Page 14 of Small Town Hunter

Sun’s out and blazing now, and there’s no breeze. I swear it jumped about ten degrees in five minutes. I put away the rest of the food and decide to drive around some to check out the town.

What the fuck am I gonna do about Jessica?

Ruby can’t stay with her anymore. I need to handle this.

I start the car and pull out of the Burger Palace lot.

I can’t go back to Virginia. I’mthisclose to getting McCall and getting a fat chunk of change from Roman. I need that money to get Jessica out of the picture. The lawyer down in Rowanville ain’t cheap. There’s the mortgage, tax debts…Ruby’s daycare, too. I can’t keep pawning the kid off on my sister.

Stick to the plan. No distractions.

Once I’m fed, I’ll get McCall stitched up, and then –- good Lord.

Is that — sitting right there on the hamburger sign.

Yes.

It is.

An owl.

White. Silver tail feathers. Red beak.

I’ll be damned. I need a picture— where’s my phone? Not my souped-up work phone, but the other one. Them sorry bastards at the SVOA ain’t never gonna believe this. I scrabble in the glove compartment, and at that moment something huge and white bolts in front the car.

Fuck!

SCREEEECH!

CRUNCH.

The burger billboard takes the worst of it; my fender guard protects the Challenger from crunching like a tin can. Can’t say the same for the other thing I just rammed into. Mother of God. I’ve got boots on the asphalt in half a millisecond, my heart pounding fast.

The very first thing I see is the heartbreaking sight of a fallen birds nest crumpled on the asphalt. Two lifeless pink chicks are sprawled next to it. My stomach drops.

“Oh, hell. Oh, no, no.”

The nest had to be perched in the crook of the billboard beams. God, this is the last thing I would ever want. The baby owls are goners. Gone because of me. I killed them. And that gut-clenching stab of horror punches deeper when the other thing I rammed into starts to moan.

I hit a human.

Oh, fuck.

“Hey! Hey, you alright?”

I leave the fallen nest and hurry to the writhing thing on the road, which is thankfully still alive.

“Ahhhh,” the thing groans.

It looks like a giant bedsheet. But then the bedsheet rolls to the side, and a cinnamon-colored face appears, scrunched in pain.

A woman.

God, could it get worse?

“You okay, Miss?”

Yes, it’s a female — but that big white thing is no bedsheet. It’s just a dress. A big, frilly, ugly dress that looks like it’s eating her alive. And if I didn’t know better I’d say it was a wedding dress.

---