Just a Little Honesty (3 page)

With only a few hours of driving under his belt, Luke still hadn’t said much. Only once had he offered to stop for a bathroom break, and only then it was because he wanted to stretch his legs.

“So,” I asked, speaking up for the first time since we’d switched cars. We were probably four hours into the drive—11:45 p.m., according to the dashboard clock—and Luke didn’t seem to be getting the least bit tired.

“Are there any plans to stop and get some rest on this little vacation of ours?”

Luke passed me a quick glance out of the corner of his eye—the first look in hours, might I add—before looking straight back at the highway.

“Listen,” I said, turning in my seat. “I know you’re probably capable of driving straight through the night, and I get it; you want to get as far away from Oakland as fast as you can. But you’re going to get tired at some point, and there’s no point pretending you’re not human. You need to sleep.”

Still, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t grumble, groan, or even sigh. He seemed to be in super-robot-Luke mode; I’d never seen someone work so hard to avoid even the simplest human behaviors.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, yawning. And I’m not sure it was worth anything (because he simply continued to ignore me). “
I’m
exhausted. And the thought of a hot shower, a comfortable bed, and a good night’s sleep has never sounded better. Imagine the amount of ground we could cover tomorrow if we’re both well-rested and thinking clearly.”

I watched his face for any kind of reaction, but still nothing.

“Luke—”

“Your seat reclines,” he said, still avoiding eye contact. “There are blankets folded up in the back if you’re cold. Help yourself.”

“You want me to sleep in the car?” I asked, fully realizing how much I sounded like a diva. I used to spend every summer with my parents taking road trips; I’d spent more hours sleeping on those trips than I had enjoying the ride, so my reluctance to sleep in the car while Luke drove was just as curious to me as it was to him.

“What do you suggest, Julie?” he asked, finally looking at me. “We’re rushing against the clock, and there’s no time for making unscheduled stops. If you’re tired, sleep now; I’m not stopping.”

I broke his stare and turned to the window, watching my reflection with sad eyes; I simply looked on as we passed countless signs along the edge of the highway that pointed to a thousand other places I would’ve much rather been. I don’t know how many hotel signs we put behind us (or how many I counted) before I finally drifted to sleep. 

Saturday, April 06 | 6 a.m.

It wasn’t until the sun pierced my eyes bright and early the next morning that I finally managed to wake up and focus on my surroundings. The car was parked off behind an abandoned warehouse somewhere off the highway. I shifted in my seat and turned to look at Luke, assuming I’d find him sleeping at the wheel.

“Morning,” he said, not even the slightest bit groggy. “Sleep well?”

I grimaced and sat straighter. “That’s a joke, right?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. Somehow, though I had no idea how, he looked as alive and energetic as ever. “I assume you’re hungry?”

“You’re not?”

“It wouldn’t kill me to eat something, I guess,” he said, getting as close as he probably ever would to admitting that he had any kind of need to satisfy.

“Where are we?”

“About six hundred miles out of Oakland.”

“
Six hundred miles
?” I asked, wiping away a puddle of drool from the side of my face.

I dropped my head and rubbed my lips together; the night had left me feeling a little self-conscious. Obviously I’d drooled all over myself into the early morning, so there was no telling what else Luke had witnessed during the night. Had I snored? Talked in my sleep? Matt had always teased me about my innate ability to sleep through anything, and I used to laugh it off as nothing more than a quirky character trait. But it was hard to laugh it off knowing that Luke was only an arm’s length away while I was at my most vulnerable.

Thinking of Matt, my mind suddenly went back to Oakland. I wondered how things were going in the hunt for Conan. Did Charlie have a lead? Was he okay? Were Matt, Kara, Bruno, and Derek safe?

“No word from home,” Luke said as if he’d read my mind. “But Charlie’ll call when there’s something to report.” I dropped my brows and looked out the window, and Luke simply sighed. “There’s no use worrying about them, Julie. They’re not in any kind of danger. In the meantime,
we’ve
reached our destination. We either wait it out here until we get new orders, or we wait it out here until it’s time to go back. Either way, welcome to Piqua.”

