InnocenceForSale.com/ Bree, page 78
How could those hands be so gentle now and yet so strong when they needed to be? When I wanted them to be?
“When you were a kid, did you always want to be a murderer?” I asked.
Eric laughed and the bed shook. It was music to my ears. “No. First, I wanted to be a dog when I grew up.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “What kind?”
“I’m not sure. Nothing you could fit into a handbag at least. How about you? Wait… doctor, of course.”
“Or nurse. When did you give up on your dream to be a dog?”
“About six, I guess. Then I wanted to make suitcases like my dad.”
“You can make a living making suitcases?”
“Sort of. We didn’t have much, but we lived. He made some really nice stuff, but it’s all antique and antique-style. Who knows how you end up with the interests you end up with? That’s his. He’s a good man.”
“What’s that like?” I asked.
“What’s what like?”
“To have a father who’s a good man.”
“It’s… irreplaceable.”
I cast my eyes down as low as his neck for a second, then looked back up. “What are you going to do after… this? Kidnap some other poor girl and take advantage of your rugged good looks again?”
“No. I need a vacation after this. Besides, I’d rather go out and kill somebody who had it coming and then get paid for it. You’re a special… case. After it’s over, maybe you’d…”
“What?”
“Maybe you’d want to stick around. With me.”
My heart thundered and soared into the air for a few glorious seconds. In his arms anything seemed possible.
“You won’t… get sick of me?” my lip trembled.
“No.”
“Would you be… proud of me?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell everyone… that’s my girl?”
“Everyone. Except the Secret Service if your dad wins the election.”
I gave him a smile that quickly faltered. “Is it even possible?”
“It’s possible if you want it to be possible.”
“But… Barlow. Nobody talks to me, but I hear things, you know? They talk about him like he’s the devil himself. They say he cuts off peoples’ heads and uses their skulls to drink their blood.”
“Uh… I’ve never seen him do that.”
“What did my father do to him?” I asked.
Eric paused for a long time. “He was involved, somehow, in killing Jace’s parents. Maybe he did it himself.”
I paused for even longer. “I’m dead.”
“He said he wouldn’t. I trust him. You sound scared. That’s a first from you.” Eric resumed stroking my cheek.
“I never had anything I cared about losing before.”
Looking up at him, I licked my lips and took a few deep breaths. There was an ‘L’ word that was trying to burst out of my mouth.
I wanted to say it to him while I still could, but it was as if my lips didn’t know how to make the right shapes. My tongue wouldn’t cooperate. A lifetime without it had left me unable to say it.
The emotion inflated itself painfully like a balloon in my windpipe, as if punishing me for keeping it bottled up, while I must have looked like a goldfish opening and closing my mouth in his arms. Eventually, I buried my face against his chest so he wouldn’t see me cry again.
Eric
Like any city, Beech Grove had its share of police sirens. Unfortunately for me, I was in a situation where every siren was a potential cause for concern.
Every time I heard one, I was snapped out of a shallow slumber to listen intently. Was the siren getting closer? Were others joining it?
It was almost dawn when the faint sound of a siren drawing closer was joined by another, coming in the same direction. Then another.
I sat up and disentangled myself from Eliana, going to the window and parting the curtains to look outside. It was all still out there from this vantage point, but another siren joined the approaching cacophony. I went to the bag and recovered my gun, slipping it into my holster.
“Wake up.”
“Hmmm?”
“Wake up. Get up. Get up!”
Eliana sat upright. “What’s… oh!”
There were too many sirens to count now, and they were still getting closer. I grabbed the bag and the briefcase with one hand and Eliana with the other, pulling her to her feet and racing to the door.
Red and blue lights flashed on the curtains behind us as we dashed into the hallway. Eliana instinctively went to the left, towards where we’d come from, but I pulled her to the right, towards the fire escape.
We sprinted down the empty hallway, then took a left towards the back of the building, where the fire escape was. I hit it at high speed and it flew open, setting off the alarm.
The street was empty, and I’d take that over a hail of bullets any day. We raced down the single flight of steps and on to the sidewalk, while at the front of the motel it sounded like every cop in the city was trying to be the first into the parking lot to make the arrest of the century.
