The Unrepentant, page 4
Let her leave you. Let her start over. Find what she needs.
She deserves more.
On the other hand…
When she finds more, it’ll be with someone else.
Mace hurries after her.
He spots Eve at the end of the parking lot, striding toward her black Toyota sedan. He’s about call to her when someone touches him.
Mace turns, sees a grinning man, and recognizes him immediately.
It’s the man from the woods, the one he knocked to the ground. The one who had been holding an axe.
Thumb.
Mace has no idea what to say.
“Oh, hey.”
Doesn’t sound right.
Thumb doesn’t say hello back. Just keeps grinning. He lifts the bottom of his coat to show Mace a gun. Points to a van at the other end of the lot.
Chapter Ten
A few hours earlier Charlotte sits on a bench, arms wrapped around her knees, and stares dourly at Baltimore’s Greyhound bus terminal, unaware of what’s about to befall Mace.
It hasn’t been easy to find. She’d driven until she found an all-night gas station, and the attendant working there gave her directions she somehow forgot minutes later. She stopped at a second gas station, bought a Snickers bar, and drove until she found the bus terminal off a dark side road.
The terminal is closed until morning. And Charlotte has passed so many cops that she doesn’t feel comfortable waiting inside of the truck she’s stolen from Mace. She parked, left the key on the front tire, and sat on a bench across the street.
Charlotte isn’t sure where she was going; she just planned to take a bus as far as eighty dollars (minus a Snickers bar) would take her. Pennsylvania? North Carolina? She has no idea how far Barnes’s reach extended. He’d gotten her to Baltimore from all the way across the country, had planned on sending her to Russia.
He must have people all over the U.S., maybe the world.
She hugs her knees tight to her chest, as if she can eventually shrink away into nothing.
A homeless man limps past the bench, muttering to himself. She eyes him but he doesn’t glance at her. Just keeps limping.
Charlotte watches him walk away. She always wondered what turned someone homeless; imagined those men and women as babies that were loved and cared for enough to grow into children, and then adults. When had they been cast aside?
Or had they jumped, like she had, blindly and desperately?
And landed in chains?
She remembers those moments when she’d see sunlight in the basement, when one of those men opened the door at the top of the stairs. She’s always loved sunlight, basks in its warmth whenever she can. But back then, sunlight couldn’t reach her. And even if it had, it wouldn’t have broken through her grief.
Grief and resignation had consumed her.
Until something else had grown.
Something dark. Impenetrable.
Charlotte rubs her eyes, presses her palms into them.
“Shit,” she says to herself.
It’s easy to get lost in her thoughts, so easy that she realizes an hour must have passed. Cars and trucks are starting to rumble over roads. Birds chatter. Dawn is coming.
She wonders if Mace will help, maybe get her across the country. She can go back to California, try and start over, lose herself in that state’s long stretch of land. Barnes will never know she’s no longer in Baltimore, or even in one of the surrounding states.
And maybe, with Mace, she landed somewhere safe. If she runs off again, she has no idea where she’ll end up.
She couldn’t confidently stay in his apartment, but what women could after what she’d gone through? But now, some distance removed, she isn’t nearly as worried about him.
Charlotte just hopes he isn’t too mad about the truck.
She leaves the bench, takes the key from the tire, climbs back into the cab. She pulls out of the station and drives and then exhaustion hits her. Hard, like a punch to the back of her head, leaving her groggy. She finds an open parking garage, spots a secluded corner, pulls into it, her head nodding as she turns off the ignition.
Charlotte sleeps for a couple of hours, wakes confused. Remembers where she is, then leaves the garage and gets directions back to Garden Crossing Apartments.
When she returns she parks and collects her thoughts. Tries to think of what she’ll tell Mace.
And sees him. Walking across the lot.
A short stumpy man is behind him, keeping close. They reach a van and the man opens the side door. Mace says something, and the man pulls a gun from his jacket pocket.
Mace nods.
Charlotte takes a closer look at the man, recognizes him from last night. The one Mace knocked over.
That same feeling she had in the basement, that sense of something cold and dangerous growing inside of her, returns.
She thinks about the way that man had held the axe over her, how he’d pulled her by her hair out of the trunk. Thinks about the terrible things he’d whispered to her.
She feels like she’s burning.
Charlotte opens the truck door and steps out into the cold morning.
Chapter Eleven
Mace reflects on the various regrets of his life as Thumb leads him to the van.
He regrets not shouting for help. He wanted to keep Eve out of danger, but ever since she climbed into her car and sped away, Mace has second-guessed that choice.
He regrets not having a child. Neither he or Eve ever wanted children, but the absence of a child, particularly around their friends’ large families, often felt stark. He wondered how much that absence affected Eve. She never said anything about it, never indicated any unhappiness, but Mace wasn’t sure he believed her. And she would have made a wonderful mother. It would be nice to have an older child now, perhaps fully grown. Who could save him.
Speaking of children, he regrets saving Charlotte.
