With Every Breath Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll take you up on that.” He tossed the bottle into the bin. “I’ve got a car to haul. Coming with?”
    “Nothing better to do. I tell you what, being unemployed is getting boring. Think I need a hobby.” Trey tossed his bottle into the bin.
    “You have a hobby. Thought you were making furniture.”
    “That hobby costs a lot.” He followed Cole outside.
    “That’s why you’re supposed to sell it.” Cole headed to his pickup truck and the flatbed trailer parked side by side in front of the shop. “Hitch up the trailer, will you?”
    “What’d she do to her car, anyway?” Trey stopped beside the nose of the trailer.
    “It’s a rental. Probably the fuel pump.” Cole climbed into the pickup and let Trey guide him back.
    “Where we taking the car?” Trey called up to him.
    He waited while Trey hitched up the trailer. When Trey hopped inside the cab, Cole said, “Figured we’d leave it at Joe’s since it’s on the highway. He won’t be able to touch it since it’s a rental car, but he can call the company and let them know that the piece of crap is broken.” Cole headed out of the driveway. He looked down to the gas gauge. “I’ll fuel up and run inside to let Joe know we’ll be back to drop the car off.
    “Wonder how many cars he’s got in the shop. Maybe I should help him out. Poor sap’s always swamped.”
    “It’s because he fires all his help,” Cole said. Joe was the neatest mechanic Cole had ever met. He liked things in their place, and when new guys came in and turned out to be shop slobs, Joe gave them the boot. “You might actually last, though. You might be a dick, but you’re not a slob.”
    “Thanks, asshole.” Trey grinned and flipped him off. Eight years in the Navy had whipped the guy into a neat freak; a side of Trey not many knew. Most couldn’t see past the guy he’d been before he went in—a hell raising, destructive kid who wrecked every car he owned, and been thrown into the drunk tank a handful of times. He had his own ghosts, his own scars, and joining the Navy had been an escape he needed. Cole was sure the military saved his friend’s life—Trey had been on a downward spiral his last few months before joining.
    Joe’s Garage, one of two mechanic shops in town, sat on a corner lot right off the highway. He’d been coming here with his old man even before he could walk. Joe now ran the station, a spitting image of his father, Joe Sr.—a massive man with the heart of a teddy bear. Joe was a couple of years older than Cole and Trey, but they all had a mutual love of hot rods. Cole didn’t trust many others under the hood of his vehicles, but he trusted Joe.
    A mint condition pea green LTD was parked at one of the pumps out front. Margie Nelson stood between the pump and the car wearing a scowl to accent her wrinkled brow. The pump towered over her and Cole lost sight of her when he parked the pickup on the opposite side of the pump. He shoved the door open and stepped out onto the pavement.
    “How’s it going, Mrs. Nelson,” Trey asked. He shoved his hands in his pockets just as Cole rounded the front of the pickup.
    “I’d be a lot better if Joe hadn’t put in this piece of junk.” Margie gestured to the pump with a wave of her hand. “Improvement my butt.”
    Trey rounded the pump. “It’s not working?”
    Cole looked up to the gas station door. Margie shouldn’t have been out pumping her own gas anyway. The cable across the parking lot triggered a bell inside the station whenever a car stopped at a pump. There weren’t many full service stations in the state, but Joe’s Garage had always been full service. If the attendant inside the shop couldn’t get to the pump, then the cashier came out to check on the customer.
    Margie looked ready to beat the pump with the pastel blue handbag she clutched in one hand. “What was wrong with the old pumps?”
    “Not a damn thing, ma’am. Pardon my French,” Trey said with a grin.
    She narrowed her