Chapter Three
Hunter
Even as those words leave my lips, I know they’re a mistake. They haven’t even sunk in on the cute cashier before I understand the depth of just how much of an asshole I’m being. Threatening the cashier I just rescued from that old jackass? What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I a gigantic asshole, or just wildly on edge because there’s a drug gang out to kill me and my nephew, and my baby nephew also happens to have a cold and hasn’t let me sleep for the last few days?
I have no clue.
But there’s something about how she looks at me that makes my blood run hot in ways it hasn’t since the last time someone kicked me out of a back of a helicopter. And, here I am, with a bunch of diapers, baby powder, and whiskey, so what the fuck am I supposed to say?
“I’m sorry,” she stammers, and there’s a hitch in her voice that hits me like a bullet. “I was just making conversation.”
Ah fuck, I think I see a tear in the corner of her eye.
“No, don’t worry about it. I’m just worked up from that guy earlier, and I forgot my manners. You did nothing wrong, uh…” I say.
“Emily,” she says, recovering.
“Emily, I’m Nick. I’ve had a long day, I’ve got some adrenaline in my veins from earlier, and sometimes I’m a bonehead who gets tongue-tied and stupid,” I say.
She smiles weakly. “It’s okay. I know how you feel.” She scans another one of my items: the pack of racecar stickers. Then she gives me a curious look. “So, are you new in town, Nick? I haven’t seen you around before.”
Old habits and recent worries resurface — she’s asking questions, I’m on the lam, and I’ve got a baby sleeping in the junky truck I bought for cash at a scrapyard in Boise and have parked in the parking lot. I shake my head, probably a little too sternly because she flinches. What’s up with her?
“No, I’m not new. Maybe you just haven’t seen me around before,” I say.
“OK. Usually I’m good with faces and Ironwood Falls is a smaller town. Most people know most people, you know?”
“I don’t like most people,” I say. Then, to break the mood that feels colder than Frosty the Snowman’s bare ass, I add, “Especially that guy earlier. What a jerk.”
Another flicker of a smile that leaves me feeling like I’d probably love to see the real thing.
“Some people,” she says. Then she scans another couple item — a roll of duct tape and a baby’s bottle. Her eyebrow twitches curiously. “So, um, what do you have planned later?”
“Nothing much. Just going to take my stuff home and hang out by myself,” I say, because the last thing I want to admit is that I’ve got a baby waiting for me outside. “Take it easy, you know?”
She gives me a long look. “You’re going to just chill alone?”
I pause as I realize I just said I’m going to chill at home, alone, with whiskey, diapers, duct tape, and crayons. Oh, and stickers, too. Do I admit I have a baby and don’t know what the fuck I’m doing? Or do I own the fact that I must be the creepiest man she’s ever seen in her life?
I clear my throat. “Yeah. By myself. Sometimes you have a long day, or two, or five, and you just need to relax…”
With diapers, crayons, and whiskey.
Fuck me.
Emily’s gaze lingers on me, and I suddenly feel like a bug under a microscope… or maybe one under a magnifying glass in the hands of a bored teenager on a bright sunny day. She rings up a few more of my items, then her hand hesitates over the collection of cold and flu meds.
Oh shit, she’s really looking at all my medicines. Does she think I’m trying to make meth? That my night’s plans involve getting drunk, strapping on a diaper, and cooking up some crystal?
Alarm bells louder than a Metallica concert are going off in my head as I realize that, not only do I seem like a lunatic to her, but a meth-making lunatic as well. The last thing I need is to go raising more questions. Especially ones that might have local law enforcement looking into me and the baby asleep in my truck — a baby that I have no paperwork for and stole from the scene of a crime.
“I don’t need all of these,” I say. “Maybe you can help me. Which one of them is best for, uh, delicate tummies?”
I just referred to myself as having a ‘delicate tummy’. Ironwood Falls seemed like a good place to settle for a while, get some rest, gather my bearings, but after uttering those words, maybe I should leave town and find somewhere else where no one knows my shame.
“For delicate tummies?”
I swallow. “Yeah. Meds don’t usually agree with me, you know? So I need something that’ll do the job, but be gentle. Real gentle.”
“This is the one you want,” she says, grabbing one bottle and scanning it.
“Good. Thanks for your help. This cold’s been bugging me for days, and I really can’t wait to kick it and get some rest.”
Finally, she finishes ringing up my items.
"Well, I hope you find some time to relax," she says, her voice soft and genuine. “We all need time to decompress now and then, however we choose to do it…”
Before I can figure out how to salvage the situation, a loud cry pierces through the quiet store.
My eyes widen. Shit. That’s not possible. I left him swaddled and snug in the truck with the window cracked. He was asleep. Deep asleep. How the fuck is it that babies can sleep exactly when you don’t want them to, but never when you need them to?
Another scream loud enough to rupture eardrums drifts in from the parking lot, through the open front door of the store, and cuts through the awkward quiet.
Her eyes dart towards the parking lot, then back at me. “Is that a baby—”
I don’t wait for her to finish. The adrenaline from earlier surges back as I slap a bunch of cash on the counter, grab my bags, and am halfway to the door before she can react.
“Sorry, Emily, I really have to go,” I shout over my shoulder. I was supposed to keep a low profile, not almost get into a fight with a customer and get suspected as a diaper-wearing, meth-making, baby-abducting alcoholic. I’m leaving breadcrumbs to anyone from Victor Moretti’s gang that could be looking for me.
But it’s not like I could stay quiet though, either. Not after seeing what that old asshole was trying to do to Emily. Something about her drew me in, made me raise my voice, stirred this urge to protect her; I could tell someone’s hurt her before — that much shines as bright as a spotlight in her green eyes — and I’ll be damned if I let someone make her feel that way again.
“Wait,” she calls out just as I reach the door. “Nick, you forgot your diaper pins.”
Fuck, I need those.
But I’ll be damned if I stop. That’s just another opportunity to get ensnared with questions… or with Emily’s green eyes.
Bags in hand, I run to the truck and leap inside. Then I pat Charlie on the head. His crying stops a little, he giggles, and then resumes his howling.
“Hang on, little man,” I say, moving him into the car seat and buckling him in. He’s giggling and crying at the same time, and he’s shit himself, too, just for good measure. Great. How can someone so small make so much shit? I turn the key in the ignition and peel out of the lot. As I do, I catch sight of the cashier standing in the store's doorway. An urge to stop runs through me; of everyone I’ve met in these last few days of running like hell, she’s the one person who I want to avoid the least.
But as much as I want to st op, I can’t. Because I have a fifteen pound payload of shit, screams, and smiles that supersedes any other mission.
Even one as pretty as her.
“I know it sucks to leave, Charlie, but maybe we’ll see her again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Yeah, so would I.”