Page 15 of A Brother's Secret
6
Data…
She scowled, eyes unfocused and brooding behind the clear safety lenses I’d handed back to her. She was still pissed and I felt like a total shit. She stayed that way for over an hour into the ride, her expression smoothing out about a half an hour before hour two… I figured now would be a good time to pull off and eat. I’d texted Dragon what I could from the elevators on the way down to the garage and was pretty much itching to check out any responses by now. Freeway riding didn’t exactly afford any stoplights to check messages, and unfortunately, traffic was clear; the road wide open in front of us, so there wasn’t any stop and go to afford me a similar luxury.
I pulled off the freeway and I felt her perk up behind me, curious. It took an effort of will to keep my eyes on the road and off my mirrors to see what she was doing. It was drawing on towards evening, and we wouldn’t be making it to Point Nowhere before dark. There wasn’t anyway.
“Why are we stopping?” she yelled when we reached the bottom of the offramp.
“Food!” I calledback.
“Good idea, I forgot aboutthat!”
I laughed at that and shook my head, turning us out onto the surface streets in the direction of where the blue signs boasted food could be found. At the next stoplight, I called out, “What looksgood?”
“Don’t give a fuck, it’s just something you eat so you don’tdie!”
I tilted my head and couldn’t argue with her there, then again, Mali had never been picky out of necessity growing up. Food had been sometimes hard to come by for her and her pops, and he was one of those guys that were too proud to hit up the food bank. I turned into a Cracker Barrel Country Store’s parking lot and let Mali off the bike. I backed it into a vacant parking stall and lowered the kickstand, shutting off the engine.
She stood not far from me, working loose the chinstrap on her borrowed helmet and I watched her for a minute.
She looked like she was born on the back of a bike, long legs covered in tight denim, flowy, loose black tank under my worn jacket that fit her better than it’d ever fit me. She was beautiful. She looked over at me and arched onebrow.
“K, now I’m fucking starving,” she said and I smiled and gotup.
“Me, too. Let’s eat, then we’ve probably got around four or so more hours togo.”
She groaned and sighed out, “There had better be a hot bath or a shower at the end of this rainbow,” she grumbled.
I took that into consideration and murmured, “I’ll see what I can do.” I don’t think she heard me. She was up on the faux rustic front porch, opening up the door to the country store part of the building. I went in after her and we found the hostess.
“Two, please.” Ever polite until someone gave her a reason not to be, I let her take the lead. No reason not to. She was a fierce, capable woman and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that she’d turn out to be anything else. We dropped into a two-person booth and Mali immediately lost herself behind amenu.
I pulled out my phone. Four missed text messages fromD.
1/4: We’ll get on it, get Point Nowhere setup in no time. Just get your asses here, carefully. Any idea who’s doing it yet? Let me know what’s up. I can’t start working angles until Iknow.
2/4: Do you need your computer systems brought out to Nowhere?
3/4: That was a stupid question. Of course, youdo.
4/4: We’re almost set up here. If you stop, let me know where, for how long, all that happy horseshit.
Me: We’re stopped, about four hours out at a Cracker Barrel. Food then we’ll get right back on theroad.
I set the phone aside and perused the menu myself. The waitress came by and asked for our drink orders. I looked over my menu at Mali who had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes matched by the ghost of a trouble-making smile on herlips.
“What can I get you to drink?” the girl asked and Mali ordered a sweet tea. I cocked my head and let my gaze rove her face and ordered thesame.
Her smile grew a bit wider, despite the tiredness creeping in and she asked, “Do you know what you want toeat?”
I got back to the menu murmuring, “No, not yet,” and decided that she was definitely up to something. I’d seen that playful look a thousand and more times and it always preceded some sort of shenanigans.
The waitress came back and asked us, “Do you know what you’llhave?”
Without missing a beat, Mali said, “I’ll have an explanation over why Brad’s wife was fired.”
I choked on my sip of tea and laughed, the girl blinked and blushed slightly, fighting not to roll her eyes. I couldn’t help it, maybe it was the stress or the long, hard miles, but I laughed and laughed over her jibe over the viral internet sensation that had been some dude named Brad demanding to know why Cracker Barrel had fired his wife over their Facebookpage.
