Page 92 of Shatter

The light turns green, and he doesn't notice.

A pickup behind us honks.

He jerks, and the bike lurches and almost stalls.

I laugh so hard I have to press my face into his back.

"You're gonna get us killed." He's trying to sound stern and failing.

"Drive, Espen." I keep my hands right where they are.

* * *

He turns off onto a dirt road I'd never have seen, a gap in the trees barely wide enough for the bike.

The road winds back through the pines for a mile, maybe more, bumpy and rutted, and I hang on tight.

Then the trees open up.

A spring.

The water's so clear it doesn't look real, a pool of glass over white limestone, blue-green in the middle where it drops away into nothing.

Sunlight comes down through the cypress branches in long, slanting bars.

A heron stands in the shallows on the far side, perfectly still, one leg tucked up.

He kills the engine.

The silence rushes in, enormous.

Birds and water trickling somewhere, and nothing else.

I pull off the helmet and stare.

He doesn't get off right away.

He twists in the seat and looks back down the dirt road the way we came, for a long moment.

Then he reaches behind him, pulls the Glock out of the back of his waistband, and slides it into the saddlebag, where he can reach it.

He buckles the flap closed.

I watch him do it.

Cold touches the back of my throat for one second.

I let it go.

Not today.

"Are there alligators in there?" I nod at the water.

"Too cold for them." He swings off the bike and holds out a hand to me. "Sixty-eight degrees, all year round."

"Too cold." I take his hand and climb off. "Good."

"Mostly." He says it with a perfectly straight face.