Page 2 of Wrong Number, Right Grizzly (Dial M For Mates #7)

RONAN

A collective groan filled the conference room when an older woman raised her hand and asked a question.

Wasn’t there some sort of unspoken rule that when a presenter asked if there were any questions, the answer was always no?

Especially when it was the last presentation of a training?

All I wanted to do was get home, take a shower, climb in my own bed, and sleep.

Instead, the first of a dozen questions was asked, each and every one of which had already been answered in the presentation.

If they had paid attention or taken notes, we could have been out of here.

Five minutes became ten minutes became a half-hour.

I was getting paid for it. That wasn’t the problem.

A storm was going to be crossing my path home, and I didn’t want to get stuck driving through it. My goal was to be ahead of it and settled into my own place before the first raindrop fell. With every passing minute, that became less and less likely.

“If there are no more questions, I’m just going to pass around a little survey about how you felt about this week. If you could fill it out and use it as your ticket out of here, that would be great.”

A survey. A paper survey, at that. It was official, I hated it here.

I was at a technology training conference for work, and they were giving us a paper-and-pen task, which they will then have to enter into the computer to analyze. If it was a link, at least it would’ve been on brand.

The person beside me handed me the pile, and I took mine and passed the rest. I’d hoped that it was an always, sometimes, never kind of survey, but no, each question required a yes, no, and why.

One by one, I filled them out, being as brief as possible, also very vague.

I didn’t want to get into a ton of details.

That wasn’t until the last question, when I said that ending at a designated time was important.

Safe to say I was salty. Sure, I wasn’t flying or catching the train like most of the people here, but that didn’t make my time less valuable.

If they said they were going to be out at a certain time, that should be that.

Five minutes late was acceptable, but we were getting close to an hour by this point, and I was done with it.

I folded the paper in thirds as instructed, grabbed my bag, and walked out to the table that was collecting the forms in exchange for our completion certificate.

The way they held that paper over our heads, knowing full well that we needed it in order to get paid…

argh. I wouldn’t say the week was a waste of time.

It wasn’t. I met some nice people, ate at some nice restaurants, learned about migrating over to this new system so that I could help people at work with the adjustment.

That was all great. I just didn’t want to be away from home this long.

That was something my bosses didn’t understand.

They equated being single with unlimited free time.

The only reason I was picked to come was because I was the only one on my team who didn’t have a family at home waiting for them.

In that lens, it was kind of odd that I so desperately wanted to be in my own bed.

Shouldn’t I be living it up, meeting people, traveling on the company’s time?

Shit, they’d offered to give me a hotel for tonight.

I could’ve gone out with those of us who remained, and had a nice meal.

Instead, I threw my bag in the car and headed home, a need to be on my way eating at me in a way it never had before.

I was cutting it close for the storm. I knew this, but still…

I was optimistic. I wasn’t taking major highways back.

They were faster speed-wise, but added enough miles that it actually took longer.

Instead, I rode through the old county roads…

up hills, through valleys. It was very scenic.

Had it been earlier in the day, I’d have taken my time, stopped at some of the pullovers to take pictures, eaten at some of the little hideaways that were along the way.

But it wasn’t earlier, and the skies were getting darker by the second.

Something kicked up under my vehicle. I didn’t know if it was a stick or a rock, but it scared the daylights out of me, and I squealed like someone in a horror movie. “It’s all right, Betty,” I patted my dash. “I’ll be more careful.”

I hadn’t named my car Betty… the person who had it before me did and had me promise not to change her name.

Until they brought it up, I hadn’t considered naming my car at all.

I hadn’t named my last one, that was for sure.

I just called it the Civic. But this was Betty, and she had done a good job for me over the years.

She was rolling up to 180,000 miles soon, which was great. No car payment was a good car payment.

The song playing on the radio swapped out to an emergency broadcast siren, and I slowed down and turned it up, wanting to hear if there were any changes in the storm. There weren’t. High winds, torrential rains, all the same stuff it warned about before, only now it was imminent.

A red light on my dash lit up at the same time, and as I glanced down to see which system went wrong, crossing my fingers it wasn’t the service engine light, the car completely stalled out and the dash went black.

“Fuck.” I pressed the brakes, put the car in park, and then tried to turn it on again and again and again. Nothing.

Reaching into the glove box, I pulled out the user’s manual and attempted to figure out what light might’ve been on the console based on location. None of them were good. “Double fuck.”

I popped the car in neutral and allowed the incline to work to my advantage as I pulled over as far as I could, not wanting to get hit by a passing car, and then put on the hazards.

In the movies, people open the hood, look inside, do a little magic, and are on their way. The only thing I’d get if I opened up the hood was a glance at a bunch of things that I didn’t understand how to fix.

I took out my phone and there was no signal.

None. Today was going from bad to worse.

There wasn’t a lot of traffic on this road.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen another car, but I figured somebody would come eventually.

When they did, I’d flag them down and all would be right with the world.

Only instead of having a car show up, I had rain, one drop then another, followed by so much rain that I couldn’t even see out the windshield. I was hoping that if it came down hard and fast, it would leave quickly, but this wasn’t letting up. It was coming down harder and harder and harder.

“Screw it. I’m going to have to get wet and walk to where I can find some signal.” I was talking to no one, but needed something other than the downpour to listen to.

The rain pelted against my skin, and the noise of it pounding everywhere was a lot. About a quarter a mile down the road I finally got a signal. I held my shirt over the phone and started to tap away, looking for a tow truck.

I found the number and pressed it, trying to have it dial. It wasn’t working. For some reason, my phone didn’t recognize it as a number, so then I tried to cut and paste it onto my own phone, but the paste wouldn’t work. Whoever did this website really did a number.

So instead, I recited the digits over and over and over again in my head, flipped back to my keypad, typed it out, and called.

The phone rang and rang and rang, and when it picked up, the message didn’t indicate a tow truck, but that really didn’t mean anything this time of day.

The owner could’ve gone home by now. It would make sense that they would forward it to their own cell.

Was it overly professional? No, but I was in a place where my guess was everyone knew everyone.

Those kinds of formalities weren’t needed.

In panic I hung up. Instantly regretting it, I dialed again, this time leaving a long ass message.

“Look, I don’t know if I have the right number. My name is Ronan, and I’m stuck at…” I pulled up the maps to find my location. “Abercrombie Road, about five miles past the gas station and…” I kept on pleading until it cut me off.

Now what? Would going back to that gas station be my best choice? Five miles was a long walk, especially with the rain coming, but being in my car here didn’t seem like a good choice either.

The wind picked up, and I jogged back to my car and climbed inside. Once there, I waited… and waited… and waited… for either the tow truck driver or a random passerby to show up.

No one did.

As the rain pelted down, the echoing in the car became unbearable, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk . It had been pouring for over an hour with no end in sight.

Lightning went off in the distance, and I jumped so hard that I hit my knee on the steering wheel.

Please let someone come soon, because staying out here overnight… yeah, I didn’t think I could handle that.