Deserted - Cara Dee Page 0,25
wanted to drive, and there was no denying that he looked at ease. Window rolled down, Ray-Ban shades on, one arm resting casually on the door, his other hand in his lap with three fingers holding the wheel, head bobbing slowly to the radio.
The ventilation system blasted some heat, compensating for the fact that it wasn’t actually warm in the South yet. But low sixties was a lot better than the midthirties Philadelphia had had to offer.
Here, the sky was blue, and the sun was shining brightly.
Gray extended his hand out the window and moved it like a wave as the music on the radio swept him away for a second. The song was heavy and poignant, a mix between alternative rock and country, and the singer sang about being taken through high water and hell. The tune was almost sluggish, playing on like the drummer and guitars were wading through thick molasses, but the harmonies pushed through it and built up a crescendo that sent a shiver down Gray’s spine.
“Any response from Cole yet?” Darius asked.
Gray shook his head.
He’d texted Cole last night to say they were in Texas. Cole was from here, and Darius had suggested they visit to check in on him. Gray was wholly on board but wasn’t too surprised there’d been no reply. Cole had mentioned more than once that as soon as he got home, he wanted to close himself in with his family for a while and help his dad tend to the ranch.
“Too bad you didn’t put a tracker on him,” Gray said casually.
Darius snorted quietly. “He’s not a runner.”
Whatever. “By the way, how did you find us at the park?” It was something Gray had thought about briefly the other day, but he’d forgotten to bring it up. “I was watching the bench where I left the tracker. You didn’t go near it—I would’ve seen you. Instead, you showed up at the truck.”
“If the advance is easy, it’s an ambush.” It sounded like a quote. “You check the perimeters before you go to the target location.” He paused and frowned to himself. “If I’d applied that to my dating history, I could’ve saved myself a lot of hassle.”
Gray’s forehead creased in confusion. “Like, what, you should’ve interrogated a woman’s family before you went out with her?”
Darius nodded and tapped his temple.
Gray resisted rolling his eyes; he had a more pressing question. “Don’t you think I would’ve seen you if you’d been lurking around the perimeters a bunch first?”
“First of all, no—it’s called stealth. Second of all, no, because I didn’t have to lurk. I knew exactly where you were.”
Frustration bled through Gray’s response. “How—”
“Because I planted a second tracker on you, knucklehead.”
Gray blanched.
“The bottle cap,” Darius said. “You found the letter, right?”
What the fuck. Gray tensed his jaw and pulled out his wallet, where he’d saved the bottle cap in the coin pocket. He picked it up and brought it close, inspecting the cap. The underside, rather. Using his fingernail, he scraped off the plastic pressure seal and cursed. He was such an idiot. So was Darius, but for other reasons.
“You’re un-fucking-believable,” he muttered. “So much for the bottle cap meaning a lot to you.”
“You won’t find a single lie in that letter,” Darius told him. “It does mean a lot, because you mean a lot, and the cap ensured I could find you.”
Gray was too irritated to absorb the compliment—or whatever it could be called. “You gave me some bullshit story about your dad giving you and your brothers bottle caps.”
“He did.” Darius slowed down as they approached a lone tractor on the highway, and he tested switching to the lane for oncoming traffic to see if it was safe to pass. “When I went off the deep end after an assignment seven years ago, he tapped into my sentimentality and gave me a bottle cap to remind me of home—that my family was always there. Which was true, but he gave it to me so he could know where I was when I headed up to their cabin in Whistler to drink myself into oblivion.” He paused. “When Lias was dumped by his girlfriend, he was heartbroken and took off.” He spoke of his youngest brother. “But Pop predicted the escape and sent him off with a bottle cap to remind Lias of our grandfather’s alcoholism. To let him know that drinking his ass off wouldn’t make shit better.”
“He didn’t use that approach on you.”
Darius shook his head and