Embers: A 9/11 Romantic Suspense

Abby needs help, and she needs it bad. Her firefighter brother went MIA on 9/11, and she'll risk anything to find him. That includes taking along the gorgeous hitchhiker she picked up off the side of the freeway.

Hank Finster knows trouble when he sees it, and Abby is one giant flashing warning sign. Still, she's determined to bring her brother home, and Hank can't let her enter danger alone.

They have no plans on falling in love, but it might be the only light as they plunge into the darkness of Ground Zero.

It was neither a dark nor stormy night when Abigail Baker pulled off to the side of I-80 for the unlucky person hitchhiking on a stretch of highway outside of Vistula, Indiana.

Her mother always told her people who pick up hitchhikers end up as the faces on milk cartons. Abby had always laughed and told Mom she never should have watched those Urban Legend movies. Technically, her mom had cowered behind the door to the kitchen while Abby got to chaperon her brother and his date on the couch.

Though, to be honest, Abby had not researched the statistics on the number of hitchhikers with hook-hands. Her best estimate was that her odds of meeting one before lunch during a small rainstorm in Indiana were low.

As far as she was concerned, the world had ended yesterday. It was okay to abandon her common sense. Might as well live with it.

The man wasn't wearing a giant hat and black trench-coat signaling evil intentions either. He was a random guy soaked to the bone in a flannel shirt, thoroughly disheveled and clearly disheartened. The man was sticking out his thumb, and Abby wondered how many people had passed him by.

“Need a lift?” Abby asked, rolling down her window.

“Yes, anywhere.” He approached her door slowly. She got the vague impression of dark eyes and dark hair, but the rain made it more difficult. Unlike on Urban Legend, he had two real flesh-and-blood hands without even a single psycho murderer hook.

“I'm headed to Cleveland. You going in that direction?”

“I'll go anywhere that’s not here.” A few cars whizzed past them, uninterested in stopping at the shoulder of I-80.

“You didn’t just escape from an asylum, did you?”

“Does Michigan count as an asylum?” he said.

“Only to Ohio State fans. You can get in as long as you promise first you that won't rape or murder me." Abby considered that potentially binding.

Rather than sound exacerbated, he simply said, “I promise not to rape and murder you. Okay?”

“Get in.” She closed the passenger side window and unlocked the doors. He didn’t hesitate before climbing in.

“Thank you so much… Miss? Ma’am? Mrs.?”

“Abby works,” she said, since at thirty-four she was no ‘miss’ and, being single, was no ‘Mrs.’

“I’m Henry Finster. You can call me ‘Hank.’ Everybody else does,” the man, now to be referred to as ‘Hank’ and not ‘possible hook-hand murderer,’ said.

Abby examined the not-hook-hand-murderer to get a sense of what exactly she’d picked up. Hank wore a waterlogged pair of jeans and a flannel shirt which was plastered to his chest. He was a relatively muscular White guy, and she had no clue what color his hair was. Brown? Black? It was hard to tell with it wet and water running down his goatee. His not-hook-hands were calloused and much tanner than Abby's.
Then again, almost everyone was tanner than Abby. Living in Wisconsin and having pale skin and blue eyes made her a skin cancer bullseye. Unfortunately, her T-shirt reading ‘Will die of melanoma’ was in the wash.

Though this week, odds were better than usual that something else would definitely kill her.

“Strap in. If you reach into the back, I might have a blanket.” Abby put her Ford Escort into gear.

“Sorry about that. The next time we stop, maybe I can buy dry clothes.” He took the wool blanket from the bag, leaving her black duffel undisturbed.

“No offense to you, random not-murderer named Hank, but I’m on a tight schedule. I filled up at the last town thirty miles back. This full tank should make it to Cleveland. I can drop you off at the next sign of civilization.”

“How far is that?” he asked, pulling the blanket over his chest.

She turned the heat on. “Depends on what you mean by 'civilization.' Bus stop might be Toledo, but then I’d have to get off the freeway. Or so it says on my map.”

He glanced down at her MapQuest pages laying on the center console. “I’m good with Cleveland.”

“Good choice,” Abby popped the clutch, skipped fourth gear, and moved into fifth.

“You drive a stick shift?” Hank stated the obvious.

“Yep. I’m going to assume you’re not about to make a dick joke, dude who promised he wasn’t a murder.” Abby wondered if she needed to find a weapon. Did a pair of old chopsticks in the door compartment count?

“It wasn’t. But now I sound like a jerk if I say I don’t know many girls that drive stick.”

“I know manual transmission is a losing battle, but on the plus side, nobody ever tries to borrow my car. Seventy percent of guys don’t know how to drive stick either.” She glanced over at him. “Same as the number of guys who think only with their stick.”

“I’m great with stick,” Hank said. “Wait. I’m not a creep. Let me explain what happened here.”

“You have ninety seconds before I dump you back on the side of the road.”

“Ninety seconds?”

“Yes; it will get you two more miles.” Abby tapped the digital clock.

“I’m not a creep. I was talking about vehicles.”

“Vehicles? Now you have sixty seconds.”

“I work in construction and demolitions. I get to drive heavy machinery, which are stick shift. I’m not lying.”

“Demolitions? Like blowing stuff up?” Abby said doubtfully.

“Yes, I’m a member of the National Demolitions Association and have taken OSHA courses in hazardous materials removal. I have a heavy equipment operator certification in Michigan and Indiana. I can show you my certification cards.”

