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Chapter 1
Jamie's Taken
(opening scene)

     Jamie looked up to see the blonde-haired cashier standing at the Pack-n-Save’s single cash register, giving her that same sweet smile she gave her every day, the special twinkle that gave away her affection, and Jamie sighed again.

     Every day, the teenager waved through the windows at Jamie passing by the storefront on her way home from work, and Jamie usually shoved her fists in her pockets and pretended she didn’t see the girl working to gain her attention.  She didn’t know how she’d discourage the Pack-n-Save’s friendliest employee’s focus.

     The charming young country girl whose parents owned both the store and the apartment Jamie rented above it, had no idea Jamie was a woman on the run, and living in disguise as a man.

     Better male than dead.

     Her smile effervescent, the high school cheerleader bounced on the balls of her feet as if stifling barely contained energy as Jamie set the cans of tonight’s ravioli dinner on the conveyor belt to cash-out.  She couldn’t completely ignore the girl and ruin her good relationship with her landlords.  Jamie hated to do that.  She liked to think of herself as a nice woman … beneath an aloof man’s guise.

     Did Nancy have a new game plan to get James Coleson’s attention?  Jamie couldn’t shake the feeling the girl was pure trouble.

     “Hello, Nancy,” Jamie said blandly in her well-practiced deep voice, unable to avoid the girl.  Usually Jamie tried to buy the majority of her needs when the other cashier was on the job, but sometimes Nancy was clever.

     She flipped her golden blonde hair over her shoulder flirtatiously.  “Well, hi yerself, James!  Yer lookin’ awful cute today.”

     Jamie took a step backward, not wishing much interaction with the girl.  The less people saw of her up close, the later she’d be recognized as being a bit too soft-featured for a young man, and the later she’d need to flee town.  She couldn’t take the chance of making a single friend if, her identity uncovered, she might quickly find a cop-bullet in her head.

     And Nancy seemed quite taken with the young man she thought Jamie to be, despite the fact that Jamie devoted every second in her presence to discouraging the girl.

     “I dunno know if you should get too close to me, Nance.  I had a bad cold all this week.  You might end up gettin’ sick breathin’ my air.”

     Nancy, her peppy personality engaged, was apparently undaunted by things as menial as germs.  She swatted the air.  “I’m not afraida you, James, as ya’ are a me.  My high school prom’s in a few months, ‘n I turned down half the football team hopin’ you wouldn’t be doin’ nothin’ that night.  I know how shy ya’ are.  It don’t mean I’m yer girlfriend, if ya take me.”

     Jamie swallowed hard.  She’d kept this small Colorado town fooled for seven or eight months now just keeping quiet and unsocial.  No one had gotten so much as a glimpse of her as a woman.  In fact, she hadn’t lived as a woman for nearly a year—and stayed alive.  Jamie couldn’t give up her new identity to level with a high school girl that she … well, she wasn’t what she looked like.  And Nancy was the over-chatty type, unlikely to keep a secret.

     Pushing her magnifying glasses up the bridge of her nose, effectively obscuring her eyes, Jamie cast her wandering sight back toward the few aisles of groceries scattered with off-brand products, anything to give the kid the message that her familiarity wasn’t all that welcome.  She didn’t like it but she needed to gently hurt Nancy’s feelings to boot the kid off her silly fascination with the young man renting the apartment above the store.  Hopefully, Jamie could accomplish it in a way that wouldn’t have dreadful repercussions.   

     Like finding her rump and few possessions driven out of town on a rail.

     “I’m sorry, Nancy,” she said, her eyes unfocused on the store’s scuffed and worn tile floor and bringing up her best mountain accent to flavor her voice.  The eyeglasses just slid down her nose again.  “I can’t take ya to your dance.  I’ll be outta town that night so ya oughtta take up an offer from one of those boys ya turned down.”

     Pushing the glasses she didn’t need up the bridge of her nose again, Jamie turned to see the girl’s pouty frown of disappointment, her bottom lip protruding.  “I ain’t even told ya what night it is.”

     Proms, proms.  When were proms?  Think fast, Jamie.  June!

     “I’m goin’ back to Alabama alla June to visit my family so I figured ya were talkin’ ‘bout some time in there.”

     It must’ve seemed like a good excuse because Nancy gave up a relenting smirk. 

