Page 91 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
“I’ll drive you somewhere. And drop you off. If anyone asks, say one of the police officers had a change of heart and helped you.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to get me killed.” The blond man rolled his eyes and opened a door to one of the SUVs. “Get in.”
Whoever the blond man was, he could drive in snow if driving like a madman counted as driving. Jun gripped the door and braced himself on the dash as they hurled down the road at many times the recommended speed for the weather. They spun into a driveway. Up ahead, far down a long gravel stretch, was a house with a light.
The blond man turned to Jun. “I’m told you’re a good man, so I’m going to trust you to do whatever you can to contact your dog and call him off in the next”—he checked his watch—“twenty-seven minutes.”
“I will.”
“Good. And tell Collin his dad says good job.”
“What?”
The blond man’s lips tightened into a line. “Don’t ask questions, just go.”
Jun tumbled out of the SUV. It backed up at once, spun around, flinging gravel across Jun, and roared off.
There was nothing ideal about this. He gripped the blanket tight and hobbled up the drive on his bare feet, trying to step on patches of foliage and snow instead of the hard nubs of gravel. The door of the house was old and worn, and the walls were weathered wood, the kind that was never painted.
Dogs barked inside, and someone hiccuped and groaned. Footsteps. Jun whispered a wish to whatever kind spirit might listen. The lock clicked over, and the door opened. An ancient-looking man with a pipe in his mouth peered at him. He was shorter than Jun by several inches and wore a padded, quilted coat.
“Who’s there?”
“You don’t know me, sir. I’ve…I’ve gotten in trouble. I need to call my friends.”
The man sighed. “Don’t know if I should let you in, but…are you bleeding, young man?”
“Maybe.” Jun dabbed at his face.
“If you need medical help, it’s better to go to them than wait for them to come to you.”
“Can you drive?”
“I drive. Got a truck.” The man squinted at him. “I’ll take you down to town. We have a fire station.”
“Please. I need to make a call within twenty minutes.”
“It’s fifteen minutes drive. Cell service is spotty right now. Give me a moment.”
Jun shivered and closed his eyes, trying to keep himself from chattering. “Please hurry.”
It took the old man almost five minutes to make it back out and show Jun around to his truck. And once they started driving, it was so slow. Jun pulled his feet up on the seat and held them in his hands trying to warm them. His belly ached where he’d been kicked, and the only thing he could feel from his lower legs was pain. The rest was just numb.
“Fire station.” The old man pointed ahead to a small garage and office complex just off the road. He pulled in.
Jun forced himself to scramble out of the truck and hobbled to the door. He pounded hard. A few seconds later, a man in a firefighter uniform opened the door.
Jun started speaking before the man could greet him. “Phone now. I have about one minute to make a call or something bad happens.”
The man blinked, but he walked backward into the office and picked up the receiver from a landline. Jun had to take a double look at it. “How do I dial?”
The firefighter pushed a flattish box the size of a small pad toward him. There were numbers on the top in hospital pink, green, and gray. Jun went to type in Damian’s phone number.
He didn’t have it. They’d only communicated via the app. And he couldn’t log into an app on this device, whatever it was. It looked like a museum piece.
He knew Yohei’s number, though, his Korean one and his Japanese one.
