Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 120: Neil Wayner!

Chapter 120: Neil Wayner!

The city of Novaria soon vanished in the rearview mirror of Mia’s car and the sky turned heavy, ominous gray of an early dusk with heavy snow falling from the sky.

Silence hung in the car and a fat snow smacked her windshield, slowly gaining an edge on the car’s windshield wipers. They had been on the road for hours when Neil glanced in the outside rearview mirror on his side, and his blood immediately froze. A half mile behind them, and closing fast, was the authority car with its red and blue lights rotating furiously.

A second later, he heard the siren begin to wail in the atmosphere and he felt panic slowly begin to seep into his bones. He hated this feeling, but he had no choice.

The woman beside him heard it, too; she glanced in the rearview mirror and took her foot off of the gas pedal, slowing the car and angling it onto the side. Neil reached into his jacket pocket, his hand closing on the butt of his gun, although he had no idea at that moment exactly what he meant to do with it if the police tried to pull them over.

The police car was so close now, he could see there was not one, but two policmen in the front seat. They pulled around the BMW... And kept going without stopping them or looking their way.

"There must be some accident up ahead," Mia murmured as she drove up a hill and came to a stop as she noticed what looked like a six-mile traffic jam on the snowy highway.

A moment later two ambulances came roaring past them.

Neil’s rush of adrenalin subsided, leaving him shaken and limp. He felt as if he had suddenly exceeded his capacity to react with violent emotion to anything whatsoever, which was probably due to him having been trying to execute for days a carefully thought-out escape plan that should have been a guaranteed success if it weren’t for his car that was pulled away by those trucks.

Everything else that had gone wrong was a result of that. He wasn’t sure even now if his decoy was still waiting for his call before he would distract the military. To be safe, Liam hadn’t thought he needed a cellphone to avoid being tracked down. And now he would need to find a phone booth, which was rare unless he got lucky and came across one of the ones stationed at the roadside for travelers to make his call.

However, until Mia had driven further away from Novaria, he didn’t dare stop to find a phone booth. Moreover, although his destination was only 130 miles from Novaria board, he needed to be traveling northwest to get there. Instead, he was now heading southeast with Mia because he couldn’t let her know who he was.

Mia, who was watching the traffic jam ahead of them, heard her phone ringing, she fished it out of her purse and looked down at the caller, seeing it was Owen, she sighed and put the phone on silent mode before dropping it back inside the purse deciding to call him back later when she entered Mirage Mesa. She knew he must be calling to know where she was at the moment.

Though Mia knew he was calling because he worried about her, she sometimes felt as if he treated her like a little child. Even though she made it appear to strangers that she loved the man she was going to be marrying soon, deep down, she knew she was kidding herself. She had lost the ability to feeling all the exciting emotions of love the day she found her mother laying on the floor of her room with a hole in her chest, and the day the man she loved was proven guilty of murdering her.

She was at her lowest point in life when Owen appeared like an angel in disguise. He had helped her with the burial ceremony of her mother when all the people in Whispering way blamed her for the death of her beloved mother. Though she had been angry at Owen before then, she had forgiven him when she saw how hard he tried to make her smile again after her mother’s death. Back then, She would ignore him for days, and he would come over to her dorm and refused to go until she would come out to speak to him.

There was a day he stood in the rain for an entire night because she refused to step out and see him. The next day when Mia found him curled up outside and shivering, she had felt like a monster for ignoring the man who had done nothing but help her. That was the day she changed her attitude towards him and they became friends again, until the day he proposed to her...

Ignoring his calls now, Mia felt slightly guilty but then pushed her guilt aside deciding to explain to him why she didn’t pick up later when she get home. Unknown to her that Owen was calling to let her know about the man who had escaped prison this morning.

Neil, who was starting to feel restless about the route he was taking with Mia, decided to occupy his time productively by looking for a new route from the journey book prepared for him by Kai’s brother. Perhaps he would find an easy route that would lead to the mountains from Mirage Mesa.

Twisting around in his seat, Neil picked up his backpack and said, "I think I’ll have a look at a map."

Mia naturally assumed he wanted to check his phone map to see whatever town his new job was located in, but she was surprised to see him take out a sheet of paper.

"Where exactly are you heading?" she asked curiously, while trying to peek at the paper in his hand but he moved it away from her view.

"Eldrame," he replied, sending her a brief look. "I interviewed for the job in Novaria, but I’ve never been to the company," he added so she wouldn’t ask questions about the place he had only made up. He knew how she was, she was like a curious kitten and judging from how she was craning her neck to take a peek at his map, he could tell she still had that habit.

