Chapter 33

“Shit!” Sheila swore as she angrily flipped the turn signal and slowed our Ford Super Duty truck to a crawl and searched for a safe place to pull off the road. “Sky, I need my license and registration, they’re in the glove compartment.”

She rolled down her window with her left arm pointed over the roof of our vehicle. She waved towards the side of the road, a visual indication to the following patrol car we were pulling off the highway.

“Stash the Glock in the hump. We don’t need any complications.”

Sheila popped open the center hideaway. I removed the unloaded Glock from its dashboard holster and deposited it into the compartment and handed her the envelope containing our truck’s registration and proof of insurance along with her Colorado driver’s license.

“Everyone, stay calm and keep your hands in sight. We don’t want to give this flying tire guy any reason to be alarmed, they are already paranoid enough,” she said in an oblique reference to the winged tire logo of the Colorado State Patrol.

Sheila came to a full stop before steering sharply to the right and rolling to a halt in a parking space between two cars. She had angled our Ford, so the body of the lorry acted as a barrier to protect us and the approaching cop from oncoming traffic.

“Best behavior,” she reminded us as she repositioned the rearview for a better view while setting the parking brake and turning off the ignition.

With her hands in the eleven and one o’clock position on the steering wheel, she held her license and documents at the ready between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. I twisted in my seat and looked over my shoulder as the police officer emerged from his patrol car. He adjusted his Smokey the Bear hat while speaking into the microphone clipped to the epaulet on his powder-blue uniform. The kid could’ve passed for fifteen. It seemed the older I get, the younger cops became. At this rate, if I ever made it to a hundred, me and the boys in blue would both be wearing diapers.

With his hand resting lightly on his holstered service weapon, the trooper leaned down and scanned the interior of our Ford as he looked each of us in the eye.

“Do you know why I stopped you?”

“Did I just run a red light?” Sheila grinned sheepishly and did a half-giggle of shy innocence.

One of the unintended consequences of the way she held her hands was her extended arms acted as a vice and squeezed together her boobs and accented her cleavage. It didn’t help much that the top two buttons were open on the flannel shirt she wore over her braless chest. Whether she intended to or not, she was giving the young guy an eye-full.

“Yes, and ... do you have a firearm in your vehicle?”

His eyes widened in fearful surprise as he tightened his hold on his 9mm and took a step backward. He had spotted the ammo clip in Sheila’s breast pocket. The empty holster protruding out from under the dashboard didn’t help ease the alarm bells ringing in his mind.

“Yes, I have an unloaded Glock in the center hump. Besides the one in my pocket, I have another magazine in the glove box. Let me get it for you,” Sheila said as she moved her right hand to open the compartment and reached inside to retrieve the gun for the young constable.

He gripped the handle of his holstered 9mm, and within the blink of an eye, he had his pistol drawn and trained upon Sheila as his eyes darted about, searching for any signs of danger, his body tense, ready to fire in an instant.

“Drop the weapon and freeze!” he screamed.

“Like ice,” Sheila trembled, paralyzed in time as rigor mortis of fear froze her in place. A bead of sweat trickled down from her forehead and dripped from the end of her nose.

“Keep your hands insight, where I can see them. I don’t want to shoot you!” He licked his lips and tightened the grip on his pistol. “Do not move unless I tell you to do so,” he said as he lifted his finger from the trigger to trigger guard, a safer resting place, but not by much.

He could still react and fire in under a second. If he was more afraid than I was, we were in big trouble. I was terrified. My boss’s instinct to be helpful and courteous, sabotaged her desire to comply. Fear does not mix well with bullets; only his training had held his fire.

“I’m sorry. What is your pleasure, officer?”

Only Sheila’s lips moved as she spoke and remained frozen in place. The sweat on her brow made her look like a talking ice cube. I remembered to breathe and inhaled slowly and tried to relax. I was in the line of fire. I’d seen too many YouTube videos of police shootings. When a motor vehicle stop goes bad, cops tend to go nuts and empty their clips when they let fly. If he opened fire, life in the front seat would be history.

“Using two fingers, hand me your weapon. Slowly!”

The Mobius strip of time simultaneously slowed down and accelerated as he emphasized the last word with a wave of his pistol.

“I’m reaching for the gun as you have ordered.”

Sheila’s voice continued calm and steady while she repeated the trooper’s instructions and, holding her fingers like a pair of tweezers, reached for the pistol.

“Slowly, pick it up by the muzzle.” The trooper shifted his balance and steadied his aim.

“Yes, sir.”

She retrieved the sidearm and held it between her fingers like a stinky dead thing. As she passed the weapon, the trooper’s facial muscles tightened, his eyes narrowed, and his finger twitched as it covered the trigger. Oh crap! He’s going to shoot. I closed my eyes and cringed as my bowels turned to jelly. I held my breath and waited for eternity. It’s been a blast.

