Thieving too-young one-night stand total stranger in the passenger seat notwithstanding, Derrick tended towards caution in driving as in most things. The PT Cruiser didn’t exactly gobble up the hundred miles between Mankato and St. Paul, but nor were the roads as bad as Derrick expected. Certainly not as bad as they must have been last night for a Greyhound bus driver to turn back and unload his hapless passengers on the over-crowded Lamplight. The snowplow brigade had obviously lumbered through behind the worst of the storm, and the follow-the-leader tracks up the snow-packed highway were only occasionally slippery. The ninety miles that would have taken an hour and a half in the spring took more like four, but eventually the specter of the Twin Cities rose up from the gray horizon, and i
