The Road To Deliverance

by James, Harper

  Cole was sitting very still and very quiet in the front seat. Like a mouse frozen under a cat’s paw. A vein throbbed in the side of his neck. His eyes were locked on the disappearing rear end of the police cruiser. He wasn’t even breathing. You dare smile. She’d leap over the seat, bite his nose off if he did.

  How the hell did he make that happen?

  How did he manage to distract her right when they were passing? Except she started it, not him. It was all her own, stupid fault. If she hadn’t tried to hit him, she’d be free. Or would she? She’d probably still be lying on the back seat staring at the ceiling. Not even knowing there was a police cruiser passing. She’d have been better off not knowing, not giving herself a hard time.

  He must have seen it before it passed. He was constantly alert, not one of those drivers who never use the mirror. He certainly played it well. Played her well.

  It didn’t make any difference either way now. They were long gone. But she wasn’t lying down again. And she wasn’t ever going to laugh again. Period.

  ‘I suppose you’re laughing to yourself inside.’

  Momentarily, anxiety and anger tightened up his face.

  ‘What do you expect me to say? No, I really wish they’d pulled us over. And I’d be lying on the ground with my hands cuffed—’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘—and my face in the dirt. And your foot in my balls from the look on your face.’

  ‘You got that right.’ She kicked the back of his seat. ‘Not just the once either.’

  ‘And you’d be saying, he kidnapped me, Officer, he kidnapped me and they’d be thinking ho, ho, ho, promotion time here we come and . . .’

  As he trailed off, she experienced a sudden, vivid flashback to the gas station washroom, the abject dismay on his face.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire. I can see your eyes in the mirror. I can see how much it doesn’t matter.’

  He didn’t say anything for a long while. Then he reached over, switched on the radio. The sound of Glen Campbell’s Gentle On My Mind filled the car. He cranked up the volume, but not so loud that she couldn’t hear what he said under his breath.

  ‘What do you care if it matters or not to the bastard who kidnapped you?’

  It was her turn to be quiet.

  Chapter 18

  ‘DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH thinking anyone’s on their way to cut you down.’

  The hood over Jay’s head was ripped away to reveal the gloating, disfigured face of the man whose voice was like an insistent finger poking awake the hateful thing that still lived deep inside him, sleeping, waiting patiently for a day such as today. Lucas. A man he’d called a friend a long time ago, had hoped never to see again, not on this side of the grave.

  He already had a good idea where they’d taken him before the hood came off. They’d hustled him downstairs into a basement. The smell was the first clue. Then the temperature. Looking around at his surroundings confirmed it. Polished concrete floor, white-tiled walls. A grid of heavy-duty metal girders overhead. Attached to it, three stainless-steel rails running the length of the room.

  Three rows of headless, skinned beef carcasses, hooves chopped off, hanging by meat hooks from the rails. And pride of place for himself. Front row, his bound wrists tied to a similar meat hook suspended from the center rail. Arms above his head, his ribs visible through his tightly-stretched shirt mirroring the beef ribs all around him.

  And, over at the side of the room, the tools of the butcher’s trade. Knives, cleavers, saws, hanging on the wall, everything in its place. No job too big. Or too small.

  Lucas walked around him, slapped the carcass immediately behind with his open palm a couple times like it was a favorite dog. He wiped his greasy hand in Jay’s hair.

  ‘Who’s got the gasoline?’

  Everybody hoped he was joking. Especially Jay. Because everybody knew exactly what he was talking about. It was why he looked like he did, after all. Most of them had been there. Including Jay. That’s why nobody laughed. Because there were plenty of spare hooks hanging from the rails.

  Something else they all knew—the gasoline might come later. But there’d be a lot of things happened first. All that hardware hanging on the wall wasn’t only for show.

  Jay wasn’t thinking about the hardware on the wall. He was thinking about gasoline.

  Because he still heard the guy’s voice in his dreams. Johnny Friday’s voice, begging, pleading.

  Johnny, a big shot in a rival black gang, not looking so big standing in the bed of Lucas’s pickup truck, exhaust fumes rising in the cold air. A noose around his neck, arms and legs shaking like freshly-killed meat.

  Lucas with a five-gallon jerry can in his hand.

  Another one of the guys, Bruno, fumbling with a road flare, manual dexterity shot to hell by alcohol and drugs.

  Lucas dousing Johnny’s fancy snakeskin shoes with gasoline. Singing at the top of his voice. Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit.

  Some of the other guys joined in, picking up the words as they went along. One big, excited lynching party. But not everybody had the stomach for it.

  Jay stepped forward, heart battering at his chest.

  Enough. You’ve had your fun.

  Grabbed hold of the jerry can. The two of them tugging it back and forth, back and forth. Like a couple of overgrown kids squabbling over a new toy.

  Back off, Jay.

  Behind them Bruno had the cap off the flare, striking pad exposed. Swiped the tip of the flare at it. Missed by a mile, dropped the flare in the grass under the pickup’s tailgate.

  Lucas jerking sharply at the can. Gasoline sloshing around inside, slopping out, coating their hands, the oily smell strong in the air.

  I. Said. Back. Off.

  Then a sharp pain in Jay’s shin as Lucas kicked him savagely. Losing his grip on the jerry can. Lucas stumbling backwards as the can slipped out of Jay’s slippery fingers. Caught his heel on a rock, landed hard on his ass.