No, he doesn’t.
Maybe a little.
Mace wonders if he should try and make a break for the woods, suddenly take off running. But he wouldn’t make it more than a few steps before Thumb shot him.
Then again, he has one more option.
He can beg. Shamelessly.
“I don’t know what you want or who you are, but I can’t help you.”
Thumb reaches past Mace, grabs the van door, slides it open.
Mace sees nothing but a floor and walls covered with dark plastic.
“Don’t act dumb. You remember me. Get in the van.”
Mace shakes his head, tries to look confused. “I don’t.”
Thumb pulls his gun out.
“I don’t,” Mace whispers, his hands rising in surrender.
The man’s other fist flies out of his pocket and smashes Mace’s left cheek. It’s a hard punch. Mace stumbles backward, trips, falls butt first inside the van. His cheek feels shattered. Pain spiderwebs through his skull.
His legs are shoved inside. The door creaks shut.
The door slides back open.
Charlotte is standing behind Thumb.
Mace blinks, sees her hand in Thumb’s pocket.
Mace can tell from the bulge that she’s holding his weapon.
“Close the door,” Charlotte tells Mace.
He looks at her.
Charlotte grabs the door with her free hand and slams it closed. Thumb’s eyes widen as he realizes what’s happening, just as his head is caught between the door and the edge. Charlotte closes the door on the man’s head again.
“Give me a hand,” she tells Mace.
Mace can’t stop staring at Thumb, now slumped unconscious halfway inside.
“Mace! I can’t lift him by myself.”
Mace numbly grabs him under the shoulders and pulls Thumb inside. Charlotte climbs in and closes the door.
“We have to move. They’ll check in with him. Come looking when he doesn’t answer.” She reaches into the man’s pocket, pulls out his keys, and tosses them to Mace. They bounce off his chest. “Go up front, start driving.”
Mace picks up the keys. “Where?”
“Start with ‘away.’ We’ll figure out the rest later.”
Mace climbs into the front and starts the engine. There is no back window, so he uses the side windows to reverse. He pulls out of the parking lot and heads down the road. Wipes his forehead on his sleeve. He’s surprised at how much he’s sweating. He slides a hand under his shirt and feels his damp chest.
Mace hears Thumb groaning, moving.
“What’s your name?” Charlotte asks.
“Mace,” Mace replies.
Thumb laughs.
“Him, stupid,” Charlotte snaps. “Tell me your name.” Thumb doesn’t respond. Charlotte tries again. “Why are you looking for me? Why can’t you just let me go?”
Another laugh from Thumb. “Come on, you saw too much. Can’t let you just walk. And I’m not telling you shit, cunt.”
The shot is loud, sudden, a thunderclap.
Mace yelps, swings the van over to the side of the road, pulls out the brake.
He turns. Sees Charlotte holding the gun, looking at him quizzically.
Thumb is lying on his back.
Mace looks at Thumb’s caved-in face and sees blood.
Nothing but pooling blood.
“Why’d you kill him?” His voice sounds different, insecure and young. It’s good that Mace is sitting because he doesn’t think he could stand. His arms and legs are rubber, his heart a terrified rabbit. The van smells of metal and smoke.
“No way this guy could walk after finding out where you live,” Charlotte is saying. “And he wasn’t going to tell me anything.” She pauses. “And I hate the word cunt.”
“We could have taken him to the police.” Mace feels distant from his body, as if his soul and voice are about to float away.
“Remember that nice officer you met last night?” Charlotte reminds him.
Mace touches his forehead. He’s surprised at how soft it is. It feels like this is the first time he’s ever touched his own skin.
“You killed him.”
“You got a one-track mind.” Charlotte’s hunting through the dead man’s pockets. She pulls out his wallet, takes the money, and dumps everything else on the floor.
“Change of plans,” she announces. “Let’s get your truck. They’re going to be looking for us, and we need to lose this van.”
Chapter Twelve
They drive back to the Garden Crossing apartment complex. Mace tumbles out and Charlotte joins him, happy to get away from the corpse. She hadn’t noticed until now how chilly the day is. The grayness of the sky. Everything seems slowed down, vivid, like she’s carefully watching a movie.
She can still feel the imprint from the shot, the jolt against her hand.
She wills it away.
“Where can we go?”
Mace is pale, his hand over his stomach. “To do what?”
“To get rid of the van and the dead guy.”
“I don’t, I don’t know.”
“How about where you found me? Those woods?”
Mace throws up. Charlotte looks around. The parking lot is half-full of cars, but no people.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone dead,” he tells her.
“But you have?”
“I was in the Army.”
Charlotte stares at him. “I’m not getting that impression from you, but we’ll talk about it later. Let’s go. I’ll drive the van. You follow me.”
Mace walks to his truck, climbs inside, and sits.
Charlotte re-enters the van. The pungent smell of the corpse has filled it. Her hands clench the wheel and something rustles inside of her. She grips the wheel hard until the rustling goes away.
