The brown truck’s passenger side window rolled down then, revealing the last people I thought it’d be.
Staring back at us were the refs from Duke’s game.
“Hullo!” the boy sitting shogun greeted us with a bright smile.
“Um…” I was caught in indecision then. These were perfectly goodstrangers…
I decided to ignore him and start walking with my head down and dragging Duke withme.
Their car inched along beside us.
I felt the blood pumping in my ears. Was this how human trafficking happened? I knew kidnappings did happen at arenas… but did that include hockey arenas or was that more concerts and larger things? I made a mental note to check on that when we got home.
Shit.Ifwe got home.
Why were they following us?
“Hi?” he repeated. “Where yagoin?”
I looked over at him and studied his face. He looked happy. When he smiled, it seemed like his whole face lit up, and I became very aware of what I looked like in that moment in my long winter coat, sweatpants, and Sorel winter boots. I instinctively put my hand to my hair and forgot I was wearing a beanie.
Wait, why did I care what I looked like when I might be getting kidnapped?
By hot kidnappers…
Butstill…
I shook my head of that thought and cleared my throat. “That’s a little forward of you to ask, seeing as I am a girl with a kid and you are two guys following us in your truck,” I deadpanned. “Do you not see how you could be viewed as threatening in this situation?” I swallowed but my throat felt like sandpaper from yelling in the cold. “You’re scaringme.”
“Oh, shit.” Awareness seemed to dawn on his face and his eyes became large, worried saucers. “We look bad, eh? Sorry about that.” His Canadian accent was clearer with that response. His sorry came out as surry and his about became a-boot. “I totally didn’t think about that. Griff,” he said, turning and hitting the guy driving, “stop the car, bud. You heard the girl, we’re scaring her.”
I heard them arguing in the truck then, and I pushed Duke forward to start walking faster again. He kept a menacing look on his face and licked his cracked lips.
“We could take them if we had to, I know it,” Duke whispered to me. “You just have to go for their weak spots. Hit ‘em with a nut shot.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it. Wanna switch?” I held out the sticks tohim.
“You sure?” he asked with worry etched on his little face. I could tell his back was starting to hunch forward more as he grew tired.
“Yes, for sure,” I grabbed the handles and eased it on my shoulder.
We made it a few more yards before hearing more commotion behind us. I looked over my shoulder to see the two teenage refs– wearing nothing but hoodies, hockey warm-up pants, and sliders with socks peeking out– slushingthrough the snow towards us.
“They can’t run very fast in those,” Duke whispered. “Good sign.” He stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth– his thinking face– before speaking again. “We could hit them with my sticks too. Use ‘em as baseball bats.”
I felt a laugh bubble up in my chest, because the refs looked completely innocent to me now, but I didn’t want to hurt Duke’s feelings. He had good instincts.
Yeah, no… I wasn’t thinking about hurting them at this point… I was more shocked that two very good looking guys my age were walking toward us.
“We come in peace!” the boy who talked with me from the shotgun seat yelled.
I pushed my beanie up and eyed them. Now that they stood in front of me, they lookedlike brothers–they both had dark hair, wide shoulders, and athletic stances. The only difference was that one boy had brown eyes and the other had glowing blue ones.
“Where ya headed?” Brown eyes asked.
I twisted my mouth, still sizing them up and trying to decide if I should tell the truth or not. There was about ten feet of space between us then, and it felt like we were in a stand-off.
“7-11,” I finallysaid.
