Chapter Three: Resurrection

Wyatt's words in combination with his touch sent a tingle from the crown of her head to the tip of her third toe.

He kept her off balance as he continued holding her hand, keeping his grip firm. Maureen pressed her lips together as she looked down at his large hand engulfing hers. She was suddenly a trapeze artist who just realized there was no net under her, instead she was walking across the Grand Canyon.

"What about you?" Maureen asked, louder than she intended over the buzzing in her ears.

"What about me?" he asked, moving his thumb in slow circles on the top of her hand.

"Did you leave someone behind for all …. this?"

"No," Wyatt finally said after a lengthy pause before he released her hand.

Maureen could feel the lingering touch of his hand as she held his penetrating gaze. "How much longer are we driving from here?"

A slow smile pulled at Wyatt's lips, "am I keeping you from something?"

Maureen ignored him and plodded on. "I need to use the restroom before we start driving again."

Wyatt moved his eyes away from hers and looked around the rest stop, seeing a random sprinkling of people.

"Sit tight," he murmured as he slipped from the passenger seat and walked around the front of the SUV to open her door.

Maureen stared down at him, her bladder demanding she exit the vehicle at once but cautious on a cellular level.

"Don't force my hand," Wyatt warned.

Maureen nodded stiffly, aware of Wyatt's capacity for strength, feeling the energy pulse from him.

She kept her pace casual as he flanked her towards the set of bathrooms. Wyatt had to slow to match her shorter stride, allowing himself to openly run his eyes over her.

To anyone who happened to glance in their general direction, nothing between them would've seemed amiss. Maureen was accustomed to sharing breathing room with felony murderers, serial rapists and had a soft spot for a schizophrenic who'd killed and eaten his parents.

Maureen felt Wyatt's eyes moving over her and was initially grateful when the restrooms loomed closer but felt her feet come to a stop when he began to follow her inside.

"What are you doing?" Maureen hollowly heard herself ask, painfully clear that he was staying her formidable, hulking shadow.

"Don't worry princess, I'll turn around," Wyatt growled as he pushed open the metal stall door.

Maureen swallowed hard as she walked into the narrow stall, keeping him in view.

She was near the point of losing control of her bladder as he remained true to his word and turned his broad back towards her.

Maureen almost sighed with relief as her hot urine began to splash into the water.

"Where are you driving us?" she asked his back.

Wyatt stared at the back of the stall door, the messages from the humorous to the obscene carved in the salmon pink paint.

He considered his answer, knowing that even with the most optimal driving conditions and quick stops for gas that his planned destination was still close to three days of driving, even if they split time behind the wheel and drove straight through.

Maureen cleaned up with the scratchy paper from the nearly empty roll and flushing the toilet.

Wyatt turned around as Maureen was smoothing down her tight-fitting skirt.

He edited his answer when he saw the fatigue pulling at Maureen's tight features.

"Not much further," Wyatt said as he pulled open the stall door, there was not much space for Maureen to slip past him in the small confines.

Wyatt knew there was a hotel close by according to a series of bright, splashy billboards he'd been seeing the last few miles.

As Wyatt remained a few steps behind Maureen as they returned to her rental, a minivan pulled in a few spaces down, two frazzled parents in the front and two screaming toddlers in the second-row seating.

Maureen paused as Wyatt opened the heavy passenger door, moving her eyes from the family to him.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere close by," he murmured, his expression bleeding to dangerous neutrality.

Maureen looked over at the family as the father of the noisy children popped the hood when steam started pouring from the overheated engine. She pressed her lips together as she turned back to see Wyatt let his jacket fall open and show the gun he had tucked in his waistband.

"I will," he rasped.

Maureen nodded as she shakily climbed into the elevated SUV, she knew he would.

Her professional mind wanted to know which of the family of four he'd kill first.

Before Wyatt navigated the sturdy SUV from the rest stop parking lot, he plucked Maureen's phone from the cupholder and smashed it under his heel on the cracked asphalt.

"Hey," she shouted in a shriller tone than she intended, reaching out for no known reason as he ground his heel against the former HD screen nestled inside the allegedly indestructible case.

Wyatt slid behind the wheel as the family in the minivan never noticed the couple in the dark vehicle as they left the parking lot.

As Wyatt merged onto the freeway, seeing another sign for the hotel in just a few exits, back at the sprawling medical center as Kat was arranged in a mylar cadaver bag, out at the nurse's station, Ellen argued with an analyst who had continued to fail to find anything about Wyatt Rivers before he'd turned eighteen.

Wyatt's records weren't sealed or tagged by the government; they just weren't there.

Unbeknownst to Ellen and everyone except for a few clerks at a government office, Wyatt Rivers began life at eighteen with a new name and identity.

His father had never wanted him.

Wyatt never even dreamt of his birth name or allowed himself to think about it.

He'd killed his mother as he'd left the birth canal. His father was too drunk to take his wife into town and she hemorrhaged to death on the uneven dining room table.

Wyatt's father kept the table.

Wyatt was unwanted from the start but was adept at learning how to cook as well as possessed an aptitude for science.

When he was fifteen, his father had begun to overdose while sitting at the same table his wife had died giving birth to his son.

Wyatt had cracked a beer and lit a menthol cigarette as his father began to foam at the mouth, limbs wildly gesticulating, his tongue beginning to bloat and protrude from his blubbering lips.

Wyatt toasted his dying father as he took a long swig off the beer and smoked a cigarette down to the filter as he watched him die.

His father's death was ruled an accidental OD. Nothing about his father's death aroused suspicion and there was a paltry inheritance and life insurance policy that were sent to the house.

The small-town sheriff began working with a young Wyatt as he had with his dead father.

As soon as Wyatt turned eighteen, he paid the sheriff a hefty sum to keep his cooking cabin secure and checked in monthly.

As Ellen ended the call with the useless analyst, hours away and only moving further, Wyatt shook himself to reality as he thought about taking Maureen to that cabin, how in just a few days he'd be showing her where he was born, died, and was born again.