Deadly Expectations (32 page)

The second trace seemed like it was taking longer than the first.
 
My legs were cramping up and I had to sit on the frozen ground.
 
I huddled close to the bike but the wind had long since taken all the heat from it.
 
It didn’t give that much
cover
anyway.

A flash of light down the highway caught my eye.
 
I watched where it came from and saw it again.
 
A vehicle was coming up the rolling road, its lights popping up at the tops of the rises.

“Ray … there’s a car coming.
 
I’m going to flag it down.”

“Be careful Anna; stay on the phone with me …”

I stood up and started waving.
 
The wind took my hood off.
 
I didn’t bother to try and pull it back up; I needed both hands in the air.
 
The roar of the engine got closer and closer then its lights found me.
 
It wasn’t slowing down.

“Stop … please,” I yelled.

It passed me.

“Ray …
”
 
Then
the brakes jammed on and it skidded to a stop half sideways on the road a couple of hundred feet away.
 
“It stopped.”

“Stay on the phone,” Ray said.

I waited … nothing happened.
 
The truck didn’t move and the driver didn’t get out so I started walking toward it.

“It’s just sitting there Ray,” I told him.
 
“I’m walking over to it.”

“Careful,” Ray warned.

The cold was so intense I felt like my joints were freezing up.
 
I stopped after only fifteen or so steps.
 
The driver’s side was toward me and I saw the door open.
 
The rear floodlights came on and someone got out.
 
I was suddenly scared and wanted to go back and hide behind the bike.
 
He started walking toward me.
 
I was in the middle of the lane so I took a few steps to the shoulder.

“It won’t start,” I yelled though the wind to the silhouette of the man in the lights.
  
No idea if he heard me.
 
The cell phone beeped as the call dropped.
 
I looked down.
 
No signal.
 
I closed it and put it in my pocket.
 
The shivering grew worse and worse as he approached.

He was only fifty feet from me now.
 
I took a few steps closer.
 
He started to run … I took a few steps and started to run the other way.
 
I’d left my gun behind with the bike.

“Wait,” he called.
 
The wind took most of his voice.
 
I kept going.
 
I was almost to the bike holding the weight of my stomach still with one hand as I hurried.

“Wait!” the man called through the wind as he got closer.
 
I got my glove off and shoved my hand in for my gun.
 
I had it out of the holster and the bag in a couple of seconds.

I held it in both hands, safety off, pointed up but ready to go.
 
The wind blew my snow filled hair into my face and all I could make out was his shape.
 
I straightened up.

“Anna!” he shouted.

I froze.
 
Then I put the safety back on and pointed the gun at the ground.
 
Paul had put his hands up when the gun came out but now he lowered them.
 
He walked a dozen steps toward me and stopped a few feet away.
 
It was definitely Paul, even in the darkness with the light behind I knew.

“Paul …
”
 
I
said.
 
I took the last two steps toward him and looked up at his face.
 
He put his arms around me as I reached around him.
 
One around my back and the other holding my head to his shoulder.
 
He pressed his face into my hair.

“You smell like summer.”

“Yes,” I said as I shivered.
 
Even in the cold I could still smell it in my hair.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.
 
“I’m so sorry.”

“Sshhh,” he said.
 
“Later.”

He would speak his peace.
 
I knew I had that coming.
 
Our daughter said he would forgive me, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t have to work for it.

“Can we get it in the truck?”
 
I asked, gesturing to the bike.

Paul let me go and went over to the bike and got my bag.

“No,” he said and kicked it hard; over into the ditch.
 
“I don’t want to see it ever again.”

Fair enough, I thought.
 
It felt like such a long walk to the truck.
 
The sideways snow had been sticking to my clothes making me even colder.
 
I ducked my head down toward him to try and keep the wind off.

“It’s so damn cold,” I chattered.
 
He squeezed me with his arm.
 
Next to the truck at least I was mostly out of the wind.
 
My ankles were still getting blown but the rest of me suddenly seemed a lot warmer.

Paul opened up the passenger door.
 
The truck was full of garbage.
 
He scooped out all the food wrappers and bottles onto the road and helped me in then he went around to the other doors and did the same.
 
