Philip’s frown was reflected by the other two. “We’re more vulnerable on foot,” he said.
“But we’ll be off road,” Kyle put in. “I doubt they’ll have dogs to track us.” His eyes met mine. “You sure you can lead the way and not get us stuck in some godforsaken bog?”
“I only know nice god-sanctioned bogs, I promise,” I replied. “Turn at the broken signpost right up there.” Kyle made a turn that left my stomach behind, and we bounced over rutted and winding dirt road for about a minute. “Here! Stop here!”
Kyle did so, and we quickly grabbed everything we had with us, which wasn’t all that much, thankfully. As we bailed out of the car, Philip snagged his jump bag from the trunk, and Kyle looked back toward the main road. “They went past,” Kyle said. “The brush is high enough to hide the car from the road, but they’ll be coming back to see where we turned off. We have about two minutes to get some distance and then go to ground.”
“Not a problem,” I insisted, then took off into the chest-high grass with the others close behind. Less than a minute later we heard the sound of tires on the bumpy road.
“Down,” Kyle ordered. We dropped to the wet, spongy ground and didn’t need another order to tell us to be still as statues. I concentrated on slowing my breathing, listened as the car stopped. The beam of a powerful flashlight skimmed by, but the grass was tall and we’d made it far enough away from the road that they couldn’t see any sign of us.
I heard a muttered and angry conversation, filled to the brim with curse words. After some more cursing, the men returned to their car and backed out to the highway. I began to rise, but Philip seized my arm and shook his head. Muscles taut, I listened for any evidence of our pursuers but only heard the retreating sound of their car. Even after it reached the highway and peeled out we remained still in the grass, and it took everything I had not to shriek and leap up when something slithered across my calf.
After what had to be ten minutes Kyle muttered, “Clear.”
Philip released my arm, and I shot to my feet. “Snake,” I gulped.
Luckily, Philip didn’t laugh at my reaction. Good thing, since I’d have decked him like Carol Ann, zombie baby or not. Or at least tried to. Okay, maybe just thought about it really hard.
“Which way?” he asked.
Fighting the deep desire to make a bunch of noise to chase off any lurking snakes, I turned and headed away from the dirt road and toward the thick darker darkness ahead that I knew was the woods. I had a panicked minute when I couldn’t locate the game trail, but finally found the dead tree that marked it. Philip pulled out a keychain LED light and clicked it to red as we started working our way through the brush and trees and sticker bushes. At long last, lights glimmered through the trees, and in another hundred feet the trail opened out onto a road.
“We lost them, so that’s good,” Naomi remarked. “On the other hand, after that jaunt through the brambles, I have thorns in unmentionable places.”
I grinned. “I’m not helping you with those.” I pointed to a rusted mailbox about fifty feet down the road. Beyond it the road turned to gravel. “That’s Randy’s driveway.” I brushed at mud and dirt and finally gave up. I couldn’t see what I was doing anyway.
“We’ll wait here,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, I think he’d freak if all four of us trooped up to his door.”
Naomi gave me a worried look. “Be careful.”
I had a feeling she was more worried about my mental well-being than the physical. “I will,” I replied, then jogged to Randy’s driveway.
Chapter 11
Randy began learning everything there was to know about cars about the time he was old enough to hold a wrench. His mama had run off not long after he was born, and his dad practically raised him in the garage. They worked together until a few years ago when his dad met a lady and moved to Houston. After Randy and I broke up I finally climbed out of the pit of denial I’d been in during most of my time with him, and accepted that much of Randy’s business wasn’t exactly on the legal end of things.
Right now that didn’t really bother me one bit. Hell, only a few months earlier I’d bashed a guy’s head in with a baseball bat. I didn’t have any room to talk.
My steps slowed as I reached the end of Randy’s drive. The gate itself probably hadn’t been closed in twenty years and hung crooked and corroded against the barb wire fence. A dilapidated, corrugated-metal garage, held together by rust and wishful thinking, stood beside a huge oak tree. A yellow bug light over the garage door made it impossible to determine the colors of the three fixer-upper cars parked in front of it. Lights inside the trailer and the faint thump of music told me Randy was home, and likely in a Carol Ann-free zone, since only his Charger was parked by the door. He didn’t like being on the hook to give someone a ride back to their car in the morning.
He’s expecting me, I reminded myself. He wasn’t stupid enough to have Carol Ann here when he knew I was coming by. Randy might be totally fine with watching two women fight in a bar, but he didn’t like a lot of drama in his own place.
I climbed the three steps and knocked. He opened the door a few seconds later and peered at me through the screen. “What happened to you?”
“Car trouble,” I said, keeping my eyes on his face so that I wouldn’t have to look down and see the oh-so-sexy view of his old, dingy tighty-whities—the only clothing he had on at the moment. And, knowing Randy, I couldn’t even chalk it up to some sort of sad attempt at a come on. It was completely normal for him to come home and strip down to underwear.
He pushed open the screen door. “C’mon in and get cleaned up.”
“Thanks.” I stepped in and took a look around. Not much had changed in the year since I’d last been here. The game system had been upgraded, and the recliner looked brand new, but the rest was as familiar as home. The smell of pot and cigarettes and bacon grease hung in the air. A bong sat on the TV stand beside the big screen, and the remnants of a couple of joints lay in the ashtray on the coffee table. “I just need a wet washcloth,” I told him, looking down at my jeans and shirt—both wet and muddy from lying in the marsh. “Not sure how much good it’ll do, but worth a try.”
“Sure thing.” He stepped to the kitchen, pulled a washcloth from a drawer and wet it, then wrung it out and handed it to me. “Where’s your car?” he asked as I started wiping the mud off my knees. “Stuck or broke down?”
“Um, well my car is parked down the street from Top Cow because I couldn’t get it to start earlier today.” I worked at cleaning off the worst of the gunk but gave up on getting the ground in stuff. “I was in a different car tonight that sort of got stuck.” Sighing, I swiped at my shirt. “It’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you. I need to borrow a car.”
Randy didn’t have any education past high school, but he wasn’t stupid. “You mean that’s what you came to Pillar’s for?” Hurt flickered across his face. “To get a car from me?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. Crap. Now I felt like a heel. “I’m sorry for misleading you. A couple of friends of mine are in some really deep trouble, and I, uh, need a car that can’t be traced to me.” I met his eyes. “I know we didn’t break up on the best of terms, but I . . . I hope you don’t still hate me.”
He reached for a pack of cigarettes. “Well, ain’t that some shit.”
Grimacing, I rinsed out the washcloth then set it on the counter. “I’m sorry. If you want me to go, I will.”