A Lifetime Burning in a Moment Read Free

stay in the car,” his wife said. “Calm down and don’t make this any worse. Kids, put your windows up.”
    Devlin pressed the button automatically locking all four doors. The truck ticked and creaked as it eased beside him, stopping when the driver’s door drew up across from Devlin’s, leaving about six feet between them. The driver’s window was down. Devlin lowered his.
    Half way.
    One muscular arm tattooed with a spider’s web was draped over the truck’s steering wheel, the other rested on the door frame. The old pickup had a beat-up fiberglass cap over the bed and a crumpled front fender, as if it’d rammed something. The driver took his time dragging on his cigarette and spewing a smoke stream to the sky before turning to Devlin.
    “Is there a problem, mister?”
    Devlin figured the man to be his age. He was wearing dark glasses, a filthy ballcap and looked as though he hadn’t shaved for several days.
    “Your friend seems to have misplaced his beer bottle under my tire. I think he wanted to give me a flat.”
    “Give you a flat?”
    The man’s face soured. He turned to his passenger who appeared mystified. The driver turned back to Devlin.
    “I think you’re mistaken.”
    “Mistaken?” Devlin made a point of surveying the empty lot. “You’re right. Obviously, with no one else here, it couldn’t have been you.”
    The air tightened as if a gun had been cocked.
    “John please!” his wife whispered.
    “John?” the man had heard. “That your name?”
    The driver said something to his passenger and they laughed. Devlin couldn’t make out what he’d said about his name as Elise squeezed his knee. He glanced at the frightened faces of his children in the mirror. Elise was now squeezing so hard it hurt.
    “I’m sorry,” Devlin said. “It was a bad joke. You’re right. I’m mistaken. It must’ve rolled under there. I’m sorry I chased you. I was wrong. Please forget it.”
    “Did you call me a bad joke, John?”
    Devlin saw his reflection in the driver’s dark glasses. Tiny. Small, shrinking away, as he always did.
    “No. Forgive me. I made a bad joke. I was wrong to accuse you of anything. Totally out of line. I apologize.”
    The driver’s face hardened as he and his passenger scanned Devlin, his family and their car for a long, cold moment. Then the driver studied his cigarette butt. Before he flicked it away, he half grinned and nodded.
    “No harm done, John.”
    The truck’s motor ticked as it rolled away then vanished down the road.
    Elise wanted them to wait. So they did. For a long moment, Devlin sat motionless behind the wheel. Then he cursed under his breath, turned the Ford’s ignition and started back to their cabin along the serpentine dirt road.
    No one spoke.
    The ping of gravel punctuated the silence, decompressing the tension as each of them withdrew into their thoughts. Devlin soon took comfort in the soft strains of music leaking from Annie’s headset she listened to a CD. Blake looked toward the lake while Elise glimpsed her passenger side mirror.
    “Oh God, they’re following us!”
    Devlin’s skin prickled when he saw the pick-up’s grill and damaged front fender half-concealed like a phantom in the dust behind them.
    “Hang on!”
    He accelerated and the Ford roared along the narrow route, bobbing on its sudden hills and valleys, sunlight flashing through the thick woods, branches slapping the car as stones boiled against its undercarriage.
    “Daddee!” Annie gripped her armrest.
    Blake was numb with fear.
    “Oh God, John,” his wife said.
    “We just need to buy some distance.” Devlin’s ears pounded with each curve he rounded. “There it is.” He braked, the car slid, creating thick, choking dust clouds as he turned into the underbrush of their entrance. The Ford bounced. He tucked it neatly into a leafy canopy and shut off the motor.
    No one moved.
    For several desperate moments they heard nothing but their breathing which halted when the