Recalled (Death Escorts #1)(11)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Yeah, maybe that would be better than this recon stuff.

I walked a few paces from the diner. When I got home, I’d make a plan on how to kill her from a distance.

Behind me the bell on the door jingled, indicating it swung open again. I didn’t bother looking back.

“Hey!” someone called.

I stopped and turned.

She was there, rushing toward me, pulling a dark-green coat around her. She had snow in her hair. I didn’t realize it was snowing.

“Yeah?” I asked, wondering if she was really talking to me.

Now that she had my attention, she seemed to grow a little shy. I just stood there and waited as I watched the snowflakes take up residence on her head.

“Do you have a car?” she asked.

I nodded and motioned down the street toward the Roadster. “Right down there.”

She glanced at the Roadster, then at me. “Is that thing any good in the snow?”

I shrugged. “Guess I’ll find out.”

“Oh, is it new?”

I nodded again.

“Can I have a ride home?”

My eyes snapped to her face. She wanted a ride? From some guy she didn’t know? Maybe killing her wouldn’t be that hard after all. Maybe she already had a death wish.

She seemed to know what I was thinking because she said, “I know, it’s kind of weird of me to ask… but it’s really cold and I don’t feel like walking.”

“Don’t you usually take the bus?” I blurted, thinking back once again to the night I died. Inwardly, I kicked myself. I needed to stop saying things like that. You’d think for two people who knew each other for exactly two minutes, there wouldn’t be any history for me to keep bringing up.

She glanced at the bus stop and then back at me. She didn’t seem to think what I said was unusual and I was relieved.

“I don’t really like the bus,” she said quietly.

We both stood there awkwardly for long seconds before I remembered it was my turn to talk. I pulled the keys from my pocket.

“I’ll give you a ride. Come on.”

And before I knew it, we were climbing into the tiny space of the two-seater.

She glanced at me and smiled tentatively when I turned the heat on full blast and it was only then I realized I just told myself I was going to stay away from her. Far away.

So much for that idea, I thought as I pulled away from the curb.

* * *

I drove slowly because once she wondered if my Roadster might not be very good in the snow, I started to wonder that too. I hadn’t had any problems up until this point so I just tried to enjoy the fact I was riding around in a car that cost more than a hundred grand. (I looked it up online). She didn’t say anything on the ride, except to give me directions, and I didn’t try to make small talk.

She didn’t live that far from the diner and when I pulled up in front of her apartment building, I left the engine idling at the curb. She glanced out her window and upwards so I assumed her apartment wasn’t on the ground floor.

“I almost died the other day,” she said quietly, still gazing out her window.

My hand tightened over the gearshift when I realized she was talking about the day I got crushed by that bus. When I didn’t say anything, she turned in the seat and looked at me through the dark.

“But I didn’t because someone saved me.”

I swallowed, my eyes locked on hers. “Wow,” I said, not really sure how to respond. Why was she telling me this?

“Maybe you heard about the accident? It was in the newspaper.” She continued to watch me. I couldn’t read her expression clearly because the only light in the car came from the dash as the streetlight in front of her building was burned out. Judging from the part of town we were in, that lamp probably hadn’t had a bulb change since the nineties.

But even in the practically nonexistent light, I could see the whites of her eyes, and they were focused directly at me.

“I don’t read the paper,” I replied. “What happened?”

Even though I knew what happened, even though part of me said not to even talk about it, I couldn’t help but want to know how she remembered that night.

“I’d just gotten off my shift. It was late, like tonight…” Her voice faded and the whites of her eyes suddenly disappeared. She closed them, like the memory was painful.

Then her eyes reopened and she said, “I was walking home and there was this guy… He was on the sidewalk too. A bus came around the corner and slid on a sheet of black ice. I froze. I knew it was going to hit me, but I couldn’t seem to move. But then he pushed me out of the way and the bus hit him instead.”

“Wow,” I echoed again, wishing this body came with a better vocabulary. My stomach cramped as I remembered the feeling of the bus plowing into me.

“He died right there in the snow. He didn’t have any ID. I don’t even know his name.” Her eyelids closed again and she took a deep breath.

“Didn’t the newspaper say who he was?” I asked curiously.

She shook her head. “I don’t even think they knew. I called the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“You called the hospital?” Why would she do that? Why would she care?

“I wanted to go to his funeral. To at least tell someone what he did, that he saved me—a complete stranger. I wanted to tell him thank you.”

“You did,” I replied, remembering. She said thank you that night. On the street when she leaned over me. The echo of her words whispered in the back of my mind.

“What did you say?” she asked, her voice losing a little bit of sorrow.

Dumbass. I mentally yelled at myself. Way to make the Target trust you. Say suspicious things so she would run every time she caught a glimpse of you.

I pushed my hand through my hair—surprised to feel it shaking—and took a breath. There was no way she could think what I said was suspicious. There was no possible way on this earth she could know I was the guy who got flattened by the bus. To her, I probably looked like some dude who babbled stuff because he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying. I mean, this was probably the first time I ever listened to a girl talk.

“What I meant was you did say thank you. Right now. Where ever he is, maybe he heard you.”

She sat there for a long second, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. I hope he heard.”

She seemed like she really meant it.

My stomach cramped again and I felt a clammy sweat break out on my forehead. My knee started bouncing up and down, knocking the bottom of the steering wheel.