Broken Sparrow Paperback

1. Broken Sparrow

2. Broken Dove

3. Broken Wings

4. Broken Arrow

As I head toward the coolers, I spot the girl from earlier. She’s standing in front of the hot dog machine, shuffling back and forth on her feet, looking like she’s got the weight of the world riding on this decision. She’s got her hand deep in what looks like a child’s purse, and she’s digging through it, like she’s scrounging for change.

Maybe it’s the curves from her body-hugging pants or the fact that her hair is almost the same shade as the sunshine, but I walk up to her. “Pick the one with the pucker,” I say.

She turns her full body toward me, looking startled. “Excuse me?” She closes the small purse and grasps it to her chest like I’m a mugger sizing up her tiny teal handbag for what’s inside.

I give her a playful grin. I point past her to the slim rolls of meat, each one slowly turning under an electric heat lamp.

“Pick the one with the pucker,” I repeat. “See the skin?” I nod toward the glass display case where the hot dogs are in various states of doneness. “That one.” I lean down to point to the one I mean, and I catch a whiff of her hair. She smells sweet, like cookies. Pure sugar. “When the skin puckers like that, it means the dog is nice and cooked inside but not too dry and not too raw. Just right,” I explain.

The woman watches me and takes a tiny step back. I get it. I’m a heavily tattooed stranger three times her size, and she’s a sweet little wisp of a thing trying to buy her lunch in peace. She’s pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and I can see her brown eyes are light, startlingly so. The look of caution in them, and the tightness at her mouth, trip up my gut.

I can see the light dim in her face as she scans my beard, my leathers, the decades-old ink on my neck.

She’s braced. Protective. Afraid.

And that’s my cue to move on.

“Cover it up with some relish and you got damn near as decent a meal as you can get on the road.” I give her a grin and a nod, ending the conversation.

She gives me a press of her lips that passes for smiling back, but it’s guarded. Hesitant. She looks like she’s struggling between being polite and running for her life. It hits me why I’m drawn to her, why I’m chatting up a sexy stranger in front of the hot dog machine at a gas station.

Jessica. This woman reminds me of Jessica. No old lady, not one of those down-to-whatever, whenever, for-a-good-time types.

She’s another scared little bird fallen from the nest. If only women like this understood what real wolves look like.

I take one last breath of that sugar-cookie fragrance. “Enjoy your dog,” I say.

Then she speaks. “Uh, thanks.” The words sound as soft as her hair looks and as guarded as her face.

I nod and head past her, leaving her to her hot dog and her troubles.

I yank open a cooler and grab two sweet teas in one hand and the phone buzzing my pocket with the other. “Tiny,” I mutter.

Tiny’s been like a damn housemother since we bought the property. I scan the text just to confirm it’s from him and pocket my phone. Tiny can wait.

I grab a bottle of water to add to the teas and head for the register.

“I’m so sorry, I…” The little bird in the yoga pants is already being checked out. There is a hot dog on the counter along with some other snacks, and Mr. Green Glitter Eye Shadow is shaking his head.

“Lady, card’s declined. Won’t go through. I ran it three times.” He drops the piece of plastic on the counter. “You got cash?”

I stand a respectful distance behind her, trying not to look at her bottom in those yoga pants. I look anywhere but down, aiming for her sunshine hair and the sleeveless tank that reveals trim, almost muscular arms.

She’s telling the attendant her card worked fine when she paid for gas outside at the pump. “Could you try it again? Please?” she asks, her voice proud, but the exhaustion of defeat sneaks through.

The kid huffs a sigh, but he picks up the card and runs it again. After a second, he raises his brows. “Okay? Satisfied?” he asks. He hands it back to her. “Won’t go through. I’m sorry, all right? It’s shitty, but this isn’t our fault. You gotta pay cash or…”

My eyes trace what look like finger-shaped bruises on the backs of her upper arms. The marks aren’t faint, but they are starting to heal. They look recent enough that I’m sure that somebody gripped her and shook her not that long ago.

She drops her head in her hands.

I stare past her to the shit she has piled on the counter. A hot dog loaded with ketchup. Two bags of chips. One water, one juice. I pull out my money clip and peel off a fifty. “Here’s your cash,” I say to the attendant, reaching past her.

The woman faces me, her expression unreadable.

“Better not to use the card readers at the pump,” I say. I’m trying to save her pride here, and by the looks on everyone’s faces, we all know it. “You know those things all have skimmers on them,” I explain.

“Skimmers?” she echoes, like she has no clue.

“Scammers steal card numbers from gas pumps all the time,” I say. I point to her card, which she’s now clutching tight in her hand. “Maybe check with your bank, maybe there’s been some kind of fraud. There’s usually a reason why these things don’t work when they should.”

The attendant holds up a hand with the change, looking unsure who to give it to.

“That’s his,” she says quietly. She blinks at me, but she doesn’t say thanks or anything.

I pay for my water and teas with the change and nod to the gas station dude. “Thanks, man,” I say and grab my stuff.