CHAPTER THREE

Saturday, April 06 | 7:30 a.m.

“What’s the word?” I asked, watching Luke end a call. He’d just hung up with Charlie, who’d called right in the middle of breakfast. Still seated in our diner booth—both on opposite sides—he tucked the prepaid phone back into his pocket.

“We’re staying put,” he said, but his expression didn’t give away much else.

I assumed “staying put” meant one thing: Charlie—and all the fine men and women of the Oakland and West Bridge Police Departments—had no reason to believe that Luke and I had been followed out of town. I could only assume “staying put” meant we were far enough away, but close enough for comfort. And I truly hoped that it meant that Charlie had zeroed in on (or at least had some kind of clue about) Conan Milton’s whereabouts.

“Did he say for how long?” I asked, mindlessly stirring my orange juice with a straw.

“No, but my guess is a day or two,” Luke said, giving me more information in those nine words than he’d given me in the last fifteen hours. Since he’d given me a little—but not much—insight, I figured that Charlie must’ve told Luke something sensitive about what was going on back in Oakland.

“Do they have any leads?”

“Nope,” he said, smacking his lips together, clearly indicating that his “nope” was a big, fat lie.

“So,” I said, looking around the diner. It reminded me of the diner back in Oakland, the one where I’d shared many meals with my friends and family. I already missed them, and I hated being so far from home…. “What do you propose we do here?”

“Well,” he said, letting his gaze fall out the window. “Piqua’s a small town, so you’re not going to find much to keep you busy. But if you’re interested,” he said, looking back and nodding to a large, framed map hanging on the diner wall. “There’s a town map. You’ll find just about all your options there.”

I slid out of the booth and walked across the diner, leaving Luke back at the table to finish his breakfast in peace. I stopped at the opposite wall and stared at the map, letting my eyes wander from street to street. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that we’d ended up in the middle of nowhere;
of course
Charlie would pick the smallest town within a thousand-mile radius of Oakland.

“We’re just a few miles out from some hiking trails,” Luke said, his breath just inches from the back of my neck. I hadn’t heard him come over, but he was suddenly leaning over my shoulder and pointing at a road on the edge of town. I didn’t want to assume that he’d purposely tried to get under my skin, but just the warmth of his body behind mine sent a shiver fluxing through my body. “What do you think?”

“That Charlie doesn’t think being on the run is punishment enough,” I said, stammering. In that moment, I seriously considered the fact that Luke had no perception of personal boundaries. Given our circumstances, considering everything we’d been through, I couldn’t believe he stood there—barely an inch from touching—so comfortably. “He couldn’t have sent us somewhere bigger, somewhere with a few more options?”

“Your uncle didn’t pick our location, Julie,” Luke said, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the map.

“He didn’t?”

“No. I did.”

“You?” I asked, turning on my heel. And as soon as I turned, I wished I hadn’t. We were suddenly standing nose-to-nose.  Luke watched me with a furrowed brow, and then he settled his stare directly on mine. I tried to back away, but I had nowhere to go. Suddenly pressed against the wall, I looked to the ground and waited for Luke to step back. He wasted no time moving out of my way, so I brushed by him and headed straight for our booth.

“Where did we land on hiking?” he asked as if nothing about what had just happened seemed the least bit awkward to him.

I glared at him as we both settled back into our opposite sides of the booth. “You’re seriously suggesting that I go hiking?”

“You saw the map,” he said. “Did you come up with any other ideas?”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head so hard it almost hurt. “
Anything
but hiking.”

“It could be fun.” He used his napkin to wipe the (already clean) corners of his mouth. “And it’d help get your mind off of everything back home.” No sooner than he folded the napkin up and placed it on his empty plate, he yawned.

“You know what I think?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “I think we should leave this rinky dink town—God only knows why you thought this would be an appropriate destination, anyway—hit the highway, and set up shop at the first hotel we can find.”

