Read Online Con Law by Mark Gimenez - Free Book Online

I swallowed a bug!’
    It was just after eleven the next morning. Nadine Honeywell required twenty-four hours’ advance notice prior to leaving town. She wore the crash helmet, goggles over her black glasses, and number 100 sunblock on all skin exposed by her short-sleeve shirt and shorts. She sat higher in the second seat. Book wore jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, black doo-rag, and sunglasses. He glanced back at his intern; she was holding her cell phone out. He yelled over the engine noise.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Trying to text!’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I always text when I drive!’
    ‘You’re not driving. You’re riding.’
    ‘Close enough!’
    Book had installed the windshieldso they didn’t eat (all the) bugs for four hundred miles, the leather saddlebags to hold their gear, and the second seat for Nadine. He had picked her up at seven. Four hours and three hundred miles on the back of the big Harley hadn’t improved her mood.
    ‘There’s a rest stop up ahead. I’ll pull over. We can stretch.’
    ‘I’ve got a better idea. Let’s turn back!’
    They had ridden west out of Austin on Highway 290 through the Hill Country then picked up Interstate 10, the ‘Cowboy Autobahn’ where the posted speed limit was eighty but the actual limit pushed one hundred. They were now deep in the parched high plains of West Texas. Other than the four-lane interstate and the wind farms—thousands of three-hundred-foot-tall turbine windmills dotted the landscape on both sides, their blades rotating as if propellers trying to push Texas eastward—the landscape remained as desolate and untouched as it had been at the beginning of time. Book steered off the highway and into the rest stop. He slowed to a stop, cut the engine, and kicked the stand down. Nadine hopped off as if she had been adrift at sea and now touched land for the first time in a year.
    ‘My God, you never heard of cars? With climate control and CD players?’
    She yanked off the helmet and goggles, shook out her shoulder-length hair, and wiped sweat from her face. Book removed his sunglasses and the doo-rag then pulled two bottles of water from a saddlebag. He handed one bottle to his intern; she drank half.
    ‘I could really use a caramel frappuccino right about now, but I haven’t seen a Starbucks since we left Austin.’
    ‘I don’t think you’re going to find one out here, Ms. Honeywell.’
    ‘It’s like a desert.’
    ‘It is a desert. The upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert.’
    ‘What are those?’
    She pointed tothe horizon where a low ridgeline with craggy peaks stood silhouetted against the blue sky.
    ‘Mountains.’
    ‘In Texas?’
    Mountains in Texas. Book had ridden the Harley through much of Texas, but not this part of Texas. Of course, it took some amount of riding to cover all of Texas; the state encompassed 268,000 square miles.
    ‘How much longer?’ Nadine asked.
    ‘Couple of hours.’
    ‘I’m hungry.’
    Book reached into a pocket of his jeans and pulled out a package of beef jerky. He handed a strip to Nadine. She took the jerky with her fingertips and held it out as if examining a dead rat.
    ‘You’re joking?’
    ‘High in protein.’
    She made a face and extended the jerky his way. He took the jerky and clamped the strip between his teeth then reached into another pocket and removed a granola bar. He offered it to her.
    ‘Good carbs.’
    She regarded the granola bar a moment then gestured at his clothing.
    ‘You got another pocket with hot dogs?’
    ‘Sorry.’
    Her shoulders slumped in surrender. She set the water bottle on the bike and pulled out a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer; she squirted the gel and rubbed her hands together then took the granola bar and bit off a piece. He chewed the jerky.
    ‘I’m missing my Civ Proc class,’ she said.
    ‘You can learn rules anytime.’ Book spread his arms. ‘This is where a real lawyer works, Ms. Honeywell—in the real world. Not in an air-conditioned office on