“But the office—”
“—will run just fine without you. Yes, I know you’d rather come home every night, but if you really want field experience, you need to get out in the field and stay there. It’s a small town. You have to meld in, become part of the community. It’ll be good for you, getting out, mingling, trying to fit in ...”
Mingling with humans. Trying to fit into human society. That’s what he meant. Damn.
I reluctantly agreed. He made me promise to call him with an update tomorrow.
three
I took the back roads to Columbus. Highways and motorcycles don’t mix. Neither do motorcycles and the Pacific Northwest. Like Lucas, though, I refuse to yield to the climate. I ride when I can, and have a rainsuit in my saddlebags. I could have taken Paige’s Prius, but the forecast was clear for the next week. So I was zooming along, enjoying the ride, when I passed a service station warning “last gas for ten miles,” which seemed odd, considering Columbus was only a few miles away. Still, I had under half a tank, so I stopped.
As I filled up, a couple of truckers stood outside a rig, the younger one checking me out, the older one checking out my ride.
“Marlon Brando,” the older guy said, nodding at my ride. “That’s the bike he had in The Wild Ones.”
The younger guy’s gaze slithered over me. “So are you a wild one, hon?”
The older one shut him up with a glare, then turned to me. “Where you heading? There isn’t much around out here.”
I doubted these guys were from Columbus, but if they were on this back road, they were probably familiar with the area.
Channeling Paige, I pasted on a big, friendly smile. “Columbus.”
“Why?” the younger guy said. “Nothing there for a girl like you.”
“And not the safest place either,” the older one said. “They’ve had themselves a few murders in the past year. Young women.”