Jo drove with one hand on the wheel. The windows were up against the nighttime chill, so she leaned against the console between them.
Brill could smell the scent of her perfume, the hint of sweat and sunlight musk in the shirt she wore.
She watched the road with an intense look he couldn't place at first, and shifted in his seat to let the pistol in the small of his back settle against the vinyl in a more comfortable position.
Maybe she was waiting for him to ask where they were going. He was curious, but not enough to say something first.
Jo didn't budge though. She drove out to the highway, turned left, away from Leon's, he noted and they listened to the whirl of the tire tread on blacktop as she topped it out at fifty five.
He glanced through the windshield at the wash of stars painted across the night sky and took a moment to appreciate it.
She must have noticed him staring.
"Beautiful."
"It is."
"I come out here a lot, just to look."
"Smart people would be sleeping right now," he said.
"You saying I'm not smart?" she joked, the side of the mouth he could
see quirked up in a grin. "Besides, it's early."
"When you're up with the sun," he said. "Dark is late."
"We were up before the sun," she reminded him. "I've put in two twenty-hour days since we found the first one."
She looked over at him.
"You found the first one," she corrected.
"I wasn't looking."
She drove a bit further. He could see the dark outline of the wilderness to their right, sparse trees dotting the rock-strewn landscape. The park was the fringe of the badlands, the fabled nest of Indian and outlaw hideouts of the old west.
Now climbers and hikers and runners like him could get lost in the wilds, searching for whatever it is they hoped to find.
He hoped it wasn't another body.
"Who are you?" she asked in a quiet voice.
He almost didn't hear her over the noise of the tires.
"I told you," he answered. "John. We've met."
She looked over at him, the smile gone, replaced by something else. Wonder? Fear?
"I see guys like Des and Jester all the time," she told him. "Climbers migrating from spot to spot. Women like Deb and Sue and the others."
"That's me," he said.
She shook her head.
"No, you're something different."
He let her drive in silence, watching her face from the corner of his eye.
"I couldn't shake it," she said. "First impressions said you were dangerous. My gut screaming around you sometimes, so much it makes me want to draw my weapon."
He had watched her hand linger over the pistol several times. He knew he had that effect on people.
"But you had alibis for here. None for Leon's place though," she looked over at him again.
"I didn't come that way."
"Uh-huh."
Hand gripping the wheel hard. She didn't like him lying to her.
He didn't like doing it, but denial was almost second nature to him. Confess nothing. Share little.
"I’m just a runner,” he said.
“I can’t run. Hurts my knees.”
“I’ve read that’s a myth.”
“I’m here to tell you,” said Jo. “I run, my knees hurt.”
She spun the wheel into a gentle curve and pulled off on the side of the road. The angle of the asphalt carried them up a slight hill. The ground fell away from the edge of the pull out, so they could stare
over the precipice at the rocks and mountains spread out in front of them.
If it was daylight.
In the dark, the land was shadowed starlight.
The view was the attraction, only it was the sky and not the earth at this time of night.
“How long have you been running?” she asked as she shut the engine off.
Brill listened to it tick as the heat dissipated into the cooler night air. She killed the headlights and they were plunged in darkness, the faint glow of the stars outlining the movement of darker shadows in the cab.
“Years,” he said. “Longer than I can remember.”
He listened to the hiss of a bottle top being twisted off, watched the shadow in the driver’s seat hold one out to him.
He followed her lead, and they drank in silence.
She wanted a story. She wanted his story. That’s all most people ever wanted, was to know who they were dealing with. The kind of person they were dealing with.
“I didn’t run track in high school,” he told her. “I got into it about a year after.”
“College,” she guessed.
“I didn’t go.”
As simple as that. No need to say military. No need to say dual
citizenship and that the military was another country.
“I worked my way through junior college,” she shared. “Joined as deputy and finished my bachelor’s degree at night.”
“Tough,” he admired. “Not easy to do both.”
“Kids?”
It was an easy question. She would have noticed no ring on his hand, but that could mean divorce.
“None,” he answered. “You?”
She shook her head. He heard it rustle, watched the shadow in the starlight.
“No time for men,” she snickered.
It was a tired sounding laugh, a world weary one that hinted at more to tell.
But she didn’t share that part.
She shared another beer and they were done with the six pack. She shared silence with him, stretching out longer and longer until he thought she had fallen asleep.
When she snored, he didn’t laugh out loud even though he wanted to. He rested his head against the door jamb and closed his eyes too.