Escape, the Complete Trilogy

by David Antocci

  “Stop the car!” Abby continued to scream.

  “I can’t. I’ve just got the wheel!” Donny shot back.

  “Not you, the driver! Stop the fucking car!”

  Billy came to in the backseat and took in the scene. It took a moment before he realized what was going on, but he couldn’t find his gun. He reached forward, grabbing Donny around the neck. Abby didn’t let this go on more than a second before she shifted herself and kicked him in the ribs with the hard heel of her right boot, breaking one rib instantly. Billy screamed and let go of Donny to grab his side.

  Donny reached for the wheel again, but it was too late as the car finally jumped off the side of the road and crashed into a hundred-year-old maple. The driver had buckled in, but the airbag had exploded in his face, leaving him unconscious. Either that or it was the lack of oxygen from Abby’s rope around his neck. Either way he appeared to still be breathing and would probably be fine.

  Billy wasn’t so lucky. He wasn’t buckled and smashed into the front seat headfirst.

  Donny shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Abby, you OK?”

  Her answer came in the form of a grunt.

  “Hold on,” he said as he stumbled from the car. Having whacked his knee on the glove box, he was limping a bit. He made his way to the rear of the car, where he helped Abby get out. He looked her up and down. “You alright?”

  She nodded her head. “Yeah, I’m OK.” She walked a few steps forward and looked in through the broken window on the driver’s door. He wasn’t moving. She placed her fingers on his artery to make sure there was a pulse. Satisfied that he would live, she looked into the backseat. “What about Billy-boy back there?”

  Donny didn’t even need to go back to look—he could hear him moaning. “He’s hurt, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on,” Abby said. “We’ve got to get away from here.”

  Donny blinked, trying to clear his mind, and looked into her eyes. He was hard-pressed to catch up with what was going on. Abby had been dead for nearly a year, but now here she was in the flesh ordering him around. She was right about one thing: he helped her get away from Rosso’s, and the men back at the house had obviously figured that out. “Alright, follow me.”

  They took off running down the road, staying close to the tree line so they could duck for cover if another car came along.

  11

  A HALF-MILE DOWN THE ROAD, Donny and Abby ducked into the trees, where he led them through a path and into a large, open, unlit area. The moon wasn’t very bright, but he seemed to know the way. Abby followed him to a metal building, where he entered a code into the keypad. They entered, and Donny hit the lights, the flickering fluorescent bulbs lighting up a shabby office with faded green walls.

  “Where are we?”

  “The landfill.” He looked around and found a large first aid kit tucked away under a bunch of junk and a half-dead potted plant on top of an aging, gray metal file cabinet. “Sit down,” he said, indicating an old office chair.

  Abby did sit, happily. She had been running on pure adrenaline for the past twenty-four hours, ever since she got the call Ava had been taken. It was starting to wear off, and she was hitting the wall.

  She had various cuts and scrapes and a particularly nasty graze above her right eyebrow, probably from the car accident. It all happened pretty fast, but she seemed to remember hitting her face on the seat in front of her.

  They sat silent while Donny cleaned her up with rubbing alcohol and gauze. There was so much to say, and so many questions, that neither knew where to start.

  Donny finally broke the silence. “We shouldn’t stay here long. This is where we were heading in the first place. The men back at the house know that. There could be some guys on their way here right now. The sooner we get out, the better.”

  Abby nodded her head. “I thought you were getting out of all this. After you helped me get away from Bryce, you said you were going to get out yourself.”

  “I thought you were dead,” he said, looking at her. “It’s kinda like seeing a ghost.”

  Looking into his eyes, she smiled—truly smiled—for the first time in months.

  He finished up, her cuts and scrapes cleaned, and packed the first aid kit away. “So... what the hell is going on Abby? What happened back at the house?”

  “I’m after Bryce. I figured Rosso would know where he is. So, I knocked on the door... loudly.”

