Page 1 of Stowaway Whirlwind
Chapter 1
Goldie
I cross my numb fingers, the icy gusts of wind lashing my skin, my teeth chattering while I silently plead with the big man tofucking go inside the truck stop store alreadyafter he finally exits his eighteen-wheeler. My knees ache in my crouched position, concealed beneath the clear, midnight blue sky and prickly bushes. I almost screamfinally!when he at last strides away from the rig, his heavy bootsteps slapping the pavement, swinging his keys in his hand without looking back. I crawl forward, making sure he’s completely out of view before I lumber up with stiff joints and my backpack slung over my shoulders, then jog up the passenger side of his truck.
I could nearly cry with joy when I jump and yank on the door handle and the massive door swings open with a creak, the big man having blessedly left his truck unlocked. Climbing the steep, narrow steps with my large belly in the way isn’t easy, but I manage to do so without slipping or losing my grip.
The inside is much more spacious than I thought, with a whole back area behind the front seats, complete with a few storage cabinets and a mini fridge. I curl into a ball behind the driver’s seat, hoping that when the driver returns, he won’t check back here and discover me before he leaves since Idesperately need a ride out of here. It’s not exactly warm in the truck, but at least I’m no longer exposed to the elements.
Feeling a tentative sliver of safety for the first time in a week, I slump against the seat back, hug my belly, and allow my eyes to drift shut. Just a few minutes of rest in the dark cab with the background white noise of the rumbling diesel engines from nearby trucks is all I need, and then I’ll be golden.
Davis
I don’t know how Wyatt did this long-hauling gig for almost twenty years. I’m not even three years into it, and I’m miserable sleeping in this cab most nights. I miss my bed, listening to the cicadas instead of the constant honking and slamming doors that jerk me awake when I’m parked overnight at a truck stop. I may only be thirty-four years old, but I may as well be sixty-four with as much as my back complains from sleeping on my narrow mattress every night.
It’s a whole hell of a lot better, though, being out on the road than sitting at home, missing my dad. Better than walking into the living room, expecting to see him dressed in his lucky football jersey, seated on the edge of the couch, ready to watch the game with me, and then getting knocked in the head and heart. It’s been nearly two years since he passed—three years since we even lived together before he needed to move to an assisted living facility after suffering two strokes—and it still bowls me over to find the living room empty on game days.
Dad took care of me and my older sister, Amanda, all on his own after Mom passed when I was ten years old. He workedhard to make sure we lacked for nothing, always finding a way to pay for our school sports and club fees, even when it meant taking on a second job that left him dead on his feet.
When he was the one who needed to be taken care of, I was determined to pay everything he did for us back in kind, especially since I was the only one he had to lean on after Amanda left for the University of Michigan without a backward glance. I jumped at the chance to switch with Wyatt, a fellow trucker at Berenson Trucking, taking over his long-hauls, which pays better and went a long way toward covering the costs of Dad’s ever-increasing medical needs—which I’m still paying off.
Wyatt took over my local deliveries so he would be able to go home every night to his woman, Dolly—the hitchhiker he picked up at a truck stop and quickly knocked up and married, shocking the hell out of our small town seeing as he’s close to twenty years older and a hundred plus pounds heavier than her. He told me he first thought Dolly was a lot lizard and even went so far as to shamefully accuse her of being a whore. He’s spent every minute of every day making up for that mistake.
Now that I’m the one driving from one side of the country to the other, whenever a lizard comes knocking on my driver’s side door, asking if I’d like somecompany, my first thought is:is the universe sending me a Dolly?And then I shove that ludicrous thought to the side and politely reject her. Besides, as pretty as Dolly is, she’s a bit of a nutcase and way too damn young. I’m glad it all worked out for Wyatt, but I’m not inviting that kind of chaos into my life, no matter how badly I wish I had someone to go home to every night.
Checking my mirrors, I carefully change lanes to the right to take the next exit off the highway, already dreading another night spent in my truck, made all the worse by the heartburn that I can’t seem to shake for the last twenty-four hours.