“You’re telling me you can drive bulldozers and build bombs?” Abby asked. “Right, hold up your hands.”

“My hands?” He complied.

“You don't have creepy murder fingernail spikes but convince me you're unthreatening. Tell me two things to convince me!”

“Why is driving a bulldozer threatening?” Hank sounded a little panicked now.

“Have you seen Maximum Overdrive?” She cited the Stephen King movie where an alien possesses a Mack Truck and a bulldozer to attack people.

“Okay, okay. I play the guitar, and I knit.”

“Bullshit. Is knitting a normal skill needed to build bombs?”

“I don’t build bombs! I set up controlled explosions by… well, I guess I do build bombs. Legally!”

“Right. Since I’m an expert knitter, prove to me you know how to knit.”

“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t exactly carry knitting needles everywhere. If I did, you’d believe it’s part of my ‘murder-you’ kit.”

“Very true, though I don’t remember hearing a lot of knitting related murders in this part of the country. Talk about knitting.”

“Ahh… unlike most people, I prefer using light worsted weight yarn rather than regular worsted weight yarn. I started with acrylics but would rather use mohair over wool because it’s warmer.”

“Can’t argue with that. I don't actually know how to knit.”

“Then how do you know I was telling the truth?”

“It’s my job.”

“Police negotiator?” Hank asked.

“Admissions counselor for University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in psychology. Teenagers tell me bullshit lies about what they put on their resumes. I can ask you to describe your favorite season in twelve different languages.”

“I’m impressed. Twelve?”

“Ilarawan ang iyong paboritong panahon sa limang pangungusap. Tagalog,” Abby preened behind the wheel.

“Wanna lie about your language skills?”

“No, ma’am,” Hank said. “Or Abby?”

“Abby works. I was mostly messing with you about the hook-hand murderer thing. Mostly. It’s been a crappy week,” she said. “How did you end up on the side of the road, Hank who knits?”

“Funny story about a crappy week. Yesterday, my crew was finishing a roof, and it got… unfocused. I figured we weren’t gonna get anything done this week, so I sent them home. My foreman Jerry and I had a line about a demo on a barn next to a historical home. We drove down to check it out today.”

“Did you bring dynamite?”

“No. There’s permits and stuff for that, plus traveling with it across state lines,” Hank said. “Jerry was the driver in charge of the directions. I was the navigator.”

“You got lost?”

“We had a difference of opinion on a six-way stop. There was a problem with a cow path, and we had a small argument when we found the freeway again. Then, Jerry was driving back to Michigan as fast as he could with my cell phone.”

“So you won’t be help as a navigator?”

“I’m fine when the map is right. If I can read a blueprint, I can read a map, unless Jerry made it. ‘Turn southwest at the place where the red mill used to be’ is not a direction.” Hank didn’t sound all that upset.

“He didn’t check on MapQuest?”

“Jerry’s in his fifties and doesn’t use that newfangled Internet. He took the directions over the phone and wrote them down.”

“Maybe he’s going to come back for you.”

“Nah, he gunned it. I get it. This has been super crazy stressful, and everyone is on edge. You quizzed me on knitting while accusing me of planning your murder.”

“It was for your own good,” Abby said, having zero regrets about that. Saying what was on her mind had never been an issue for her.

“I’m sure Jerry felt the same way. He left me with my wallet and credit cards, though an umbrella would have been nice.”

“We’re going to go a few exits that I can get on and off pretty fast. I can drop you there, and you can hitch your way to a bus stop.”

“Nah, buses are harder to find than you think. And you’re already nicer than Jerry.”

“It’s because I have boobs.”

Hank started coughing. She glanced to make sure he hadn’t choked. “Sorry. You see, I absolutely did not notice that. Because that would get me kicked out of the car or attacked by a jealous husband.”

“No husband. And if I did have one, he wouldn’t be jealous. It’s a small rack.”

“I didn’t notice,” Hank mumbled.

“Remember what I said about bullshit lying?”

“This is the part where I stop talking. Anything I say can and will be used against me in the Court-of-Abby.”

“Good plan,” she agreed. Now that she’d tortured him enough with her deliberately dizzying mix of murder explanations and sexual innuendo, she angled the vents toward him.

The next twenty minutes passed in companionable silence. She saw him check the speedometer because she drove consistently about ten miles over the speed limit.

“You're not worried you're going to get pulled over?” he asked.

She pointed to the box mounted on her windshield. “Radar detector. And I'm pretty sure no cop in the country is going to stop me for long once he talks to me.”

“Really? You’re a great talker, but—”

“They'll understand my hurry,” Abby said and inched the cruise control upward a few more miles per hour.

“Most people are not in a hurry to get to Cleveland. What’s going on there?”

Nothing I want to talk about, Abby’s brain said. However, she used her voice to say, “Why don’t we listen to music?”

“I can run the radio.” Hank took getting shut down on his line of questioning with relative grace.

“No, not the radio. I can’t… I don’t want to hear…”

“Oh… makes sense. Got any CD’s?” Hank started to open the glove compartment. “Destiny's Child or Backstreet Boys?”

“Destiny’s Child."

“Independent Women. Can’t argue with that. They’re so good. I hope they stay together.” Hank popped her Survivor CD into the player.

Nothing better to listen to on Wednesday September 12, 2001.