  Donny shook his head, almost chuckling at her casualness. “I knew you changed on Trial Island. I could tell just watching you. I remember saying, ‘I’m looking at Abby, but that’s not Abby.’ The way you carry yourself now... and you carry a gun? Where was this badass two years ago when I had to all but tie you up and throw you in a trunk to get you to leave Bryce?”

  “I guess I found myself.”

  “You’re damned right you found yourself. You just single-handedly took down the biggest crime family in the Midwest.”

  “He took Ava,” she said. “That was all the motivation I needed.”

  “Bryce took her?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it. I’ve been trying to track him down for the last ten months, but haven’t had any luck. The investigator is one of the best, but even he couldn’t get anything. The family is locked up tight. But I knew Rosso would know, so I went straight to the source.”

  “I heard a rumor that he was still alive, but never saw him or anything. Just rumors. So what did Rosso say?”

  “Not much,” Abby said. “He was experiencing severe cardiac arrest at the time. The only thing I got was that Bryce is laundering money somewhere upstate.”

  “He just told you this?”

  “He took some convincing,” Abby conceded.

  “You really are on a rampage, beating information out of a sick, old man. I guess I would be, too, if he put a hit on me.”

  “I didn’t beat him. I had some information he wanted, so it was an exchange, so to speak. And he didn’t put a hit on me. That was a cover story. It was Bryce who attacked us on my sister’s lawn last year and,” she made air quotes, “killed me.”

  Donny was still getting over his shock. “It was a pretty convincing story. You were about the only thing in the news for weeks. When it came out that you were a mob wife, the media spent most of the summer running ‘Where’s Abby’ pieces. When you turned up dead on your sister’s lawn at the hands of a mob hitman, everything just blew up.”

  “I know,” Abby said. “I’m alive, remember? I watched it myself. Kind of surreal, actually.” Abby shifted gears, uncomfortably glancing out the window, unable to see anything in the darkness beyond. “We should get out of here.”

  Donny looked at the clock. They had been there about fifteen minutes, and he figured they were essentially living on borrowed time at this point. “You’re right, let’s go.”

  Abby picked out a set of keys hanging by the door labeled for one of the pickup trucks parked on the side of the building, Donny shook his head. “No, that road we came down is the one way in and out of here, and this landfill is the only thing down here. If anyone comes looking for us, they’ll be coming down that road.”

  “I guess we’re on foot then,” Abby said as she hit the lights.

  As soon as she did, the unmistakable glow of headlights bouncing in the distance dimly illuminated the office through the front windows.

  “Come on, through the back door.” Donny grabbed her arm, and they raced out the back, careful to keep the building between themselves and the car coming into the complex as they made short work of the distance to the tree line.

  Once they were in the trees, Abby pulled her night-vision monocular from her belt to look back toward the office building a few hundred yards away. All the lights were off, but she was able to see a couple of men walking around the building. One of them found the back door ajar and called another one over. Abby smiled for a moment as they bravely flung the door open and shot blindly into the space, hitting nothing but old office furniture.
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  “What’s going on?” Donny asked even though the sound of gunfire made it clear.

  “They’re looking for us in the building,” Abby said.

  “They must have seen the lights on inside before we shut them off. It won’t be long before they figure out we’re not in there and come looking for us. We should go.”

  “You’re right,” Abby said, taking a last look at the men.

  Just before she took the monocular from her eye, they must have figured out that the building was empty because someone inside hit the switch for the outdoor floodlights, lighting up the area around the building like Times Square.

  “Son of a bitch,” Abby cursed, ripping the monocular from her eye and rubbing it. The sudden burst of light had blinded her momentarily in the right eye.

  “You OK?” Donny said, catching her as she stumbled a bit.

