Through the open bay door and past the orange harbinger, he dumped the newly purchased pump on one of his steel benches. He strode across his shop, wrenched the steel door open, and stepped into the waiting room. Beyond the desk, he stared at the dot-sized flickering light as his computer slowly loaded. Five years.
His gaze left the screen and drifted over his landscape photographs on the walls. Beneath an image of clear spring water cutting through slabs of snow, he lingered on a six-by-eight amateur snapshot.
Amanda had snagged his camera and clicked away, capturing the average scene back when Jim owned the shop. Through the front door, Jim could be seen at his desk, sorting repair orders. To the left, Ryan was in the shop bent over a fender, his head cut off by the hood. Amanda was a reflection in the waiting room’s window. A camera topped off the thirteen-year-old, clothed in a baggy work uniform. She’d been carefree, loving every oil change she’d finished, and Ryan had wanted to protect her.
He dropped his gaze back to the screen, the computer ready to go. Visiting a white pages website, he typed in the name and waited. He didn’t find Amanda’s name in Colorado but instead found Jim, in Morrison, a five-hour drive from Bayfield. The town was near Denver but probably small enough to suit Jim. Maybe Amanda was still at home, or at least Jim could tell Ryan how to reach her. He stared at the snapshot as he reached for the cordless phone.
“Hey.” Ryan’s gaze shot to the right, toward the shop. His brow lowered and his eyes narrowed at the man who leaned against the door frame.
Ryan agreed with the rest of the town. Gersham was too big of a name for someone with so little meat on his six-foot frame. Stringy blond hair, bony cheeks, and constant stubble, everyone agreed Germ suited him better. He wore the trademark densely packed, gray stripes of the town’s other repair shop.
Ryan strained for calm as he put down the phone. Away from the desk, he strode past his unwelcome guest. “Hey,” he replied as he entered the shop. Germ was right behind him. “What brings you inside my shop on this fine day?”
“Couldn’t help it.” Germ followed Ryan into the shop. “Pulling up to Josh’s, I spotted this.” He patted the car’s roof.
Ryan turned to the tool box against the wall. Germ. Germ had ordered the pump, returned it, and had never chosen to be social enough to tell a soul. And he had the nerve to show up now in the mood to talk. Ryan needed to talk to Amanda and not put another second to poor use. Germ had to leave.
With a steel tone, Ryan said, “Yeah, it’s a real public attraction. I’m wondering if I should charge admission.”
Germ grunted. “It’s not the first to come through here.” Ryan grabbed a ratchet, his grip tighter than necessary on the metal rod. He clicked on a socket then stepped to the car. Bent over the bumper, he tackled the drive belt tensioner. Germ leaned against a fender and watched.
The tension on the belt gave but didn’t do anything for the charged impatience fueling Ryan’s system. “Business must be slow in dent repair.” Move along, nothing to see here, buddy. Anxiety crushed his gut while his spectator refused to budge.
Germ gave an easy smile. “How’d you guess? You know, when I came by for some chamois yesterday, I didn’t see this in your shop. How’d you get the part so fast?”
Still in the engine, Ryan lifted one shoulder, forcing it to relax into a half-shrug. “Suppose I have you to thank for that. It was the one you returned five years ago.” He glanced up to catch Germ’s reaction, but Germ had turned, his hip propped on the fender. He appeared to survey the shop. Ryan focused on Germ’s flexing jaw muscle. “Let’s hope it still works. Rubber seals don’t last forever.” He’d meant to deflect, but the jaw muscle worked harder. Remind him he was on his way to Josh’s. “When you head over, don’t mention the car to Josh. It’ll save you the trouble of a conversation.”
“What’d he tell you?”
“Less than what you probably know.” Ryan worried a rubber hose off the pump. “I don’t know. I’m in a rush to get this done and can’t afford distractions.” The silvery smell of power steering fluid hissed and steamed as stray drops trickled onto the hot engine. He dropped a steady gaze on Germ, focused on his present distraction.