“Need a bag for that?” the kid asks.

“Not me,” I say. I instinctively breathe deeply, hoping to catch a hint of that sugar-cookie fragrance before I head toward the door.

“Wait!”

I stop at my bike and face the woman calling after me.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says. She’s got the hot dog in one hand and her snacks in one of those cheap white plastic sacks imprinted with the words Thank You. The words repeat over and over in a pattern that seems excessively enthusiastic given the fact that the bags hold crappy gas-station chips.

I slide my sunglasses over my eyes. “Forget it,” I say, lifting my chin at her. Now that she’s facing me, staring me down, I can tell she’s not all baby bird. She’s got strength in her eyes and something else I can’t place. Fierceness, maybe. Whatever it is, none of this is my problem. “It’s kinda my fault,” I say, making light of it. “I really pushed you toward that dog. I hope you enjoy it.”

She smiles at that but then flicks a glance over toward a beat-up sedan parked in the shade at one of the pumps. She quickly looks back at me, but I’m thinking that must be her car.

“Look, I…I want to pay you back,” she says. “Can you wait here a second?”

I sigh and watch as she dashes to the car. I don’t even try to keep my eyes off her as she runs. Her hair flicks against her back with every step, and before I know it, she’s walked around one side and opens the rear passenger door. She looks up at me, watching me watching her, and I see her pass the hot dog to someone in the back seat.

I strain my eyes to make out…a kid.

A little girl.

She hands the hot dog and plastic bag to the little girl, talks to her for a moment—all the while keeping one eye on me—and then trots back across the gas station lot back to me and my bike.

She holds out a crumpled five-dollar bill and has her cell in her hands. “I only have a little cash on me,” she explains. “But I’d like your number or address so I can mail you a check when I get…”

The heavy pause lets me know that this little bird is flying away. Either doesn’t know where she’s headed or doesn’t want to say.

“When you get…?” I repeat, saying it like a question.

Her sudden silence reveals the truth. A woman with bruises on her arms and no cash. Beat-up car and shifty eyes. A little girl in the back, eating cheap-ass food at a rest stop.

I hold out a hand. “Unlock your phone.”

She swipes the touchscreen and punches in a code. Never taking her eyes off mine, she holds the phone out to me. I put my number in her contacts and hand the phone back.

But I can’t leave this woman just yet. I look her over. The soft lines in her forehead I can now see are worry lines. The distrusting eyes. Perpetual look of concern. A woman and a little girl in a beater car with a single hot dog between them. I shake my head. “You wanna pay me back, my number is in there under Morris.”

“Did you send my number to your phone?” she asks.

I shake my head. “You want to reach out, you can. I’m in there. But if you want to put this day in the rearview…consider the lunch a gift.”

She looks at me confused, an upset-looking pucker twisting her pretty lips downward. “Why?” she asks. “Why are you doing this? I can’t accept your generosity. I can’t—”

“Did you fill your tank?” I ask pointedly. I didn’t actually see her put her card into that pump, so I don’t know if she has gas to get wherever she’s going or not.

She gives me a sad look and a wry smile. Like I caught her. “I put some gas in,” she admits.

“Some gas,” I echo. I shake my head and dig into my pocket. I flick a glance around to make sure no one is watching us and then peel off two hundred in cash.

She sees the money, and her eyes widen. “What? What is this? What do you think you’re doing?” She shakes her head and starts to back away.

Before she can get away, I reach out and grab her arm but gently. I lower my face and whisper in her ear, “I see those bruises on your arms,” I hiss. “I know the guy who grabbed you exactly like I’m doing right now didn’t give you cash to go with those bruises. Only a piece of garbage would send his woman and kid—or a woman with a kid, whether it’s his or not—away without a decent ride and money to get where they are going. I’m not a piece of garbage.”

She struggles a little against my hold, but not in a way that makes me think she’s scared. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was actually leaning closer.

“I’ll keep out of your business after this. The two hundred means nothing to me. I’ve got ink worth more than that covering just my left hand.” I trace the line of her chin with my hand to prove the point. “I won’t stand by and watch a woman and an innocent kid suffer when a couple bucks might see you safely home—or wherever you’re going.”

I release her and kick a leg over the seat of my bike. While this woman smells like an angel and looks like she was made for sin, I’ve got places to be. “Hey,” I say, firing up my bike. “You need a job, a place to stay, or anything—you have my number.”

She looks at her phone, reading the contact information I entered. “Morris?” she asks. “Your name is Morris, right?”

I nod. “That’s me, darlin’.”

She looks over my bike and my leather vest. Her eyes grow dark when she scans my chest, my neck, and finally, come to meet my eyes.

“Don’t you want to know my name?” she asks. Her mouth is slightly open. I can almost taste the sugar-sweet air she puffs between those perfect lips.

I shake my head and give her a sexy smile. “You can tell me your name when you call me.”

And with that, I take off, leaving my beautiful bird and her little chick behind.