This book was titled by Ben McComas.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
A Biography of Mary Kay McComas
IT WAS HIS nature to be honest and forthright.
Over the years he’d taught himself to be prudent and thrifty as well, so it went against his grain to shred the nearly new fan belt in the rented compact with a metal file. The spare tire he’d thrown in a ditch a hundred miles east would weigh on his conscience for some time to come. But at this point it seemed as necessary to shred the fan belt and toss the tire as it was to be dishonest and misleading.
A day, two at the most, was all he would need to get a clear picture of the circumstances. Then he could come clean, tell everyone who he was and why he’d come, and they’d welcome him with open arms.
Maybe he should have brought something to drink, he thought, touching his dry tongue to his drier lips. There was no telling how long he’d have to wait, having stranded himself in the vast Nevada desert. He hoped that the emergency-road-service operator could follow simple instructions. If that overly calm, soft-spoken representative called the wrong towing service, there would be hell to pay—bet the rent on it, he nodded decisively.
Heat waves rose up from the asphalt all around him. The sun licked fire on his face and neck. He slipped the loosely knotted neck tie off and tossed it through the car window to join the suit jacket and the cellular telephone on the seat. Posing as a traveling businessman to appear more pathetic and helpless had been pointless, a clear case of overkill, he decided. A man on vacation in jeans and a T-shirt would have looked just as pitiful and disabled in this heat. Hell, if he were truly stranded, a three-hundred-pound truck driver in a tank top and shorts with a cold six-pack under his arm would have tears in his eyes. …
Come to think of it, who in their right mind wouldn’t procure fluids prior to embarking on a trip across a desert?
He leaned back against the driver’s-side door and wiped his brow with a stiff white handkerchief, his scattered thoughts shifting back to his prime objective.
Man’s inhumanity to man was what he’d dedicated his life to preventing, which made it as sad as it was ironic that he hadn’t known what was happening in his own home.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall forward on his neck. What would it be like to speed down this very highway on a motorcycle? he wondered. Heart free, the wind in his hair? With no responsibilities, an underdeveloped sense of duty, and a staunch passion to live—to feel, to taste, to see life second by second?
A new pain tugged at the delicate scar tissue of long-healed wounds, and he breathed in the hot dry air, held it in his lungs until they ached, then slowly released it.
He was partly to blame. As much as he wanted to plead his innocence, ignorance wasn’t a good enough excuse. He should have been there. He should have paid more attention. He should have suspected.
A movement in the east caught his attention. His expensive oxford shirt was pasted to his back, wet and sticky. He was definitely going to make a wretched first impression, he thought, a wry smile curving his lips as he shaded his eyes to look down the road.
The blur of heat waves was so dense that he didn’t see the truck until it was almost upon him, despite the fact that the landscape was as flat and dry as a tortilla.
In order to be all the things he prided himself most on being—honest, forthright, prudent, and thrifty—he knew it was necessary to be prepared. Going into this particular situation, he felt he was sufficiently prepared to accept whatever came his way.
The tow truck, for instance, was not new and shiny but old, rusted, and missing the right front fender. This didn’t surprise him. The Albee Trucking & Towing logo on the door was bashed in, chipped, and faded. That was a relief. He now knew he could count on his rental company. A woman was driving. He’d been hoping she would be.
The truck came to a loud rattling stop in front of him, and he got his first good look at her. Michelin was her name. She wore a baseball cap with the word BOSS across the bill, her dark hair pulled through the hole in the back like a ponytail.
Dark hair. A brunette?
Odd. His brother, Eric, had always been so definite about his preference for blondes. He used to say, “Brunettes think too much. That’s why you like them, remember? Me? I’ll take a cute little blonde with long legs and a good sense of humor any day of the week.” Then he’d grin wickedly. But he’d been … what? Maybe seventeen or eighteen at the time. Young. Immature. Cocky.
Well, be that as it may, the fact that she was a brunette wasn’t an earth-shattering surprise—but the rest of her face was. It belonged on a dairy poster. Healthy was the first word that came to him. She had a glowing, sun-kissed complexion, an uncomplicated nose, and a large mouth with soft, luscious-looking lips that were smiling at him, showing him a row of white even teeth. Shaded glasses dangled from her fingertips and large, thoughtful dark eyes were taking him in and evaluating him at ten times the speed of his own.