  “Yeah, just glad these aren’t binoculars, or I wouldn’t be able to see through either eye right now.” She blinked her eye purposefully. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” he said, looking past her, “because they’re searching the yard for us, so let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Donny held onto Abby’s hand to help guide her as they ran through the trees. It only took a couple of minutes for her to see straight again, but she was enjoying the closeness with Donny she hadn’t felt with another person in a very long time. She held tightly onto his hand as they dashed toward safety.

  * * *

  As they came out the other side of the woods surrounding the landfill, Donny got his bearings and said they should go right. He knew of an auto repair business not far down the road. It was an old-school garage that patched tires, did oil changes, and got fifteen-year-old clunkers running again on the cheap. Nothing fancy.

  As Donny suspected, it only took them three tries to find an older, beat-up, American-made pile of garbage with the key left under the mat. With that, the pair set off to get out of suburbia and back to the city where they could blend in and figure out their next move.

  “How long is the ride?” Abby asked.

  “During rush hour­—close to an hour and a half. Right now, with no traffic and going the speed limit so we don’t get pulled over in a hot car, probably forty minutes or so.” He looked over at her. “You look beat. Why don’t you close your eyes?”

  “Thanks, I might,” Abby said, watching him watch the road.

  Donny stayed quiet for a little over five minutes, hoping she might sleep, but when it was clear she was still awake, he asked, “So what’s next?”

  “I’ve got to get my hands on a phone,” Abby said. “Rosso’s information doesn’t do me much good, but I’m hoping it makes sense to the investigator looking for Bryce.”

  “Well, here.” Donny fished the phone from his pocket.

  “No, I can’t risk the call getting traced back to you. I’ll get a burner in the city.”

  Donny said nothing, but the puzzled look on his face told Abby he didn’t understand.

  “A disposable phone,” Abby said. “J... um, my investigator, calls them that. The cheap, pre-paid ones you use and then burn them, usually by snapping the SIM card and throwing it in the garbage so that it can’t be traced back to anyone. I’ll buy a couple at some random convenience store once we’re in the city.”

  Donny shook his head, amazed at the transformed woman sitting next to him.

  They rode in silence for a couple more minutes until Abby broke it. “Why didn’t you get out?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “That’s a lie,” Abby said. “We were in L.A. You had all your fake ID’s, cash, and everything you needed to walk away. You were the last person I expected to run into at Rosso’s place.”

  He sighed. “Alright. Well, I know I never said it, but you had to know how I felt about you.”

  He looked at her, and their eyes met.

  “Of course I knew, but I also knew you’d be dead if either of us acted on it.”

  “I still cared about you. I still...”

  “No,” she said sharply. “We cannot. If you need to, pull the car over and let me out now, but I’ve got shit to get done Donny.”

  He almost chuckled. “You can’t tell me you didn’t feel the same way. You kissed me back after we signed the Trial Island papers.”

  She allowed herself a small smile. “It was just for appearances. You were pretending to be my husband. How would it have looked if I didn’t give you a proper kiss goodbye?”

  He smiled back. “Alright, that’s bullshit.” He thought a minute. “Anyway, forget about it. I’m not sayin’ I love you, or we need to pick up where we left off. You wanna know the truth? I’m kinda pissed off.”

  “Good,” Abby said, trying to be cold.

  “I mean, the hoops I went through to get you and Ava out, and now you’re right back here? What the fuck!”

  “I didn’t want to come back here, and it’s not exactly like we’re in the same situation. I appreciate what you did. I really do.”

  Donny had a lot to say but wasn’t about to give Abby the satisfaction of hearing it. He was pissed off, and rightfully so. Still, the conversation that continued in his head revealed more to him that he was willing to say aloud. What I’m sayin’ is that when you left, I lost you. I planned to get out, but how could I lose you and everything else in my life too? This is all I know. I could have left with you. I would have followed you anywhere in the world. But without you, what did I have? I dunno. It sounds stupid, but I just couldn’t lose everything.

  “Go ahead and pretend you’re upset,” Abby said, interrupting his thoughts, “but you’re helping me now, and I appreciate it. I owe you.”

