TWENTY-EIGHT AND A HALF WISHES (A ROSE GARDNER MYSTERY, BOOK 1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Chapter Twenty-Four

Joe drove like he was trying to ride into yesterday. I felt my grip slip a couple of times and Joe would jerk on my arm and remind me to hang on. But I was drowsy, the vibration of the bike lulling me to sleep.

I recognized our neighborhood, but Joe didn’t drive home. Instead, he pulled up to an old detached garage on the street behind our houses and shut off the bike.

“Where are we?” I asked, falling off the bike onto the grass. The garage hadn’t been used to store a car in years and the gravel driveway had long since been invaded by the lawn.

Joe knelt down and took the helmet off my head. “I rent this, to store things.”

“Like a motorcycle? I didn’t know you had a motorcycle.” I lay on my back in the grass. The stars in the sky were spinning around me. I felt like the center of the universe.

“That’s me, a man of mystery.” He lifted the garage door, an old-fashioned kind, a panel that tilted out and back.

“Tell me about it…” I mumbled, closing my eyes. The spinning stars were making me dizzy.

I heard him roll the motorcycle into the garage, then shut the door and padlock it. He pulled me up. “Come on.”

I had trouble standing and wearing heels in the grass wasn't going to work, especially in my state. Joe realized this before I did and knelt down to slip them off. He held my shoes in one hand and pulled my wrist with the other. “We have to hurry. We don’t have much time.” He pulled me to the trees that lined the rear property line and ran between them. Well, I tried to run. It wasn’t working out so well.

Joe hunched down. “Climb on my back.”

“Why?”

“They’re gonna come looking for you. We have to hurry and get home.”

I didn't really want to hurry so they could come find me, but Joe seemed to have a plan so I climbed on. He ran through to the trees behind his house, then slid me off. As he tried to help me over the fence. I saw my shed out of the corner of my eye.

“Hey! Why’d you put a gun in my shed?” My words sounded more indignant than I intended.

“I’ll explain it all to you in a little bit. We just have to get through the next hour first.” He led me to the back of his house, pried open a screen, then lifted the window. “Sorry, I don’t have time to be gentle.”

He shoved my head and body in through the window. When my top part was in, he pushed the back part of me through and I landed in a heap on the floor. I looked around to orient myself, realizing I was in Joe’s bedroom.

He climbed in, replaced the screen, and shut the window. “Okay, time to hide you.”

“I’m not so good at hide-and-go-seek.”

“Lucky for you, I already picked out a place for you to hide. Your job is to stay quiet.”

Joe took me into the hallway and pulled down the attic steps. When he started to push me up, I froze. Joe was making me hide in the attic. “Are there any windows up there?”

“No.”

I shook my head so violently I almost fell off the ladder. “No, I can’t.”

He climbed higher, so that we stood on the ladder side by side. “Rose, I know you’re scared and this is gonna be hard. But you can do this. You have to do this. Your life depends on it. Now go.” He pushed me up, and I scrambled up the steps, trying to stave off the fear.