“Are you waiting for me?” she called through the truck’s open side window. “Or the next bus? Which, if you’re lucky, should pass this way in about”—she looked at her watch—“oh, four or five hours, depending on the special at Eddy’s Diner today. If it’s meat loaf or salmon cakes, it’ll be here on time. If it’s the chicken special, you might be here a while.”
“No. No,” he said, intrigued by the reaction in his knees to her slightly raspy voice. “I sent for you. Actually, I called the rental company. I’m hoping they sent you.”
“Is your name Thomas?”
“Yes,” he said, and where he might have smiled happily at being rescued, he smiled instead to hide any guilt that might be lurking in his eyes. “Please tell me you’re not a mirage and that you know more about cars than I do. Tell me you can fix it.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m sure not a mirage, and I’ll give it my best shot. How’s that?”
“That sounds good.”
It was part of her routine to stop the truck with the motor running and have a check-it-out conversation with would-be customers. She had good instincts about people, and it seemed that the more inane the subject of the initial dialogue, the more she could tell about the person.
This man, for instance, knew she knew he wasn’t waiting for a bus and that he didn’t care what the special at Eddy’s Diner was, but he was friendly enough and well-mannered enough to play along with her. That he was glad to see her was clear in his facial expression, but that he had no intention of taking advantage of the fact that she was a woman was apparent in his respectful, appreciative manner of speaking. And, of course, her job was always easier when she didn’t have to deal with amateur mechanics.
This man was okay, she decided, taking her foot off the brake as she slipped her dark glasses back on.
Then digressing, just a bit, she noted he was also breath-clogging, heart-halting, skin-tingling, palm-sweatingly handsome! A tall man with broad shoulders and not even a hint of a paunch above his belt, he had dark wavy hair and sharp keen eyes that were probably green but could also be brown. She found herself itching to get close enough to find out.
It was his smile, however—wide and charming and a little bit devilish—that sent her pulse racing. She took another quick peek at it through the rearview mirror.
The name Mr. Thomas was still ringing strangely in his ears while she pulled the truck ahead of the rental car along the side of the road. He stepped out onto the asphalt as she used the rear- and side-view mirrors to back it expertly to within a foot of the front fender and turned off the engine.
It wasn’t the first time he’d thought it unusual for a woman to be operating a towing service—dangerous even, now that he’d seen how empty and isolated this stretch of highway was. But she was clearly no novice. Every movement she made was a study in confidence.
She gathered papers and heavy work gloves off the seat next to her, opened the door, and step-hopped to the ground.
Noah could feel himself melting into the soft, steaming asphalt beneath his feet. Visions of Daisy Mae blinked through his mind as he took in the long expanse of shapely leg between cutoff jeans and the work boots on her feet. The sleeveless cotton shirt she had tied at her waist wasn’t filled to quite the same magnitude, and, of course, the hair was the wrong color, but these were minor details and did nothing to ease the hard lump of air stuck firmly in his throat.
“What seems to be your problem?” she asked.
“What?”
“The problem? With your car?”
“Oh,” he said, collecting himself quickly. “Ah … I don’t know.”
Her stride was long and slow as she walked back to the car. She nodded and smiled and squeezed the gloves tight in her hand. Something wild and crazy was stirring inside her, jingling her nerves and prickling her skin.
“You’re not out of gas, are you?” she asked, her tone light, almost teasing.
This was a good sign. She liked him. He could tell.
“No. I was careful to fill up the tank back in Gypsum. The man there said it would be a hundred and twenty miles to the next gas station. I was pretty sure I had enough, but I had him top it off to make sure.” A pause. “He checked the water in the radiator too,” he added, wanting to impress her with his clear thinking, his foresight and vigilance … with anything really.
“Aw. That explains it,” she said, setting the papers and gloves on the back of the truck and raising the hood over the sedan’s engine with a quick glance in his direction.
“It does?” He stepped closer. “Explains what?”
“Why you look so familiar to me,” she said, concentrating hard on the engine, looking for the most obvious problems before going through each system in detail. “The man at the station back in Gypsum is my dad. I must have seen you while you were there.” She frowned. “But I don’t recall seeing this car before.”
His heart sank to the pit of his stomach. He looked familiar to her?
“Oh. Well … don’t all cars start to look alike after a while?” He stepped up beside the car to peer in at the engine with her—as if he knew this end of an automobile as well as he knew the other. “I mean, wouldn’t a blue … ah … Chevy you saw today look exactly like a blue Chevy you saw a month ago?” He was the world’s worst liar. He really was. His face was hot and his hands were clammy. Couldn’t she tell he was lying?