It takes ten minutes of driving, but Charlotte finds a small turnoff along the wooded road and steers the van up it. Mace follows her. She turns down a second small side road, rounds a wide curve, pulls the van over to the side. It’s an empty road, rarely driven, shrouded by thick tall trees with brown leaves dangling like pennies.
Mace parks behind Charlotte and steps out when she does.
“God,” she tells him, walking toward his truck. “Smells like hell in there.”
Mace doesn’t respond.
“Can you tell me anything about this place? Do people come here a lot?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“There has to be some type of tracking device on the van,” Charlotte tells him. “They’ll find us.”
“Who?”
She ignores the question. “Then again, I don’t care if they find the van. But if the cops do, we’re in a lot of trouble. You got any rags on you?”
“What?”
Charlotte pulls off her shirt, starts gnawing at the bottom.
Mace looks away from her bare skin and bra.
She rips her shirt, then pulls the tear until the bottom half is separated. She puts the top half back on. It doesn’t even reach her belly button. She unscrews the gas cap, rolls the strip of T-shirt into a rope, pushes it in. She pulls her shirt out, along with a dripping trail of gasoline.
“Good thing he was a smoker.” Charlotte takes a lighter out of her pocket.
“You’re going to set him on fire?”
She opens the van door. “You should start your truck.”
“Shouldn’t we…”
She disappears inside.
Charlotte exits the van a few moments later, coughing.
“Let’s go.”
They drive back the way they came. When they reach the main road, Mace glances at her. “How’d you learn to do that?”
“Use the gas to start a fire? Some TV show.” She looks out the window, drums her fingers on her knee. “Where are we going?”
“Back to my apartment.”
Charlotte grabs the dashboard. “What? Why?”
“The only bad person who knows I live there is on fire right now.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I need to get a few things.”
“That’s stupid. If we go back there, you’re going in alone.”
“I’ll be quick.”
Charlotte’s not happy, but she doesn’t say anything else. They drive in silence for a few minutes.
“He’s not the first person you’ve killed, is he?”
She doesn’t answer.
Mace doesn’t press.
No, Charlotte thinks, he’s not.
But this time, the killing left her cold. The other time, the only other time, she was a wreck.
Now that feeling inside of her, that fire, feels like its devoured her guilt or fear. She touches the trigger’s fading indent in her index finger.
If anything, she’s relieved.
Relieved that one less man is chasing her, that she’s a little closer to being free. Further away from being forced back into that basement.
And that’s when Charlotte understands what she needs to do.
She’s going to kill all the men who held her.
No matter where she goes, no matter where she runs, she’ll never be safe until they’re dead. Either she has to die, or they do.
She won’t rest until that happens.
Charlotte knows they won’t, either.
Chapter Thirteen
Mace sprints up the stairs of his apartment building two at a time, reaches his floor, runs down the empty hall. He hurries into his apartment and sinks to the ground.
He breathes deeply until he calms down, at least enough to take stock of the situation. Charlotte’s right; whoever’s looking for her could realize she was in this apartment building. There are places he can go—friends’ houses, both close and far away. And Mace can find someplace safe for Charlotte, to pay her back for saving his life.
He has to hurry, but it feels impossible to stand. His legs are soft, his entire body unwilling to move.
He wonders if that’s because he wants to stay away from Charlotte. She was casual when she killed that man. It shouldn’t be that easy.
But he knows the men chasing her are worse.
Mace pulls himself up. He opens the hall closet, takes out a gym bag, throws random handfuls of clothes inside. He unlocks the safe in his closet and grabs his emergency credit card.
And then an idea hits him so hard it stops him in his tracks.
Now’s the time to call the cops.
His phone is in his hand, but Mace doesn’t dial. Instead he thinks of what to tell them, how to explain everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“Mace?”
He shouts.
“Hell’s wrong with you?” Eve asks.
She’s standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing back here? How’d you get in?”
“Your key was in the door.” She holds it out to him. “And I forgot my jacket.”
“Oh.”
Eve looks at the bag slung over his shoulder. “Going to the gym?”
“No.”
She walks into his apartment, maddeningly slow.
“Now’s not a good time,” Mace tells her.
“Are you going away?”
“Maybe. Yes. Maybe.”
Eve purses her lips. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“A lot’s changed. I’ve changed. I’m going through changes.”
Eve touches his arm. “What’s going on?”
“I really just need to go.”
“Then tell me quickly.”
Mace doesn’t think it’s possible, but he manages to relay the events of the past day in under two minutes. Eve’s expression changes from humor to horror while he talks.
“…And I don’t know what to do,” he finishes. “I mean, I do. I need to go to the cops. Tell them everything and turn her in.”
Eve walks over to the chair and leans on it, as if for support.
Mace had set the bag down, but now he picks it back up and loops it over his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I need to think this through.” Eve stares down at her hands. “Have you been taking your medicine?”
