Roadrunner's Second Chance

CHAPTER ONE

Alex

Then

My Jeep had two flat tires. My phone had no bars. I had one spare tire and six ounces of water. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and did the math the way I did most things that scared me.

Quietly.

If I said the numbers out loud the Sonoran Desert might hear me and raise the temperature for sport.

Sunset.

If I could somehow last that long, walking to the highway was a believable goal. Before dark I wouldn’t make it halfway with the water I had left.

The 12 miles to empty that was indicated on the gauge cluster changed to low fuel.

Sheltered behind the windshield’s reflective shade, I closed my eyes. Monterey summer heat was 72 degrees with an ocean breeze behind it. This heat had no manners.

It just took.

I killed the engine. When the Jeep’s interior temperature rose to what was no longer bearable, I rolled the window down and peered at my destiny.

The desert air hit me like opening a 500-degree oven. Saguaros in every direction. Prickly pear when the saguaros got bored. I was eighteen, three months from a college that did not know my name yet, and I had driven a Jeep up a rock ledge because the road looked like a suggestion.

In the distance, a cloud of dust was brewing.

I stared in disbelief. It was headed right for me.

Dust devil.

It would bury me and the Jeep amidst the saguaros. Some college students would find my bones in a hundred years and decide I had been a very committed geology student.

Then the cloud veered left. Straight for a while. Then right. Dust devils didn’t hold a line like that. I rubbed my dry eyes.

It was a motorcycle going at full speed down the sandy track that went toward nothing I could see.

Dodging the saguaros, I ran toward the trail. I threw myself into the middle of the path with both arms up. It was more personality than it was a plan.

He locked the rear tire and rode the skid like he had done it a hundred times. He stopped a few feet from where I stood.

The dust enveloped us both and then dissipated.

He took his sunglasses off and rested his forearms on the bars. It seemed he had all day to spare. He looked at the Jeep. Then at me. Nobody in my life looked at me like that.

They looked at clocks. Then they looked at departure times.

“Unless you’ve got two spares,” he said dryly. “This is about to be a bad day.”

“I was thinking the opposite.” I pushed the brim of my University of Arizona cap back with my thumb. “Best day I’ve had in a while.”

It was not some line I had practiced. It just came out, which was how the true things usually arrived when I was too rattled to talk in circles.

He brushed the dust off his jeans and took another look at my Jeep. “How long you been out here?”

“Three, four hours.”

He tilted his head toward the highway that neither of us could see. “Was a hundred and one when I left Marana. Not a good day to break down.”

There was a patch on the front of his leather vest.

Panzer.

“Is there a good day for it?” I asked.

“October through March.” He looked me over. “This fall, I’d give up an eye for one afternoon out here with you.”

I raised a brow. “You’d forfeit an eye. For me?”

He closed one eye. “I’d still have the other one to admire you with.”

It should have sounded ridiculous. It didn’t. The people I knew wouldn’t have stopped if I had been on fire in their driveway. He had stopped without being waved down twice.

I decided he was worth the risk. Most of my risks until then had been empty houses or a skateboard.

“Fix my Jeep,” I said, “and you can have the rest of my afternoon.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Hop on. We’ll grab my truck and come back for the tires.”

His motorcycle had lived a hard life. Dull chrome. Paint faded to matte. Fringe on the saddlebags worn thin. It looked honest. I wasn’t used to honest things.

I realized that he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Apparently, safety attire wasn’t a concern. “We don’t need helmets?”

“Nope.” He put his glasses on. “Welcome to Arizona.”

I had never been on one. “What do I need to know?”

“Sit still. Hold on.”

Two instructions.

I climbed on and wrapped my arms around his waist. I rested my chin against his shoulder because there was nowhere else for it to go that did not feel like a decision.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m Alex.”

“Riley.” His unshaven cheek touched mine. “Nice to meet you.”

He pulled away like he was running from the law.

I didn’t know who he was or why he had been riding through the desert like that. I assumed that once the Jeep was fixed, he would disappear the same way he had arrived.

In a cloud of dust. Gone before I understood it.

That was how most good things left my life.

Abruptly and without much warning.