Haley jumped in. “And I can help keep the two of you in shape.” She frowned at Ezra. “I noticed you lagging behind when we were on the run.”
“Please don’t make me pull a huge tire,” he mockingly pleaded.
“No, but I could hook a rope to the front bumper of a truck and make you pull that.” She remained serious for a moment, then cracked up.
“You two are okay sticking with me? It really isn’t—”
Butch cut him off. “You didn’t happen to see wire cutters in these trucks, did you?”
He wasn’t sure what to make of the question, but he had seen a small toolbox. When they looked inside, Butch grabbed what he needed. Then, without waiting for approval, he walked over to the side truck and quickly cut the valve stem on each tire. The air whooshed out, soon giving the truck four flat tires.
When Butch saw them watching him, he explained. “They won’t be able to use these trucks until someone comes in with new stems. It will give us plenty of time to escape, and make it hard for those guys to report back in. It looks like these trucks don’t even have radios.”
“You read my mind,” Ezra admitted.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Haley jested as she patted Butch on the arm.
“This is nothing. I used to put ball bearings in the valve caps of dirtbags I didn’t like back in high school. Over the course of a school day it would slowly let air out of their tires. When they came out to the parking lot, they’d waste so much time airing them back up. I’d laugh the whole time.”
“Good to know,” she said dryly.
Butch smiled. “I’ve always been mechanically inclined, I guess. Nowadays, I put my skills to better use.”
Ezra took a peek at the men far down the highway. They’d made good on their promise to keep going. It gave him the ability to get in the last truck without fear of them coming back to stop them. “There’s plenty of room in the crew cab. Haley, why don’t you take the back seat? Since you have the least experience with guns, maybe Butch can show you how to clean our rifles, plus the new ones we’ve picked up. It will help you learn more about them, for sure.”
“I can get in the back seat with her,” Butch said matter-of-factly. “Just until we have them all cleaned. Then I’ll get in the front to keep watch again.”
Haley spoke up before he could reply. “It would be nice to have a teacher next to me. It would be hard for us both if he had to look back from the front seat.”
Ezra took it in stride. They were making huge concessions in their lives to go on his cross-country adventure. The least he could do was let them have some time together. There was no need to have a girls’ area and a boys’ area, like those lost tents.
“All right. I don’t care where you sit. Get in before I leave you both behind!” He climbed into the front seat, watching with humor as they scrambled one after the other through the rear door. When they were settled, and he saw them in his mirror, he had a flashback of one of Grace’s first dates to a movie theater. She and some boy whose name he couldn’t remember sat in the back of his Jeep. He eyed the couple warily in his rearview mirror, making sure her date didn’t try anything with his precious daughter. Grace once caught sight of him peeking, but she didn’t scowl; instead, she smiled. It was one of those rare instances where he thought she understood why he and her mother were always so protective of her.
This time he did not look back again.
He clapped once, in homage to the game he’d once played with his wife and now his daughter. A game he desperately wanted to continue face-to-face with Grace.
“To Yellowstone!”
IMPACT Book 6
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