Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
A reason for JR’s trust in my driving skills is unearthed seconds after the woodlands remove the tarp hindering my view. A pack of dogs is chasing us. They’re heavy fanged, drooling, and seemingly more interested in JR’s side of the truck than mine.
“Be careful,” I beg when JR climbs out the passenger window.
With my eyes bouncing between the rugged landscape and his ruggedly handsome face, I watch him toss a machete at a massive tree trunk coming up on our left.
His aim is perfect, and within a second of the machete slicing through a section of vine curled around the truck, it slithers through the snowy field, its snake-like maneuver only ending when a net made from liana cuts snavels up the first dog in the vicious pack of three.
Although the remaining two are still capable of chasing us down, like all imprudent foot soldiers, they lose steam when their leader is taken out.
When they circle the opening in the snow where the net flung out, I grin with excitement. JR could have fought back with violence. He could have instilled the same level of fear onto the dogs as they’re bombarding me with. The fact he didn’t has me gobbling up his features even more than I was in the bathroom both this morning and this afternoon.
My stare is so consuming, it takes JR yanking on the steering wheel to avoid us colliding with the trunk of an old pine tree.
When a lack of clearance knocks off the side mirror, I shoot my eyes to JR. “Maybe you should drive now.”
Before he can answer me, we break through a gathering of shrubs, straight onto a busy road. Motorists honk and brakes are compressed, but before we come close to veering into oncoming traffic, I yank on the steering wheel with so much force, I get us back on the straight and narrow in an impressive period of time.
“Why the hell are there so many idiots on the road?” I grumble under my breath. “Don’t they know we’re in the middle of a blizzard!”
An icy road is a thing of the past when JR tugs on the steering wheel for the second time. Instead of veering us away from a tree trunk, he directs us straight toward one.
“Holy shit,” I mutter when a second yank careens us down a windy dirt road I’m sure hasn’t been used for years.
The wheels of the truck bump across the landscape more than they roll, and their bounce routine has me fearful JR’s life is still in danger when he removes a large pair of tin snips from the duffle bag he packed in a hurry and raises them to his face.
I grimace more than I cheer when he commences hacking off his beard. He doesn’t bring the blade of the snips close to his jugular, but within seconds, his beard goes from bushy to cropped in less than five minutes.
“No,” I push out on a sob when his hair is the next thing to face the chop.
He doesn’t trim it as short as his beard, but the inches he loses break my heart. His hair is a part of who he is. I am as fond of it as I am of the hairs on his chest.
Once the hair from his beard and face is tossed out the window, JR signals for me to turn down a bush track coming up on our right.
It’s as rough and bouncy as the last road, but within five miles, it pops us out onto a state freeway half a mile up from a state trooper barricade.
I stray my eyes from the flashing lights disappearing on the horizon to JR. “You knew they were there.” Although I’m not technically asking a question, he nods as if I am. “How?”
My nose crinkles when his face becomes washed with remorse. He has a lot of bad memories, which makes me even more concerned that pushing him out of his comfort zone will increase his pain. I was able to pack up my life and relocate years ago because I’ve never really seen one place as my home. We moved a lot when I was a kid, so none of my roots are firmly planted in one spot.
After a couple of seconds of painful silence, he flips down the visor above my head, exposing a faded polaroid. While doing my best not to get us in a wreck, I take in the faces of the two people in the image. I know both of them even with them technically being strangers. The woman was referenced in the newspaper article JR showed me two days ago, and the man, although a lot younger in this photograph than he was when I met him, was once a patient of mine.
He came in with a nasty head knock a little over seven years ago. I was working in a rural hospital as part of my penance for keeping my career when a hearing deficit almost pulled it out from under my feet. I had just gotten him stabilized when his care was overtaken by local law enforcement authorities.