Finding West

2

She put her fork down. "Would you stop staring at me?" she asked. "I don't like being looked at like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm a piece of meat."

"I wasn't even..." I shook my head and stuffed a slice of bacon into my mouth before I could say or do anything else that would offend her. For the first time it occurred to me that I wasn't the only one with a hidden past, and based on the stubborn set of her jaw, something had made an obviously beautiful girl hide herself from the world. The possibilities left me cold.

"I just realized I don't even know your name."

She glanced up at me. "Kat. And you?" she asked, then quickly added, "right, I forgot."

I chewed quietly, watching her watch me.

"How about your age? Do you have any clue how old you are?"

I scratched at my bearded cheek. "I have no idea."

Her blue eyes studied me for a moment. She was so fearless. "I'm guessing you're around mid-thirties."

"I don't feel that old," I said. "What about you?"

"How old do I look?" She sat back and raised an eyebrow.

I shook my head. "Hell no. If I tell you what I think, you'll get all huffy because I'll inevitably say the wrong number. I might not know much right now, but I'm aware that age and weight are two things men never discuss with a woman unless he wants to lose a testicle."

She stood up, her chair scraping along the linoleum, and smirked. "I'm twenty-five and one hundred and fifty pounds," she said, taking her plate to the sink. "And that's a very antiquated idea you're running with."

My eyes followed her movements as my brain tried to make sense of the information. She was tall, slim but not skinny, and she had a nice curvy behind. "It must be all in your chest and ass," I mused out loud.

She spun around, her eyes wide, and crossed her arms across her chest. She didn't say anything, I suspected out of shock, but she didn't have to. Her body language alone was enough to chastise me.

"I shouldn't have said that."

"Let's get one thing straight," she said through stiff lips. "If you want my help, you can't say shit like that. Ever."

I nodded, disturbed that I might be the kind of guy who usually said things like that to women. "Sorry. It just slipped out."

She looked away. "That's your first and only warning, Lenny."

I frowned. "Lenny? Did I miss something? Did you see my name somewhere?"

"No. I just decided you deserved a name."

"Yeah, but... Lenny?" I hoped to God my real name wasn't Lenny.

"Yeah, Lenny sounds like the kind of guy who'd talk about a girl's ass and tits, don't you think?"

I sighed through my nose. "I think I'm more of a Dean or Jack."

"More like Hershel."

"Dean?"

"Gilbert."

"Jack?"

"Herman." She fought off a grin. "I can go all night."

"Fine," I conceded. She could win this one for now. She fed me bacon after all. "Greasy Lenny it is."

Kat made me wash the dishes while she stood on the other side of the counter and watched. She was, I was beginning to understand, hardheaded and a bit of a smartass, traits that I didn't think I'd like on a person. She was both surly and soft at once, a confounding study in contrasts.

She retrieved her laptop from the bedroom—the fact that she had one surprised me as she seemed like a low-tech, off-the-grid kind of girl—and set it on the kitchen table. "I'm going to look in the police database for missing persons in Alaska."

"If I'm even from Alaska," I said, drying my hands on a dishtowel.

"This is going to be a long ass day," she mumbled as I walked around to look over her shoulder.
She searched website after website tirelessly, but every link she clicked on, every new page with missing persons listings, sent me deeper into a dark place. I'd seen more depressing things than I'd ever wanted to.

After an hour and a half, Kat had finally had enough. "I need a drink," she said, pushing away from the kitchen table. "I can't see any more pictures of abducted children."

"Do you mind if I look?" I asked, but she grabbed the laptop before I even had a chance to touch it.

"Hold on," she said, holding onto the computer with one hand while doing something with the other. Probably clearing the browser history, if I had to guess.

"You have something to hide there, Kat?" I asked when she finally handed the machine over.

"Don't we all?" she asked and made her way to the fridge while I found a police database we hadn't perused. "You want a beer?"

I meant to say yes but my entire body was suddenly frozen with fright. Right on the screen was a mug shot of a guy with a thick beard, grey eyes and dark hair, and underneath his picture was the caption: Murder in the first degree.