     “Momma told me ta ask ya for a ride into Steamboat.  Her medicine came at the post mail today, and she’s out, bad plannin’ now that Daddy has a new truckin’ run right when her medicine’s due.  The new bottle’s in the post box, ‘n she can’t make it through the night without her tonic.  If ya could give me a ride up to Steamboat’s post office, Momma’ll do better tonight.”

     It was the last thing Jamie wanted to do, be trapped in a small compartment with the frivolous, ever-babbling girl who obviously had a crush on him. 

     Her, Jamie corrected herself.  I’m a woman.  Is living as a man beginning to bleed into my self-image?  I can’t remember the last time my nails had been done, wore a dress, or put on a touch of makeup.  The up side?  I definitely don’t miss the make-up and I’ve saved a ton of money in pantyhose alone.

     Unfortunately, Nancy’s parents had been good to Jamie, had given her a few rides when she was new in town and before she’d bought the old pick-up for cash on the side of Long Haul Pike.  If Nancy needed a ride anywhere, Jamie owed it to her parents to give their daughter a ride.

     “Well, the post boxes’re always open so there’s no need to close the store.  I’ll wait until yer shift’s done.  Come knock on my door when yer off-work and we’ll shoot up there.”

     Nancy’s smile looked too pleased, and Jamie foresaw a hard night.  Maybe Nancy would turn out more mature than Jamie estimated.

***

     Even though it wasn’t very late past sundown, the night was darker than Hell at midnight with the flames turned off.  Small Colorado towns far from city lights tended toward an impenetrable darkness, and no moon hung to provide even weak light, only stars above, and they weren’t much help.  

     With the truck’s headlights to illuminate the hills before them, the only things to see were the yellow markings of a long two-lane, asphalt highway and the passing of evergreen trees, some distended billboards for products long gone.  Occasional leaves kicked up now and then at the prompt of a lazy breeze. 

     They passed a weather- and years-tattered billboard with a Lucky Strikes cigarettes ad so old it didn’t have a cancer warning on it.  Then there was a Stuckey’s ad that had long ago lost the T somewhere along the way. 

     Someone had taken the time on a dreary country night to deface a Woolworth’s sign by spray-painting the letters less beside it.  There wasn’t much entertainment in the rough hills of Colorado.  Spray-painting signs must have been the height of debauchery one lawless night between a twelve-pack of Busch and cans of Skoal.

     The old truck’s engine ran hard, and there wasn’t another car seen on the highway between the hour-long round-trip from Itchy Knee Parish to Steamboat Springs, a typically dead Sunday night, sidewalks rolled up.  The thought of breaking down on a dark road was disheartening, but she remembered she’d replaced her cell phone’s dead battery with a fresh one just an hour ago, but then she doubted there was a cell phone tower anywhere near this spit of land anyway.  Itchy Knee’s residents were still sporting Eighties’ mullets.  She was glad to have shoved the phone in her jacket pocket on the way out.    

     Jamie gripped the steering wheel, thinking this trip way too long.  She’d turned up the radio to hear the Getaway Boys sing their newest bluegrass hit, which she hated, but she sang along loudly the lyrics she’d unwittingly picked up to discourage conversation.

     But Nancy wasn’t all that disheartened to accept her neighbor’s softly delivered rejection.  She turned the sound down.

     “Ya know, James, since the moment you come to town, I thought yer the cutest boy to walk through Itchy Knee in, gosh, a century or two.” 

     She emitted a little giggle, and Jamie had to refrain from rolling her eyes.

     Jamie suddenly felt Nancy’s hand on her knee, and she quickly snatched the girl’s hand up and put it back on her own lap. 

     “I’m not yer type, Nancy,” Jamie replied blandly, kept focused ahead on the yellow lines of the road, and stressed to get through this moment, hopefully without discovery of her very tenuous position.  She thought of telling the girl the young man she knew as James Coleson was a gay man, but that would probably create even more stir in town than being discovered as a transvestite. 

     Jamie looked forward to her parents retrieving her from her underground life in a year or two and going back to living as herself again across the country, without the haunt of violent eyes and a badge to follow her every move.  Just as soon as Doug gave up looking for her, quit posting her picture around the country as a missing person, and accepted the notion that she’d fallen into the river along with ten other cars when the Leverock County bridge collapsed, then, and only then, could Jamie consider poking her head out of the shadows. 

     Nancy scooted a little closer to Jamie across the truck’s bench seat.  “I don’t rightly know wut ma type is yet, James.”

