Chapter 18 #2
“Is he holding a beer?”
I glanced in the rearview just in time to see the streetlight reflect off the can clutched in his hand. “Yep.” Sweet home Alabama…
“How did we somehow manage to choose a college that’s basically the redneck version of Dayton?”
She had chosen the college. I had just followed. Then fuckface had blocked my number…
“Maybe you should steal tractors. Be just like old times, but…hillbilly.”
She was joking, but tractors didn’t have titles or registrations, which would make it easy as hell to sell. Hot-wiring was hot-wiring. And I knew where a farm was, one where the guys had gone a few times to collect mushrooms. Not in a wholesome, cooking kind of way. They were making shroom-aid.
“Although,” Jade said. “I can’t see you outrunning the cops.”
“They have to notice it’s gone to call the cops. A farmer isn’t going to be out drilling fields at midnight.” Unless he was like Billy-Bob back there and driving it to the bar…
“Wait, you’re serious?”
“Why not?”
“Because, well…” Jade sputtered. “I can’t steal a tractor!”
I turned onto a two-lane highway that led into the countryside. “All you’ll have to do is drive my truck.” I glanced across the console.
Her eyes were closed. And I was pretty sure she was doing some kind of breathing exercise.
“You can do that, right?” I asked.
Another breath in, then out. “I can do that.”
The fact that she was already freaking out didn’t bode well.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled onto the weed-covered shoulder, cut the engine, and stared through the dusty windshield at the hand-painted sign hung on the fence: BEWEAR! BULL IN FELD. God bless Alabama education…
“Why are you stopping here?”
“It’s a farm. There’s probably a tractor.”
“Now?” Jade turned in the seat, a horrified expression on her face. “We’re stealing a tractor right now?”
“If we find one. Yes.”
Wiping her hands over her jeans, she blew out a sharp breath. “Okay. Right now. What’s the speed limit on this road?”
“What does that have to do with stealing a tractor?”
She took her phone from the cupholder. “So I know how fast to drive. Obviously.” She wasn’t even behind the wheel, and her panic was already showing.
“Forty-five,”
“Forty-five,” she whispered, tapping on her phone.
“Are you making a note?”
“Yes. In case I forget.”
Good God. Releasing a breath, I reached across the console and gave a condescending pat to her knee. “Good job, Jade.”
“Fuck you.”
Who knew those two words could be like a shot of adrenaline to my dick?
“Is there like a bat signal? So I know when to get away.”
“You have to go with me.”
“Oh, great. Yeah, sure. So much for just drive—” Her attention drifted back past the windshield. “Wait. Please tell me you do not expect me to climb that fence…into a field…with a bull….”
“There’s not a bull.” And even if there were, it would be asleep. Not like the things could sense blood.
“I know it’s not the most literate, but you can read, right?”
I glanced back at the sign. “It’s like when people put up those signs saying there’s a guard dog, and their guard dog ends up being a one-eyed Pomeranian named Ginger.”
“That comparison is flawed. A one-eyed, small bull called Patch is still a bull—over knee height. Which you know I don’t do.”
“Yeah, I remember…”
Hendrix had brought home a goat once—stolen, of course. Jade had launched herself on top of the kitchen counter when it snuck up behind her and bleated.
“Just think of it as a cow with horns.” I unbuckled my seat belt, then reached for the tool bag I kept on the passenger floorboard. “Moo-fucking-moo.”
She glared at me. “Ha-fucking-ha.”
“They have cows in petting zoos, Jade.” I tossed the keys into her lap. “I really do need you to go with me as a lookout.”
The door swung open to the smell of freshly cut grass and the chirp of crickets.
I rounded the truck, and the interior light cut off.
Damn, it was bumb-fuck-nowhere dark. No streetlights or lights from houses—I glanced up at the thick string of clouds covering the moon.
At least once those rolled out of the way, we’d have some light.
My attention went to the truck. Jade was still sitting there, staring through the window like that field was a death sentence.
“Scared of animals over knee height. What a load of…” Grumbling, I went to her side of the truck and opened the door. The interior light flickered on, and she looked terrified. “Come on, scaredy cat.”
“Surely, I can look out from here?”
“I might need you to open and close the gate. Make sure the cows don’t escape.”
She unbuckled her belt but still didn’t get out. “Just leave it open. Set them free. Save them from their burger fate.”
“Yes, because setting them free to certain death by a Chevy four-by-four is more humane.”
“Freeing them from farm oppression.”
