“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s not supposed to.” He checked the mirror out of habit, then looked back at the road. “How far out are you?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe less. Naomi’s driving.”
“I’ll get there first. I’ll call you when I’m inside.”
“Sounds good. I’ll call the police in the meantime.”
They ended the call.
Remington shifted in the seat beside him, and Wes reached over and rested his hand on the dog’s neck. The contact pulled him back from the edge of the thing he was trying not to think about.
He thought about it anyway.
He’d spent years convincing himself that Rowan King was somewhere in the world living a life that didn’t include him, and that it was okay. The mindset shift hadn’t been easy. But it had been manageable. Their distance alone had made it easier to accept.
Then she’d nearly run him off a mountain road, and every careful wall he’d built in the years since California had come down in about forty-eight hours.
He wasn’t ready to lose her again.
He especially wasn’t ready to lose her like this.
Don’t go there,he told himself.Not yet. Stay on the road. Stay on the problem.
The truck crested a rise, and the road straightened ahead of him for a good quarter mile before curving left toward the valley below.
The tension in his shoulders eased just slightly.
Then he saw it.
A battered green farm truck crawled along the road ahead, a wide equipment trailer hitched behind it. The load—some kind of wide, awkward tractor attachment—extended past the trailer’s edge on both sides. It ate up the shoulder on the right and drifted close to the center line on the left.
Wes checked his speed and eased off the gas.
The road was too narrow to pass safely. Trees pressed in close on both sides. The dense mountain growth left no margin for error.
Ahead, the curve came up fast.
He couldn’t see far enough around it to know what was coming the other way.
He pressed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel once, hard.
Remington looked at him.
“I know,” Wes muttered.
The farm truck showed no sign of speeding up. It rocked along at its own pace, completely indifferent to anything behind it, the trailer swaying slightly with every uneven patch of road.
Wes checked the time on the dash.
Then he checked the mirror.
Then he looked at the trees on the left side of the road, measuring the gap between the truck’s trailer and the edge of the asphalt.
It wasn’t enough. Not quite.
But the curve was coming up, and after the curve the road might open up enough to get around it.
