Page 53 of Snake

Autumn almost laughed at him. “A woman drove the car that brought us to the airport this morning.”

“That’s different. It’s her job. And we were in the back seat.”

“If it makes you feel better,” Autumn said, unable to completely hold off a smirk, ”you can sit in the back seat while I drive.”

“Sir,” the agent said before Chase could react, “I can’t release the car to someone who’s been drinking.”

Chase turned aggressively back to the counter and leaned close. Starting hard at the poor twenty-something who was only trying to do his job, he snarled. “Do I look drunk to you?”

The agent—whose name, according to the tag clipped to his shirt, was Jason—blinked. He dashed a glance at his monitor, and Autumn imagined him weighing the possibility of losing a top-shelf rental on an Elite account and maybe getting written up or even fired, against definitely getting fired, and maybe even facing charges, if he handed the keys to a drunk and that drunk hurt somebody driving.

Quietly, he said, “I smell it on your breath.” While Chase huffed like an asthmatic bear, Jason focused on Autumn. “Have you been drinking, ma’am?”

“No, not a drop.” Too irritated to be subtle anymore, she added, “This is a work trip, and I don’t drink on the job.”

Not strictly true, as evidenced by her most recent trip to Signal Bend, but nobody here knew that.

The dig hit its intended target squarely. Chase turned and glared hard at her. She saw the threat but was currently too fed up with him to care about consequences.

She needed to figure out a way to surreptitiously record him, in case he said something clearly actionable. She didn’t know the law in Missouri, but Indiana was a one-party consent state for recording.

“I’ll make you the driver, then. I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t put you down as a driver. You can amend the contract at a later time, when you’re sober.”

“This is bullshit!” Chase groused. “I’m the one paying for this!”

Autumn set her own corporate Amex on the counter. “You can put it on my card.” Which was, of course, from the same company account, but she enjoyed the moment, and the deepening frown on her boss, nonetheless.

“What’s your last name, Jason?” Chase demanded, drawing a silver pen from inside his suit jacket.

Jason sighed audibly. “Torres. With an S.” He plucked a business card from the desk and set it on the counter. “Here’s the info for our corporate office.”

“I’d like one of those, too, please, Jason,” Autumn said, offering him a smile so he understood her reason.

He smiled back as he handed her a card and the keys, putting them both directly into her hand. “It’s a white Mercedes EQE, slot 3.”

“Thank you for your help, Jason.” Gathering her bags again, she turned to her boss. “Come on, Chase. Let’s go.”

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~oOo~

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The drive to Signal Bend was about two hours. Chase sulked in the passenger seat for about forty-five minutes, arms crossed like an angry toddler. Then he fell asleep with his head tipped back against the seat and snored like a horny moose for nearly an hour. As Autumn pulled off I-44 and stopped at the end of the ramp, ready to turn onto the road that would become Main Street, her boss made a final snort and sat up.

“This it?”

She made the turn and headed toward town. “About twenty more minutes to town. Feel better?”

At the corner of her eye, she saw him give her a petulant look. “I felt fine, and I still feel fine.”

“Okay.”

She glanced his way and saw him turn to the window. They passed a small property with a humble bungalow, a car and a truck, both ten or twenty years old, parked on the yard, and several lines of laundry waving in a moderate breeze. Old tractor tires filled with geraniums lined a gravel drive. Two little boys chased a few brown chickens through the scene. Autumn thought it looked pretty, almost like a folk art painting.

While the thought rolled to an end in her head, Chase said, “Jesus, what a dump.”

She smiled to herself but said nothing. The first time she’d driven this road and seen that little home, she’d had a similar thought. But now, after a handful of trips to Signal Bend, a total of probably two weeks’ time, she supposed she had a better context for the lives that got lived here. Chase didn’t have that context.

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