“Aw,” she said again with satisfaction, breaking in on his stammering as if she hadn’t been listening. “I think this might be your lucky day, Mr. Thomas. You snapped your belt here,” she said, giving a hefty tug and pulling the belt out of the engine like a rubber snake. “I might be able to replace this and have you back on the road in less than an hour.”
“An hour?” After he’d gone to all this trouble? After he’d sweat blood deciding which belt to cut? After he’d made all these plans? Damn, maybe he was going to have to flatten that tire after all. He looked to see several spares on the back of her truck and cursed them.
“Sure,” she said, frowning over the belt, examining it. “This happens all the time because of the heat.” She paused. “This is a rental, right?”
“Ah … yes. Yes, it is. Why do you ask?” he said, feigning concern.
She shook her head. “You may want to show someone this belt when you return the car.” She handed it to him. “Normal wear and tear affects the whole belt. That one’s like new except for where it snapped.”
“Hmmph.” He was studying the belt, sweating profusely, and feeling guilty as hell. Seems he wasn’t any good at sabotage either.
“If you’ll fill out this form for me, I can get started,” she said, seeming not to give the belt another thought as she handed him a clipboard with a double-copy document on it and a ballpoint pen hanging by a string. After a sharp look, she added, “There’s water in the cooler on the front seat. Help yourself.”
The relief in his smile came naturally and for more than one reason. She wasn’t going to ask any questions, she had water, and she didn’t seem to mind that he was acting like an idiot.
She turned then, walking back toward the front of the truck, and that’s when he saw it—the military-issue Colt .45 stuffed into the waistband of her shorts against her spine. He wasn’t much of a mechanic, but he’d had weapons training. And that little piece of mayhem explained at least part of the woman’s confident air. It could easily blow a tree in half.
It also—and he had no idea where this thought came from—was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen a woman wear.
“Have you ever had to use that thing?” he asked, more than a little curious.
She glanced over her shoulder, and he motioned with his eyes to the gun. She grinned, and his heart fluttered in his chest.
“Nope,” she said, reaching into the cab of the truck for a parts catalog. He was looking her over, a common enough experience in her life, but it usually didn’t make her want to giggle. She kept her back to him as she opened the book on the seat and ran her finger down one page after another. “I don’t stop if I don’t feel easy about it, and I wear the gun in plain sight to ward off any second thoughts someone might be having.” She found what she was looking for and leaned closer to the page, reading. “A couple of times,” she said, closing the book and tossing it back inside, “I’ve had to wave it around in the air, to get a drunk’s attention, but I’ve never actually had to fire it.”
He watched her climb onto the truck bed and open a large metal box. She wasn’t that big a woman, physically. She was on the tall side and looked strong enough, with smooth, defined muscles in her upper arms—the kind that came from daily exertion not a gym. She had capable-looking hands and firm, toned leg muscles.
“Could you shoot it?” he asked, intrigued, suspecting the kick from the Colt would knock her flat. “If you had to, could you?”
She stopped rummaging in the metal box to give him a thoughtful look.
“Could I or would I? There’s a difference.”
She squinted through her dark sunglasses to study him, and doing the same in her direction, he said, “Yes.”
A slow smile came to her expression. She liked his directness.
“Yes,” she repeated, without a hint of doubt, before returning to the contents of the box. “Wouldn’t it be stupid to carry it around, not knowing how or when to use it?”
Just that simply, without rancor or insult, she was telling him that he was free to think anything he liked about her—good or bad, flattering or otherwise—but it would be very foolish of him to believe she was helpless.
Noah, however, had discovered weeks ago that she wasn’t helpless, and he was still curious about the gun.
“What I meant was”—he attempted an air of casual conversation by filling out the reimbursement form as he spoke—“wouldn’t a smaller-caliber gun be easier for you to handle? Give you better control? I know something about guns, and that one’s … pretty heavy duty.”
Once again, she smiled easily, and he was glad he had looked up in time to catch it.
“It is,” she agreed, retrieving two fan belts from the collection she kept inside the box, reading the cardboard band around each. “But when I do something, I like to do it well. And … I’m sort of sentimental about this gun. My husband gave it to me.”
Then it was the same gun he’d given Eric all those years ago … and she wasn’t averse to talking about him.
