Page 39 of Baby Me

“Yeah.”

“I’m Jonah. Get in. I had someone following me earlier, but I lost him. We’ll drive without headlights to get out oftown.”

Where did Charlie find thisguy?

“Yeah, sounds good.” I sat in the front seat and buckled up. A marijuana air freshener hung from the rear-view mirror, and the car stank of weed. The driver’s eyes were red, and he had that mellow look abouthim.

Jonah turned left on the main street, and I felt the first pinch of pain in my abdomen. My driver swerved from left to right, forcing my guts to one side, then the other. Fifteen minutes into the ride, my insides began to feel like scrambled eggs. My head was still spinning from the last dose of morphine I’d received two hours ago, but I could slowly feel it leaving my body. By the time I arrived at the cabin, it would be out of my system. Luckily, I still had some strong painkillers at the cabin from when Kate wasinjured.

The driver removed a blunt from the inside pocket of his jacket and lit it. He took a big inhalation and released the smoke slowly out of hislungs.

“You can drive on that?” Iasked.

“No problem,man.”

I winced in pain, reminding me that the morphine was diluting in mybody.

“You want a hit?” heasked.

“Yeah, Ido.”

I took the joint from his hand and inhaled a long drag. It immediately went to my head, but it also made me forget about the pain, so I took anotherlungful.

“Good shit?” he asked, glancing into the rear-viewmirror.

“Perfect.”

We drove out of the city and headed uphill into the forests. On our fourth turn, I noticed a set of headlights in the rearviewmirror.

“You think someone’s following us again?” Iasked.

“I dunno. But we can findout.”

He took a sharp turn to the left onto a side road. The headlights followedus.

Shit!

“You got another one of those?” I pointed to the joint he was finishing. We weren’t far from town, and if I was actually going to do what spontaneously popped into my head, I would need the joint to keep going. He passed me the freshly rolled upcigarette.

“Slow down a little, but without thebrakes.”

He slid his foot off thegas.

“You’re going to stop after the next turn, and I’ll go the rest of the way onfoot.”

“Are you sure about this,man?”

“Yeah, I’m not taking any chances. I’d appreciate it if you could get him off my back, and do yourself a favor – go back to the city. You never sawme.”

“You gotit.”

We gained some distance from the car behind us, and as soon as we turned, Jonah stopped. I opened the car door, hurried out, shut it firmly, and he took off. Moments later, as I lay in the ditch, I saw our stalker pass by. The windows were tinted, and judging from the way he was revving the engine, he wanted to catch up to the van. Resting for a moment, I lay on my back and through a canopy clearing, gazed at the stars above me. I lit the joint he’d given me, smoked it up, checked the coordinates on my watch, and started heading north toKate.

My journey blurred. The further north I trekked, the colder it became, and the slow drizzle turned into snowflakes. Painless at first, I followed the guiding GPS on my watch. Up the hill, then down the hill, through a creek or two, between shrubs, dodging some branches and taking a hit in the face from another. After each slip and stumble it was more difficult to get up. As my imagination wandered, my worry about Kate spiked, and I sped up my walk, though it still felt too slow. What if the driver figured out where we had been heading? What if he was already knocking on Kate’s door? What if it was Cortez? What if Kate wasn’t there, but at Silvia’s? Should I have checked her housefirst?

As the image of Cortez pointing a gun at Kate became clearer, I saw the cabin. The lights were off, as they should have been in the morning hours, and I felt my pulse race. Along with the increased blood pressure came a massive headache and an excruciating pain in my stomach. I’d been up for about twenty-four hours now and the exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. The fresh forest air had also cleared my lungs of the painkiller I’d finished smoking, and my abdomen hurt like a bitch. I lifted my shirt. Blood was seeping from the stitched-up surgery wound that had torn, but I could rest as soon as I saw that Kate wassafe.

Except when I opened the front door, I saw a bear cub rush atme.

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