The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,75
squeaked as he settled his weight, and he said, “Fuck off.”
“Do it because we’re old friends.”
“You screw me every chance you get—you’d do it twice if you thought you could get your little dick hard again.”
“Fine. I’ll go ask Anjelo.”
“Oh fuck you,” Toro said, the chair rocking forward as he tossed the phone onto the desk. “I don’t lend people cars. I rent cars. Sometimes. To people I like.”
“You owe me from when I took you those rubbers. You know, from when you were at that motel in Santaquin.”
“That doesn’t even come close.”
“Three hours.”
“You’re a fucking mooch.”
“I’ll treat her like a princess.”
“God damn it,” Toro said, grabbing his phone. “Keys with the red tag.”
“You’re my brother,” Jem said, grabbing the keys.
“If you bring that trooper back with a single fucking scratch, I will take it out of your ass.”
“Kinky,” Jem said, “but I’m spoken for.”
He was already sprinting past Marcy as Toro roared his response.
The trooper was a white Dodge Charger hidden at the back of the lot, behind a box truck that had been sitting in place so long that the tires had gone flat and the panels were covered in mildew. The sides of the Dodge held the iconic beehive, and STATE TROOPER was printed above the front wheel wells. Red-and-blue lights on the roof were what really sold it. Jem got behind the wheel, started it up, and headed west.
He followed I-80 out of the Salt Lake Valley, and once he was past the Oquirrh Mountains, he headed south on Route 36 toward Tooele. A few minutes later, he pulled into the lot of a Holiday gas station, parked with his nose pointed at Route 36, and waited. He thought about pulling out the rental application and looking at it again. He liked Tean’s handwriting, liked the neat cursive, and he’d taken to imitating it sometimes just because his own letters still looked like he’d peaked in third grade. The doc had this way of adding little tails to letters. Jem wondered if he had a whole menagerie for the alphabet, if the doc envisioned B is for grizzly bear when he drew a little curlicue tail onto a B. Instead, though, he stayed focused on the road.
At 11:44am, a silver Camry rolled past the Holiday, and Jem caught the first three letters of the license plate. They were a match, so he pulled onto Route 36. The rest of the license plate was also a match—it never hurt to be sure—and so he hung back and followed the Camry through Tooele and east, into the foothills, where LouElla lived.
When they were still ten minutes out, he flashed his lights and sped up. The Camry hesitated, drifting to the left as though uncertain what Jem wanted. He kept right behind her, and then the driver got the message and pulled across the rumble strip and onto the shoulder. Jem copied her. He sat in the car for a few minutes, letting her stew, letting the panic build. Any kind of strong emotion made people willing to believe bullshit they wouldn’t usually swallow, and flashing lights and police car were a stir-and-serve mix for fear.
When he got out of the car, he kept his pace slow and measured as he approached. The Camry’s window buzzed down. Jem got his first look at the driver in the side mirror; she was still young, but she wasn’t a kid. Midthirties, he guessed. She had a lot of brown hair that she didn’t seem to know what to do with, and she kept looking at him in the mirror and looking away.
“Good morning, miss,” Jem said as he reached the window. “Could you put your hands where I can see them, please?”
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered, her hands blanching as she clutched the wheel. “Was I speeding? What’s wrong . . . officer?” The hesitation hit when she finally took a full look and realized he was wearing a polo and chinos and not a uniform.
“Off duty,” Jem said with a smile. “I’d like you to open your glovebox and find the vehicle’s manual, please. Do you have a tire pressure gauge?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyebrows shooting up. “What?”
“Please find the vehicle’s manual, miss. If you have a tire pressure gauge, that would be a help.”
When she gave a helpless twist of her hands and bent toward the glovebox, Jem moved to the back of the car and squatted near the rear driver’s tire. He put his back to the