Germ returned the look, waiting.
With a resigned breath, Ryan pivoted and carried the dripping part over to the work bench. “He said the pump was ordered and then returned, never installed.” After setting the old part next to the new one, still in its box, he pulled a coarse shop rag from his back pocket.
Why was Germ so interested? What had Danielle’s death meant to him? Maybe he felt professionally responsible for not being able to fix the Clip in time. After all, he’d stopped wrenching after the crash. Ryan refused to care. Germ’s problems belonged to Germ.
Ryan rubbed at the dirty fluid on his hands. Beside Amanda, everything else had to be considered a delay. Placing the rag under the dripping pump, he folded his arms across his chest and stared at the side of Germ’s face.
“Jim used to own this place back then,” Germ said. Ryan nodded. He had no more words for Germ. “I didn’t figure they’d be the ones to leave. I never thought Amanda was close to Danielle.”
Suddenly the spotlight shifted. Ryan was being stared down by Germ. Ryan turned from him and pulled out the new pump. He returned to the car. “You sure aren’t your usual quiet self today. These hatchbacks seem to rile you up.” He felt a blast of heat on his face before leaning over the hot engine. Or was he just being paranoid after Josh’s behavior?
Germ shrugged. “I’ve always wondered if there was more to it, you know? You ever think that way?”
Ryan felt like he was the one being dragged through interrogation. Maybe Germ should have worked harder to get the pump in the car. He’d said the girls weren’t close, which was an understatement. They’d repelled each other like electromagnets, surging not with electricity but animosity. Was Germ looking for someone else to blame?
Ryan’s sweat ran cold. “I think you’ve been hanging around the open paint cans too long.” Ryan’s arms were deep in the engine. He watched the shadows grow in Germ’s face.
“Still,” Germ patted the fender before pushing off. “Someone’s gotta do it. Cars don’t paint themselves. See you around, Rye.”
Ryan peeked around the hood, made sure Germ had actually left his shop. And then waited five minutes more.
Satisfied, he strode back to the waiting room and grabbed the cordless phone, punching at the buttons. He paused at the last number. Something restrained him, nudged his finger back from the last button . . . this would throw their world upside down. He studied the picture with her ponytail and camera reflection. Jim had to tell Ryan how to reach Amanda. He punched the last number and lifted the phone to his ear.
It rang three times. “Hello?” A woman’s voice.
The sound slammed into him. His body tensed. His hand tightened on the phone as the past flashed in such detail, he squinted against it.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
“Amanda.” His throat clenched on him, tortured him to wait.
Silence held the line. Then, finally, “Ryan?”
He closed his eyes, not expecting this. Over the phone may not have been the brightest idea, but five years . . . the thought had him opening his eyes and gazing through the window to the shop. The greasy pump sat on the work bench. He took a deep breath. “Amanda, listen. I’ve found—”
“Who is this?” a man’s voice boomed into his ear.
Ryan gripped the phone tighter, nearly cracking the plastic. “Jim, it’s Ryan. I found something that’ll help Amanda. I need to talk to her about Danielle—”
“Not interested.”
“I know, but Jim, Amanda didn’t—”
“Sir!” Impatience flooded the barked word. “I told you. We aren’t interested. Do not call us again. Unders
tand?”
“No, Jim, you’ve got to understand.” Ryan’s body heat rose with the thundering of his heart. “It wasn’t her fault. Danielle—”
“Sir! You forget yourself. We aren’t interested. Our lives are fine the way they are. We’ll never remember this product you’re trying to sell on us. Let it be.”
“How can you say that? What if she remembers later? Then what?”
Jim’s voice was distanced away from the phone as Ryan heard, “Telemarketers, persistent little buggers.”
The dial tone sounded in Ryan’s ear. He glared at the phone, held in his crushing fist, ready to hurl it at the far wall. Didn’t Jim get it? The car had crashed by its own damn self. More than one person needed freedom from responsibility.
