Shallow Creek

She rolled her eyes and walked away.  “Here it comes.”

“I need your car.”

She sat down on a stool near the front door.  “To go where?  To your brother’s cabin?”

Brendan nodded.

“Is it anywhere near your family’s old cabin?”

“Yes, why?”

“You’ll need more than my crappy little car out there, Brendan.  Use your head.”

Kim got up and brushed past him as she made her way down the stairs.  He hurried along behind her, wondering what she was up to.

“Wait here,” she said at the backdoor to the main house.

Obeying her without protest, Brendan leaned against the back wall, right next to the door.  Checking every direction for cops or other general onlookers, Brendan tried hard to not look too nervous as he waited for Kim to reappear from inside the house.  When a black sedan slowly cruised by the long driveway, his heart crawled into his throat until the car moved on.

After waiting a full minute, Brendan started to get antsy.  What was she doing in there?  People’s lives could hang in the balance, and she was off doing God only knew what.

What if she called the cops?  Was that why she’d lured him out here, so that she could get into the house, away from him, to make the call in privacy?

As Brendan peeled himself cautiously off the wall, the door opened and Kim appeared, keys in hand.

“Take my mom’s truck.”

She handed the keys over and clicked the garage door open with the remote in her other hand.  The wide aluminum door ascended to reveal a pristine, blue Ford F-150 with all-terrain tires and a short lift kit.  A gleaming toolbox hung across the bed, right under the rear window.

“I can’t promise it’ll look this good when I bring it back,” Brendan said, admiring the clean machine.

“Don’t worry about it.  I’m going to tell her you stole it.”

“What?  Why?”

She smiled beautifully despite her cold.  “Just kidding.  Don’t be a dumbass.”

Brendan recovered enough to get into the truck and start the engine.  He rolled down the window as he backed it out, carefully avoiding Kim’s car in the process.

“Have you got any money?” Kim called to him.

Brendan stopped the truck.  He patted his pockets.  “I left everything at my parents’ house.”

“Here, you stole this from my mom, too.” She passed him a few folded twenties through the open window.  “And don’t think this means I’m not still pissed at you.”

“Can we sort that out later?” She folded her arms and nodded.  “Thanks a lot for your help.  I really appreciate it.”

She huffed a little and waved him on.  “Go fix this, and then come back to me in one piece, okay?”

Chapter 44

Hope enveloped Brendan as he drove casually out of the neighborhood.  Kim still had a thing for him, he was sure of it, but for now he needed to file that away and focus on escaping Shallow Creek.  Surely the cops had blockaded most of the town by now, setting up a perimeter to hinder Brendan’s flight.

When Brendan thought about it, though, that DEA jackass, Norman, would probably deploy most of his limited assets to search for his missing agents.  Sacrificing the search and rescue teams in order to stop Brendan leaving town wouldn’t be as high a priority.  With that in mind, Brendan made the decision to sneak out of town the way they used to in high school.  The chances of anyone patrolling that area would be slim.

This part of Shallow Creek had changed a lot since he’d last visited.  Developers had converted a lot of the old houses into businesses of various sorts.  Some had kept the homes up and even restored some of them, which Brendan appreciated since these houses were the oldest buildings left in town.  Others had pulled down the historic structures and replaced them with cheap pre-fab shacks promising quick oil changes or greasy donuts.

Seeing the old town of his parents’ childhoods disappearing like this distracted Brendan enough that he would’ve missed his turn if not for the streaks of mud staining the main road in a V-shape emanating from the tiny, unmarked lane.  Once on the dirt-covered lane, Brendan smiled.  A lot had changed in Shallow Creek, but teenagers would always want to get away from their folks to do stupid crap.  He followed the straight road as the buildings became more and more sparse, giving way to the empty fields and short hedges lining the pavement.  Just when the lane appeared to terminate in a thick stand of bushes, Brendan caught sight of the old gap in the hedge on his left and cut the wheel, sliding the truck out into the field.

As he bumped the once-clean truck across the barren dirt, Brendan thanked God that no one had installed a fence or a gate back there.  That lane was so narrow that he’d never have gotten the truck turned around if an obstruction had forced him back the way he’d come.