Wounded (a mystery and a sweet romance)

Wounded: Chapter 14

Dark trees smothered in moss and lichens loomed on either side of the road, illuminated only by the headlights of the car. There weren’t any street lamps this far out, and they had yet to pass a gas station or anything that hinted of civilization. Tara stifled a yawn, glad Malcolm had volunteered to drive. The petri dish with their sample rattled where it sat in the cup holder between them, but it was the only noise in the car. There wasn’t much in the way of radio stations out there, so she had turned off the power a while ago. In the back seat, Jasmine and Mandy had fallen asleep.

“How much farther to Forks?” Tara asked quietly, though she had already used the GPS on the phone to get an estimate.

“About fifteen minutes.” Malcolm waved toward the phone plugged into the charger. “Want to see if you can find a hotel that’s open this late?”

“I’ll try.” Tara pulled the phone into her lap. “So long as you don’t ask me to arrange an appointment for our mushroom sale. I doubt Google can help me with that.”

“We’ll have to drive around town and see what we can find.”

“Then knock on the front door?”

“Unless Jason gave you a secret passcode to get in,” Malcolm said.

“Sorry, I should have offered him more chocolate.”

The reception wasn’t much better than it had been on the mountainside, so it took a while for anything to come of Tara’s hotel searches. “Do you think you’ll continue to live out in the boonies after you become rich from your Internet business?” she asked while she waited for the results to load.

“If you can become rich hawking information about mushroom picking, there’s more wrong with the world than I thought.”

“A lot of entrepreneurs do very well selling information products that solve a problem or teach people how to do something.”

“I want to pay the back taxes so I won’t be the one to lose land that’s been in the family for generations,” Malcolm said. “After that, I’d just as soon give away the information for free. Wealth and the waste it buys are... idiotic.”

Tara snorted. “Careful, some fortune cookie writer is going to steal those eloquent words.”

Malcolm didn’t respond. Tara clicked on one of the results.

“Here’s a motel with Twilight-themed rooms,” she announced.

From Malcolm’s grunt, it sounded like he was less than intrigued. While she was trying to figure out if the motel had a twenty-four-hour desk, he asked, “Do you want to be rich?”

Tara lowered the phone. “Well. I worry about the future sometimes. Our generation has inherited a lot of economic and environmental burdens, you know? I want to be secure for whatever happens down the road. And I want the freedom to do the work I want to do when and how I want to do it.”

“No working for the Man, eh? You have more in common with Jason than you think.”

“Well, we did have similar tastes in chocolate.”

Malcolm didn’t respond, and she thought the conversation was over until he cleared his throat and said, “A lot of people mistake a desire for freedom for a desire for wealth. If you want it badly enough, you can figure out a way to have the former without a lot of the latter.” He looked away from the dark road long enough to meet her eyes. “But you seem to be figuring out a path that makes sense for you. You’ve obviously found some freedom.”

“I guess. I want to work for myself though. I know enough that I could, but I’m not sure what topic I would like to build an online business around. It would have to be interesting to me and useful to others as well.”