Allie gripped the wheel with one hand, leaned on the console so they were closer together.
The water and normalcy of the ride seemed to smooth out her emotions some, and he could see her breathing become more relaxed.
“How long have you done yoga?” he steered her toward familiar ground, an effort to keep her calm.
“Forever,” she said. “I love it in nature. I’m going to become an instructor next winter.”
“Where?”
“Los Angeles,” she said.
He felt a roil in his stomach.
“Is that home?”
LA was home to eight million people, thirteen million if the valley and surrounding metro was included.
“No,” she said and he relaxed a little. “I’m from Seattle. But I’m on my way to LA. I just took the scenic route.”
Brill took a deep breath and held it, let it out of his nose.
“Do you meditate?” Allie asked. “That’s a good breathing technique.”
“I have to,” he told her. “Keeps me centered.”
Most of the special forces he had worked with in America and abroad practiced a form of daily meditation, and he was no exception.
The South African Recce made it mandatory, with block time for practice.
Usually it was after a training session, and Brill found it helped with retention.
Even though he was supposed to practice empty mind, he usually went over the previous training, either a briefing or actual, and it helped.
But the appeal of empty mind was a siren song to him. Especially with the nightmares of memories in a rebel camp on the border of Angola.
He meditated twice a day. Once after practice and again before bed.
“I also do yoga,” he shared with her.
“You do? We’re going to do it together,” she almost squealed. The mirth was back in her eyes and she gripped the wheel with two hands.
“Tonight, after dinner,” she promised as she pulled to a stop at the park entrance.
“The beer last night was cool of you man. Very generous.”
“I had some to share,” he brushed off the compliment.
“No man, we all share out here, but it’s like one or two at a time, you know. You just gave it all away. I think that’s awesome.”
“Thanks.”
He wasn’t very good at getting compliments. They had been few and far between growing up, and as he slid into adulthood, being good meant survival.
Being better than everyone else meant living.
Compliments were reserved for rare occasions when commendations needed to be made to look good on paper.
And after his stint with the Recce, XO and Barraque just didn’t transact in compliments.
The job was done.
It was competent.
Lack of competence left you dead or looking for employment elsewhere.
“I think more of the world should be like you,” Allie said.
She pulled her sedan to the side of the entrance and handed him her phone.
“Watch the minutes. I’m low,” she told him.
Brill skipped 911 and dialed zero instead to save time.
“I can’t dial again,” he said to the operator when she answered. “We’re low on minutes.”
Allie grinned beside him.
“We’ve got another one,” he told her.
“Can you send Jo?”
“Again?” she added a string of curse words to the end. “Someone hunting you guys up there?”
Brill closed the phone and passed it back to Allie.
The operator was right.
Someone was hunting them up here. A killer targeting the homeless dirtbag population.
He knew it.
One kill or two could be random accidents, but the pattern was there.
He had been too lazy to notice, or too occupied with trying to find a way out without Barraque showing up.
But the operator saw it.
That meant Jo would see it too.
And she might just notice that all the killing started when he showed up.
Time for some damage control, he thought.
“Wait back at camp,” he said to Allie.
She slugged him in the shoulder in a playful pat, started up the sedan and rumbled back toward the clearing at the edge of the trailhead.