Her Bear In Mind Read Online Free PDF Page A

Brenda the skank. And her car. She swore he had lifted up her car…
     
    Sierra shook her head to clear it, reminding herself to stop focusing on the crazy.
     
    And that kiss…why had she kissed him? Why did she find herself attracted to a man who literally lied to her every time he opened his mouth?
     
    She decided there wasn’t going to be a second kiss, or a second date for that matter. Not until she found out what was going on. Either he was going to tell her, or she would find out on her own.
     
    And since Joe was unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon…
     
    Sierra picked up the phone and dialed.
     
    “Enterprise Rental Cars, how can I help you?” the voice on the other end said.
     
    “Hi,” Sierra said. “Do you rent pickup trucks?”
     
    *
     
    Molly flat out refused to come with her this time.
     
    “Last time we did this I had to walk a mile down some backwoods, creepy road hunting for cell coverage. No thank you.”
     
    “But we’ll have a truck this time.”
     
    “ No thank you .”
     
    This time, she put on running shoes and jeans. She pulled the gun holster down from the back of her closet, and tucked her .22 caliber pistol into it, covering it up with a light leather jacket. The gun had been a birthday present from her mother, who worried about her moving to the “big city”. Sierra made it out to the shooting range once a month or so, and wasn’t too bad a shot. She wasn’t that good a shot either, so mostly she hoped she never had to use it.
     
    She decided to go after dark, hoping that might help her presence go undetected. She still had no idea what she was hoping to find, or who, exactly, she was worried might find her looking.
     
    After sitting patiently through Molly’s unsuccessful attempt to talk her out of it, Sierra set off in the rented black F150 just before sunset.
     
    Thankfully, she’d had her GPS on during the previous trip, or she never would have been able to find that unmarked dirt road again. Where the Prius had lurched on every bump, the F150 lightly jostled. It practically scoffed at the deadly mud bog that had sucked her in last time.
     
    The road wound through the trees for another twenty minutes, twisting and turning until Sierra had no sense of direction anymore. The good news was it remained a single road, no veering paths she could elect to follow, or inevitably get lost on.
     
    No road signs though. No markings of any kind. The longer it went on, the more curious Sierra became about where it was leading. Surely, the city had not planned this road (if you could even call the narrow, single dirt lane cutting through the words a road).  Yet someone had put it in. Someone was clearly also maintaining it. Here and there she spotted patches of gravel filling sinkholes. In some places, there were dirt piles and tree branches on the sides of the road where someone had recently cleared it. And the many sets of tire tracks looked fresh. It was like a glorified driveway. A single road with no turns could only mean it went to a single place, and this place was alarmingly well off the beaten path.
     
    Suddenly, she could see lights up ahead through the trees. Sierra immediately shut off the headlights and killed the engine, not wanting to attract any attention. She hopped out of the truck and continued down the road on foot. She could only pray that no one else would be coming or going down the road any time soon. The foliage was too dense to pull the truck off the road, let alone to try to hide it. Her sneakers squished softly in the mud as she hiked towards the lights. She noticed after a while the lights were flickering like bonfires or torches. There was a lot of noise filtering towards her now, too. Voices. People shouting. Yelling in…fear? Anger? No…cheering. It was the unmistakable roar normally associated with sporting events. And something else too. A different kind of roar. More like animals.
     
    Sierra slipped into the trees next to the road