I tried to look everywhere at once as we ran. Really, we’d been lucky that Vito hadn’t gone public earlier, but I hadn’t expected anybody to have made the connection with us and the news story, given how few people had seen us in total.
The only person who had a lengthy look at me was the woman at the front desk. Maybe she’d just been finishing her shift when we arrived, and then saw the news this morning at home when she woke up. It was impossible to say, but I thought we were a little hard done by to be identified so quickly.
Up ahead I saw a car parked at the side of the road and put on a burst of speed to try to get to it as quickly as possible. Eliana was running her heart out, and being half dragged by me, when a police cruiser came out of the road to our right, cutting us off, and I just about went flying over the top of the hood.
I let go of Eliana’s hand and had my gun out in a flash, pointing at the driver, screaming at them to show me their fucking hands. In the dim early-morning light, I saw some hands come up.
It wasn’t until I ripped the door open that I saw it was a lone female officer in the driver’s seat, looking like maybe it was the first shift in her short career that she’d been given the all-clear to ride alone. Lucky for me, but not so much for her.
“Keep your fucking hands up!”
I dropped the bag and briefcase too. Reaching in with my newly freed hand, I took her gun away, while keeping my own out of her reach, and stood up again.
I kept my gun trained on her. “Slowly release your seatbelt and get your hand back up. Don’t you fucking do anything stupid.”
“Sir, I want you to think about what you’re doing, you’re-”
“Shut the fuck up and get out!”
“OK! OK!”
She slowly, over the course of a geological time-scale as far as I was concerned, released her seatbelt. I stuffed her gun in my pocket and grabbed her by the front of the shirt to speed her exit up, dragging her out and shoving her away from the car.
“Back up! Back the fuck up!” I looked at Eliana. “Get in.”
My quasi-captive circled around and I heard her opening the passenger door.
“Run away,” I said to the rookie cop. “Run as if you’ve got a bullet chasing you, motherfucker.”
“Just stay calm and-”
I fired a shot that her ballistics team would have to dig out of the wall behind her in a few hours, close enough that she would have felt it whistling past. That made her forget all about her Negotiations 101 class back at the academy and she was running for the hills.
After a few seconds she was far enough away that she couldn’t interfere, and getting farther with every passing moment. I holstered my gun and picked up the bags, shoving them in on top of Eliana and getting behind the steering wheel.
I floored it and got us moving away from the motel as quickly as I could, at least out of ear shot of all those other sirens. A glance in the rear view mirror made my heart freeze.
Taking one hand off the wheel to reach for my gun, I turned my head to look at the owner of the eye-whites I’d seen in the rear view mirror. What I saw there gave me pause.
I looked in the direction I was driving at breakneck speed and blinked a few times, then turned back again. In the back seat was a man, on the large side, dressed in drag, with his heavily-made-up face frozen in a mask of horror.
“Who the fuck are you!” I yelled, my gun now free from the holster, unnecessary though it was after the initial shock.
“Please man! I was just out… s-suckin’ dicks for a few bucks! I got no beef with you!”
The falsetto voice was wildly out of place with his size, but I couldn’t believe the high-pitched scream when I whipped the car around a left corner and sent him tumbling around in the back. It was enough to dislodge the blue-haired wig and reveal the hair-net underneath when I glanced in the mirror again.
Eliana was losing it in the passenger seat, laughing so much she might have to stitch up her own sides before this was done. I shook my head and couldn’t help but let out a quiet chuckle in disbelief either.
They call me in when the job is supposed to be clean and clinical. Now here I was racing a stolen police car through the streets of the city, lights still flashing because I didn’t know how to shut them down, with the kidnapped daughter of a Presidential candidate in the passenger seat laughing her ass off, and a cross-dressing prostitute in the back starting to pray loudly for his life.
Sometimes if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. What I really needed to do was get another car, before they called in a helicopter.
The radio crackled to life. “Car two-eleven, turn back, the Stodfell Motel is in the other direction, over.”
Since the officer of The Good Ship Two-Eleven was female, I was going to ignore it, but Eliana grabbed the handset before I could even fathom why.
“Negative, dispatch, I’ve spotted a possible forty-eight-niner-zero-niner in progress and I’m in pursuit.”
“Negative, Two-Eleven, your assistance at Stodfell is a priority,”
In the back seat, the drag queen was trying to yell to get the dispatcher’s attention. “Please send help! I’ll never suck another dick, I promise!”
