Free I'll Protect You (Clueless Resolutions Book 1) by W B Garalt Page A

Maggie and Max strained to see the driver.
    “Those freaking tinted windows, I can’t make out what he looks like.” Maggie complained.  As the car swung into the lane directly in front they could see, through its rear window, the silhouette of a woman driver with a cell phone held to her ear.
    “Well, he is a she, and doesn’t look that dangerous.” Max said.  The blue car slowed and exited the highway at the next ramp.
    “False alarm” said Max tensely.
    “Jesus, are we getting paranoid, or what!” Maggie stated in the form of a question.
    After a few quiet moments Maggie broke the silence.
    “I hope the usual back up going through Providence has thinned out a little before we get onto I-195.” she wished out loud.  She hated sitting in heavy traffic.  There were alternate routes having fewer traffic tie-ups but they were not nearly as direct.
    As they drove on toward Rhode Island both Max and Maggie began to relax. They felt relieved leaving behind the non-stop pressure cooker that their lives had become.  Once tuned in to their favorite oldies music on a satellite station and feeling a little giddy, they passed the time for a while singing along like teenagers having their first experience with unsupervised freedom, each laughing at the other when the lyrics or the tune were botched up.
    The tension lines on Maggie’s face were disappearing.  Max loved that after-hours smile of hers and he was thinking ahead to a relaxing dinner. He stepped up the speed just a notch.
    After crossing the state line into Rhode Island and having cruised through portions of Hopkinton, West Greenwich and Coventry, the travelers entered Warwick as they approached Providence, the state capital.
    At the point that they passed the exit leading to Green Airport, the traffic began to thicken.  For two miles after that they were in four lanes of an inching along, stop-and-go mixture of commuter cars and semi-trailer rigs.  All were struggling to squeeze through a major highway intersection which was under a re-design construction project.  Also, it was during the Friday-after-work rush.
    One way to avoid this bottle neck while driving to Cape Cod from Southern Connecticut, or from New York, was via Interstate 295 around Providence to connect to I- 495 in Wrentham, Massachusetts and then south to the Cape Cod Canal bridges.  The other alternative was by crossing Narragansett Bay through southern Rhode Island to Jamestown and Newport via route RI 138 which crossed I-95 in Richmond. That route was on a two lane, rural road until it reached Jamestown. After that there were two suspension bridges, one of which charged a toll.  This picturesque drive offered travelers a gorgeous view of Narragansett Bay and a hint of what colonial America looked like.  When taking that route, however, travel time was hard to estimate.  This was great for vacationing through New England, but for two pass-through motorists, intent on reaching an idyllic setting on outer Cape Cod in record time, it was a non-choice on this day.
    Fifteen minutes after being slowed by traffic Maggie and Max crossed into Massachusetts and were up to speed again on I-195 East, almost half way to one of their favorite long weekend getaways.
    They had mutual friends in Hyannis who owned a year-round shingle style cottage near the waterfront. Between their cottage and the water they had a guest house, a swimming pool and a tennis court. The friends were also members of a local beach/tennis club. Although the plan was to stay in Falmouth, Max and Maggie would not turn down an invite to stay with the friends, if asked.

The Memorial Day celebration was in full swing in East Wayford on a sunny, but cool, late-May holiday morning.
    Around 8:30 AM, two police squad cars with sirens burping and all lights flashing were heralding a parade.  It started with a local Boy Scout troop, the East Wayford high school band, a platoon of American Legionnaires and two cars carrying senior