     The cheerleader’s hand went back to her knee, and Jamie moved it a second time with a more determined grip, and wished to heaven the girl would slide back to her side of the truck.

     “Trust me, Nancy.  Not only am I not your type, you should cool your jets before ya get in trouble with some young man who can’t take no for an answer.”

     “You ain’t said no yet.” 

     Nancy’s hand went back to Jamie’s leg and further up this time.

     Jamie slammed on the brakes, nearly putting them both into the windshield, then she yanked the steering wheel, aiming the truck to the roadside, and she shifted the transmission into park, preparing for battle.

     Nancy’s hands flew to her blouse, and she began to fumble with the buttons of her blouse.  “I knew you didn’t mean no, James!”

     Jamie threw her hands up to halt this entire horrid scene!  “No!  No, no, no!  Don’t you move another single finger, Nancy!  I’m not ever saying yes!  You don’t understand!”

     She scooted closer until Jamie’s back was mashed against the driver’s seat door, tossing her a saucy smile.   “I understand more den you know, James Coleson!”

     “I’m too old for you, Nancy!”

     “Is it cuz ya think I’m just immature, cuz I’m one of those girls who learnt fast!  Wait ‘til ya see what half the football team done taught me!”

     Jamie reached for the door release, and she tumbled backward and slammed into the dirt.  Dust rose up into her eyes, and she blinked furiously to see Nancy shooting from the passenger’s door and crossing the high beams of the truck to reach her, and Jamie rolled onto her feet just in time to keep the girl from launching herself down atop her.

     An outstretched arm held the girl back, too eagerly stripping herself of her blouse.  Jamie searched up and down the highway, hoping for headlights to end this ridiculous situation but no headlights could be seen.  She couldn’t even see the brush-yards she knew were on both sides of the highway, only the truck’s bright headlights bouncing from the rough run of the engine to light up the area and the stars above. 

     Jamie was in a full panic to escape this scene.  There was unswayable fire in Nancy’s eyes.  The girl looked undeterrable.  How was Jamie going to get out of this and still keep her cover?

     Suddenly aware of some oddity she felt, she looked up to see no stars directly above them.  She felt a hot flash of air that she shouldn’t have felt on an April night when the snow had only recently melted.

     Just then, Nancy reached out and past Jamie’s open jacket to the nondescript white man’s shirt she wore, and the girl ripped the shirt open, sending buttons soaring into the night.

     Nancy gasped to see the bandages Jamie wore to flatten her breasts in her disguise.  Her shocked brown eyes rose to meet Jamie’s, and she couldn’t tell what the girl was thinking.

     Jamie pulled her jacket closed and snapped the zipper up.

     An evil rose into the little cheerleader’s eyes and an accusatory finger rose to her face. 

     “What are you?” the teen spat, venom in her voice, probably livid for having been fooled.  “I’ve hearda yer kind, don’t think we’z just uneducated bumpkins ‘round here!  Dressin’ like a man, like ya are!  We don’t want yer kind here at Itchy Knee!”

     Jamie crossed her arms over her chest in protection.  “Ya don’t understand.  It’s not as weird as it looks.  I’m hiding, Nancy, from someone who wants to harm me.  Please don’t tell anyone in town about this.”

     “Tell anyone?” the indignant girl shrieked, tugging around her own clothes she’d already started setting astray.  “You’ve lied to everone in town, ‘specially my momma and my daddy, and I know my daddy don’t want no trouble comin’ from no outsiders!  You just wait ‘til he hears about this!  He’s liable to tell the sheriff everthing about yer fake little life!”

     Nancy spun and began her march to the truck.

     Jamie sprinted to catch up with the girl, and took hold of her arm before the headlights of the truck.  “Nancy, that would be a very mean-natured thing to do and could cost me my life!”

     Turning just as she stood before the headlights, the teen’s face lit up to show her anger, and she yanked her arm from Jamie’s grip.  “You shoulda thoughta that before ya started dressin’ up like a man and lyin’ ta everone in town!  I’m still tellin’ my daddy!”

     Jamie’s brow crashed into her sight.  “You’ll have a fine time explaining to your parents why you ripped into my shirt like a starving’ person at a free buffet!”

     “I doubt my daddy’ll believe ya over me onced I tell’em ya got all weird on tha trip to Steamboat ‘n wanted ta put yer hands on me!”

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