“Never’s a long time, sweetheart!” Eliana said, then pressed the button on the handset again. “Negative dispatch. Not on my watch. Not in my city. The good people of Beech Grove deserve better.”
There was a pause long enough that I thought the dispatcher might have finished her shift, but then the tentative voice came through, sounding like maybe she was even more of a rookie than the officer I’d commandeered this vehicle from.
“That’s… a possible instance of a marriage between cousins… in progress?”
“Possibly more than one, ma’am. There are a lot of people on that truck.”
A car was coming at us from the other direction and I slammed on the brakes while twisting the wheel, sending us into a half spin in front of it. The guy in the back flew from one side of the seat to the other and hit the door with a deep grunt unlike anything that had come out of him up to that point.
“Who is this?” asked the dispatcher, but I interrupted before Eliana could reply.
“Out, let’s go.”
I holstered my gun, grabbed the bags, and stepped out. I held up my hand as if I was holding identification and then stuffed nothing into my pocket as I ran over to the other car, which turned out to be a 1970s-era Ford.
The window was coming down as I opened the door. “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to commandeer this vehicle for official police business.”
In a daze, the man stepped out of what was no doubt his pride and joy. Eliana went to the passenger side.
“Hey… what’s wrong with your car?” he asked.
“Nothing, it’s yours,” I said, hopping in.
I floored it again, laying down some rubber as I turned the car around its owner and headed in the direction we’d been going. This was the quickest way to the interstate and, so far, there weren’t any helicopters involved, which was a great mercy, but I’d want to change cars again before too long, once we were more than a stone’s throw away from the greatest concentration of law enforcement in the city.
In the meantime, I tried to wrap my head around the ridiculousness of what had just happened. Definitely one that would win a round of drinks at the office Christmas party.
“Is that a smile on your face?” Eliana asked. It was. “Is Mr. Serious having some fun?”
Without answering, I reached over and curled my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into a kiss while I kept one eye on the road. Holy shit, what a week.
“That’s my girl,” I said, when our lips parted.
“That’s my man.”
Eliana
The first car we took after the police cruiser had a bench seat in front and I spent some of the time just resting my head on his shoulder and watching the road get eaten up in front of us by the old V8. At one point, the road was dead-straight all the way to the horizon. I wished it went all the way around the world and connected with itself so this trip would never end.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t what happened. After 2 changes of car, taking advantage of fresh tanks of gas almost as much as covering our tracks, Eric drove until just after midnight. He finally pulled into a quiet street just outside of Anchorville and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“This is as good as it gets for tonight. No forests around this part of the world. Fuck, I’m tired. How are you holding up?”
“Just peachy. Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?” I said without enthusiasm.
“Yep. Hopefully after that we can spend a few days at least without running for our lives.”
“If we still have lives,” I muttered.
Eric lifted my chin towards him. “You will.”
In comparison with the meal from last night the fare was pretty bland today. The last of our original snacks and some apples we found in the car before this one went down quickly and then we climbed into the back seat.
This one was even more cramped than the last car we had slept in, but I welcomed the confined space that meant we had to squeeze together as tightly as possible. His arms were wrapped around me, his body pressed against me, and I tried to block out everything that might happen tomorrow.
The fact that I might die tomorrow wasn’t making me as frantic for one last session of hard sex as I thought it would. I was a little confused by that, why wasn’t I making the most of my time anymore?
You are. Just enjoy it.
My brow knitted as my own voice in my head seemed to be aware of something that my conscious mind wasn’t. I worried at it for a while and it dawned on me.
I was in the arms of the man I loved. I fucking loved him. What better use of time was there? My own internal voice praised me.
There you go. Feel him. Savor it. Remember this moment. If it all goes to shit tomorrow, close your eyes and make sure this is the last thing you think about. The sex was great, I was there, but it’s these moments you’ll want to take with you. He’s holding you, he sees you…
I swore I’d stay awake all night, stretch this moment out forever, but I was wrong. The voice turned into a lullaby and the thoughts turned into dreams. Maybe Eric was right about Jace, or maybe I was falling asleep for the last time.
* * *
I had a dream I was on a beach with Eric, nobody was in sight, we had the whole place to ourselves. The wind whooshed through the palm trees and the waves were crashing on white sand so bright it was almost too much to look at.
