Page 18 of Small Town Hunter

The milkshake goes down the wrong way.

He prompts, “Your groom is probably worried. You know. Probably calling the police…”

I lose my appetite. I fold up the rest of the food in the bag, feeling sick. “No,” I say.

“No?”

“I’mnotgoing back,” I say flatly.

“You don’t want to get married?”

“I’m going to California. That’s where I’m headed. I’m not going back at all, ever.”

“Ah, darlin’, maybe you’re not aware, but right now we are a fair ways from California.”

“I know that,” I say stiffly.

“You have money for a bus? A hotel room?”

I have the jewelry I’m wearing and the rest tucked deep in my pocket. Birthday presents, Christmas gifts. My mother loves jewelry, and she was always getting lavished with it when Daddy needed to apologize for something. She gave me the pieces she didn’t like or want, and I have them all here, diamonds and emeralds and rubies and more. But I don’t need to tell Crash all of that.

“I have some money,” I answer. Technically, it’s not lying.

“So where were you planning to sleep, on the way to California?”

“At the Holiday Inn, of course.”

I would sell some jewelry for cash and pay my way there.

“There isn’t a Holiday Inn for another three hundred miles.”

“Well, there’s other hotels.”

“No place a quality young lady should lay her head. It’s rough road from here to Los Angeles. How old are you?” He demands suddenly.

“Twenty three.”

“Prove it,” he orders me.

I take out my license, the one I never got to use since the driver’s test. Mama and her crew missed it when they packed up my things and sent them ahead to the Reverend’s house. My birth certificate remained in her safe, out of my reach.

Crash takes the license from me. Our fingers touch briefly; his are hard and rough.

“It’s expired,” he notes.

“It’s still me. Look at the forehead.”

“Trina Marie Whiteleaf,” he reads, his accent rumbling high and low on every syllable. “Five foot one. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Twenty-three years old.”

He lowers the ID and scans me up and down with a look that makes me go hot all over my body. “You lost weight,” he grunts.

“For the wedding.”

“You looked prettier here,” he says, tapping the ID. “Happier.”

“I wasn’t getting married then.”

He gestures to my left hand. “Is that the ring?”

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