Rebirth (John Taylor #1)

Chapter 11

We made small talk about our time in the service, just reminiscing the way two old soldiers do, talking about things we experienced without getting too serious or personal.

"So, where you going in Miami?" he asked after we finished our version of old home week.

"I have to meet a friend."

"This have anything to do with that girl the news said you grabbed?"

Considering we had been riding together for almost an hour by this point, I was floored.

"What?" I said cleverly.

"They have TVs in that truck stop you found me at, ya know. You are all over the news."

That explained why everyone at the truck stop was so standoffish. From what Lowenstien had said, the news was making me out to be a stone cold killer, which also explained why none of them confronted me outright.

"They why would you agree to let me ride with you?"

"'Cause something about it just didn't sound right. Like they said you grabbed a girl and killed a cop, but then they said you killed a bunch of mobsters, and one station had a witness on that had seen the two of you together, and you had left her alone and stuff, and she still followed you. Plus, I just see you and no girl. Nah, I figure someone's blowing smoke."

"Thanks," I said.

Not that I would have done the same thing in his place. Sure, I had some of the same feelings of distrust, but had I seen the story that was being put out, I would have assumed enough of it was true and called the cops.

He let it drop at that, and I wasn't one hundred percent sure I wouldn't find the cops waiting when he dropped me off. But, true to what he said, he hadn't called the cops. When we pulled into a small truck stop just outside Miami there wasn't any sign of the authorities.

Odds are they wouldn't be long in finding this place. This guy may not have turned me in but it was a safe bet one of the truckers at the place we left called in at some point and told the cops I had been there.

It would take them a little time, but they would track down all the trucks that had been there at the time and looked to see where they were headed. While they wouldn't know I was headed towards Miami, seeing as how that was where this all started, they would probably follow up with any trucks headed out this way.

He might disbelieve what was on the news, but once cops started asking questions, odds were this guy would tell them where he dropped me off. Since I was walking, this meant I needed to get on the move.

Luckily, the address I was headed for was only a couple of miles away. One thing we did a lot of in the Army is walk. Marches were a way of life for military training and once we were in country we logged a lot of miles walking to various locations too remote for our vehicles.

The injuries slowed me down some, but I had done plenty of rehab while I was still in the hospital and had most of my old form back by this point.

I set a brisk pace and made it to the address in just over half an hour. The address led to a mailbox and a long dirt road winding off into a wooded area. This was better than I could have hoped for. I was certain it would take some forceful persuasion to convince these guys to tell me what I needed to know, and the remote nature of their 'clubhouse' would limit random people from seeing something and calling the cops.

Of course, that is almost certainly why they set it up this way. It was a safe bet a lot of what they got up to would be on the grayer side of the law, if not straight out illegal.