Page 63 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
I’d hit a patch of gravel just as a semitrailer truck passed me. It’d swerved out into the middle lane to keep from hitting me.
Ark had grabbed me and pulled me onto the verge. The big back tires had just missed my toes.
I’d pushed the bike around behind a gas station so I could sit there and just shake for a while. In a few minutes, a cop car had rolled up with its lights flashing. I could hear the guy talking to the station attendant.
“Did you see a girl on a bike with a big dog?” he asks.
“Nope, ain’t seen nobody all day long,” the clerk says. “Just people fillin’ up at the pump. Folks don’t stop and come in much anymore.”
“Thanks for nothing,” the cop says, disgust coloring his voice. “Some fool woman is pedaling along the freeway, and near got herself killed. Much you care.”
The cop car peels out of the parking lot, lights flickering as it goes on down the highway.
A few minutes later the attendant brings out a half-full bag of trash. He squats down beside me, and hands me a tourist map. “Look,” he says, “I don’t know what you are running from, but he’s right. You’re gonna get killed riding on the freeway if you don’t get arrested first.”
“Arrested?” I ask. I don’t dare get arrested. They’d fingerprint me, and I’d be caught out in a minute.
“Yeah. It ain’t legal to take a vehicle out there that can’t consistently make highway speeds. This is a cute bike you got here, but it’s a kid’s learn-to-ride bike.”
I gulp in a big breath of air. “I know. I’m just learning. But I need to get to the Family Clinic. It’s my only hope.”
He grins at me. “I ain’t no Obi Wan,” he says, a comment that makes no sense to me whatsoever.
“But I ain’t no storm trooper, either. I’d take you in my car, but I don’t get off work until ten. I guess you want to get there before closing?”
I nod.
“All right then. There’s a bike trail, runs back of the station here. It’s a little bit longer than the highway, but a lot safer. You’ll be going through residential neighborhoods, and a couple of them are kind of rough.”
“I’ve got Ark with me,” I say.
He looks sober at that. “Keep him close. There’s a gang not far from here that has a dog-fighting pack. Sometimes they let them out, just for kicks.”
I feel my stomach clench. But I have faith in Ark. He isn’t just any old dog. He is a trained warrior that refuses to shut up when there is danger, or someone’s hurt.
“My dog has combat training,” I say. “And he’s a registered ESA.”
“I hope for your sake you know what you’re talking about,” the attendant says. “But it’s daylight still. If you just keep moving, you should be all right.”
I nod.
“You got your GPS?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No phone,” I say.
He gives me a hard look. “I’ll give you this map,” he says. “And I’m marking the safest route on it. Act like you belong. Don’t stop unless you absolutely have to.”
So I don’t. I pedal like a madwoman through neighborhoods with mowed lawns and cute ornaments, neighborhoods with boarded up windows, and broken glass on the sidewalk, older neighborhoods with shaggy lawns and kids playing catch in a vacant lot.
I like that one best, although it might have been the most dangerous. Guys hang out in doorways and on porches, lighting up and smoking who-knows-what.
The clinic is just on the edge of that last one, so I am feeling kind of desperate, as well as exhausted.
“Wait!” I call out again. “I need you! I need your help.”
The woman who is locking up turns to me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But the medical staff have already gone home for the night. You’ll have to wait.”
I must have looked dismayed, and I know I can feel tears starting to prickle my eyelids.
