NICK
I was awake enough to know that it definitely wasn’t Stella kissing me, not unless she’d been eating bacon and had grown a mustache overnight. Two hot paws bounced on my chest, and a tongue wiggled up my nostril. The bright light in the bedroom stung my eyes. When I got my bearings, I was met with a very small brown face, a dangling pink tongue, and a shrill, “Marf!”
It was the dog I’d met when I was wrestling with that oxygen compressor. Priscilla. What she was doing here, I had no clue. But there were a lot worse ways to wake up than a dog in your face. “Heyyyy there, little one,” I said, and gave her nose a rub.
And she flopped over happily on my chest.
“Where did you . . . Priscilla! Cookie!” I heard Stella whisper, followed by the pitter-patter of her feet on the carpet. “Priscilla! Just let him . . . Oh!” she gasped, when she dashed into the room and found Priscilla standing on top of me, on all fours on my chest. “Well, look at you two.”
Very slowly I walked my fingers up my abs toward Priscilla. She dropped to her front paws and lifted her rear end. She was, of course, precariously close to stepping on my balls. But goddamn was she cute.
Stella reached out for the dog. “You go back to sleep. Don’t mind us.”
Priscilla tumbled off my chest and dove into the covers, her little ass wagging and her tail whapping the sheets. She high-centered herself on my thigh, her warm, furless stomach sliding along my skin, and tumbled into the V between my legs. She tried to dig into the mattress, furiously and briefly, before flopping down, exhausted, with her bony jaw on my knee. Her tail kept wiggling under the covers, and her breath was hot against my calf. “What exactly is she doing here?” I asked, rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger.
“Well, OK. So here’s the thing. There’s been a bit of a . . .” Stella looked up at the fan, slowly spinning on the ceiling. The end of the chain spun in a regular circle. “. . . a complication. In our plan.”
Priscilla inhaled so hard I felt my briefs move, and then she sneezed. I picked up the sheets. Priscilla shoved her face under my leg, her cold, wet nose against my inner thigh and her big black eyes looking innocently at me like, Oh no, I didn’t sneeze on your man parts. Promise! I closed her back inside her sheet fort.
“Spill it, cutie.” I tapped my chest. “Hit me. I can take it.”
Stella sat down on the edge of the bed. “Mr. Bozeman, Priscilla’s dad, the one with the oxygen compressor . . . remember?”
Remember? I’m still having twinges. “I’m with you so far.”
“He had to go to the hospital for a hernia this morning. He’s fine!” she said quickly, and pressed her hand to her chest. “Thank God, but he just called to tell me he’s going to need to stay for a few nights. Until Thursday.” Stella grimaced and waited for me to respond.
Thursday. The heist was planned for Wednesday. Complication indeed. “So what you’re saying is, the dog is coming with us.”
“Yeah. That’s the size of it.” Stella sighed like she was frustrated, but then her face softened when she rubbed Priscilla through the quilt. In response, she rolled onto her back, and her legs poked at the cotton like she was swimming the backstroke. “She won’t fit on the bike. We tried a backpack while you were sleeping.” Stella shook her head. “Disaster.”
Gone were the good old days of me, the open road, and a solo heist with no trace behind me. Now there was a woman I wanted to take care of, and there was a dog who needed to come with. The whole thing was feeling pretty fucking adult . . .
And I liked how it felt. A whole hell of a lot.
Stella slid off the bed into a crouch and started playing peekaboo with Priscilla, who answered every drop of the sheets with a wiggle and a sniff of my shorts. Stella snort-giggled against the mattress. “We can rent a car. But the problem is, there aren’t that many places that take dogs. And even if there were . . .” She trailed off.
She didn’t have to finish that. The more stops we made, the more witnesses there would be. And with Priscilla in tow, we’d attract way more attention than was sensible. Dogs were great, but people remembered them. And that was not what we wanted.
But it did give me an idea. A crazy one, granted. But one that sounded pretty fucking good too. “It’s what, an eleven-hour drive?”
Stella stopped with the peekaboo and nodded. “Eight hundred and eight miles.”
