Page 58 of Elijah's Hope
The plane started to turn, and I watched it coast down the runway. Doogie must have refueled in Nome so he was good for a round trip. I thought about what I had done. How I had ended Shelby and Eli. I told myself, at the time, I was doing the right thing. Now, I wasn’t so sure. But the plane was in the air and it was too late.
Shelby was gone.
And Kate, after all this time, was finally here.
I looked at her beautiful face and couldn’t believe this day was happening.
“I have to tell you, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure what to expect.”
Neither did I. Not only did I not believe I had done it, I couldn’t believe it actually worked.
“I guess this is the part where I ask you out on a date. Probably should do it properly. Kate, will you go out on a date with me?”
She seemed to think about it. “Okay. I didn’t come all this way only to turn around. I’m in.”
“Great. Come with me.”
Yes. This was going to work out perfectly. As long as she didn’t find out who I was before I was ready to tell her.
* * *
Dyson Camp
One week later
Eli
“That’s shit work, Simmons, and you know it!” I shouted at the junior roustabout as we stood in front of a series of pressure pumps that controlled the speed and the depths of the drills. “You’re supposed to be watching all these pressure levels. That is your fucking job. See that number two pump, what’s the fucking problem with it?”
“Pressure is too high.”
“That’s fucking right, asshole,” I yelled. “The pressure is too fucking high. It gets any higher, we could have a major incident. You want to die today? Because I don’t want to fucking die today.”
Except I sort of didn’t want to live today either.
“Eli!”
I looked over my shoulder at the sound of my name. Cal was there with a stern expression on his face.
“My office. Now.”
I practically growled at him. Didn’t he realize I was in the middle of a meal?
I turned to Simmons. “Report this to Ark, and make sure you don’t get careless again. Right now, and from every minute forward, know that I’m looking for a reason to shit-can your sorry ass.”
He mumbled something about doing better but then I was done with him. Not exactly satisfied, but chewing out some roustabout was not going to fix what was wrong with me.
The truth was, I didn’t know what was going to fix it.
Shelby was gone. I left her then she left me. It only made sense. Hell, I probably would have told her to go myself. It’s not like I was going to get over what she’d done.
Not the porn thing. That I didn’t like, but I didn’t know what circumstances brought her to do it so I knew I could put that behind me. The criminal record? I hoped to hell it wasn’t for solicitation, but again, how could I know what might have led her to that?
No, it was the lying.
The stories about her brothers and Halloween parties. All of it fake.
Because she was playing a part. A part she had to play to escape from where she’d been.
