Page 4 of Finding His Redemption

She was still watching him like she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

The boy pressed his hands against the glass and peered out at them with unabashed curiosity.

“Uh, thanks,” she said, then she reached for her wallet. “I can?—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t need your money.” From the looks of that car, she didn’t have a lot to spare.

She hesitated, then put the wallet away slowly as if she thought he might change his mind.

Jax picked up his duffel and started walking. It didn’t take long before he heard the engine again, a low rumble behind him. But instead of driving away, she pulled up alongside him with the passenger window rolled down.

“Where are you going?” She seemed genuinely puzzled by a man carrying a pack down an empty road in the middle of nowhere.

He didn’t stop walking. “Away from here.”

The car inched forward, keeping pace with him. The kid’s face was still plastered against the window.

“You don’t have a plan, do you?”

He didn’t, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “I’m headed to town. To start.”

“Well, then you’re going the wrong way. The closest town down this road is a fundamentalist Mormon settlement. They don’t like strangers. They like the men from the Ridge even less.”

Fuck. He stopped moving and exhaled, his breath clouding the air as he looked up at the brightening morning sky. Before prison, he’d spent nearly six years living in a town with a crazy doomsday cult in the mountains. He didn’t love the idea of repeating the experience.

Just one more reason he had to leave.

“And if you’re headed to Solace,” she added after a beat of silence, “then that’s a long walk.”

“I’ve done longer.”

She gave him a look that said she didn’t doubt it. “Get in. I owe you a ride and a cup of coffee for helping me.”

“Anyone ever tell you not to pick up ex-cons on the side of the road?”

“Everyone I know,” she answered. “But I have a weakness for strays.”

“We have a dragon,” the boy added, like that explained everything.

Jax blinked. For a second, he thought he’d misheard. “A… dragon?”

“Bearded,” the woman clarified.

Ah. That made more sense. Sort of.

The boy all but bounced in his seat. “He doesn’t really have a beard. He’d look funny if he did. And he has teeth, but his name is Toothless, like inHow to Train Your Dragon.”

Jax had no idea what the kid was talking about, but he nodded anyway.

“We also have Niblet the chinchilla, who hates Tuesdays. And three cats! One’s named Socks because he has socks, one’s Princess Jellybean because I like jellybeans and she’s a girl,and one’s Trouble because that’s what Mom says he is. But we actually found them in the garbage, not on the side of the road.”

In the garbage.

Jax’s grip tightened on the duffel’s strap. He didn’t know why that hit the way it did, but it struck somewhere deep and ugly. He couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the woman added, echoing his own words back at him.

Jax studied her face. She didn’t look scared. Maybe she was crazy.

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