“Thank you,” the trooper sighed. “Don’t ever do that again.”

I opened my eyes and slowly exhaled. The lawman had returned his gun to his holster after he took the weapon from Sheila. Good advice.

The statie flashed his blue lights and joined the flow of westbound travelers. We sat in collective silence as he vanished in the distance.

“That was different,” Sheila frowned and shook her head.

With a sigh, she tucked the ticket into a pouch over the visor and leaned forward as she checked her mirror for approaching vehicles.

“Stopover there, I need to use the can.”

I pointed to a Starbucks a few hundred yards ahead of us and crossed my legs and gritted my teeth. I needed a new change of underwear, and having none, I needed to clean up before I went commando. The whole miserable encounter had scared the shit out of me, and the proof was in my shorts.

“Did you just fart?” Darlene kicked the back of my seat and snickered.

“Something like that,” I responded.

I slid my sliding seat and reduced my lady love’s legroom to a postage-stamp-sized chunk of carpet.

“Are we having fun yet?” Seraina muttered from the back seat

We had no problem finding a reasonably private booth in the nearly empty coffee shop. As our crew settled in, I excused myself and made a hasty exit to the men’s room.

I hate lumpy farts. I ignored the yuck-factor and used a handful of fresh toilet water to scrub my ass. Satisfied I was clean enough for mixed company, I stuffed my soiled whitey tighties into the trash. I didn’t stop washing my hands until they glowed pink. Even though I used the air dryer, I did what every guy does: I finished by wiping my paws on my pants.

“We’re going to have to amend our itinerary,” Sheila said as she absent-mindedly stirred her coffee with two red plastic sticks as she flipped through the pages in her notebook. “That stop generated a police record.”

The director blew on her cup of coffee and placed a white packet of sweetener on the gray Formica tabletop. “It wouldn’t look good if our names also show up as purchasers of a half-dozen AR-15s, all on the same day.” Sheila took a tentative sip of java and made a face at the steam rising from the scalding brew. “Damn, still too hot to drink. Well, that nugget of information, along with multiple sales of the same weapon to three groups of women, is the kind of data blip which attracts attention.”

The colony’s CEO slid the salt shaker and pepper mill next to the sugar square and tapped the packet with her finger. “Ixnay onway eaponsway, we’ll skip weapons today. We’ll make up the slack the next time.” She tore open the tiny package of sugar and sprinkled it on her coffee. “Instead, I’ll drop you, Darlene, and a wad of cash off at the Toyota place in Aurora. 100K should do the trick,” Sheila said to Seraina.

“Get the biggest bang for the buck. Load up on fuel, chainsaws, and hit the tractor supply center on Wadsworth Boulevard. Grab any farming equipment you can find and return directly to the cabin. Use your best judgment,” the commander ordered as she gave Darlene’s and Seraina’s hand a squeeze of affection.

“This lot comes to six-thousand-four-hundred-sixty seven dollars and thirty-eight cents. Will this be cash or charge?”

The liquor store manager didn’t bat an eye as he read out the total. Sheila cringed a bit and dug through her wallet and handed the man her Radiant Blue Titanium credit card. Prestige credit cards are designed to impress strangers with the owner’s willingness to spend money they don’t have. I grinned; even debt has class distinctions.

“Who spends six-grand on a case of booze? You got bottles in here that cost more than my first three cars. Combined.” I carefully placed the cardboard box of exotic spirits on the floor of our transport’s empty crew cabin. “Hell of a party you’re planning,” I observed with a chuckle.

“This lot is not for us. It is for charity, part of the annual gift to our friendly assessor. His office is our next stop,” Sheila said with a laugh as she preened in front of the aptly named vanity mirror above the driver’s visor. “Is this too daring?” She fingered the third button on her flannel work shirt before she undid it and jiggled her breasts in her hands.

“Nice visual, boss. That’s what I call ‘cleavage with attitude.’ What’s the occasion?”

“Charlie’s been county assessor just short of forever. He’s hardcore, except he loves his booze. Says it helps him forget,” she said with a grin.

“Crap! At these prices, what the heck is he trying to forget?” I lifted an amber-colored bottle of Highland Park 25-Year-old whiskey and examined the sales slip. “Eight-hundred-sixty-three dollars? You gotta be kidding.” I let out a whistle.

“Amnesia is expensive. We’re trying to get him to un-remember Liberty Mountain. We’re not worried about the taxes. We don’t want our geothermal capacity and server farm to be part of the official record. No point in leaving a paper trail for others to follow,” Sheila said as she attached a thank you note and a bouquet of forget-me-nots to the case of bourbon and Scotch.