There was a bright pink flower in my hair, I could barely catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye, and I had a similarly colored drink in my hand, ice-cold to help combat the sun, and with a frosting of sugar around the rim. Eric was just emerging from the ocean, the salt water dripping off his chiseled body.
He walked closer and closer, but he never made it out of the sea. The nearer he came, the further up the beach the waves crashed. They came louder with every step and the sun went behind a cloud.
I squealed a little, spilling my drink in the scramble to pick up our towels and a picnic basket. Those waves… they were so loud. The last one crested over me and crashed down with ear-splitting volume.
The water wasn’t cold… in fact, it wasn’t water. Broken glass sprayed down on my face and lower legs and several voices yelled at once as I was snapped back to a confusing reality of noise and movement.
Eric erupted into motion and I was flung forward into the rear foot-wells as hands and guns reached inside the car. The rear window was smashed in as well and more shouting voices came through there too.
I couldn’t make out what anybody was saying, aside from a constant stream of swearing, in the turmoil. Eric was dragged out of the window so fast it might have been an alien abduction for all I could tell.
Lights shone in the car and I finally found my voice, letting out a terrified scream as I was blinded by the glare. Rough hands grabbed me by the hair and shirt, dragging me out the same way Eric had gone.
I was dropped unceremoniously on the ground for a second and saw Eric slumped on his side near the rear wheel of our car, bleeding from his head before a black hood was placed over it and men began to hog-tie him.
“Eric!” I screamed.
“Shut up, bitch!”
I was rolled on to my front and had cable ties pulled cruelly tight on my wrists and ankles before I was carried along behind the unresponsive Eric. They brought us a long way back in the direction of the main road before we came to their cars and they stuffed both of us into one of the trunks.
With my hands tied behind me, and a hood over his face, I couldn’t tell if Eric was breathing or not. I tried to shuffle into a position where I could feel his chest moving, but the space and our positions were just too awkward.
Acrid fear burned in my throat as panic set in. I couldn’t hear him taking any breaths over my own frantic noises and the voices outside muffled by the lid of the trunk. I started screaming for help, but nobody in earshot gave a fuck.
“When you were a kid, did you always want to be a murderer?” I asked.
Eric laughed and the bed shook. It was music to my ears. “No. First, I wanted to be a dog when I grew up.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “What kind?”
“I’m not sure. Nothing you could fit into a handbag at least. How about you? Wait… doctor, of course.”
“Or nurse. When did you give up on your dream to be a dog?”
“About six, I guess. Then I wanted to make suitcases like my dad.”
“You can make a living making suitcases?”
“Sort of. We didn’t have much, but we lived. He made some really nice stuff, but it’s all antique and antique-style. Who knows how you end up with the interests you end up with? That’s his. He’s a good man.”
“What’s that like?” I asked.
“What’s what like?”
“To have a father who’s a good man.”
“It’s… irreplaceable.”
I cast my eyes down as low as his neck for a second, then looked back up. “What are you going to do after… this? Kidnap some other poor girl and take advantage of your rugged good looks again?”
“No. I need a vacation after this. Besides, I’d rather go out and kill somebody who had it coming and then get paid for it. You’re a special… case. After it’s over, maybe you’d…”
“What?”
“Maybe you’d want to stick around. With me.”
My heart thundered and soared into the air for a few glorious seconds. In his arms anything seemed possible.
“You won’t… get sick of me?” my lip trembled.
“No.”
“Would you be… proud of me?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell everyone… that’s my girl?”
“Everyone. Except the Secret Service if your dad wins the election.”
I gave him a smile that quickly faltered. “Is it even possible?”
“It’s possible if you want it to be possible.”
“But… Barlow. Nobody talks to me, but I hear things, you know? They talk about him like he’s the devil himself. They say he cuts off peoples’ heads and uses their skulls to drink their blood.”
“Uh… I’ve never seen him do that.”
“What did my father do to him?” I asked.
Eric paused for a long time. “He was involved, somehow, in killing Jace’s parents. Maybe he did it himself.”
I paused for even longer. “I’m dead.”
“He said he wouldn’t. I trust him. You sound scared. That’s a first from you.” Eric resumed stroking my cheek.