  Donny nodded his head. “You know what? Call me a sucker for those beautiful brown eyes of yours, but I saw you, and there I was again, two years ago like not a day had passed. Of course I’m gonna help you. And what am I gonna lose? You killed Monte, my piece-of-shit boss. Rosso’s dead. You think I wasn’t ready for this to happen someday? I’ve got money stashed away, ID’s, whatever. I can pick up and go whenever I need to. With the old man sick these last few months, the FBI is hot and heavy to move in the second he kicks the bucket, and I wasn’t gonna stick around to see where the chips fall, if you know what I mean.”

  “Makes sense,” Abby said, drifting off a little, watching the road.

  After a few minutes, Donny chuckled and said, “Burner.”

  “What’s that?” Abby asked, not quite hearing him.

  “I just can’t get over it. A few years back, Bryce beat you within an inch of your life, and you did nothing about it. Now you’re some kind of commando, talking about burner phones, and taking out a dozen men like it’s nothing. Is this just all Trial Island?”

  “No,” Abby sighed. “No, the island training was all about survival. Well, mostly about survival. They figure it’s inevitable fights are going to break out, so they teach you a lot of self-defense. I was small and expected to get picked on, so I took it a step further and got some extra personal fight training.”

  “That was kind of obvious, watching the show. But where’s the rest come from? Where did you learn to shoot a gun?”

  Abby had gone back and forth in her head over the past couple hours on how much to trust Donny. She was skeptical of most people, but were it not for Donny getting her away from Bryce, she would have been dead by now. If there were anyone in the world she should trust, it would be him.

  “This guy JJ,” Abby said. “He’s my investigator. I didn’t just come here on a whim. While he’s been looking for Bryce since he shot me and murdered Eric, I’ve also had him training me on all this stuff. He’s ex-military, some sort of special ops,” Abby said, pretending she didn’t remember all the details. “I’ve been in rehab for my shoulder and leg, but on my own time I’ve done some personal rehab, learning to shoot guns and getting familiar with urban-combat stuff. Bryce went to great lengths to kill me. I intend to track him down and make sure he never gets that opportunity again.�
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  Donny let out a whistle. “I’ve heard the phrase to beware the wrath of a woman scorned, but this is some next-level shit.” He took his eyes off the road to smile at her. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  Abby dozed off a bit as they drove, but her mind never truly shut off. She thought about the years of friendship she’d had with Donny. She remembered the first time she had really noticed him. It was the night Bryce snapped and tried to kill Ava as an infant. He beat the hell out of Abby as she wrapped herself around the baby to protect her. She always thought Bryce would have killed them both that night had Donny not burst into the room to tear him away.

  From that day on, Donny always watched. He was a silent protector, always nearby if needed. Abby grew very fond of him, and while she had never admitted as much to him, she had dreamt of running off with him on many of the nights Bryce didn’t come home.

  Ava absolutely adored him; she always lit up when he was around. He was the only positive male role model she ever had in her life. Children are an excellent judge of character, and going by Ava’s judgment, Donny was a keeper.

  He made all of the arrangements to get Ava out of the country. It had been so long since she had thought about how much he had done for her over the years, all for the love of a woman he knew he couldn’t have. The way he kissed her when they parted, there was no mistaking his feelings.

  Abby opened her eyes and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. He looked at her and smiled. It was a comfortable smile as if they hadn’t just gone the better part of two years without seeing each other. As if no time had passed at all. They were just friends on a road trip together.

  She wanted to say Thank you, thank you for everything, but she didn’t. No words were exchanged, but she knew that he knew.

  They pulled off the highway and into a small plaza with an all-night diner next to a twenty-four hour convenience store. Abby got three phones at the store and activated them over some much-needed comfort food in the back corner of the diner. She stuffed two in her pocket and handed one to Donny. “This is how we’ll communicate. I don’t want a stupid thing like a phone call to get us caught.”