“I’m sure it puts his mind at ease knowing you’re carrying it out here with you,” he said.
“I guess so,” she said, tossing both belts back into the box, looking very unhappy. “We have a little problem here, Mr. Thomas. I don’t have the right size belt to fit this car. I don’t even have one that’ll do till you get to Warm Springs.”
He really wished she’d stop calling him Mr. Thomas. He hadn’t known it would grate on his nerves every time he heard it.
She jumped lightly to the ground in front of him. Casually, she slipped her right hand into her back pocket. The cotton shirt pulled tight across her breasts, and Noah held his breath, hoping she would continue to speak. He couldn’t, there wasn’t a thought left in his head.
“I’ll call and see if we have one in stock and then someone can run it out to us,” she said. He thought of the nail and hammer in the trunk of the car, and how he could get to them without her seeing. “But if we don’t, you’re going to have to decide if you want me to tow you back to Gypsum, where you might have to wait a day or two for us to get it in, or if you’d rather have me tow you into Warm Springs or even Tonopah, where they’re more likely to have the right size belt. But then I’d have to charge you for the extra towing, plus my trip back to Gypsum.”
When he was slow to respond, not wanting to appear too eager to return to Gypsum with her, she went on, “I’m really sorry about this. I hate to have to tow you anywhere, it’s such a simple thing to fix. There’s no getting around a service charge, but I could have saved you a lot of time if I’d had the right belt.”
Shamefully, this amused him. “It’s not your fault,” he said, feeling another twinge of guilt for distressing her. “Like you said, these things happen. And if you don’t have one in stock, you can tow me back to Gypsum, I think. I’m in no hurry.”
“Oh,” she said. Unexpectedly addlepated, she wished she was wearing a dress, a slinky dress, cut high and low … a slinky red dress. … “Good. Most folks who come through here are in a rush to get … through. It’s the desert,” she said with a shrug, walking off to the front of the truck once more. “Makes people feel like they have to get from one end of it to the other as fast as they can, before they die out here, stranded and alone.” She laughed softly. “It’s funny, but I guess if you’re not used to it, being completely alone can make you a little crazy.”
But she was used to it, he could tell. She was as comfortable in her own company as she would be in a room full of friends—as she was with a stranger on a deserted highway.
She left the door open after climbing inside the cab of the truck to call Gypsum on the radio. Noah finished filling out the papers, signing N and T with a squiggle behind it that could have just as easily read Tessler as Thomas, and handed them in to her silently, noting the cooler on the other side of the vehicle.
“ … I won’t put the chains on till you know for sure,” she was telling someone when he opened the rider’s side door. “And Eric?” Some static on the radio. “Will you step on it? It’s hot out here.”
Reaching for a bottle of water, Noah’s arm stopped mid-motion inside the cooler. He knew about Eric Tessler Albee, reported to be age fourteen, solid student, basketball enthusiast, no arrest record, dime-sized brandywine birthmark on his left shoulder. But hearing his name spoken out loud, and realizing it was him on the other end of the radio, was like a sudden slap in the face.
Eric Tessler Albee was real.
He looked at the woman, Eric’s mother, and found that she’d removed her glasses again and was watching him. He quickly offered her a bottle of water, to which she shook her head no, then smiled at him.
“Got another fainter on your hands?” came a young male voice amid the crackling and snapping on the radio.
Her smile broadened to a grin, and without looking away, she said, “No. Maybe not, but let’s not take any chances, okay?”
She held the microphone with both hands in her lap and sighed. It was several seconds more before the next message came across. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Her face lit up brighter than the sun, and then she chuckled. She shook her head and glanced over at him, her eyes sparkling with amusement, glowing with love and happiness.
“Kids,” she said simply.
He could only nod and turn his attention to drinking deeply from the water bottle, worried that he might choke. If she had ever smiled at his brother like that, then his actions during the last year of his life were easily explained. What nineteen-year-old boy could resist a face like that? What wouldn’t he give up to see it on a daily basis?
When he thought he could speak coherently, he stated the obvious, hoping to glean more information.
“Yours, I take it?”
“Mmmm,” she affirmed nodding, still smiling, still amused. “He’s made it his life’s ambition to drive me slowly insane, I think.”
“Must be a teenager.”
She laughed. “For two years now. He’s fourteen. Do you have children that age?”
“No. But most everyone I know does.”
