Jacob's Ladder Read Online Free PDF Page B

to you about that. Were you sick with the flu before or after you took that awful beating?”
    “Look, I don"t know what your dad told you about me, but—”
    “He told me that you don"t belong to any fight club,” JT almost growled. “He told me who beat you.”
    “Great.” My hand tightened on the seat. “Just…great.”
    “Was that the first time?”
    “No,” I muttered.
    JT stayed silent for a long enough time that I thought he was going to stay that way for the rest of the ride. After a while, when we were stopped at a red light, he turned to me. “I don"t understand that. I"m just called in to pick up the pieces.
    Sometimes more than once at the same place, you know?”
    “It"s not that simple.”
    St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
    21
    “I know that. Nothing"s simple.” When the light was green again, JT pulled out into the intersection. “I was shocked to find out is all.”
    “What?”
    “That a guy like you…” He never finished his sentence.
    What did he mean by that? I looked out the window and didn"t answer.
    “I don"t mean to pry,” he said eventually. “Only that as an outsider, you wonder.”
    “What do you wonder?”
    “When I was an absolute rookie, we responded to a call. When we got there, a woman had been stabbed several times and left for dead on the living-room floor.
    Her husband was just sitting there, on a recliner, watching the game and drinking a beer. Before the police dragged him away, he said she"d asked for it and he"d given it to her. That"s the kind of shit I can"t wrap my mind around.” Poor JT. His earnest green eyes were shadowed, like the answer was something he expected to figure out, and the fact that he couldn"t made him feel like a failure. Like he lost sleep over it. Those eyes said JT took things harder than most. Maybe being an EMT was an especially tough job for him.
    “Nobody asks for that.”
    “I know that. Of course I know that.”
    “So what do you wonder?”
    “Why, I guess. Why, after the first time, the first blow, the first bruise, does anyone allow it to go on?”
    “That"s a great question.”
    “Well?”
    “Don"t look at me. As you can see, I flunked that test.” JT grunted at me but said nothing further.
    When the silence looked like it was going to continue, I ran my hand over the frame of the door, admiring what my dad used to call a wind wing. It opened smoothly, and I let the air wash over me. It was a pity they didn"t make those anymore—the little quarter windows that opened to focus a blast of air into the truck. It felt like the human equivalent of being a dog, shoving my head out the window, and letting my tongue loll. I"d always liked playing with a wind wing, aiming it until I felt like I was drowning in air, and since JT lived so close to the ocean this far north of LA, he probably wouldn"t need an air conditioner much, even if the truck had one. Which of course it didn"t.
    What it did have was style: solid cherry-lipstick-colored cool.
    We pulled into the parking lot at the SeaView, and the dip as the truck ascended the driveway caused me to clench my teeth until I saw the setting sun reflected on the glassy, waxed hood. My heart burst with longing.
    “I"m so in love with your truck,” I gushed.
    22
    Z. A. Maxfield
    JT"s green gaze landed on me and took my breath away.
    My face heated. I yanked the plastic bag with my personal crap off the bench seat between us. I wished I"d never told JT my nickname. He seemed like a nice guy, but I wasn"t the sort of man to appreciate a nice guy. And even if he had been my type, if I knew anything at all, it was that when one guy beat you half to death, it wasn"t a good policy to pin your hopes on the guy who picked you up and dusted you off.
    For me it wasn"t a good policy to pin my hopes on anything. I wasn"t good at picking men. Or rather I was clearly the quintessence of picking the wrong men.
    Whatever.
    “Thanks for the ride.”
    “If you"re going to stick around for a few