Chase got out and stood next to Norah, both of them now waving furiously, standing directly in the middle of the road. For a second, Chase worried the truck might not actually stop. And if it did, who would be behind the wheel? Some shotgun-toting redneck who’d spot her from a million miles away? Sniff her out? The idea was ridiculous. They weren’t going to become the target of a hate crime. Especially not with Captain Bishop beside her. Chase had felt the butt of what she was pretty sure was a pistol on Norah’s belt when they’d kissed the night before. But she didn’t want to ask. It was hard to imagine the proper, controlled, and sometimes a little princess-like Norah she’d known packing. Then again, this wasn’t exactly the Norah she’d known, was it?
The pickup finally slowed, coming to a stop directly in front of them. A short, round man wearing a red MAGA hat and a T-shirt that read, “I kneel for one man, and He died on the cross” got out and adjusted the crotch of his Walmart-issue Lee jeans.
“God help us,” Chase muttered under her breath. Norah gave a sideways glance that exuded the confidence Chase had come to depend on so many years ago, but Chase noticed her hand drift toward the subtle bulge on the side of her waistband.
“Mornin’, ladies,” the man said, once he’d sufficiently put whatever small package that was floating around in his pants back in place.
“Hello. Our car broke down last night. Any chance you could give us a ride to the nearest town?”
Chase wasn’t so sure she wanted anything to do with riding in this guy’s truck, but Norah seemed to know what she was doing.
“You been out here all night? Alone in these parts?” His accent was heavy, made heavier by an almost muddy quality tohis voice, like his tongue was too thick for his mouth, and every hair on Chase’s body stood straight up.
“Yes.”
The man silently shook his head and clicked the fat tongue against the roof of his mouth, and a cold shudder ran down her back. She turned to Norah, who seemed to be busy examining him. She looked him up and down, stopping for a while around the place where his waist would have been if he’d had one, and again around his ankles. She was obviously scanning for a weapon.
“Not a safe place for a couple of pretty young things like you two. Happy to give ya’ll a lift. The closest town is Moresville. ‘Bout ten miles that-a-way.” He jerked his thumb down the road.
Ten miles? Fuck me. We could have walked that in a few hours. Chase glanced at Norah again, who seemed to be having the exact same thought.
After a beat of silence, Norah finally answered. “Yeah, okay. That’d be great. I’m Captain Norah Bishop, with the army. This is Dr. Chase Durgan with the CDC.”
Norah once again reached for her gun, this time making it very obvious to Mr. MAGA that she was packing. Once she seemed sufficiently satisfied that he knew who he would be fucking with, she opened the front door of the pickup and got in. The man came around to the driver’s seat again, leaving Chase standing alone on the dirt road.
“You comin’, little lady?”
Chase looked at Norah again, hoping they wouldn’t end up on the next episode of a true-crime podcast when their dismembered bodies were found in the swamp. But Chase trusted Norah. She always had. And she probably trusted her even more with a nine-millimeter strapped to her hip.
The inside of the pickup was as bad as the outside, maybe worse. The floor of the backseat was littered with McDonald’s wrappers and empty Mountain Dew bottles, and on the dashwas a sun-beaten bumper sticker that read “Hillary for Prison.” Since coming out at nineteen, Chase had never had to make much of an effort to hide who she was, which was good, considering she was basically a walking rainbow flag. Her cropped hair and boyish hips and breasts she usually didn’t have to work hard to conceal were all only accentuated by her androgynous T-shirts and total lack of makeup. If anyone was clueless enough to not pick up that she was gay, they certainly knew she wasn’t like most other women. This wasn’t usually an issue. In fact, it wasn’t even a question for Chase. Once she figured out who she was, she embraced it with open arms and never looked back—except in the rare moments where her safety was in jeopardy.
Norah, on the other hand, regularly passed for straight. Her long hair, matched only by her long eyelashes, highlighted a pair of beautiful blue eyes and delicate cheekbones that even a pair of army fatigues wouldn’t make less feminine. She was beautiful, almost in the same way as Disney princesses or high-fashion models were. Inside, she was as tough as any ranger or marine, but on the surface there was something almost, Chase hated to use the word,delicateabout her. Of course, she knew that Norah Bishop was about as delicate as a bomb. That was what made her so incredibly irresistible. And also what Chase was sure would distract this asshole the entire way into town.
“So you said you’re a…captain? In the army?” The man spit the words out, actually spraying the windshield a little as he spoke.
“That’s right.”
“As in the US Army? Like…President Trump’s army?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it that, but yes, like ‘the army.’”
Please don’t start shit, Norah. Chase pleaded with her eyes through the rearview mirror, but it was too late. Norah was gone.
“You’re way too pretty to be fightin’, you know.”
“Is that so?”
Chase ground her fingernails into her knees and bit her lip.
“A nice-lookin’ girl like you should be at home, tendin’ to her husband and little’n. You do have a husband, don’t you?”
Please don’t answer that. Please don’t answer that.
“No, actually. I’m…”
Don’t say gay. Don’t say gay.
“I’m single. Work takes up a lot of my time.”
