LITMIR.BIZ

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      Tori looked amazed and ordered Dion to make up his mind. He told her he probably wouldn’t be able to attend. She flapped a hand at him and cried, “You don’t have to wear a costume, if that’s what you’re afraid of! Or just put on a cowboy hat. You’d look nice in a cowboy hat.”

      She sat in a sexy slouch next to her fiancé, looking like a daughter he’d had too late in life. Sounding like one, too. But even with the age difference, they seemed to fit well enough together. Montgomery was good looking and likely as fit as she was. They were probably so madly in love that age meant nothing.

      She seemed to be waiting for him to answer, for a change, so Dion said, “I’ll try to make it over.”

      “Fabulous!” she cried. “With parties, you know, the bigger, the better — lots of people, all different kinds of interesting new people. Are you married?”

      “No, I’m —”

      “Gay!” she shrieked. She laughed, flapped a hand at him. “Just kidding. You’re not gay. I have a gay-guy radar, and you’re not, not that it would matter. Gay guys are the sweetest. There’s tons of them in my line of work. You’re gorgeously quiet and mysterious, by the way. Girlfriend? No? Even better, because there will be scads of beautiful girls for you to meet.”

      “She’ll sort your life out for you, like it or not,” Montgomery said, then stood and stated it was time to get on with the day. Dion silently thanked his lucky stars. Aloud, he told Tori it was really nice meeting her.

      “See you later. Do come by for drinks after.”

      “Thanks. I’ll try.”

      Dion followed Montgomery outside, past a carport sheltering a white Acura four-door, and into a garage that was being used for storage, by the looks of it, boxes stacked on boxes. This was where the bikes were kept.

      “Here’s my old fave.” Montgomery wheeled out a black Maruishi. “Great bike for the trails, but kind of heavy. Check out this beauty. Just got it.” He invited Dion into the garage to view a featherweight, brushed-gold bicycle on its hook. “I’ve already put a thousand klicks on it. Titanium. It’s like balsa wood, man. But unbreakable.”

      “You’re taking this on the trails? They’ll demolish it.”

      “Oh god, no,” Montgomery said. “This one’s going with me today. My go-to off-roader.” He pulled out a fat-wheeled bicycle with low bars and heavy duty shocks. He and Dion rolled the bikes out to the street, where a minivan sat parked. Montgomery hooked the bikes to a rack at the van’s rear, and a moment later they were on the road to Lynn Valley.

      It was a great day for a bike ride, cool and overcast, but not raining. Conversation came easy and, unlike with Tori, Dion was allowed to get a word in. Better yet, it seemed like a safe conversation that wouldn’t go off the rails and threaten him with questions he couldn’t answer.

      Montgomery reminded him of somebody in some unlikely way, but he couldn’t pinpoint who or why. He was still puzzling over the question and somehow afraid of the answer, when Montgomery took this perfectly safe conversation and rerouted it. “I’m actually glad we got this opportunity to talk,” he said.

       Damn.

      “Yeah, and don’t roll your eyes at me. This is important. I know who you are. I heard about your crash and the shit you’ve had to go through. Many others might have given up on the spot, but you made a comeback. You’ve had your ups and downs, but by all accounts you’re no quitter, and I commend you for that.”

      Dion was flattered that Montgomery would care, but didn’t like being commended for his comeback. Everything about the crash was a lie, and when the truth came out, he would be chucked in jail. He would disappoint everyone. “I’m getting by. I’ve also come to accept that I’m not what I used to be, which is fine. I’m okay.”

      The van pulled up to a red light and idled. “My boss tells me you’re not what you used to be because you’re a defeatist,” Montgomery said.

      Bosko, Dion thought. “Right,” he said. “Which is the same as a quitter.”

      “Bit of a difference there. You’re not living up to your potential, that’s all. Which is a shame. So what are we going to do about it?”

      The light turned green. The boss Montgomery referred, Mike Bosko, was a meddler whom Dion didn’t trust. Leith was another meddler, but easier to take, because he didn’t even try to be nice about it. So now Montgomery was joining in, probably at Bosko’s urging.

      Bosko was dangerous, because he was sharper than he looked. He knew there was something about the crash that didn’t sit right. He was looking for a way to flip Dion over, make him talk, get at the truth from any angle he could. But Dion wasn’t going to flip that easy. “I’ll get by,” he said, slightly tweaking what he’d said earlier, but with a cool finality.

      Montgomery shrugged. “I’ll lay off, but it’s not over.”

      Even with its disappointing start, the day shaped up well. The Sunday traffic was loose knit, and they made good time up to the Headwaters parking lot. James Wong and Ronnie Graham were waiting impatiently by the little museum building that was shut down for the season. The group of four set off for the Mesachee, cycling single file up the soft, dark pathway that rose switchback style into the forest.

      Wong pulled a wheelie and took the lead. Montgomery followed, keeping up effortlessly. Graham dawdled a bit, and Dion fell back, getting accustomed to the Maruishi. Looch — that’s who Montgomery had reminded him of. Which made no sense, as the two men were nothing alike.

      It took some experimenting with the gears and one near crash into the undergrowth before he felt comfortable on the bike, and by now he was alone in the woods. He geared down, stood on the pedals for thrust, and pushed to catch up with the others. It was coming back to him, the burning lungs and the exhilaration. Like riding a bike.

      The trail curved upward, chilly in the shade of cedar and fir. He huffed and puffed and caught up with the group, which had reached its destination: a widening in the path, which was split by a large boulder. The Rock. Bikes abandoned, they were on their feet, and Wong was pointing out to Montgomery where he and Graham had seen the howling creature, then where the creature had fled.

      “We were coming up the trail,” he said, as Dion laid down his bike and joined them. “It was right about here. It saw us and went loping off, up that way.” He pointed.

      Montgomery and Dion looked up the slope of low brush into a vague shadowland atop the ridge. “Now it’s loping,” Montgomery said.

      “Really fast. He was like half wolf.”

      Dion kicked at the brush through which the creature had supposedly run. The terrain was rough, sludgy, and snarled with tree roots and decaying logs. Even in the height of summer, when the ground would have been drier, he couldn’t imagine any human loping through it. Must have been an animal, a large dog gone wild. Just as he had expected, there was nothing to be seen here except more of the same.

      Montgomery was briskly saying to the boys, “Well, we’ll keep this sighting of yours in mind for future reference. In the meantime, if you see anything else of interest, you can let us know. But my advice would be stay out of the woods till further notice, a’right?”

      “No way,” Graham said. “I’d rather die.”

      “What about that reward if you catch ’im?” Wong said.

      “Sure you get a reward. A nice warm sense of accomplishment.”

      As they gathered their bikes for the return trip, Montgomery and James Wong discussed gear shifters at some length, so Dion found himself alone with Ronnie Graham. Graham had less to say than his friend and seemed comfortable speaking freely only while in tandem with Wong. Dion recalled yesterday, the challenge nobody had put to the kid. The howl. He thought about Mike Bosko calling him defeatist and said, “Question for you.”

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