LITMIR.BIZ

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the tension I felt driving it. But I just said, “Yeah.”

      “Okay, but I wouldn’t give you a ticket.”

      “Thanks.”

      We got in the Roadster and it slid out of the parking spot and cruised down the road. This car was a perfect match for Jack. It flew. It even had vanity plates that said FLY LOW. That was Jack. Jack flew. My Jeep Wrangler suited me, too. I thought about all the fingerprints on the Jeep. It would be dusted when I got back. Everything would be dusted. I hoped it wouldn’t be busted. My mind was spinning in little bitty circles as we rode along. In a way, I was glad. It kept me from staring at Michaels. It also had me worried about Shadow. What had Silva done to him? Maybe the police crashed my door before Silva caught him. Shadow was fast and my house was set up in a way that made it impossible to catch him. We often played tag in the house and Shadow always won. Maybe Silva had given up on dinner and made a run for it.

      “I hear the wheels turning in that brain of yours,” he said as he drove along.

      “Just thinking,” I replied.

      “About what’s behind us or what’s ahead of us?” He pulled into a parking lot and found a parking place. It was crowded.

      “Pizza?”

      “Sure. Nothing is better for taking your mind off stressful things than a nice busy, noisy pizza place and a big pizza with all your favorite toppings. Zeke makes the best pizza.”

      “I left my pack at home, too. No money.”

      He guided me in. Guess money wasn’t an issue.

      “Look, I’ve been cooking, getting beat on, sat around without a shower with a gun pointed at me. I’ve been tied up, thrown across a room, sat in the dirt for an hour and rolled around under a dirty trailer. It’s possible I might need to go wash up.”

      I found my way to the ladies room and had to wait in line. At least the crowd led me to believe the place might have good pizza. I was surprised I hadn’t been to this place before. I thought I had visited every restaurant in town. Cooking wasn’t my favorite thing to do.

      I finally got in and looked in the mirror. Yikes, my hair was a tousled mess. I had red tape lines around my mouth. I looked at my wrists. Yep, tape marks there, too, and strips of tape residue. My eye was purple and green. At least it wasn’t very swollen. I dusted off my clothes, washed up, and did what I could with my hair. It wasn’t much. I didn’t have a hairbrush. If Michaels was worried about my appearance, he didn’t let on. I joined him in the foyer.

      “Feel better?”

      “Not after what I just saw in the mirror.”

      “Don’t worry about it. If I ask you out for dinner and you have time to prepare, then you can worry about it. If I yank you out from in front of a firing squad, I don’t expect you to put on make up on the way.”

      Some women would have taken offense to that, but having been in the firing squad position a number of times, it didn’t faze me. “I was going to play the video games but I didn’t think you’d like to be in the arcade with that shooting game going on.”

      “Actually, I don’t mind being on the shooting end of a gun. Believe it or not, I can shoot. Silva didn’t know it when he locked all the bedroom doors, but he locked up four guns and plenty of ammo. He’d have been set for a stand off, but he locked it all up.”

      I’d told him about the guns before, but it still drew a curious look.

      The pizza place bustled with activity. Booths lined the outer walls and tables filled the open spaces. No tablecloths. Plenty of beer. I noticed they served pasta, too. A waitress seated us at a booth with a worn but polished wooden table. Menus stood at one end. Michaels ordered pizza. I added ice tea; he added Coke.

      “You look like you’re feeling a little better.”

      “I am. Thanks.”

      “How bad was it?”

      “It could have been worse.”

      “It can always be worse.”

      “The psychological stuff was the worst. The physical stuff I can take.”

      He looked at my small frame and childlike face and seemed amused. I continued, “I was pathetic. I knew what was supposed to happen. But somehow, in real life, other factors crowd in and all the self-defense classes in the world can’t help you when instinct tells you not to use it.”

      I was talking myself into a corner. Michaels was probably wondering just what kind of a girl he had here, and he wasn’t getting anywhere on the interrogation. He looked at me and his eyes softened. There was a gentle pause.

      “Just tell me what happened.”

      I started at the beginning, when Silva jumped into my Jeep, and went through the whole story. He winced when I told him about getting hit with the gun butt and the time when Silva had hit me after Michaels left.

      “You don’t know how hard it was to turn my back and walk away. You can’t imagine it.”

      “I know. But when you came this morning, I had a gun to my head. I knew I could improve my chances if I waited.”

      “So, now we’re expecting this guy Oscar to show up. Do you have a place to stay? Your house is going to be watched and the investigation will go on for a few days. You can’t stay at home until we nab Oscar. Where will you go?”

      I knew where I was heading, but I didn’t want to tell Michaels.

      “I’ve got a place,” I said. A place far away that nobody else knew about. “I’ll check back in a few days. Oscar won’t show if the place is surrounded by crime scene tape and police cars.”

      “We’ll try to get everything out of the way tonight. Where are you going? Is it safe? Does Silva know about it?”

      “It’s in the mountains, just far enough away. No, Silva knows nothing about it. Yes, it’s safe enough for me.” This was my place. Not even Jack knew about it.

      “If Silva thinks you’re too much of a risk he could call someone to eliminate you.”

      I remembered my cell phone. Silva had it. “Will we be able to pick up a few things from the house first?”

      “I think so. We’ll go see. Okay, on the lighter side, Jamaica Mistake?”

      I laughed, “No, I thought I pulled it off pretty much as planned.”

      “I didn’t mean…”

      “I know what you meant. And, no, I wasn’t kidding. It’s great stuff. The story is on the bottle.”

      “It took me a while to figure out what I could ask you about. I was going to tell you I had a computer problem, but I didn’t know if you even had one. Do you like to cook?”

      “No, but it’s kind of a necessity of life. I grew up with lots of good food around and I hate eating alone in a restaurant. So that means I cook.”

      Michaels was right, Zeke did make good pizza. I was sorry when the meal ended and it was time to go. Michaels paid the tab and we got in the car and drove to my house.

      From the Jeep I pulled a daypack. I pushed the front door open with my foot in case they didn’t want more fingerprints. It would need to be replaced after being kicked in. Shadow came bounding around the corner, barreling into me. Relief flooded me. What a good dog. He even misbehaves when he’s supposed to. I filled a Ziploc bag with kibble and stuffed it in the daypack. I got a change of clothes and my other daypack and combined the contents of my hiking pack and my purse pack. I dug my camping box out from the garage and pulled out a few packets of backpacking food. I filled a plastic bottle with water.

      “You’re going camping? After being through all this you can’t go into the hills alone.”

      “Why not? It’s what I do when I need

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