The wind pushed most of it off the road.
 
He’d left the engine running so I had already turned up the heat and was trying to strip off my wet clothes in front of it when he got in.

“Get up … don’t sit on that,” he said.
 
I looked behind me and I’d almost sat on his gun.
 
The letter I left him was crumpled underneath it.
 
Paul put his gun away under his coat and put his hand on my shoulder to push me back down.
 
He put the letter in his pocket.
 
I was having trouble untying my boots so he helped and then gave me a hand getting the rest of the wet things off.
 
He threw them in the back.

“Your clothes are all damp.
 
No wonder you’re frozen,” his voice was strained, stiff.

I nodded.
 
I wasn’t going to try to get him to temper what he was going to say to me by making him feel bad for me now.
 
There was a change of dry clothes in my bag so I took them out.
 
It seemed to take forever for my skin to be dry enough for me to be able to pull them on.

“You’re not any bigger,” he said.

“No,” I agreed.

Paul put the truck in gear and drove.
 
Eventually I warmed up in front of the vents so I turned down the heater and slid over to the passenger seat.
 
The falling snow seemed a lot less wintery from inside out of the wind.

“I called you when I turned up back there,” I told him.
 
“You didn’t answer.”

He picked his phone up off the floor.
 
It was in two pieces.
 
He tossed it in the back seat.

“I left you a message.
 
I got through to Ray … he was trying to find me when you stopped but the phone lost signal.”

My phone rang from the back seat.

“Give it to me,” Paul said.

I knelt on the seat to pull the phone from the pocket of my damp coat.
 
I gave it to Paul.

“Ray,” he said when he opened it.
 
I could hear Ray talking but couldn’t make out what he was saying.
 

“No, you called her,” then, “yes.”

He sighed.
 
“Yes.”

He was silent for a while.
 
I had never seen his dark mood this bad before.

“How did you know where I would be?” he asked.

I just said “where you needed me the most.”

He laughed; a humourless barking
laugh
.

“Why was your gun on the seat Paul?”

He stared straight ahead.

“You didn’t think I was coming back … decided to take a short cut to finding me again?”
 
I asked.

I waited.

“It was in my mouth for the last time when I saw you on the road,” his toneless voice told me.

I put my hand over my mouth and looked out my window.

“My fault,” I said eventually.

“Damn right.”
 
He said angrily.

I slept for a while and woke up cold again.
 
Paul was filling up the truck.

“Do you want to see him now or go home for a while first?”
 
I asked him when we pulled out again.

“Who?”

“Your father … I think I have enough left to do it now.
 
You’ll have to let me drive.”

He laughed.

“Your call,” I told him.
 
“I have no idea where we are.
 
You know how long it will take to drive home.
 
I can have us there in a few minutes.”

“You know where my father is?”
 
Disbelief.

“I won’t know until we get there.
 
I want to go home … we can go see him when you’re ready.”

He shook his head.

“Let me try and set it up … if that works I’ll have to drive,” I told him.
 
“Home?
 
Once I start we’ll have to go …”

“Whatever,” he said.

I closed my eyes and thought about jumping the truck.
 
I would have to drive and I wanted to hold on to Paul … the last thing he needed was for me to leave him on the road somewhere.
 
I thought about us at home … maybe he had been working on the upstairs.
 
Our room.
 
The pond.
 
The truck seemed to drift a bit in its lane.

I kept my eyes closed and asked.
 
“Is the road icy?”

“No,” he said.

“Can you feel the truck move?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” I told him.

I continued to concentrate on the jump.
 
The truck was moving more.

“Shit,” Paul said as he pushed the truck back into its lane.
 
“Are you doing that?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“Floor the gas … I need to know how much pickup this thing has.”

He sighed impatiently but he did.
 
It pressed me back into the seat.
 
I probably should have checked that first but the truck had enough punch to do it.
 
Less pickup meant more pressure for me.
 
After a few more side gusts a big one hit from behind and the canopy door rattled so loud we could hear it.
 
I unbuckled and slid over to him.

“Time to let me drive,” I told him.
 
Another gust slammed us from behind.
 
The pressure was building in me fast.
 
He didn’t move.