Page 34 of The Fixer and the Fugitive

“How else?” Sam replied. He was making pictures on the window with the fingers on his good side. For a second Celeste was tempted to snap at him to stop but in reality didn’t care enough and let it go.

“It’s sort of indicative of the whole town,” she mused.

“The whole town is populated by veterinarians and pastors?” he guessed.

“No, the whole town is weird.”

“How so?” He dropped his hand and faced her.

“It’s hard to explain until you experience it for yourself. They’re all very…individualized. Like a hundred years or so ago someone released the inhabitants of an insane asylum on a dare to see what would happen and what happened was that they settled down and reproduced, populating the town of Paradise.”

“Let’s go,” Sam said, tapping the dash.

“What? No.”

“Why not?”

“For the reason I said. They’re weird. And nosy. You’re supposed to be hiding.”

“I can’t hide forever. I could be here a while and we’ve already established me as your boyfriend. It would be weird to keep me hidden now,” he said.

“Don’t make good points when I’m trying to ignore the locals,” she said.

“Please,” he pleaded. “It’s been so long since I interacted with everyday Americans. I’ve almost forgotten how.”

“This is not the place to practice. Believe me. You’re going to regret it.”

“I regret nothing. Ever.”

“Really?” She turned to survey him. She could do that here, where the only traffic consisted of an occasional cow that had escaped confinement from its ranch.

“No. I regret everything, always.”

She faced forward. “What do you know? One more thing we have in common.”

A while later she pulled into a spot on main street and turned off the SUV. “Are you certain about this? It’s not too late to back out.”

“Really? Because it sort of feels like everyone is already watching us. Kind of like a Hitchcock thriller where someone is always secretly staring.”

“More like Hitchcock meets Doris Day,” Celeste said as she caught sight of Maybe and ducked low in her seat.

“This is so exciting,” Sam said.

Celeste gave him a look.

“Hey, if you spent three days stuffed in a box in the back of a truck trying to cross the border, you’d be excited, too,” he said.

“All right, I’ll give you that, but only because of the box,” Celeste said.

“Yes. I knew I’d be able to use that someday to earn points,” he said, pumping his fist in triumph. “Let’s go exploring.”

“There’s not much to explore. Only this street. And it only has a couple of stores.”

“But there are people,” he said, beaming.

“You’re really optimistically extroverted for a terrorist,” she muttered.

He poked her.

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