He shoved his phone back into his pocket and said, “Care to go pick someone up?”
I sighed. “Guess it was good that I didn’t tell them I was going.”
“You’re still going,” he said. “You’re just going to pick Calliope up first.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, knowing that I was going to get grease on my face when I did. But I couldn’t stop myself. “What happened now?”
“Her truck ran out of gas.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Doesn’t she know what a gas gauge is?”
“One would think.” Webber grinned. “But you know how she is.”
Unfortunately, I did.
I was the one who picked her up the last two times that she’d done this.
“She swears that there’s something wrong with her truck,” Webber explained. “Like swears it. You’ll have to let her explain, though, because Searcy sounded frantic on the phone and I couldn’t hear everything she was saying.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Corner of Millington and Main.”
I got into the tow truck, on the off chance—very off—that I was wrong and the truck actually had something wrong with it—and headed her way without a second thought.
When I got there it was to find her exactly where she said, holding a small gas can, and emptying the gas into her tank.
She looked up at me and frowned as I pulled to a stop behind her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when I got out and headed her way.
“Your sister called and told us you needed gas,” I said.
She looked at me, then at the tow truck, then shrugged. “I got some.”
I gritted my teeth and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for her to finish up with what she was doing.
“You’ll go straight to the gas station after this, won’t you?” I asked.
“Sure will,” she said as she twisted the top onto the can and put it in the back of her truck.
With another two empty cans.
Jesus Christ.
She got into her truck and started it up.
It sounded like it was going to turn over for a minute but then stalled.
I walked up to her truck window and she rolled the window down.
“I swear, and I swear to you with all that’s in me, that I had gas in this this morning,” she shared. “I have had nothing but bad luck out of this vehicle. I’ve taken it in four separate times because I swear to you, I fill it up. I’m not a complete dumbass. But it’s just…gone. I don’t drive anywhere, Jasper.”
I believed her, even though she was the biggest train wreck I’d ever encountered.
“Get out,” I said. “Go sit in the tow truck.”
She grumbled but got out, heading toward the tow truck where I knew that she’d be safe.