"I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Eldrame before." Mia murmured softly. And Several minutes later, when he neatly refolded the map, Mia couldn’t help but ask, "Did you find Eldrame in your map?"

"No." To dissuade her from asking any further questions about the location of a nonexistent town, he flashed the sheet of paper at her as he bent over the seat to put it back into his backpack. "I have detailed instructions right here, so I’ll find it."

She nodded, but her gaze was on the road exit up ahead. "The traffic jam is not going down. I think I’ll get off the highway here and take a side road to get past the accident."

"Good idea." Neil remarked.

Mia drove off the main highway and drove onto a smaller road in the countryside. At first, the smaller road went the same direction as the main highway, but then it started to go in a different direction.

"This might not have been a good idea after all," she remarked minutes later when the narrow blacktop road began to lead steadily further away from the main highway.

Neil didn’t immediately reply. Because at the intersection up ahead, there was a deserted filing station and at the edge of the empty lot near the road was an open phone booth for travelers. "I’d like to make a phone call if you wouldn’t mind stopping. It won’t take more than a couple of minutes."

"Phone call? At the phone booth?" Mia was taken aback at the realization that he didn’t have a phone and needed to use a public one. "Um, you can use my phone, it’s_" she began to suggest for him to use hers but he interrupted.

"No. Thank you, I prefer the phone booth." He said. Neil couldn’t afford to take the risk of using even her phone, which he made the mental note to get rid of very soon.

Mia didn’t argue with him and pulled the car to a stop underneath the street lamp near the phone booth and watched him walk across the headlight’s beams.

Dusk had descended even earlier than usual, and the storm seemed to be outrunning them, dumping snow with surprising force. She increased her car warmer and decided to exchange her bulky long coat to her purple fashion designed cardigan sweater that would be more comfortable while she drove. However, she needed to bring the sweater from her suitcase.

But before she stepped out of the car, she tapped the screen of her car’s infotainment system, selecting her favorite entertainment life podcast channel. With a simple command, her smartphone seamlessly connected to the car’s Bluetooth, and the familiar voice of the podcast host filled the vehicle’s interior.

Mia smiled and increased the volume then she got out of the car, walked around to the trunk, and opened it. With the trunk opened she could hear the host discussing with her guest about the most talked about celebrity of the year. And then she heard them talk about the interview she did with Aurora Quinn yesterday.

Hearing them talk about her and about her engagement announcement with one of the most successful men in country, Mia sighed and took off her coat, then she pulled her purple cardigan sweater out of her suitcase. She had known this would be the most talked about news in the media industry after Owen had made the announcement in the magazine without informing her.

Mia wore her cardigan and walked back to the passenger seat of her car to take her phone to just call him, but then her gaze fell on the map that was sticking out of the backpack next to the seat. And her curiousity got the best of her.

Furthermore, since she didn’t know where the man she had given a ride was going and she wasn’t entirely sure what route would lead to his destination or if she was taking him so far out of his way that he’d prefer to try to hitchhike with someone else, she decided to look at his weird map.

Mia glanced at him in the phone booth, intending to hold up the map and ask his permission to look at it, but his shoulder was turned to her and he seemed to be so engrossed with the person he was speaking with on the phone to notice her. Deciding he couldn’t possibly object, she unfolded the paper and opened the map he’d been studying.

Spreading it across the seat, she held the ends down while the wind tried to whip them out of her hands. It took a full moment before she realized it wasn’t a map to any town or city but to a place she had never been or thought about going. Puzzled, she glanced at the neatly written instructions written on the paper.

As Mia read the instructions, her eyebrows frowned deeply as she realized he was heading to a deserted mountains. The sheet contained the detailed route that would lead to his destination without being stopped by any checkpoints.

Mia’s lips parted in surprise. He was heading not for a job in some unknown town, but for a house in the north?!

In her car, the podcast host had just finished discussing the evening entertainment talk show and mentioned, "The most talked-about news in the country today has caught everyone by surprise..." Mia barely registered the woman’s words, because she was staring at the tall man using the phone, and she felt again that strange, slithering unease ... of shadowy familiarity.

He had kept his shoulder turned to her, but he’d pulled down his face mask and removed his sunglasses and was holding them in his hand now. As if he sensed she was staring at him, he twisted his head toward her. His eyes narrowed on the open map in her hands at the same instant Mia had her first clear, brightly lit view of his face without the concealing sunglasses and face mask.

"The military reported that convicted murderer Neil Wayner escaped at approximately 1pm this afternoon," announced the podcast host’s voice. Mia was momentarily frozen, staring at the daring, rugged features of his face.

And in that moment, she recognized him instantly!