“I never had anything I cared about losing before.”
Looking up at him, I licked my lips and took a few deep breaths. There was an ‘L’ word that was trying to burst out of my mouth.
I wanted to say it to him while I still could, but it was as if my lips didn’t know how to make the right shapes. My tongue wouldn’t cooperate. A lifetime without it had left me unable to say it.
The emotion inflated itself painfully like a balloon in my windpipe, as if punishing me for keeping it bottled up, while I must have looked like a goldfish opening and closing my mouth in his arms. Eventually, I buried my face against his chest so he wouldn’t see me cry again.
Eric
Like any city, Beech Grove had its share of police sirens. Unfortunately for me, I was in a situation where every siren was a potential cause for concern.
Every time I heard one, I was snapped out of a shallow slumber to listen intently. Was the siren getting closer? Were others joining it?
It was almost dawn when the faint sound of a siren drawing closer was joined by another, coming in the same direction. Then another.
I sat up and disentangled myself from Eliana, going to the window and parting the curtains to look outside. It was all still out there from this vantage point, but another siren joined the approaching cacophony. I went to the bag and recovered my gun, slipping it into my holster.
“Wake up.”
“Hmmm?”
“Wake up. Get up. Get up!”
Eliana sat upright. “What’s… oh!”
There were too many sirens to count now, and they were still getting closer. I grabbed the bag and the briefcase with one hand and Eliana with the other, pulling her to her feet and racing to the door.
Red and blue lights flashed on the curtains behind us as we dashed into the hallway. Eliana instinctively went to the left, towards where we’d come from, but I pulled her to the right, towards the fire escape.
We sprinted down the empty hallway, then took a left towards the back of the building, where the fire escape was. I hit it at high speed and it flew open, setting off the alarm.
The street was empty, and I’d take that over a hail of bullets any day. We raced down the single flight of steps and on to the sidewalk, while at the front of the motel it sounded like every cop in the city was trying to be the first into the parking lot to make the arrest of the century.
I tried to look everywhere at once as we ran. Really, we’d been lucky that Vito hadn’t gone public earlier, but I hadn’t expected anybody to have made the connection with us and the news story, given how few people had seen us in total.
The only person who had a lengthy look at me was the woman at the front desk. Maybe she’d just been finishing her shift when we arrived, and then saw the news this morning at home when she woke up. It was impossible to say, but I thought we were a little hard done by to be identified so quickly.
Up ahead I saw a car parked at the side of the road and put on a burst of speed to try to get to it as quickly as possible. Eliana was running her heart out, and being half dragged by me, when a police cruiser came out of the road to our right, cutting us off, and I just about went flying over the top of the hood.
I let go of Eliana’s hand and had my gun out in a flash, pointing at the driver, screaming at them to show me their fucking hands. In the dim early-morning light, I saw some hands come up.
It wasn’t until I ripped the door open that I saw it was a lone female officer in the driver’s seat, looking like maybe it was the first shift in her short career that she’d been given the all-clear to ride alone. Lucky for me, but not so much for her.
“Keep your fucking hands up!”
I dropped the bag and briefcase too. Reaching in with my newly freed hand, I took her gun away, while keeping my own out of her reach, and stood up again.
I kept my gun trained on her. “Slowly release your seatbelt and get your hand back up. Don’t you fucking do anything stupid.”
“Sir, I want you to think about what you’re doing, you’re-”
“Shut the fuck up and get out!”
“OK! OK!”
She slowly, over the course of a geological time-scale as far as I was concerned, released her seatbelt. I stuffed her gun in my pocket and grabbed her by the front of the shirt to speed her exit up, dragging her out and shoving her away from the car.
“Back up! Back the fuck up!” I looked at Eliana. “Get in.”
My quasi-captive circled around and I heard her opening the passenger door.
“Run away,” I said to the rookie cop. “Run as if you’ve got a bullet chasing you, motherfucker.”
“Just stay calm and-”
I fired a shot that her ballistics team would have to dig out of the wall behind her in a few hours, close enough that she would have felt it whistling past. That made her forget all about her Negotiations 101 class back at the academy and she was running for the hills.
After a few seconds she was far enough away that she couldn’t interfere, and getting farther with every passing moment. I holstered my gun and picked up the bags, shoving them in on top of Eliana and getting behind the steering wheel.
