2017 Red Ribbon winner, The Wishing Shelf international book awards (Adult-Fiction).
A tattoo artist is pursued by the man of her dreams, but her biker-gang friends mistake him for a hit man out to get her.
It's 1995, and Galen Randall, the world'...
While Randall was beating the heck out of Jap, he missed seeing which way Lou's car went when it left McDonald's. Now Randall has to decide where he would go to take pictures, and hope Lou would go to the same place, or places. On this morning, he has narrowed the choices down to two: Delicate Arch (above) or Dead Horse Point (below). It's going to be a long day.
~o~~o~~o~
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If a man tosses a coin to make a decision, the chance of him making the wrong decision increases with the degree to which the decision seems to be of life-and-death significance. The more important the decision, the more likely it is to be the wrong one. The universe knows this. It's one of the little jokes the universe enjoys at human expense. The universe is often nasty, but that is a philosophical issue for another day.
On this Saturday in October, Lou O'Malley sat alone on the desolate overlook at Dead Horse Point, taking careful pictures of the sunrise, the canyons, and the hairpin curve of the river below. The wind ruffled her hair and brought soothing scents of sage and juniper to her nostrils.
Sailor napped on his motorcycle, behind bushes near Lou's parked car.
Randall, having made, of course, the wrong decision based on his coin toss, reached Delicate Arch after a long, hot, one-and-a-half-mile that climbed 500 feet in elevation.
Fifty yards behind him, Jap struggled feebly up the rocks, finding himself much less fit for the task than was Randall.
Randall stopped at the Delicate Arch, barely winded, and scanned all vantage points where a photographer might be. He saw only two German tourists hiking along the opposite ridge, taking snapshots and speaking rapidly in voices that carried to him on the wind.
Jap never made it all the way to the Delicate Arch. He used the last of his climbing strength to gain the top of a boulder overlooking the hiking path Randall had used. When Randall started back down the trail, he passed under the rock Jap had climbed.
Jap leapt upon Randall with a keening battle cry, "Ayaaaaaaaaah!"
Randall fell to his knees and used Jap's own forward momentum to propel the attacker over Randall's head. Jap hit the rocky trail hard and rolled, rolled, rolled downhill until he jolted to a stop against a squat, gnarled, prickly juniper tree.
Randall straightened up, dusted himself off, and marched jauntily on down the trail toward the old van. "I shoulda tried Dead Horse Point," he muttered.
Eventually, Jap fought his way out from the entangling juniper branches, dragged himself to his feet, and—exhausted, but determined—followed Randall.
Over at Dead Horse Point, Lou returned to her car and loaded camera gear into it.