“Damn,” Luke said quietly, and it almost sounded the slightest bit sexy. “What is it with you trying to get me to a hotel, Little?” His lip twitched, and I could easily see that he was fighting to restrain a smirk. Somewhere beneath his restraint I could see a tiny remnant of the Luke I’d once known and loved. 

“I’m not trying to get you to a hotel—”

“It’s the second time you’ve brought it up in the last twelve hours,” he said shamelessly. “And it’s an intriguing offer, don’t get me wrong. But it would be unprofessional; I’m on the job—”

“
If you would just shut up and let me finish
,” I said, not letting his little joke get to me the way I knew it easily could’ve. “I was going to say that we should find the nearest hotel—for no other reason than to get you some rest. There’s no telling when Charlie’s going to call and have us back on the road. And it’d be nice to know that when that moment
does
arrive, you’re well rested
and
able to tackle another long drive.”

He brushed it off as easily as I’d brought it up, picked up the check, and slid out of the booth.

“Luke—”

“Let’s roll,” he said, suddenly back to his old ways. He’d gone so quickly from being laid back to uptight, and I had no idea what had initiated his sudden change of demeanor. He made his way to the register at the front of the diner and stopped to make small talk with our waitress.

Letting go of a sigh, I got up and followed him.

After paying the check from the envelope of cash Charlie had given him back at the house, Luke sent our fifty-something waitress a flirtatious wink. He turned out of the diner without another word, and I trailed slowly behind him and watched as he walked for the car.

“Hey,” I said, reaching forward and taking his wrist. He turned back and watched me for a second, and then his gaze fell on my grasp. “Sorry,” I said, and then I dropped my hand and stood a little taller. Even after I’d let go of his arm, Luke still stared at his wrist as if my touch had lingered. “Can we strike a deal?”

“A deal?” he asked, finally pulling his brown eyes up from his arm.

“Yeah,” I said, raising my chest confidently. “I’ll go hiking if—”

“I promise to get some sleep?” He tried not to smile at my predictability.  “Julie, I’m not tired.”

“That can’t be true,” I said, watching him lean back against the car and cross his arms at his chest. “I know for a fact that you worked first shift yesterday morning, which means you were up by four to get your morning run in. And then you went straight from patrol to picking me up, packing your bags, and driving through the night. That’s over 24-hours you’ve been up.”

“I’ve stayed up longer—”

“
Lucas James Reibeck
,” I said, scolding him in the way only a girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, I guess—could. “Quit being stubborn.”

“Don’t
Lucas James Reibeck
me,” he said, and his face twisted.

I rested my right hand on my popped hip and watched him with pursed lips. 

“Let’s say I don’t agree to your proposition,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. “If I don’t get any sleep, and you don’t go hiking, then what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, standing straighter and dropping my arms to my side. “You said
you
were the one who picked this town.” He nodded to confirm that I’d heard him correctly. “Obviously there was a reason.”

“Maybe,” he said, and that
maybe
sounded a lot more like
well, duh
.

“Then,” I said, trying to put my faith into the fact that my fate for the day rested in Luke’s hands. “Surprise me.”

Saturday, April 06 | 9:00 a.m.

We drove about a mile out of town before Luke turned off onto a shaded dirt road. The tree-lined street was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Back home, in both Oakland and West Bridge, we’d never had anything quite so… simple. The little town of Piqua was tiny in size, rustic in charm, and as quaint as quaint could get.

I stared out the window for the entirety of our drive, utterly speechless by the simplicity of Piqua’s natural beauty. A small creek ran alongside the dirt road. The two bridges we crossed were wooden and covered, and the air smelled cleaner than I could ever remember it smelling. There was something about the small town that made life less stressful; it was calming.

Two miles down the road, Luke pulled off into a large siding. I looked around to get a better idea as to why he’d stopped, but nothing stood out to justify his pulling over. He parked the car next to a line of trees that ran along the small creek.

“The road gets too narrow up ahead,” he said, letting himself out of the car without another word. He went around to the trunk, opened it, and began unloading the bags.

“Um, Luke,” I said, now out of the car myself. I went around to the back as he slung his brown bag over his shoulder. “Whatcha doin’?”