Chapter 1
613 Words
1
“What kind of a heap is that?”
Stacy looked up at the man climbing out of the car next to hers. He’d been riding her bumper since she’d pulled out of Cave Junction, Oregon five miles back. The tighter he’d hung in his black classic Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, the slower she went in her not so classic 1993 Toyota extended cab pickup. They’d barely been crawling when they reached the dusty Illinois Valley Airport parking lot.
He was a big guy—in a multi-muscle way: muscle car, seriously muscled chest under his tight University of Washington Huskies t-shirt, and a total musclehead. His dark wrap-around shades were as retro as his ride.
“My kind of heap. How many miles do you have on that Firebird?”
He grinned down at his car like it was a beloved pet. “Just seventy-five thou. Ain’t she sweet?”
“And she’ll be on the junk heap before a hundred and fifty. Unless,” she made a guess, “you replace the engine…again.”
He scowled that she’d nailed it. Not hard, as it was a high odds bet that the miles he’d put on it hadn’t been easy ones.
“I’ve already got three-hundred thousand on my heap’s original engine.”
His scowl darkened even more.
Maybe if she waited long enough, he’d move one step closer and she could take him out at the knees with her truck’s door. It was low enough on the little half-ton pickup. The truck had been a gift from her big brother, Bill, before he’d been blown up in a “training exercise in Alabama”—except she knew he’d been in Iraq and his death was accompanied by two new medals. They didn’t give those kinds of medals for training accidents. It was all she had left of him other than a folded flag and his dog tags.
“What are you doing here, honey? You lost?” The guy asked her in his best demeaning tone.
“What are you doing here… Oh, wait. Never mind. I already know.”
“What’s that?”
“Being an asshole for a living.”
Instead of going to fury—she’d quietly put her truck in reverse and was ready to pop the clutch and peel out if necessary—he grinned. “Most folks don’t know that about me.”
“Seemed pretty damn obvious from where I’m sitting.”
He burst out a laugh. It was a big one that seemed to fill the air—which definitely needed something. The April morning was already hot and dry.
The small airport was five miles south of Cave Junction, which wasn’t much of a town by anyone’s standards except rural Oregon’s. Two thousand people and six restaurants—if you counted the Dutch Bros. Coffee drive through—were tucked in the rough terrain close by the California border. The closest town that was any bigger was Grants Pass, over thirty miles back. There was an aridness to the land here that seemed wrong after growing up farther up the coast. Around here, the Douglas firs were scattered rather than growing in thick, mountain-covering expanses. Tall grasses predominated, which would be dangerously dry and brown long before fire season. Even more so around the airport: a flat, baking expanse with no activity beneath the blazing sunshine other than this two-legged laughing hyena.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“Immensely,” he was still grinning.
She told herself not to, but was weak and asked, “Why?”
“Because I just figured out who you are.”
“You mean other than a pain in the ass.” She’d been called that enough times in her life to bury a multitude of lesser sins.
“Yep! Other than that. You’re Stacy Richardson and you’re here to fly helicopters.”
Only one man would know that. Curt Williams—her new boss… Who she’d just called an asshole.
Stacy sighed and climbed out of her truck. At least she was batting her usual average.
- Writer