“They’re a breed in themselves, teenagers,” she said with the authority only a parent of one could exercise. “They’re either the most wonderful and interesting things in the world or the most frustrating. I’ve developed a real”—she shook the mike in her right hand, looking for the proper word—“kinship with my dad over the past few years. He put up with four teenagers, and he’s still alive to talk about it.”
They both chuckled at that, and became aware that their conversation was heading easily in a personal direction. They were no longer tow person and strandee, but more explicitly a woman and a man with a budding interest in one another.
“Mom?” came Eric’s voice again. “Was that a two-five-six-oh-seven-eight-oh or a two-five-six-oh-seven-eight-one?”
“Um … hang on. I can’t remember now.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter, we don’t have either one. And the only other six rib we have is too long.” Noah released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. His guardian star was still shining on him. “You towing it over to Charlie’s place or bringing it home?”
“Home, but have Granddad check with Charlie before he calls the distributor. Maybe Lou Garrett in Tonopah too. We may still be able to save this man some time.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m really sorry about this, Mr. Thomas.” She hung the cord of the microphone over a knob on the radio. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to Warm Springs?”
“Positive. You know, I’ve never met anyone as reluctant to make money as you seem to be. Where I come from the tow-truck operators tow you even if all you need is a jump start.”
“Well, I’m not here to make a fortune off your misfortune,” she said, putting her glasses back on before she hopped down off the truck again. Her hands were trembling. Walking back to the tow bar, she added, “If I can fix whatever’s wrong on the side of the road, I do it. I believe in treating other people the way I’d like to be treated. And, to be honest, it saves me a lot of time too.”
He was willfully wasting her time, but soon she’d have enough money to waste all the time she wanted.
“Well, you sure don’t hear that philosophy much anymore,” he said, watching her, amazed that she could make even the lowliest movement look agile—elegant even.
She laughed. “I hear it all the time. I borrowed it from my dad.”
He thought of his own father—whose credo was to do unto others before they did unto you—and missed him. Not because of the way his dad thought or what he did, but maybe because he hadn’t known any different. At least, that’s what Noah wanted to believe. Had to believe. Needed to believe …
“So, Mr. Thomas,” she said, breaking in on his thoughts, releasing the hydraulic hoist that lowered the tow bar to the ground as she wiggled her fingers into heavy work gloves. “What’s a nice man like you doing in a place like this?”
“A little bit of everything,” he said, smiling at the role reversal. “A little sightseeing. A little personal business. A little … business-business.”
“What kind of business-business are you in?” She squatted, then got down on hands and knees to look under the car.
He’d known she would eventually ask the question, and he was prepared with an honest, if somewhat oblique answer.
“I’m with the government. They send me places to look at things, make evaluations, write reports. Sometimes I implement changes. That’s what I like to do, roll up my sleeves and make things change.”
“What sort of things?” Maybe if she kept him talking he wouldn’t notice what she was doing. She wasn’t in the habit of wishing things different, but this once it would be nice to have a more ladylike job.
She tossed the heavy tow bar under the car as if it were a coat hanger. Noah took a second look at the muscles in her arms. She was a lot stronger than she looked.
“Ah … well, sometimes I work with mining companies to get them to try different mining techniques or introduce farmers to new farming methods, things like that.” She had one side of the tow bar hooked to the front axle and was struggling with the other. “Can I help you with that?”
“No sense in both of us getting dirty,” she said, her voice strained with a final effort to tip the hook over the metal bar. “There, got it.” Her hands went directly to the next task of chaining the bar and wheels securely in place. “But thanks for the offer.”
People who knew her rarely offered to help her with anything physical because they assumed she could handle it herself. Strangers generally went in three directions. Either they refused to offer help because they were paying for the service or they didn’t offer to help because they were hoping to see her fail or they insisted on helping, assuming her gender required it. She liked that he held his offer until she looked as if she needed it.
“Have you been doing this long?” he asked, motioning to the truck.
“All my life,” she said, getting to her feet. “My earliest memories are of going out with my dad. This was my job.” She picked up a red plastic light and began to unwind the wires already attached to the taillights of the truck, slowly walking to the back of the car to attach it to the lid of trunk. “It’s the most important job, you know,” she said, repeating words she’d heard a hundred times. “Because it can save the lives of the people driving behind us, so they know this car is being towed, and no one’s in it to control it.”