“You know, without that farm oppression, you wouldn’t have a job. You skate their dead, grilled carcasses out in your tight, sparkly shorts—” God bless those shorts—“for the masses to consume.”
“Because I am also oppressed by being poor, Wolf. We’re kindred spirits.”
“Come on. Out.” I thumbed toward the field. “Let’s go meet your kindred spirit.”
She slid off the seat. “Okay, it’s fine.” She closed the truck door. “Cows just kill more people than sharks. No drama.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, wading through the tall grass toward the fence.
Her footsteps crunched behind me, then stopped. “And if the cows don’t get us, a snake in this long grass will.”
“How in the hell did you survive in Dayton?”
“There wasn’t any wildlife in Dayton!”
“Yeah, just drive-bys and crackheads with knives.” I stopped by the fence, and a light cut on from over my shoulder. I spun to face Jade, who was sweeping the flashlight from her phone over the grass in front of her.
“Rattlesnakes, copperheads,” she mumbled, taking cautious steps forward. “Spiders.”
“Oh, my…” Like we were in some redneck version of The Wizard of Oz .
She, however, must not have found the humor in that because she shined the light right on my face. “When you get a tick on your balls, don’t ask me to get it off.”
I shoved the phone away. “You waving that light around is making it way more likely that we get caught.”
“Fine.” The light cut off and plunged us back into darkness. “Go ahead, Buffalo Bill.”
Crickets silenced when I hoisted myself over the fence, landing on the other side with a thud.
“I swear,” she said before catapulting herself over the fence. “If I see a cow, I will use you as a body shield.”
“Do whatever you need.”
She gripped the back of my shirt and walked behind me through the dark. “I need to know. Is this a bear situation?”
I took a few steps, dragging her with me. “What?”
“You know, the slowest one distracts it. Because I’ve seen you run down a football field, and if you really just brought me to be the sacrificial lamb…”
“Sacrificial lamb. Lookout. Whatever you want to call it.”
When a moo bellowed across the field, Jade twisted my shirt so tight that the collar cut into my throat.
“Can you at least loosen your grip?” I choked.
“This is a bad idea.”
“No, driving your car to a house you planned to rob was a bad idea.”
“Not possible-death bad.”
I tried to turn to look at her, but she still had a death grip on my shirt. “We aren’t getting killed by a cow.”
“Tell that to twenty-two people a year.”
“You’ve Googled how many people died by way of cows?” And why would I be surprised?
“Knowledge is power, Wolf.”
I pointed to the silhouette of a barn halfway through the field. “We just have to make it there.”
Jade mumbled something about releasing fear and embracing courage as we made our way through the grass. Halfway to the barn, she let go of my shirt and grabbed my arm so hard her nails dug into my skin. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That.”
“There’s—” The rumble of an engine rose above the chirp of crickets and rustle of grass.
When I looked behind us, headlights cut across the field. “Shit.”
Before I could tell Jade to run, she was gone. At least she had some survival instincts.
I chased after her, shocked that I, of all people, struggled to catch up. She ducked inside the barn, and I followed, sucking in a mouthful of dust as I came face-to-face with a wall of hay bales stacked to the roof. “Where the hell did you go?”
I thought I heard her whisper, “Here.” But I had no idea where “here” was.
Once I’d caught my breath, I could clearly hear hers.
I followed them, barely able to squeeze down the side of the stacked bales to the far corner of the building.
She’d wedged herself between the bales and the metal barn siding. And damn, did she look freaked out.
“What are you doing?”
“Hiding!”
The roar of the engine grew louder. Before I could say another word, Jade had grabbed the bailing twine. “It’s legal to shoot trespassers,” she blurted while hauling herself up the bales.
The engine revved, followed by the sound of tires spinning out over grass. When headlights cut through the narrow gap, I wedged myself farther into the small space. Maybe getting on top of the stack wasn’t the worst idea after all.
I grabbed the twine and hoisted myself up, coughing when I crawled over the edge of the prickly hay.
The rusted, holey metal roof was only inches above my head.
I army-crawled through patches of moonlight to where Jade lay on her back, her chest rising on heavy swells.
The girl was not cut out for a life of crime, that much was obvious.
This was nothing. Hendrix and I had once been chased by a man in whitey-tighties and a shotgun.
Had she been there, she probably would have had a heart attack.
“You tryna’ steal my heifers?” a man who sounded like he’d smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for forty years shouted. “I got a shotgun. You best git outta here, or I’ll shoot yer raggedy asses!” Footsteps came from somewhere in the barn.