“No car, right?”
Stella shook her head. “Stupid GEICO hasn’t gotten my loaner sorted out. Ruth rides the bus, and Roxie is the queen of Uber.”
The idea I had was the least flashy cover I could imagine. It was the least likely to catch any flak from the cops. It meant no hotels, no security cameras—a minimum of exposure. We’d be self-sufficient—just two lovebirds on the open road. It was also something that I had, secretly, always wanted to do but never imagined I’d have the chance.
And if I was going do it with anybody . . .
Stella peeked down into the comforter and blew a raspberry in the air, which made Priscilla open and close her mouth like a Muppet. Then Stella did the same, and it was Muppet mouths everywhere.
. . . it was gonna be with Stella.
I grabbed her with both arms and yanked her onto to the bed. “You trust me?”
“I don’t need you to be swooping in, Nick,” she said, laughing, but wide-eyed to say she meant it.
“It’s not a swoop. It’s a surprise, but I’m gonna need you to make me a fake ID.”
“I’m way ahead of you, handsome.” She took my jaw in her hand, giving my cheeks a firm and taunting squeeze. “Just need to get a picture of this sexy face.”
The triangle flags that zigzagged the Cruise America parking lot flapped in the desert breeze. I tipped the Uber driver and headed for the front office. Behind the counter sat a lady who was wearing about twenty pounds of turquoise jewelry and whose eyelashes were so thick with mascara, they made me think of tarantula legs. But she looked friendly enough, with kind eyes and shaped like everybody’s mom. She raised her chin to peer over the desk and put a crumbly cookie in her mouth. “Welcome to Cruise America! How can I help you?”
“Morning”—I checked her name tag—“Melinda.”
“Hello, sir,” she said. She blotted at the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin and dusted off her blouse. Her silver rings clacked again her necklace. “What can I do you for?”
There was something damned refreshing about people who lived in a world where obvious questions got obvious answers. “I’d like to rent an RV.”
She blinked her tarantula lashes and beamed. “Of course, sir. Lemme just see what we have available. What are you wanting to rent? What sort of journey will you be taking?”
I didn’t even need think about how to play this one; I just said what I wanted to be true. “Just a road trip with my fiancée . . .” I actually had to pause when I said the word. I’d never said it before in my life, and I held on to it for as long as I could. How about that for an idea? “She wants to see Monument Valley. Never even been down to the Four Corners. Can you believe it?”
Melinda clicked her tongue. “Well, don’t you forget to get a photo of her with all fours in four different states! No proof without photos, that’s what I always say.”
And boom, there I was thinking about doing filthy things with Stella across state lines at eleven in the morning. I snapped out of it and got back to being upstanding. I refocused on my immediate surroundings. The place was like a really nice brake shop, minus the lingering smell of engine grease. Melinda tapped away on her keyboard. A muted promo video for Cruise America played on a flat-screen television behind her. A youngish couple, about the same age as Stella and I, drove through Monument Valley with all the windows down, holding hands over the cup holder.
This was gonna be awesome.
“Sir, I’m sorry to say . . .” said Melinda. Her eyebrows came together. She scrunched up her face, and her long nails tapped furiously on the keys. “We’re all booked until . . . unless . . . or actually . . . I mean . . .”
“Give it to me straight, Melinda. I can take it.”
“You said you’re going with your fiancée?”
“Yep. Maybe I’ll even convince her to make an honest man out of me on this road trip.”
Melinda looked up from the screen. “Well, then I do have one option. I’d be glad to give you a discount, because it’s a lot of vehicle. But it’s very nice. Very plush. Very . . .” She searched around the desk like she was searching for the word among the staplers and sticky notes and cookies, before finally saying, “. . . romantic.”
“Sounds perfect.” I pulled out my wallet and handed her my brand-spanking-new Wyoming ID, identifying me as Mike McNamara, from the same small town as Stella’s Elizabeth Rutherford.
“Wonderful,” she said, shuffling through some papers, then standing up from her desk chair. “C’mon around back. Let me show you around your home for the next week.”