You don't photograph the room. You don't announce Chicago. You drink whatever they pour and you let me talk."
"I can talk."
"I noticed. That's the problem."
"You're a delight. Has anyone told you that today, or are they all too busy getting shot at?"
"Walk, Vega."
The back hall of the diner is narrow and warm from the grill. A waitress with a pen in her hair glances up. “Welcome in. Take any booth. Be with you in a minute.”
The man in the dark jacket is gone from the front window. His mug is still there, coffee untouched, a bill tucked under the saucer. He left in a hurry. He may have wanted us to think that.
Colt puts me on the inside of the booth, his body between me and the room, and I hate how easily he does it. I also stay put, because the loft rail still lives in my knees.
The waitress sets down two mugs. "You look like the mountain spit you out. Pie's apple. That's what we've got."
"Coffee's fine," Colt says.
"Pie," I say, because if I'm going to be ordered around by a man who treats seatbelts as doctrine, I'm at least getting pastry out of the arrangement.