Noah smiled at the simple logic that had been used to make her feel important as a child. For an instant something close to envy, coursed through him. He was eager to meet this man she called Dad, this man for whom his brother had given up his own father.
SHE DIDN’T MIND that he followed her up and down the length of the car talking to her while she worked, or that he was watching her as if her every movement fascinated him. What bothered her was that she was intensely aware of it—of him and the sound of his voice, the way he walked, and that he kept his hands in his pockets as if he couldn’t trust them.
She was a minor authority on hands. The shape, the size, the character of them. Had been for a long time. She liked his hands. They were big, according to her mental measure, and shaped perfectly, as if a sculptor had spent many loving hours forming them. Slender. Graceful. And yet they were work-worn. Callused and peppered with small scars, they were hands that knew hard labor, the hands of an honest man.
A strange man, too, if the unconscious battle he was fighting with his clothes was any indication. She hadn’t seen expensive, monogrammed shirts worn with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows before. He’d slipped his hands inside the collar to rub the places on his neck where the collar itched; unbuttoned another button every five minutes; finally pulled the tail of the shirt out of his pants to let it hang loose and damp in the arid air. He was much more comfortable and relaxed since he’d taken it off altogether, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it onto the backseat of the Escort. Seemed to her that if he preferred soft casual T-shirts to starched oxford button-downs, that’s what he should have worn.
“So I didn’t really make any appointments or tell anyone when I’d be in town,” he was ad-libbing. “I figured that since I’d never been to this part of the country before, I’d just take my time and get a good look at it.”
She gave the hoist one final back-and-forth jerk to make sure it, the safety chains, and the front end of the car were stable and secure, then asked, “Have you seen enough of this particular part of the country yet? Or would you like to take a few pictures before we go?”
“No no, I’ve seen plenty.” He laughed. “More than enough. Take me away from this place.” He was already climbing into the truck, pushing the cooler over between them. “I need food. I need an air-conditioned hotel room. I need a shower … and maybe a nap.”
She chuckled, even as she noticed how incredibly small the cab of truck seemed all of a sudden. He was leaning on the door with his elbow out the window, but it felt as if he were sitting too close to her, rubbing against her, touching her, in spite of the two feet between them.
“Okay, Mr. Thomas, hang on, then. I’ll get you back to Gypsum in record time,” she said, turning the key in the ignition.
If she called him Mr. Thomas again he’d scream, pull out his hair, and make a complete confession. It was like electric-shock torture, frying his nerves to a crisp.
There hadn’t been another vehicle on the road since he’d pulled his over, but she still looked behind them before pulling onto the road and making a U-turn. Her long legs weren’t simply objects of beauty, he noted appreciatively, they worked the clutch and brakes of the truck with ease; her arms maneuvered it as if it were a Matchbox toy.
“By the way, I’m Mich Albee,” she said.
“Mich?” he said, pronouncing it as she had, with a sh at the end. This was the perfect time to ask her to call him Noah, but he just couldn’t risk it yet.
A faint smile. “It’s a long, dumb story. Michelin is my real name.”
“It’s pretty. Michelin,” he said, enjoying the sound of it.
She slipped him an if-you-say-so look. She’d argued the merits of having an unusual name before, but win or lose, she was stuck with it.
For a few minutes they drove along in a comfortable silence, content to know everything was going as planned. But then the silence started to become uncomfortable. Should she say something? What could he ask her?
“Are there—”
“Where are you—”
They started speaking at once, then laughed when they realized they’d been thinking the same thing.
“Where are you from, Mr. Thomas?” she asked, flashing him a quick smile, wondering if she looked as jumpy as she felt. Something in her mind was ticking off every breath he took, knew his fingers were tapping lightly on the door, in time with a snappy country-western tune she could barely hear on the radio.
“Chicago originally. But like I said, I travel a lot—or I did, until recently. I have a small apartment in Washington, D.C., for when I’m between jobs.”
“My husband was from Chicago,” she said. “I don’t think he liked it very much.”
“Why not?” Looking interested was no pretense.
“Well, I think there were a lot of reasons why he wasn’t happy there, but I think he just preferred wide-open spaces, fewer people.”
“Lots of people get claustrophobic in big cities. But this”—he motioned to the harsh desert wasteland—“this is sort of extreme, don’t you think?”
She laughed. “If you knew him, you wouldn’t think so. I used to think Extreme was his middle name.”