Evans Creek Book 2: In Good Hands

Prologue I: Suzie

Last year-early April

Without taking her eyes off the road, Suzie patted her hand around until she found the sports bottle.

Once upon a time, there was a logo on it. By the time she bought it at a yard sale, there was nothing but the bright blue plastic, the letter S, and a few faded white blotches. It was the S that made her spend her hard-earned quarter on it. Her name was Suzie, after all.

She was 9 at the time, or maybe 10? She couldn't remember, not exactly.

It was one of the few possessions she managed to hang on to through all of the moves. Suzie sighed and used her teeth to pull the spout open to squirt some lukewarm water into her parched mouth. Only half a swallow remained. With a sigh, she bumped it shut with her chin and tossed it to the seat.

Looks like it was time to stop again.

She needed to use the restroom anyway. She had been driving all morning.

Ever since leaving the crappy motel outside of...some town or other.

Like the names of all the "friends" she made during all of her years in foster-care, the names of the towns were impossible to remember. Three years ago, she left the last group home behind to follow Mike and never looked back. Mike called it "leading the Gypsy life" but in reality, it was a glorified sort of vagrancy.

When she left with Mike, she was 16 and everything she possessed had fit into a battered back-pack with one broken strap. In the three years they travelled around the states, she picked up a thing or two. She was now the proud owner of enough—stuff—to fill a second-hand suitcase along with a few small boxes that were stashed in the back of the car.

She knew nothing about cars, but even if she had, it probably wouldn't help. If there were ever any identifying decals or logos on the car, they had long since fallen off. All she could say for sure was that it was a hatchback and it was old. The dash was cracked and duct-taped. And the seats were covered with sheets to keep the crackly, dried-out vinyl from poking.

She didn't even know what color it was. Whatever remained of the original paint was faded beyond recognition, but it hardly mattered. There was more rust than paint on it anyway. Sometimes she thought she needed a tetanus shot just from looking at it.

None of that bothered her, though.

It was a car.

It was theirs.

It got them from A to B.

Most of the time.

Mike hated the car and cursed it almost as much—and as frequently—as he fixed it.

That is probably why he decided to leave it behind when he left.

At least the years on the road had taught her a few things.

She knew where she could park to sleep in the car, and how long she could stay there before someone would ask her to move it. She also knew that she wouldn't starve. Waitressing was not glamourous work, but it was easy to find and they weren't picky about your resume.

She never gave it a second thought three years ago when he told her to go into the diner and ask for work. She didn't think it unreasonable when he asked for her pay. Mike had a harder time finding odd jobs, and like he said, they had to eat, didn't they?

Suzie shook her head.

Three years wasted!

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.