Chapter 8: The Pass

Wyatt Garrison had left the roof the minute the dumpster went up.

Nobody noticed, because he made sure nobody did.

He drove the black truck up the pass road with the headlights off for the first mile.

He parked in a gravel pull-off where the mountain dropped away on one side.

The sky behind the peaks had turned from black to gray.

His ribs ached in the cold, the same ribs, on the same side, that he had broken on a bridge six years ago.

He had told himself it was only weather.

The rule Mara had set in the clinic sat heavy in his chest.

Nobody decides anything for me.

He was about to break it, and he knew it.

Headlights swung up the road below, and a single motorcycle climbed into the pull-off and stopped ten feet from his bumper.

The man who got off was fifty and wide through the neck, with a gray braid down his back.

He wore a road captain's patch on his vest.

Wyatt had once taken orders from him.

"Garrison," the road captain said. "You're a long way from a club that threw you out."

"I want to make a trade."

"You don't have anything I want."

"I've got me." Wyatt got out and shut the door.

"Tell him I'll come in. Tell him I'll kneel in the clubhouse in front of everybody. All I need is a week."

"A week for what?"

"For her to be left alone."

The road captain studied him for a long time.

Then he laughed, short and ugly.

"You think she's what he wants?"

"I think he wants her back."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Reaper's Runaway Princess from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.