I floored it and got us moving away from the motel as quickly as I could, at least out of ear shot of all those other sirens. A glance in the rear view mirror made my heart freeze.
Taking one hand off the wheel to reach for my gun, I turned my head to look at the owner of the eye-whites I’d seen in the rear view mirror. What I saw there gave me pause.
I looked in the direction I was driving at breakneck speed and blinked a few times, then turned back again. In the back seat was a man, on the large side, dressed in drag, with his heavily-made-up face frozen in a mask of horror.
“Who the fuck are you!” I yelled, my gun now free from the holster, unnecessary though it was after the initial shock.
“Please man! I was just out… s-suckin’ dicks for a few bucks! I got no beef with you!”
The falsetto voice was wildly out of place with his size, but I couldn’t believe the high-pitched scream when I whipped the car around a left corner and sent him tumbling around in the back. It was enough to dislodge the blue-haired wig and reveal the hair-net underneath when I glanced in the mirror again.
Eliana was losing it in the passenger seat, laughing so much she might have to stitch up her own sides before this was done. I shook my head and couldn’t help but let out a quiet chuckle in disbelief either.
They call me in when the job is supposed to be clean and clinical. Now here I was racing a stolen police car through the streets of the city, lights still flashing because I didn’t know how to shut them down, with the kidnapped daughter of a Presidential candidate in the passenger seat laughing her ass off, and a cross-dressing prostitute in the back starting to pray loudly for his life.
Sometimes if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. What I really needed to do was get another car, before they called in a helicopter.
The radio crackled to life. “Car two-eleven, turn back, the Stodfell Motel is in the other direction, over.”
Since the officer of The Good Ship Two-Eleven was female, I was going to ignore it, but Eliana grabbed the handset before I could even fathom why.
“Negative, dispatch, I’ve spotted a possible forty-eight-niner-zero-niner in progress and I’m in pursuit.”
“Negative, Two-Eleven, your assistance at Stodfell is a priority,”
In the back seat, the drag queen was trying to yell to get the dispatcher’s attention. “Please send help! I’ll never suck another dick, I promise!”
“Never’s a long time, sweetheart!” Eliana said, then pressed the button on the handset again. “Negative dispatch. Not on my watch. Not in my city. The good people of Beech Grove deserve better.”
There was a pause long enough that I thought the dispatcher might have finished her shift, but then the tentative voice came through, sounding like maybe she was even more of a rookie than the officer I’d commandeered this vehicle from.
“That’s… a possible instance of a marriage between cousins… in progress?”
“Possibly more than one, ma’am. There are a lot of people on that truck.”
A car was coming at us from the other direction and I slammed on the brakes while twisting the wheel, sending us into a half spin in front of it. The guy in the back flew from one side of the seat to the other and hit the door with a deep grunt unlike anything that had come out of him up to that point.
“Who is this?” asked the dispatcher, but I interrupted before Eliana could reply.
“Out, let’s go.”
I holstered my gun, grabbed the bags, and stepped out. I held up my hand as if I was holding identification and then stuffed nothing into my pocket as I ran over to the other car, which turned out to be a 1970s-era Ford.
The window was coming down as I opened the door. “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to commandeer this vehicle for official police business.”
In a daze, the man stepped out of what was no doubt his pride and joy. Eliana went to the passenger side.
“Hey… what’s wrong with your car?” he asked.
“Nothing, it’s yours,” I said, hopping in.
I floored it again, laying down some rubber as I turned the car around its owner and headed in the direction we’d been going. This was the quickest way to the interstate and, so far, there weren’t any helicopters involved, which was a great mercy, but I’d want to change cars again before too long, once we were more than a stone’s throw away from the greatest concentration of law enforcement in the city.
In the meantime, I tried to wrap my head around the ridiculousness of what had just happened. Definitely one that would win a round of drinks at the office Christmas party.
“Is that a smile on your face?” Eliana asked. It was. “Is Mr. Serious having some fun?”
Without answering, I reached over and curled my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into a kiss while I kept one eye on the road. Holy shit, what a week.
“That’s my girl,” I said, when our lips parted.
“That’s my man.”