He stilled, filtered what he’d heard. Amanda still didn’t remember. Jim wanted to keep her forgetful. Was there a protective father out there who wouldn’t?
Images of twisted metal and a gouged tree flashed through his mind. It was still a tragedy, but it no longer belonged to Amanda. Though it seemed she’d gotten over it long before Ryan had. He stopped pacing to look at the old part still on the bench. Maybe the only person who needed this part, this proof of no-fault, was him.
He pulled out the new pump and cursed it as he worked. Where were you five years ago when we needed you? He’d finally found a solution, but it wouldn’t bring Jim or Amanda back into his life.
He knew she had more family in Denver. If Jim had never told them about her past, what was to keep them from asking the wrong questions?
~ ~ ~
What’s it like to die? From his crouched, well-hidden position outside the open window to Ryan’s shop, the suspicious individual had no hope of damming the flash flood. Recurring, punishing thoughts hammered at him after hearing the brief phone conversation. Is there a crossing-over? Is there a never-coming-back? How much of us is actually left once we leave our body behind? Does the machine run us, or do we run the machine? Science keeps proving how much of us is just determined by the biological systems within us. So where do we begin once the machine ends? Or do we end with it?
His heart started racing. He couldn’t help it. He was past the point of no return now. Nothing to do but to let it pass over him. He rolled his fingers into his palms, clenching them tight as a cold wet coated his skin. And dammit, he couldn’t breathe. His chest would fall before it even had a chance to rise, forcing him to fight for air as his heart rate went arrhythmic. He needed a tune-up before he choked and died.
God, he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to think about death, but there it’d been staring him in the face. He hadn’t seen it in so long he’d almost forgotten it took the shape of a car. Innocent looking as it sat parked in Ryan’s shop. It had taken another glance for him to recognize Death.
It hadn’t been like that before. His mind used to run on a completely different track when he spotted that model of car. His heart would race, hard, at the sight because it meant she was coming to see him. Instead of a cold sweat, God, he’d gotten so hot. She had all the curves and the sweetest voice to match. Softness to touch, beautiful to smell, a flower in a filthy shop. It would brighten his day, his entire week.
How easily a flower could be crushed. It just took a tree to crumple the thin metal of a car that never would have grazed a tree without his involvement, or so he had thought. Professional negligence had brought him to this point, crouching in the shadows, forever hiding, no longer enlivened like he had felt with Danielle.
He needed her. If she were here, in some form, it would ease the tightness in his chest. Because for five years she had only been inside him. And if he died, then where would she have to live?
Oh, this wasn’t helping. He dug one fist into his hip, grinding in nervous response, receiving pain. He was still here but for how long, especially now?
Ryan was good. He was quick. One could tell by those green eyes, narrowed but searching, reading into everything, digging down deep into a never-healing wound, gouging through pain until he found the root cause. A man fearing death, and more, was lucky not to have those eyes locked on him yet.
The shadow man tried to tell himself that he’d covered his tracks well. As in, there was a brand-new part on the shelf, never replaced. But Ryan would look deeper than the obvious. Ruthlessness—that was what he saw in those eyes, that and persistence. Ryan was determined in his work which now seemed focused on a woman who no longer resided in this town. She would have to be found, and immediately, because, as that phone conversation had suggested, maybe some blame had been misplaced.
If the shadow man didn’t come out from where he was hiding and do something, an investigation could spark in his direction. How easy was it to talk to a cop in a small town? Ryan might run into one and with his curiosity piqued, one little question to the right person would mean his own shadowy self could be behind bars. He couldn’t do much to clear his name once in there, if there was any clearing to be done. What did Amanda Hudson have to do with Danielle’s death? Amanda had to be found and questioned.
Mentally, he let go, letting the flashes come, the shots of torn metal, matted hair, red on her blue clothes, on the blue car, Death. His heart turned, felt like it was beating on its side as his lungs came up short yet again. He touched a fist to his chest, his throat, tapped his forehead, wanting to find a hollow space for air, for calm.