“Shit, goddamnit!” I hit the brakes hard and swerve onto the shoulder when a dull gray minivan from two lanes over cuts me off at the last second and brakes to take the exit ahead of me. I rage even as my training and instincts take over, trying to keep control of the truck and straighten it out so I don’t run off down the bank and end up killing myself or someone else.
There’s a yelp and a thud from the back of the cab, but I can’t spare a second to check it out yet when the damn minivan driver, who clearly must have some kind of death wish, slams on their brakes to swing into the truck stop’s parking lot and pulls up to a gas pump.
“You motherfucker!” I yell and flip the driver off with my middle finger, though I know they can’t hear or see me. It takes a monumental effort to control my breathing as I get the truck fully under control, pull into the parking lot myself, and find an empty space to park the rig.
I have half a mind to jump out and confront the driver to lecture them about how dangerous and downright stupid it is to cut in front of a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler that can’t brake as easily or as quickly as a standard vehicle. When I see the driver is a woman with a pack of kids in little league baseball uniforms pouring out of the minivan, I think better of it. Ain’t no way you’ll ever catch me getting into an altercation with a woman, even ifsomeoneneeds to set her straight about risking her kids’ lives with her reckless driving.
I close my eyes, drop my head back against the padded headrest, and take a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart at the thought that I could have wiped out a whole family if I had been going any faster. I jerk and snap my eyes open when I remember the yelp I heard when I swerved, and then I’m up and out of my seat quicker than a jack in the box.
The person crouched in the corner behind my seat screams and claws my arms, managing to get one good swipe of theirshort nails down my cheek when I grab the front of their T-shirt with both hands and haul them up. “Who the fuck are you, and how the fuck did you get in my truck?”
I instantly drop them with a jolt when I realize they’re a girl after she screams again and—bless her heart—tries to punch me in the throat in such close quarters. She lands with a hard thud on the floor and her young, plump face twists in pain.
“Ah, shit, girl,” I say, bending to help her up, but immediately back away and hold my hands up in front of me when she kicks my knee, hyper-extending the joint, and pulls a motherfuckinggunout of nowhere.
With both hands trying and failing to hold it steady as she points it at my chest, she yells, “Don’t touch me! I’ll blow your head off if you come near me again, mister. Don’t think I won’t do it!”
I’d take her threat a lot more seriously if it weren’t obvious that she doesn’t know how to handle the gun properly and has left the safety on. I suck my teeth and make my move when she removes one hand to wipe away the tears that are no doubt impeding her vision, accidentally letting the gun dip lower on my body. Risking a non-fatal bullet wound, it takes nothing but a blink to lunge forward, twist the gun out of her small hand, and point it at the floor between us.
The girl’s scream is so high-pitched that the sound rings in my ears. She lurches forward on her knees, damn near dropping her forehead to the floor after wrapping one arm around her belly and the other over her head protectively. It’s disturbing, having a girl on her knees before me like this, like she’s terrified of what I might do to her as she pleads with me, “Please don’t hurt me! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Her long, wavy, golden-red hair falls forward, shielding her face as her sobs garble her apologies.
I’ve got no clue what to make of her, and when I don’t say anything or make another move toward her, she hesitantlypeeks up from between her curtain of hair and eyes me. Those unnerving gray eyes jerk me back into the here and now, and she ducks again when I clench my jaw and check her gun’s chamber. Lo and behold…
“Damnit, girl. It’s not even loaded,” I tell her, laughing incredulously. “How are you going to hold someone up with a gun with no bullets?”
She scrunches her red brows, tears clinging to her pale lashes as she slowly straightens to sit on her heels. She darts her eyes behind me, where I’m blocking the only way out of the truck between the two front seats. “Oh.”
I cock my head and huff. “That’s all you got to say? ‘Oh’? Where the hell did you get this anyway? I doubt it’s even yours since you don’t know how to use the damn thing.”
She presses her lips together, her lightly freckled cheeks flaming red to match her messy hair, and she looks away. I slowly look her up and down, noticing for the first time that her belly is huge and rounded, and there are faded yellow fingertip bruises dotting her bare upper arms, with a handful of pink claw marks that haven’t broken the skin but look sore enough. They don’t look like the skin-picking someone deep into addiction might have, which means she either did it to herself or, more likely, she was attacked.
