CHAPTER 9
THATCHER
She’s late.
And that shouldn’t matter.
She’s an adult. She took one of the trucks.
She’s capable.
I tell myself all of that while I pace the office like a caged animal, finding excuses not to leave.
One more thing to check.
One more lock to turn.
One more glance out the window.
The weather’s turned mean in the last twenty minutes.
Freezing rain slicks the yard, tapping against metal like a warning.
The temperature’s dropping fast, and the wind coming down off the ridge has teeth.
Fuck.
I’ve got my keys in my hand, jacket half on, already planning the route I’ll take to find her when I hear it—tires crunching over salt.
Relief slams into me so hard my knees almost go weak.
She’s back.
She pulls up by the lunchroom, hops out of the driver’s seat like she hasn’t just shaved ten years off my life, like I haven’t been imagining her truck slid into a ditch, her stuck on the side of the road in this weather.
She doesn’t see me.
Doesn’t hear me.
She’s humming.
Actually fucking humming.
Some eighties rock song—familiar enough to tug a grin out of me under normal circumstances.
But I’m too keyed up for that.
Wound too damn tight.
I hang back, watching as she rounds the truck, pops the hatch on the covered bed, reaches in, then I make myself known.
“Get lost?”
She screams.
Actually screams.
It’s louder than is appropriate for being startled. There’s real fear there, and it makes me furious.
