“That would be Sacramento. But it’s two hours away in the opposite direction,” he explained. He looked like he was close to her age, maybe a few years younger, and Grace remembered the app saying his name was Mark.
“Thanks, Mark. If I happen to find a flight out of Sacramento, would you be willing to drive me there?”
“Uh…I’d have to adjust the route and it’s not that easy to do,” he said with some hesitation. “I mean, we’d have to pull over somewhere so I could do it and…”
He prattled on a bit about all the steps it would take for him to change the route, but Grace wasn’t fully paying attention. Her main priority was finding the first flight she could to get out of here. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for her to realize it wasn’t going to happen. She was stuck. Her only hope was to book a flight for first thing in the morning and find a hotel as close to the airport as possible.
And pray it was next to a mall so she could buy a change of clothes.
Her phone began to ring, and Grace was surprised it had taken this long for it to start. Jared’s name and picture came up and she felt sick at the sight of him. She immediately rejected the call and did a quick swipe of her screen to block his number. Not that it would stop him. All he’d have to do was grab someone else’s phone and try again. Still, it was a start. Next, she turned on the do not disturb feature on her phone so she wouldn’t be bothered for a little while.
“Do I need to turn around?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.
With a weary sigh, she put the phone down. “No. We can keep going. There are no available flights tonight. I’ll have to find one for the morning.”
“I don’t know where you’re trying to go, but you could always rent a car and drive.”
Again, she suppressed the urge to roll her eyes but…the idea had merit. Sure, a cross-country drive wasn’t ideal, but it would give her plenty of time to clear her head. There would be no distractions and no chance of Jared–or anyone else for that matter–coming to talk her out of what she was doing.
“Mark,” she said excitedly, leaning forward, “you’re a genius!”
He smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Wow. Thanks!”
“Okay, so where is the closest rental car place? I mean, we don’t have to go all the way to the airport for that, do we?”
“It might be easier, and considering it’s a Saturday night, I would imagine the smaller places might be closed already. The airport car rental offices have to stay open later.” He shrugged. “At least, I think they do.”
Maybe he had a point, but reaching for her phone, Grace figured she could find that out for herself without any problem. “Aha! There is a car rental place just outside of Carson City and it doesn’t close until eight!” She leaned forward in her seat again. “Can you get me there by eight, Mark?”
It had just started to rain, so he flipped on the windshield wipers and grinned at her. “As long as this rain stays light, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
Relaxing back in the seat, she felt like things might finally start going her way.
“Dude, are you all right?”
Finn Kavanagh was so busy muttering curses that he almost didn’t hear the guy. Pacing back and forth in the crowded parking lot, he wasn’t expecting anyone to come up and talk to him. “Yeah. Peachy, except my car is gone.”
The guy looked at him in shock. He was glassy-eyed and looked no older than twenty; there was no doubt he’d used a fake ID to get into the casino, and right now was of completely no use to Finn.
“You gonna call the cops?”
Under normal circumstances he would have, but considering he knew exactly who had taken his car and why, it was pointless.
But he wanted to. Boy, oh boy, did he want to. Cursing again, he paced and turned and…oh, right. He still had an audience. “Uh, no. No, I’m just gonna call…a cab or something.” With a forced smile, Finn walked back toward the casino as he pulled out his phone. With the help of an app, he knew he could have a ride here in less than five minutes, but he had a call to make first.
Pulling up the number, he hit send and–surprise, surprise–it went right to voicemail.
“Hey, Dave,” he said through clenched teeth. “Classy move taking the car. Where the hell are you? In case you’ve forgotten, I’m eight hundred miles from home, and I got here in the car you currently hijacked, you son of a bitch! You need to get back here and…”
Beep!
If he didn’t need the phone so damn much right now, he would have tossed it in frustration. Not that he expected his brother to answer the phone, but he also didn’t expect the bastard to leave him stranded in Carson City over a petty fight.
Okay, so maybe pointing out how irresponsible his brother was wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but who knew he’d be so willing to prove Finn right immediately?
They had decided to take this road trip together as a way of bonding. Honestly, they had never gotten along, and after trying again and again, to find Dave jobs and keep him from mooching off their parents, Finn thought the time away together would help. The idea of them being in neutral territory and away from prying eyes seemed perfect.
Clearly, he was wrong.
Now he was stranded. Dave had his car and Finn needed to get home to Atlanta so he could get back to work. Granted, he was his own boss, but the garage could only run for so long without him. Actually, it probably would be fine without him for a while, but he was responsible and the
