Six
Who the hell was awake at this hour?
Erin looked up at the corner of her phone screen to check the time before she answered the call. It was earlier than she thought. Only midnight. She was awake at this hour, when she wasn't on vacation. The number wasn't one she recognized, but there were precious few that she would. Dad's ringer said "Dad," but he wasn't going to call.
Becca's said her name as well, but it obviously wasn't either of them. And it wasn't Roy because it was a 213 number, and that meant L.A.
Finally she picked up the phone on the fourth ring.
"Erin Russo speaking."
"Erin, I know we told you that you need a vacation."
The captain, then. Okay.
"And I'm taking one, just like you said. I might not have wanted to, but I can take orders, at least. Sir."
"That's not why I'm calling Erin. There's been… something happened. You should come in as soon as you get the chance."
"I'll be in town tomorrow morning."
"You're serious. Erin, where did you go for your vacation, your neighbor's house?"
"I'll see you in the morning, Captain."
"Erin, I just want to say, before you have to get into all this shit… I'm sorry."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You'll know what I mean when it's important. Now get to sleep, if you're really going to be back by morning you need it. You need to sleep more."
Erin was wide awake now. Four hours was plenty, and she still had to get to the airport. Three hours was enough time to get a cup of coffee, take a ride through town and maybe get breakfast before they went up. Plenty of time to wonder what the hell the Captain was sorry about.
No, not wonder. She was worried. That old son of a gun wasn't the kind of person to be sorry for calling her in early. They understood each other, and he understood that getting called in would probably be a godsend for her. Work was all Erin had, outside of Becca, and even then they hadn't spoken in a few years.
Not since Becca had gone to live with their father, and that was just how it would have to be.
Well, maybe things would be fine. Maybe she was overthinking it. But she didn't think so. She didn't think so one damn bit. Whatever had Captain Blunt calling at midnight to tell her to get her ass back in town at first convenience, it was something big. If he was apologizing, then she was right to worry.
Had something happened to her father? That was a best-case scenario, but her relationship with dear old dad wasn't something that she wore on her sleeve. So Captain would have been worried about how she'd take it. He would probably worry more when she took it about as well as being told that they'd had to buy a different brand of coffee this week.
Most people who reacted that way, they reacted that way because they were so upset that they weren't registering what had happened. Shock, they called it. Erin had seen people in shock, and it was disturbing to say the least. People get hurt, then they think that they're immortal because they're so high on an absurd cocktail of chemicals that they don't realize what the hell they're doing.
She pushed herself out of bed and dressed. She tried to take it slowly but she was out the door in ten minutes anyways. She'd packed the night before, and now it was just a matter of getting her suit on, shoes on, tied, and out.
She checked out and fit herself into the comfortably small seat of the compact rental she'd gotten. It was just as nice as she remembered it being. It still ran better, quieter, and cheaper than the Jeep, but it still didn't have the character. In other words, just the way she'd left it.
The way down the mountain wasn't as bad as they made it sound. Sure, a couple of corners made her a little nervous, but they'd made her nervous on the way up the mountain too, and that was when they were still relying on artificial snow because the first snowfall hadn't hit yet for the year.
Now there were high berms of snow on the low side of the road and it created a strange claustrophobia as every curve became blind, and she had no way of knowing whether or not there was a car about to come blazing around the next corner until she made the turn.
Okay, maybe that wasn't super safe for ambulance drivers, after all. They made risky choices when they thought they could afford it. For speed. Passing folks, stuff like that, and with all these blind corners that turned into a logistical and safety nightmare.
Still, for someone taking it slow, it didn't present a problem. Not even at one in the morning. She hit the city by two, and was sitting down in a twenty-four hour nationwide diner chain that claimed their eggs couldn't be beaten. How someone could make that claim, she would never know, because as far as Elle was aware everyone could at least sort-of cook eggs, and they mostly tasted about the same.
She got waffles instead, and asked for extra butter, because she didn't have the type of body that tended to need to worry about her arteries, and with the way that she often lost herself in her work she wasn't about to get that kind of body, either.
The waitress walked away still writing on her order pad and came back a few seconds later with Erin's water. She took a deep drink. She'd never been to Wyoming, but she could see the charm. The mountain was beautiful, and the view of the town down below was a sight to behold, when she could see it after the rain cleared.
This had all the makings of a great trip. She met a guy who happened to live on the wrong coast, but a guy nonetheless. More than she could say for the past ten years in L.A. The skiing, for the amount she'd been able to do, had been great. The views—gorgeous.
Then it turned out that she couldn't bear to be away from work for more than three fucking days and back on the plane she was already going. The fact that the captain had called her specifically to tell her to get her ass back into town, well that was just icing on the cake, after all. She was going to be there anyways, now she just had more motivation.
Erin put her earphones in and turned her music back on. The interplay of the instruments was why she listened to jazz. Kept her mind moving. Now more than ever, she just needed to keep moving, long enough to get back into town and find out what the hell the Captain had been so worried about.
Maybe he'd let her work on something again. Not necessarily likely, she knew. There was a reason she'd been told to take a vacation, and whether she agreed with it or not, she doubted that Captain Blunt would change his mind just because she'd gotten a little bored out there.
But that didn't mean that a girl didn't have the right to dream, and vacations didn't stop bad guys.