Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 62262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
“I bet it’s because you have a superpower. Like I said before, SPAM makes a point of collecting people with powers, no matter how random. Giving you a code name suggests you’re deployable, given the right set of circumstances.”
“I guess that makes sense, although they could have mentioned that when they hired me.”
He glanced at me before turning his attention back to the road. “Do you ever wonder why SPAM recruited you? Because I sure as hell wonder why they recruited me.”
“Yeah, I do. I wasn’t job hunting at the time, so their call came out of nowhere.”
“Same. Did you do any online questionnaires or aptitude tests before they called?”
“No. Well, except for one of those silly quizzes—what kind of pizza would you be?”
“I took the same quiz! I was pineapple and jalapeno, which sounded gross.”
“I was plain cheese.” I glanced at Sam’s profile. “There’s no way our employer secretly gleaned information from our answers to a pizza quiz, right?” I thought about that before shaking my head and answering my own question. “Nah. There’s no way.”
“But then again, it’s SPAM,” he said, “so who the fuck knows?”
CHAPTER 10
SAM
I’d made the random decision to head north, with the plan of driving until dusk. But after a couple of hours, Andy informed me, “I have to get out of this car.” He’d barely said a word since we left San Francisco.
“Are you alright?”
“I think I might throw up.”
That sent me into instant panic mode. I yelled, “Fight the urge,” as I took a wild right turn from the left lane. The tires squealed as we barreled onto an off-ramp that we’d almost passed.
As soon as I could, I pulled to the side of the road, and Andy staggered out of the car and doubled over with his hands on his knees. After a minute, he straightened up and mumbled, “False alarm.”
“That’s a relief. The thought of you barfing almost made me barf, too. We could’ve gotten caught up in an endless loop, each of us setting the other off—” Andy looked alarmed, so I stopped talking.
He took off his hoodie, revealing a T-shirt that said I like big books and I cannot lie, and returned to the passenger seat. “It’s embarrassing that I still get carsick. I always assumed I’d outgrow it, but that never happened.”
I pointed at a cluster of businesses about a quarter mile down the frontage road. “There’s a motel, maybe we should check in. What do you think?”
He shrugged. “I guess it’s as good a place as any to lay low for a while.”
The motel could have been a lot worse. A hand-lettered sign in the lobby window announced it was under new ownership, which probably explained the fresh red and white paint job and the flowerpots beside each door.
Andy waited in the car while I went inside and paid cash for two nights. A few minutes later, as we carried our bags into the last room in the row, he pointed out, “There’s only one bed.”
“Yeah, I know. Apparently most of the rooms are currently being remodeled, so the only ones available are singles. If it bothers you, I can sleep on the floor.”
“I don’t mind sharing.”
The room was on the small side, but it had fresh, cream-colored paint on the walls, and the linens on the king-size bed were crisp and clean. There was even a compact kitchenette with a microwave and mini fridge. I dropped my bags and said, “I’m going to move the car and bring back some groceries from the truck stop mini mart across the street. Any requests?”
“Anything’s fine.” He was obviously still feeling off, because he was actually a very picky eater. “Why are you moving the car?”
“Since we’re supposed to be hiding out, I don’t think it’s smart to park a car that’s registered to me right outside our door.”
“How would anyone find us here? I don’t even know where we are right now.”
“They wouldn’t. I’m just being paranoid.”
Why worry him with the reminder that there were all kinds of people out there with weird superpowers? Someone with the ability to track people was a definite possibility. If they narrowed our location down to the motel, I didn’t want the car to act like a huge arrow, pointing to our room.
Before I left, I turned on the burner phones and made sure each was programmed with the other’s number. As I handed one to Andy, I said, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, tops. If you think of anything you want while I’m gone, give me a call.”
When I got back to the room eighteen minutes later, Andy was sound asleep. He’d curled up in a little ball on the bed, and he looked fragile and vulnerable—a description he definitely would’ve hated. He’d probably also hate my overwhelming urge to protect him, which was stirred up by seeing him like that.