Free Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One by Perry P. Perkins Page A

hand.
Then, pulling back on the slide, Jack checked the chamber
thoroughly to be sure the gun was unloaded.
    Setting the pistol down carefully between
the seats, he quickly unloaded the clip, stuffing the bullets into
his jacket pocket. Then, with rapid efficiency, he disassembled the
slide, spring, and barrel until he held an awkward handful of gun
parts in his lap. These he slipped into an empty burger bag from
the floor.
    Next, he pulled a battered denim wallet from
another pocket and showed it to Cassie.
    “ Let’s
see, ” he growled, grinning evilly in
the dimness, “ what the Baggins had in
his nasty little pocketses! ” He opened
the wallet, thumbing through it and slipping the driver's license
out. A small wad of cash was folded into one corner, and Jack left
it there, sliding the license into his shirt pocket. The wallet
then joined the gun parts in the bag.
    “ Be right back,” Jack said,
opening the door.
    Cassie watched him walk over to a mailbox on
the sidewalk next to the café. Looking quickly to his right and
left, Jack opened the slot and dumped the contents of the bag down
into the box. The bag he crumpled and tossed in a nearby trashcan.
Starting back toward the van, he paused and, kneeling over a rusty
gutter grate, he dumped the handful of ammunition down the sewer.
Moments later they were heading west with the flow of traffic on
Interstate 10. Jack checked his mirrors periodically and finally
leaned back in the driver’s seat and sighed heavily.
    “ Well,” he said, “that was a little more than the pie and
coffee I had bargained for.”
    Cassie started to speak, but felt her throat
constrict, she could still feel the iron grip of the truckers hand
on her arm, and smell his stink in her nostrils, she began to shake
once more.
    Jack, his voice still soft and reassuring,
sounded concerned, “Are you going to be okay?” Cassie nodded, and
in a hitching teary voice replied, “Yeah, it’s getting better…”
    “ You’re starting to get some
color back, anyway," he said. "I thought we were going to lose you
for a minute there.”
    “ It was pretty close,”
Cassie replied, her breathing returning to normal as her reaction
to the stress of the last few minutes began to pass. “If I could
just stop shaking.”
    “ Adrenaline. Fight or flight
response. You’ll be okay in a few minutes. You did
good.”
    “ I did?”
    “ Yup. Tell me something, if
I hadn’t shown up, what were you going to do next?”
    “ I’m not sure,” Cassie said,
closing her eyes and then quickly snapping them back open as the
image of those tattooed hands floated before her.
    “ I was so scared I couldn’t
move," she said, "all I could think of was if he got me back into
those shadows I was going to start screaming and
kicking.”
    “ Good girl,
where?”
    “ Where?”
    “ Where were you going to
kick him?”
    Cassie blushed and glanced away, looking at
the rush of nighttime traffic along the interstate.
    “ Good,” Jack nodded,
“that’s exactly where. Don’t let anyone fool you, kid, there’s no such thing
as a fair fight!”
    There was a long pause as the traffic hummed
around them and they flashed from one circle of light to the next
along the thoroughfare. Finally, when Cassie could stand the
silence no longer, she glanced back over at Jack.
    “ Would you…” she asked,
swallowing hard, "would you have cut him, or…or…?”
    “ Or shot him, if he’d turned
on us?” Jack finished.
    “ Yeah,” she
whispered.
    There was another long pause and Cassie
began to think that Jack wasn’t going to answer her question.
    “ I’ve never killed a man
before,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving the road, “Not even in
the war…”
    Cassie waited, holding her breath.
    “ I’ve seen enough good
people hurt by bad people, though, that I think I could do what I
had to, to keep it from happening right in front of me. So, if it
was going to be him or us… I guess it was going to be
him.”
    This