There must be a better way to keep Danielle’s memory, his flower, alive.
And he needed the chance to find it. He couldn’t think straight. How many parts were on that car? And it just took one, the right one, for everything to go wrong.
Chapter 2
Rebecca Hudson had run out of options. She couldn’t think with Amanda gone.
Amanda’s cousin dropped her pen, sat back from her desk, and blew out a lungful of air, her arms folded over the extra-large sweatshirt that covered her tall, lean frame. She re-coiled her long, chestnut hair into a low bun. Gray eyes stared back at her above an aquiline nose and high cheekbones from the soft metal reflection in the desk lamp’s base.
She released another frustrated sigh. Amanda, come home.
Not a single subject from Rebecca’s semester at the University of Denver could successfully distract her. She scanned her bedroom but only found shadows on the walls and floor where the lamp’s glow didn’t touch. No help. She returned to her books and shook her head.
She could try her geology text, but she knew where the subject would lead. Each mention of plate tectonics from the Eurasian plate to the Pacific plate all read the same way. The word late rose up every time. She’d flipped a few pages to earth layers, mesosphere and lithosphere and had seen fear repeated.
She kept geology closed and glanced once again at her psychology book. In there, she’d read about OCD. No need to get into that one—she already was a textbook example. The compulsive part was where Rebecca repeatedly dialed Amanda’s cell phone, hoping for a different result. Or was that insanity? Maybe she should check the psychology text.
Taking a deep breath, she assured herself that concerned feelings were natural for her missing roommate. It was also absolutely reasonable for Amanda to go from her usual routine—working until quitting time and then coming to the apartment exhausted and going straight to bed—to this new routine, starting just tonight, where she disappeared for hours without a single word to Rebecca.
Well, Amanda had only been living with Rebecca for a couple of semesters. Rebecca had a couple years maturity over her cousin and should be able to realize how things could change. Maybe Amanda had found something else to interest her besides fixing cars. Boys, maybe? They could be a distraction from obligations.
One hand held her head as Rebecca picked up her pen with the other. She scribbled out factual data in her own words, let her thoughts run mechanically. She blocked off personal problems.
&nb
sp; Until she heard a car park in front of the building. She tensed as feet climbed steps to her floor. She held her breath, listened, waited.
The clomping sounds quieted, and then continued on to the third floor. She slumped and sighed.
A half hour later, she surveyed a finished paragraph, one whole paragraph. At this rate, the essay would be done in no time, another three to five days. She flipped through textbook pages. The lock turned in the front door.
Startled, she practically squeaked and leapt from her seat as if a mouse ran across her bare toes. Carefully, she settled her papers then stepped out of her room, quiet feet on the beige carpet.
Hands on her hips as she watched Amanda close the apartment door, Rebecca stared at Amanda’s back, clothed in a wrinkled, industrial-blue uniform. As she waited for Amanda to turn, Rebecca caught a whiff of . . . had to be fast food, fried chicken maybe. Hardly a well-rounded meal, but easy on the go, useful for college students as well, she admitted. Amanda faced her. “Did you need to get over here or something?”
Rebecca immediately forgave the heated tone. Her hands dropped from her hips at the sight of the pallor in Amanda’s skin. Dents of fatigue rested in her cheeks and her blue eyes appeared tired and fogged-over. Normally not more than two inches shorter than Rebecca, Amanda seemed to have shrunk another inch today.
Rebecca approached her cousin. She wanted to take Amanda into an embrace but doubted it’d go over well. “God, Amanda, what happened? Where’ve you been?”
“I’ve been out.” Amanda set the fast food bag on the nearby kitchen counter. “Is that all right with you?” Recognizing her cousin’s deflective shield tactic, Rebecca crossed her arms. Amanda would try to pin this conversation on anyone but her.
A Running Heart Page 2