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hurting, chattering teeth. Was I nervous or was I getting the first symptoms of some disease?
    “Isn’t there an orphanage here?” he asked, getting my attention again.
    “Was,” I responded. “It’s closed down now.”
    “Really? Where did they put the kids?” he asked.
    “We grew up.” I shrugged and made idle chit-chat so I could quickly pass the time and get him and that firearm out of my life.
    “We?” he questioned. I could feel his foot tapping the floor behind my seat in sort of a nervous way. “You lived there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Man, I bet that was a bitch.” He frowned with disgust.
    “The orphanage wasn’t, but the foster families were. Gee.” The Old Girl was flying around the curves. “And that is a whole ’nother story.”
    “Slow down!” He gripped the handle on the door.
    “Sorry,” I murmured. “I guess you brought up some buried memories. How did you hear about the orphanage?”
    “A friend of a friend grew up there.”
    “Oh, who?” I asked.
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t know him.”
    “Try me.” I dared him. “I was there from birth to eighteen. I bet I know him or heard of him.”
    I looked back in the mirror at him. He glared at me. His brows drew together in an angry frown.
    “You don’t,” he asserted. His lip cocked up to one side. His nostrils flared.
    I dropped the subject. It was apparent he was becoming agitated with me and I didn’t want that to happen.
    He looked out the window. I took the opportunity to slip my phone out of my pocket and predial 911.
    “Don’t even think about using it,” he warned and stuck his leather-gloved hand over the seat, gesturing for the phone.
    “I wasn’t going to use it.” I put it over my shoulder and slapped it in his glove.
    “That is why it has 911 typed on the screen?” He rolled down the window and threw the phone out.
    “Hey! That was my phone!” I screamed.
    “I gave you plenty of cash to get a new one. Besides,” he snarled, “that one was way out of date.”
    True. It was Trixie’s old flip phone. Morty wasn’t paying me enough to afford a new one and a place of my own. The plan I was on was so cheap that I was sure they didn’t have phone plans like that with fancy phones.
    “Here.” He threw a couple more hundreds over the seat. “That should be plenty for one of those fancy phones. Say, where is your taxi meter?”
    “Umm.” Shit! I didn’t think about the taxi meter thing. Think, think . I knew I had to come up with a good story or he was going to off me right then and there. “It was in my phone that you threw out the window on…on an app.”
    “That old thing had the ability to put apps on it?” he questioned. His voice was low and smooth.
    He wasn’t buying into my lie.
    Something told me there wasn’t anyone that crossed him and I couldn’t get him out of Walnut Grove fast enough. Though my sense of curiosity did make me wonder why he was in the country part of town.
    I looked in the rearview mirror about to ask him why he was in Walnut Grove, but when our eyes met a sudden chill crept up my spine. I shifted my eyes forward, focusing on the lines on the road.
    With my hands at two and ten on the wheel, I didn’t say another word until we reached the Airport Hotel.
    “Thanks so much,” I quipped, throwing the gear shift into park.
    I couldn’t get him out of my fake cab fast enough.
    “Now.” The big guy leaned forward placing his arms across the back of the front seat with his chin resting on them. Hot air darted in my ear when he whispered, “You be back here tomorrow morning at nine a.m. Sharp. I will pay you double what I paid you today. No questions asked.”
    Before I could protest, he was out of the car adjusting his clothes. He wasn’t fooling me. I knew he was rearranging his gun so it was out of sight.
    He turned around and motioned for me to roll down the window. “Remember, you’ve never seen me.”
    “One question.” I put my hands together in a begging,