“Shit,” Conleigh sighed, placing her fork into the container. “I better go. I’ve been longer than I intended to be. Linc.” I finally looked at her face. “Thank you so much. My day hasn’t been all that great, and it’s only going to get worse because the cafeteria is serving stupid tuna sandwiches. Those are the worst.”
Her eyes were so sincere that I just knew that having a tuna sandwich really would’ve made her day worse. She wasn’t kidding about that.
“You’re welcome,” I rumbled. “Anytime.”
The forty-five-minute drive over was worth it. Rescheduling interviews for really early in the morning was worth it.
Conleigh was worth it.Chapter 9I need a double shot of whatever a toddler is on.
-Conleigh to Linc
Conleigh
I was on my way to Linc’s house, and I couldn’t begin to tell you why.
I had just come off of a long shift, and I was tired.
Tomorrow, I had a final at twelve, which meant that I had to study at least for a little bit, but I couldn’t stop myself.
After the nice things Linc had done for me that day, I couldn’t deny it. I wanted to see him.
Therefore, I didn’t take any time to second guess my decision. I just decided to go with it and hopped in the car.
Hopefully he’d be where he was supposed to be.
I was doing this.
I slowed my car, looking left then right, and tried to remember if the road that I was about to take was the correct one.
The road to Linc’s place was hard enough to find during the day. It being night made it that much harder.
Something shiny caught my eye, and I stared at it, trying to decipher what it was out of the corner of my eye while also trying to stay on the dark and winding road.
I’d nearly passed it when it finally became apparent what it was.
The spokes of a wheel.
I pulled over about thirty feet past and prayed that nobody came around the corner too fast. If they did, they might hit my car.
But since there was a massive ditch on both sides of the street for as far as I could see, I could only do so much.
Pulling my emergency flashlight out of my glove compartment, I bailed out of the car, switching the flashlight on as I ran.
At first, I couldn’t find what I’d thought was a wheel again, but then my light pinged off another shiny thing—this time belonging to a tailpipe, and my heart skipped a beat.
It was a motorcycle.
A big, mangled one.
And it was smoking as if the thing had just crashed.
But there was nobody around it, and I started to question whether someone had wrecked it, and then started walking because they had no way of contacting anyone.
But then I saw the wallet on the ground next to the wrecked bike and realized that it was attached to a chain. A chain that trailed a short way to a large ravine next to a set of guardrails that kept you from falling into said ravine.
I looked to the side and saw the chain links dangling into the ravine, snapped off at the base of the concrete piling holding the fence up.
That’s when I started to canvas the area, starting in short sweeps around the bike until I’d fanned out far enough to look into the ravine.
Maybe my instincts were off. Maybe the guy really did leave his wallet and bike behind to go find help. Maybe… there was a boot in the ravine.
I swallowed bile.
Running back to my car, I grabbed my phone and was dialing before I’d even made it back to the wrecked motorcycle.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
The unflappable ER nurse started to come out in me, making me sound much calmer than I was as I gave the dispatcher a slow, methodical recounting of what was going on, where I was, and what I was seeing.
“We’ll dispatch medical and fire,” she said. “Stay on the line…”
Negative. I had more people to be calling.
I shook my head. “No. I have to make another call.”
Then I hung up and dialed the next in line as I started to climb my way down the steep ravine.
The water run-off had eroded the ground to where the drop off was sheer, and I had to slowly pick my way down the steep incline, finding footholds where there really weren’t any footholds to be found.
“Hello?”
Linc sounded tired as if I’d woken him.
I didn’t feel bad in the least.
“Linc?” I said quickly. “Listen, I’m on the way to your house, or I was. I stopped on the side of the road because I think someone wrecked their bike. At first, I thought he might’ve walked away to get help, but it’s not looking like that anymore. I called 9-1-1, and I know that the fire department is where you volunteer, but do you think that you can make sure that they come quick? I remember you saying that Bayou, your club president, was chief of the department. I’m having a really bad feeling that something’s wrong. I can’t find the man that was on this bike…but I found his bike, his wallet, and I can see a boot down in the ravine.”