Chapter 58
Cal froze beneath the tarp. Kelly did the same. Yukon had killed the engine. Still unsure of why they were stopped, Cal and Kelly's bewilderment ended when a train whistle ripped through the cool night air, piercing the silence. Cal knew exactly where they were.
"Kelly, when this truck starts moving, we're going to make a run for it," Cal whispered to Kelly, who appeared rather calm considering that they both might be just a few minutes away from a gruesome death. "You go over your side of the truck bed and I'll go over mine. I'm pretty sure I know where we are - and if I'm right, we are stopped between two cornfields. If we run in opposite directions as hard as we can, Yukon won't be able to catch us both."
"Then what?" Kelly asked.
"Find a ride to Salt Lake and meet me at The Tribune offices downtown. We'll figure out what to do next."
"Are you sure this will work?"
Cal lied. "Like a dream."
Kelly craned her neck toward Cal and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Though it was short, Cal was still stunned by the forward move from a woman who hadn't given any clear signals about her feelings for him.
"For good luck," Kelly whispered.
Cal knew it was more than that as he leaked a smile.
The final train car rumbled through the crossing and Yukon fired up his engine. As Cal and Kelly felt Yukon jamming the truck into gear and easing onto the gas, they both enacted Cal's plan, diving over the edge and sprinting into cornfields on opposite sides of the road. Neither looked back, but they could hear Yukon speeding away without a second thought. Within a minute, the summer air fell silent. Yukon was gone.
Cal knew he didn't have much time to find his way to a barn or silo to hide out until morning. Mayor Gold was likely to wake up the entire county and form an all-out search party for him and Kelly. But considering the distance they had covered and the fact that Yukon never checked on them, Cal felt like his chances of finding a safe haven were higher than Gold's men finding him first.
Nevertheless, Cal's speculation about what might happen once Yukon realized his truck bed was empty didn't assuage Cal's motivating factor at the moment: pure fear for his life. Two minutes after he had jumped out of the truck, Cal was still sprinting through the cornfield. Crisp leaves smacked him in the face, chest and legs as he churned through the soft Idaho soil. It was a simple task: one foot in front of the other as fast he could move it - then repeat. The faint sound of crickets chirping was drowned out by the furious noise of flesh slapping an endless parade of leaves. Swish, swish, swish. It was rhythmic. Yet it was a weak beat compared to Cal's heart, a heart pounding so hard that he just knew if he looked down at his chest he would've seen the outline of it pulsing through his shirt. But there was no time for that either.
Scanning the sky beyond the towering cornstalks, Cal noticed the faint outline of a barn. Now, he had a destination. Swish, swish, swish.
Twenty seconds later, Cal tore out of the field and slowed to catch his breath. He then crept toward the barn, hoping that no guard dogs would attack him. They didn't. The barn was a storage shed for hay, a standalone structure that separated the cornfield from a pasture. Hay bails were stacked to the rafters. The place was perfect.
Cal exhaled. He had made it - for now. Yukon wouldn't find him here. Not tonight anyway.
As Cal began building a small fortress out of the bails as a precautionary measure, he wondered about Kelly. Did she make it too? Is she as fortunate as me? Then he hoped for the best and pondered whether Kelly's kiss really was more than just a peck on the cheek. It felt like it to him, but maybe that's because he wanted it to be more. He spent a few more minutes thinking about it before shutting off his mind and going to sleep. His journey was far from over. With the powerful Mayor Gold unleashed, Cal knew danger was still crouching at the door.