Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

Author:Jennifer Echols
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2009-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

11

He let me drive! It took him until night four, but he let me drive!

Well, only for a few minutes.

And only a few feet.

And not the police car.

A March storm had blown up, soaking the cold night with rain. A car skidded off the slick road at the Birmingham Junction and got stuck in the muddy shoulder.

While the driver pressed on the gas, John threw his weight onto the back bumper. The tires spun, and the car didn’t budge.

I got out of the cop car to help, despite the rain. Not that I really expected to be of assistance. But it was better than waiting around for John, making him fruit cobbler in my mind. He signaled the driver, and we both pressed our weight against the back bumper.

At least, that’s what I thought. I pushed as hard as I could, and the tires spun. Then I looked over at John.

He was standing up. Staring at my ass. Now that he called my attention to it, I did feel a draft where my jacket rode up as I bent over. He was staring at the tattoo on my lower back of a bird escaping from a cage. That tattoo had cost me months of tips. The artist charged me extra because getting a tattoo at under eighteen was illegal without my parents’ consent.

I straightened and put my hand on my back. I hoped John wasn’t considering a sting operation on a Birmingham tattoo studio. It was out of his jurisdiction.

No…he was considering 6:01 A.M. Thursday. He focused on my hand where he’d seen my tattoo a moment before. Slowly his eyes moved up my body to meet my eyes. He blinked against the rain and remembered he was On Duty.

Then he squinted at the driver. “This is too distracting. Go trade places with that guy. It’s his Goddamn car.”

So I slipped into the driver’s seat and watched in the rearview mirror for John’s signal. When he pointed at me, I stomped the gas. The tires spun, then caught. The car shot forward. I checked the mirror again. The driver was wet with rain but otherwise spotless. John, plastered with mud, wiped dirt from his mouth with his sleeve.

The driver happily skidded away. Back in the cop car, John blew mud out of his nose with a Kleenex from the trunk. “I hate to go home and change with less than two hours left in the shift. What do you think?” He sneezed.

“If I were a criminal—and I am not—I wouldn’t find you very intimidating right now. I would find you bedraggled.”

“’Nuff said.”

His apartment was in one of those complexes with twenty buildings, all the same, that had sprung up along the interstate. They housed people who worked at the car factory here in town but didn’t want to commute from Birmingham. That is, people with no life.

It was only a minute’s drive from the Birmingham Junction. Why, he could probably hear the car crashes from his patio. He definitely could hear the drone of the interstate.

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