Eliana
The first car we took after the police cruiser had a bench seat in front and I spent some of the time just resting my head on his shoulder and watching the road get eaten up in front of us by the old V8. At one point, the road was dead-straight all the way to the horizon. I wished it went all the way around the world and connected with itself so this trip would never end.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t what happened. After 2 changes of car, taking advantage of fresh tanks of gas almost as much as covering our tracks, Eric drove until just after midnight. He finally pulled into a quiet street just outside of Anchorville and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“This is as good as it gets for tonight. No forests around this part of the world. Fuck, I’m tired. How are you holding up?”
“Just peachy. Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?” I said without enthusiasm.
“Yep. Hopefully after that we can spend a few days at least without running for our lives.”
“If we still have lives,” I muttered.
Eric lifted my chin towards him. “You will.”
In comparison with the meal from last night the fare was pretty bland today. The last of our original snacks and some apples we found in the car before this one went down quickly and then we climbed into the back seat.
This one was even more cramped than the last car we had slept in, but I welcomed the confined space that meant we had to squeeze together as tightly as possible. His arms were wrapped around me, his body pressed against me, and I tried to block out everything that might happen tomorrow.
The fact that I might die tomorrow wasn’t making me as frantic for one last session of hard sex as I thought it would. I was a little confused by that, why wasn’t I making the most of my time anymore?
You are. Just enjoy it.
My brow knitted as my own voice in my head seemed to be aware of something that my conscious mind wasn’t. I worried at it for a while and it dawned on me.
I was in the arms of the man I loved. I fucking loved him. What better use of time was there? My own internal voice praised me.
There you go. Feel him. Savor it. Remember this moment. If it all goes to shit tomorrow, close your eyes and make sure this is the last thing you think about. The sex was great, I was there, but it’s these moments you’ll want to take with you. He’s holding you, he sees you…
I swore I’d stay awake all night, stretch this moment out forever, but I was wrong. The voice turned into a lullaby and the thoughts turned into dreams. Maybe Eric was right about Jace, or maybe I was falling asleep for the last time.
* * *
I had a dream I was on a beach with Eric, nobody was in sight, we had the whole place to ourselves. The wind whooshed through the palm trees and the waves were crashing on white sand so bright it was almost too much to look at.
There was a bright pink flower in my hair, I could barely catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye, and I had a similarly colored drink in my hand, ice-cold to help combat the sun, and with a frosting of sugar around the rim. Eric was just emerging from the ocean, the salt water dripping off his chiseled body.
He walked closer and closer, but he never made it out of the sea. The nearer he came, the further up the beach the waves crashed. They came louder with every step and the sun went behind a cloud.
I squealed a little, spilling my drink in the scramble to pick up our towels and a picnic basket. Those waves… they were so loud. The last one crested over me and crashed down with ear-splitting volume.
The water wasn’t cold… in fact, it wasn’t water. Broken glass sprayed down on my face and lower legs and several voices yelled at once as I was snapped back to a confusing reality of noise and movement.
Eric erupted into motion and I was flung forward into the rear foot-wells as hands and guns reached inside the car. The rear window was smashed in as well and more shouting voices came through there too.
I couldn’t make out what anybody was saying, aside from a constant stream of swearing, in the turmoil. Eric was dragged out of the window so fast it might have been an alien abduction for all I could tell.
Lights shone in the car and I finally found my voice, letting out a terrified scream as I was blinded by the glare. Rough hands grabbed me by the hair and shirt, dragging me out the same way Eric had gone.
I was dropped unceremoniously on the ground for a second and saw Eric slumped on his side near the rear wheel of our car, bleeding from his head before a black hood was placed over it and men began to hog-tie him.
“Eric!” I screamed.
“Shut up, bitch!”
I was rolled on to my front and had cable ties pulled cruelly tight on my wrists and ankles before I was carried along behind the unresponsive Eric. They brought us a long way back in the direction of the main road before we came to their cars and they stuffed both of us into one of the trunks.
With my hands tied behind me, and a hood over his face, I couldn’t tell if Eric was breathing or not. I tried to shuffle into a position where I could feel his chest moving, but the space and our positions were just too awkward.
Acrid fear burned in my throat as panic set in. I couldn’t hear him taking any breaths over my own frantic noises and the voices outside muffled by the lid of the trunk. I started screaming for help, but nobody in earshot gave a fuck.
