Page 3 of Nomad

After staring at the glass for a full ten minutes, she decided to take a drink. She spluttered, gasped for air, and almost choked. The stuff tasted like kerosene or the way she imagined kerosene would taste if somebody was dumb enough to do that.

CHAPTER Two

Cannon Johns closed his eyes and let the hot water stream over his body. He was a man who’d once had the world in his hands. He was a man who’d lost everything in life that was worth having. He’d pulled into the motel looking for the only comfort life still had to offer. The escape of sleep.

The motel had thoughtfully provided two thin towels, neither of which were intended to take care of a man his size. He’d used one of them on his bike, which left one that was dry. He couldn’t very well use both towels and leave the girl with none, so he dried himself as best he could with the towel that was already wet. He put on a pair of clean jeans and opened the door to the tiny bath.

Bud was still sitting on the edge of the bed. She’d been watching the bathroom door while he took a shower. He was a very big, very built guy wearing jeans and nothing else, but for God knows what reason she wasn’t afraid of him. It was hard to tell how old he was with that beard. He could have been twenty-five. Could have been thirty-five.

“I left you a dry towel,” he said in his gruff way as he stalked toward the bed next to the door. “I’m going to sleep and hopefully I’ll sleep hard. If you plan to knife me in my sleep, I’m warning you now that I don’t really have anything worth taking.”

“I’m not going to knife you in your sleep.” He nodded and pulled back the covers. Replaying how that sounded, she decided to append an afterthought. “Or any other time.”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m not going to knife you at all.”

“Okay,” he said as if he had no personal stake in whether she would or wouldn’t. He turned away so that his back was to her.

“Cannon.”

“Yeah,” he said without turning around.

“Thank you.”

He didn’t reply or even move, but he did listen to the sounds she made as she pulled things out of her little bag and tried to take a shower quietly. It had been a long, long, long time since he’d shared a room with another person.

When she got into bed, he was still awake wondering what her story could be. When she began to snore softly, he was still awake thinking about all the things that could happen to a girl like her.

Inevitably his thoughts turned to his own baby girl. She’d only been three when she died, but he had no trouble imagining how he would have felt about her when she was seventeen. Who would name a daughter Bud?

Bud felt her shoulder being nudged. Once. Again. She cracked her eyes open and, when she realized where she was, scrambled into a sitting position.

“Come on,” he said. “Get dressed. We’re gonna get you some hot breakfast before I head out.”

When she pulled the covers back he saw that she’d slept in her clothes.

She glanced at the clock. Eight. She’d gotten more sleep than she’d had in a while, but would have loved another ten hours or so.

“Okay.”

He watched TV while she used the toilet, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair into a ponytail, situated the shoulder bag across her body and looked at him expectantly.

“You know where to eat in this town?”

“No. I’m not, um, from here.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Trucker.”

“You hitchhiked?” She nodded. He rolled the bike outside. “You ever been on a motorcycle before?”

“No.” She looked it over from end to end.

“You ever spent the night in a motel room with a stranger before?”

“No.” Her eyes jerked up to his sky-blue gaze.

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