Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(28)

June revved the quiet engine, nodding to Al’s mom. Definitely not a muscle car, thought Peter. When Al’s mom hurried off to her new ride, Peter stepped over to the van’s open window. Was he waiting for an invitation? Maybe he was.

“So,” he said. “What do you think?”

She looked in the rearview mirror, at her hands on the wheel, anyplace but at Peter’s face. Her voice was ragged. “I don’t know who you are.”

He resisted the urge to touch her. “I’m just a guy,” he said. “I went to war and came home. Like a lot of people.”

“You’re not like other people.”

“Maybe not,” he admitted.

“I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“I was a lieutenant in the Marines. Of course you can trust me. I’m like a Boy Scout, with muscles.”

She turned to look him full in the face. “No,” she said. “You aren’t.”

God, she was tough. “June, you don’t owe me anything,” he said. “But I can protect you. Keep you safe.”

“Give me the gun,” she said.

Peter shifted to let the daypack slide from his shoulder, then held it by the strap while he opened the flap to the main compartment. The .357 sat in easy reach atop the black drawstring sack. She put out a hand and touched the weapon with her splayed hand, laid her fingers across the walnut grip. He thought she’d pick up the gun, but she didn’t. She turned from the waist and grabbed the whole heavy pack with both hands and took it from him, laid it beside her on the passenger seat.

Then she stomped on the gas, gravel spitting from her tires as she slewed the van around in a tight half circle and out to the road.

Peter guessed she’d made her decision.

He stood in the softly falling rain, watching her go.

Al walked up beside him, shaking his head. “Man, you are something stupid. It was me, I’d be hanging on to that bumper with my teeth.”

Peter nodded. “I sure thought about it.”

But he knew it wouldn’t have worked if he’d pushed it. She’d seen something in him that scared her. And rightly so. Some days he scared himself. It had to be her choice.

He felt something in his stomach, or just above it. An emptiness there, a dark pit. It made no sense. They’d only met that morning. He knew almost nothing about her. But he also felt like he’d known her forever.

He hadn’t thought you could be so attached to someone in so short a time.

They’d packed an awful lot into that day.

He had to admit that it wasn’t all about her. Yes, she needed help. But it felt so good, using all those parts of himself that had gone sour and rusty. That Marine inside him, who wanted—who needed—to be useful.

Without that, he was just a guy with a bear bite out of his boot and blood in his hair.

Sore leg, sore ribs, and still cramped up and sweating from ten minutes inside.

No change of clothes, not a nickel in his pocket, and his truck a few hundred miles away.

Not that he was feeling sorry for himself.

He turned to the mechanic. “How much would you give me for a totaled Subaru, maybe thirty years old?”

Al snorted. He was cleaning his glasses with the tail of his shirt. “Not much. Where is it?”

“Behind that pizza place.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

They headed out toward the blacktop, Al moving slowly to accommodate Peter’s limp.

The leg was going to be a problem. He didn’t know if it was the ankle or something more serious. He should probably give it some rest, ice it. The ribs would take time, too.

He scanned the two-lane and saw no sign of traffic, coming or going. Nothing on the secondary road. They passed long driveways to hidden houses. He peered through the trees, looking for signs of life.

For signs of June, or her pursuers.

It was still possible he might be of use to her.

? ? ?

THE SUBARU LOOKED like a discarded toy, crimped and crumpled, half-hidden in the scrub with the rear hatch stuck open. Peter couldn’t believe it had gotten them here. Al walked around the car, scrutinizing the damage, making small sad sounds with each new discovery. When he got to the bullet holes, the sounds got louder.

“You rolled it, what, a couple of times? And drove away?”

Peter nodded.

“Man, I’m gonna buy my mom one of these. You guys should be dead. You know that, right?”

Peter nodded again.

“Don’t be that way,” said Al. “She’ll be okay. That girl looked pretty fierce to me.”

“How much for the car? I’m not promising it’ll start. And the front end is shot.”

“Parts only? I’ll give you three hundred. And that’s only because you overpaid me for that Mustang.”

“I overpaid by a lot more than three hundred,” said Peter.

“Yeah you did.” Al grinned. “Okay, five hundred. Lemme see what I got in petty cash.”

Peter heard the sound of an approaching car. He turned to look through the gap in the trees and saw one of the black Explorers turn from the secondary road onto the two-lane, heading back the way it had come.

“Shit,” he said. “I might need to buy another car. And that gun.”

“Maybe not,” Al said, and nodded at his mom’s grocery store across the two-lane. A green Honda minivan rocketed from hiding behind Esmerelda’s grocery, across the road, then into the dirt parking lot at speed. It came to a sliding stop snug behind the building. The driver’s window hummed down.