Run Rose Run(90)

The man glanced nervously back toward the house. Its cheap aluminum siding was coming off in places, and its roof was badly in need of repair. In the front yard were a few broken lawn chairs, an upside-down laundry basket, and a baseball bat leaning up against a rusting Weber grill. “I gotta pay down a few debts,” he allowed.

“Slots?” Ethan asked, not a hint of judgment in his voice.

“Blackjack,” the man said. “And horses.”

Ethan nodded sympathetically, as if he knew what this kind of desperation felt like. He’d never gambled, but he knew what it was like to be poor. He looked up inside the wheel wells, though cars didn’t rust in the desert the way they did in wet Tennessee winters, and then he touched a smattering of dents in the back rear panel. “Someone use this for target practice?”

“My wife,” the man said glumly.

Ethan could imagine she had good reason to let off a little steam. A man didn’t have any business gambling away the money he needed to survive, not to Ethan’s way of thinking. He opened the hood and looked at the engine.

“New spark plugs,” the man offered. “And I just changed the oil last month.” He pronounced it oll.

“I don’t want to buy this truck,” Ethan said.

The man seemed to visibly shrink. He kicked his toe into the weeds at the edge of the driveway. “I suppose I could go a little lower on the price.”

“I want to borrow it,” Ethan said.

The man gave a low whistle. “Well, I don’t see how that helps—”

“I’ll pay what you’re asking,” Ethan said. But he didn’t want to own the truck. Didn’t want to take advantage of someone so down on his luck, or be the reason this man had to ride around town on the busted-looking bicycle that was parked on the porch. “I’ll give you the money and drive off. And then I’ll bring the truck back to you when I’m done using it. It’s a win-win. You never get those kinds of odds around here, do you?”

The man looked extremely doubtful. “You ain’t going to use it in no crime, right?”

“I can assure you I’m not. Take my picture.”

“Why?”

Somewhat impatiently, Ethan motioned for him to do it, and the man pulled out a cracked Android and snapped a photo.

“There,” Ethan said. “Now take a picture of my license—there you go. You’ve got proof of who I am and what I look like, just in case anything bad happens. But nothing’s going to.” God willing, he added silently.

The man seemed overwhelmed by this turn of events. “Shoot,” he said. “You sure about this? You ain’t gonna take it for a test-drive, even?”

“I’m in a hurry. I’m going to pay you, and I’m going to leave. But if I hear anything funny, I’ll be back and I’ll be pissed. Because you told me it runs like a dream, and I chose to believe you.” Ethan held out the envelope with six thousand dollars in cash that Ruthanna had given him. “You’re an honest guy, aren’t you? The way I’m an honest guy? But maybe it’s best to stick around your yard for a while, just in case.”

“Sure, sure, I can do that.” He glanced up at Ethan, his darting eyes uncertain. “This is for real?”

Ethan knew that the man could run, of course, but he was willing to bet more than six grand that he wouldn’t. “It is for real,” Ethan said. “But I’m going to ask you to throw in the bat over there.”

The man laughed, but then he stopped when he saw that Ethan was serious. “Okay, okay, sure, no problem.” He handed Ethan the keys and then jogged over to retrieve the bat.

Ethan got into the truck. The cab smelled a little sweet, like pipe tobacco. He stretched his arm out the window to take the bat. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” he said.

“When do you think you’ll come back?” the man asked.

Ethan started the engine with a roar. “A few days, I hope,” he said.

“Well, good luck,” the man called as Ethan backed out of the driveway.

Ethan put the truck in drive and gunned it down the street.

He could tell right off that the truck ran smoothly and that it would get him where he needed to go. Fifteen hundred miles was all he asked of it for now, with another fifteen hundred to get itself back home.

Ethan turned on the radio, and Maren Morris was singing “My Church.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel.

Soon traffic thinned and he’d made it into the desert. Desolate and brown, under an empty blue sky, it made him think of Afghanistan—a place he tried hard not to remember. Ethan Blake set his jaw and practiced box breathing. It was twenty-odd hours to Arkansas. He watched the speedometer climb up to seventy-eight miles per hour, and then he put the Ram in cruise control.





Chapter

81


It was five o’clock in the morning when AnnieLee walked up to the bright-yellow Freightliner parked at a rest stop outside Albuquerque and knocked on the window. She’d spent the night at a Roadside Inn a few miles down the highway—it was a major step down from the Aquitaine—and now it was time to get moving. She waited for a little while, shivering, and then she knocked again. A minute or two later, a sleepy, angry face appeared.

The man it belonged to motioned her away. “I don’t want no company,” he said, his voice muffled through the glass. “I don’t do that kind of thing.” He held up a ring finger. “Married, okay?”