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“That’s good to know. If I decide to come out, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Rick’s eyes glinted with curiosity. “Come out about what? Gay? Trans? Nonbinary? There are so many options these days.”
“It was just a joke. I’m none of the above.”
“I know a bunch of guys who’ll be happy to hear that. Just let me know if you want some numbers.”
Rick handed Galen his Thermos back. “Filled to the brim with coffee, black as the tar on a midnight road.” Then he gave a double-take. “Hey, you said we were cool. Why are you glaring at me again?”
“Come on, let’s go,” Galen growled to Brenda.
Was he…jealous of Rick’s comment about the bunch of guys? She smiled to herself. That thought, whether true or not, filled her with a warm sort of excitement that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Back in the truck, they settled their drinks into cupholders and headed out of town. Brenda gazed out the window and watched the sun on its slow rise into the autumn sky. Occasionally she sipped her tea, but mostly she enjoyed the quiet and the lovely scenery sliding past her window.
Galen didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation. It was such a comfortable silence. He didn’t expect or demand anything of her, and in her life, that rarely happened. Between her chatterbox students and her high-maintenance grandmother, she spent a lot of her life giving attention to other people. It relaxed her, knowing that Galen required nothing from her. If she wanted to talk, she could. If she didn’t, she could just relax and lose herself in her own thoughts.
Like how her heroine, who had just been buried alive by the criminal underworld gang she’d been trying to rescue her niece from, was going to escape. Brenda had left her knocking frantically on the pine box in which they’d dumped her. It was a soft wood, so maybe it would splinter eventually. But wouldn’t the dirt just fall onto her face then?
Her heroine was just an ordinary person who had a knack for getting in and out of trouble. Maybe she should rewrite her, give her extraordinary strength or martial arts training. She dismissed that idea because she liked the fact that her heroine didn’t have any special skills beyond a lucky streak and a refusal to back down to bad guys.
“Have you ever fallen into a pit?” she asked Galen after mulling over her problem for a while.
“A what?”
It seemed she’d startled him out of his own reverie.
“On one of your trips, have you ever stumbled into a deep hole, about the size of a shallow grave.” The bad guys hadn’t had enough time to dig six feet down. At least Zina, her heroine, had that going for her.
“I tumbled into a ravine once. The scree gave way, and when I grabbed onto a young birch, I uprooted it. The soil was soft from a month of rain.”
“How did you get out?” This didn’t sound like the same situation, but she was curious anyway.
“Climbed. Slowly, because my ankle got twisted in the fall. I also dislocated my shoulder, but I fixed that before I went anywhere.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
“Nah. I’d always been curious about that ravine. I found some ancient native rock drawings while I was down there. Wound up going back with some tribal archeologists.”
She shook her head, marveling at his calm. “You could have died. What if you hadn’t been able to climb up?”
“Then either someone would have found me, or I would have died. Either way, I was in the right place. The wilderness,” he added, as if that wasn’t clear. “When my time comes, I hope that’s where it happens.”
Maura had wanted to be outside, too. The windows had been wide open, the desert air blessing her with peace.
Brenda shoved the thought aside. “Not this trip, please,” she said lightly.
“No need to worry about that. I’ve never even let a client get injured.” He paused. “Well, I did punch a client recently, but he deserved it. Not a real injury. Why are you asking about pits?”
He already knew she was trying to write a book. There was no harm in picking his brain. “My poor heroine just got buried alive. I’m trying to figure out how to get her out.”
“Is she in a coffin?”
She loved the fact that he didn’t miss a step in following her line of thought.
“Yes, made of soft pine. It’s under about three feet of dirt.”
“Where?”
