Torrent(36)

Though Temi clearly had reservations, she followed me. Zelda was parked right outside, a testament to the lightness of the traffic today, so we caught Simon before he zoomed off, though he did already have the engine running. Temi climbed in, and I slid the side door shut a second before the van backed out of its parking space. Simon threw it into drive fast enough that I tumbled across the carpet and bonked my head on the refrigerator.
“No, no,” I said, “don’t wait for us to get our seat belts on. We’re fine.”
Both of Simon’s hands gripped the steering wheel, and his phone rested on his thigh. If he heard me, he didn’t give any indication of it. I was fairly certain he ran through the light on Gurley Street, too, though with my butt planted on the floor, it was hard to be positive. I’d laugh if all this effort turned out to be for tailing our prey to the Prescott Denny’s.
Temi sat on the floor, too, her right leg thrust out before her, a grimace on her face. She wiped it away when she noticed me watching.
“I’m not sure a background in science fiction would be enough to understand him,” she said.
I smiled. “It’d only be a start, that’s for sure.”






 
    Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure,   Magic
    
 


 

CHAPTER 13

I squinted at the topography map spread in my lap while the van bumped and groaned up a dusty road. “We might be going to Lower Wolf Campground.”
Another campground. Great.
Simon cursed under his breath and threw on the brakes. Dust hazed the road ahead. We’d gone off the gravel a while back to follow the deep ruts and potholes of a forest service road that hadn’t been serviced in some time.
“Almost caught a glimpse of them there,” he said. “I thought they’d be able to navigate these holes on their bikes a lot faster than us, so I was going as quickly as I could.”
“We noticed.” Temi, sitting at the table behind us, rubbed her head.
“They’ve slowed down though. They must be looking for something.”
“Maybe they know we’re following them,” I said.
“They shouldn’t be able to hear us over their motorcycle engines unless they turn them off.”
“Something they’ll do when they reach their destination,” I pointed out.
“I’ll try to guess when they’re getting close, and I’ll stop our engine before they do. Hopefully.”
“We’re novices at tailing people,” I told Temi.
“Yes, as far as I can tell, your business is expanding into new territories by the day.”
By the hour, I thought.
The road forked and we turned into a dry valley clogged with scrubby brush. Pine trees rose to either side. The ride grew even bumpier, and I squinted suspiciously at the leaves beating against Zelda’s fender. “We’re not on a road anymore, are we?”
Simon grinned, though he didn’t take his eyes from the route ahead. “Nope.”
“It looks like a dried river bed,” Temi observed.
We splashed through a trough filled with mud and water.
“Mostly dry,” Temi amended.
I compared the topo map with what the GPS map on my smartphone offered. The cell had a couple of bars of reception, but the maps were slow to load. Not surprising. We weren’t on—or close to—any official roads. “We’re not far from Mount union     and Hassayampa Lake.” The trees blocked the view, but I waved in the general direction.#p#分页标题#e#
“What’s down here?” Temi asked.
“Uh, nothing.”
“There must be something.”
“Maybe those two were just looking for a private place to—oomph.” The ceiling was higher in the van than in a car, but my head almost cracked it anyway. If not for the seat belt I’d wisely put on earlier, it would have. “Get busy,” I finished weakly.
“They did seem to be sharing the one bed,” Simon said.
“Their faces were similar,” Temi said. “I took them for siblings.”
“Which makes it all the more likely that they’d look for a private place if they wanted to get busy,” I said.
My joke met with pitying stares, and I went back to studying the map. We rolled out of the riverbed and onto a road with brown grass and weeds sprouting from the center between the ruts. They were tall enough to slap at the base of the windshield. They also—as we discovered when my head nearly hit the ceiling again—disguised big rocks.
“If we get stranded out here, I’m going to pummel you,” I told Simon.
“Noted.”
The road dipped back into the riverbed, then out the other side. It never detoured far from the dusty banks, and we occasionally splashed through water, a rare find in the desert mountains this late in the year.