  He kept hold of the jerry can. Up-ended it over his own head and shocked face. Gasoline in his eyes, in his mouth, soaking into his hoodie.

  Shock turning to terror.

  Bruno with the flare in his hand again, unaware of Lucas on the ground behind him. Swiping the tip across the striker like a giant match. Igniting it, an impossibly bright spear of hissing flame burning at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

  That’ll keep the other motorists from driving into you when you’re stuck on the shoulder in the middle of the night.

  Pretty damn good at setting gasoline alight too.

  Bruno waved it in front of his face, stared at it stupidly. Johnny Friday standing with the noose around his neck wasn’t stupid at all. He lashed out with his foot. Caught Bruno on the back of the hand with the pointy tip of his sodden shoe. Little droplets of gasoline flew everywhere on impact. Small bright explosions popped and crackled as they hit the flare’s flame.

  Bruno yelped in surprise, threw the spitting flare away from him like he’d been tricked into holding a warm dog turd.

  Time slowed.

  Everybody stared in horror at the flare flying gracefully through the air, turning base over brightly-burning tip, homing inexorably in on Lucas lying on the ground pawing at his stinging, blinded eyes. As if guided by some force of rough natural justice, an avenging angel allocating retribution where it was most due.

  And then everything went crazy.

  Whumph.

  Lucas’s whole head burst into a raging fireball, the gasoline-soaked fabric of his hoodie melting into his flesh.

  And Johnny Friday standing in the pickup. Singing his heart out. Like he wrote it.

  Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

  Yep, Jay still heard the guy’s voice in his dreams, woke with it still running through his mind some days, the beautiful voice that would give Billie Holiday a run for her money any day. He reckoned Lucas heard it every time he looke
d in a mirror too.

  Now a different voice snapped him back to the present. Lucas, tapping Jay’s cell phone against his leg as he walked around him.

  ‘We’re going to send Cole a message. Where’s the maricón?’

  Muffled snickers all round, heads turned towards the doorway where a guy stood, back from the rest of them, looking like he wanted to bury a cleaver in the top of Lucas’s head.

  ‘Gabriel. Come here.’

  The other guys parted as Gabriel came forward. Lucas threw the phone to him.

  ‘Do something useful for once in your life.’

  ‘Hey, Gabriel,’ Jay said.

  Gabriel nodded, didn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘Jay.’

  ‘You can talk to your boyfriend in a minute.’ Lucas puckered up his lips as he emphasized the word boyfriend. ‘Get this down.’

  He started dictating.

  Press one for . . .

  The words rolled off his tongue, slipped through the sneer on his lips. His eyes never left Jay’s. He waited for Gabriel to finish typing, his fingers flying across the small keypad.

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Gabriel thrust the phone towards him, his mouth turned down.

  ‘You don’t trust me?’

  Lucas looked at the other guys, made sure they were all paying attention.

  ‘Not in the showers.’

  He winked at them, got howls of laughter back.

  At least my head doesn’t look like a giant cock, Gabriel thought to himself, wishing he had the balls to say it aloud. He felt the weight of the straight razor in his pocket, felt the day coming when he’d put a slit in the top of Lucas’s shiny head, finish the effect.

  ‘How’s it sound?’ Lucas asked the line of grinning faces.

  Lots of enthusiastic head nods, appreciative murmurs. He grinned back at them.

  That’s why he was the man.

  ‘Hit that send button—no, wait.’

  Gabriel raised his head wearily, waited while the big man played to his audience, came up with another gem.

  ‘I want to add some more.’

  Miss the deadline for all the above.

  Chapter 19

  SARAH SCANNED THE CONVENIENCE store parking lot as they pulled in. She was wasting her time. If there’d been a hint of police or anybody else who might be able to help, he’d have driven on by. The lot was deserted apart from a rusting old pickup without any wheels, sitting on bricks over at the side of the lot, furthest away from the store. As soon as he saw it, he swung the wheel, headed for it.

  Like she knew he would.

  ‘Nice places you bring me to.’

  They came to a halt next to the pickup. He switched the ignition off. His hand hovered over the key ready to switch it back on.

  ‘We don’t have to get anything if you don’t want to. You’re only getting a sandwich anyway.’

  She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She didn’t want to wait any longer. Even if it was only a sandwich, it was better than nothing. So long as it didn’t end up being the last meal of a condemned man—or woman, in this case.

  ‘No, it’s lovely. But Cole . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Make sure you get them from the back of the cabinet. In places like this they put all the stale ones at the front.’

  He gave her a look like he’d learned something new, climbed out of the car. Then he leaned back in, gave her another lecture on the futility of trying to run away. Looking around the deserted lot, she didn’t need to be told twice.

  She watched him as he walked across the lot. He paused before he went in. Dug in his pocket, pulled out his cell phone. He didn’t put it to his ear. A text message. Even from across the lot, she saw his shoulders slump. A moment later, he raised the hand holding the phone, arm quivering like a bowstring, looking for all the world as if he was about to hurl it against the wall. Something made him think better of it. Stuffing it down into his back pocket, he stalked into the store. If the door hadn’t already been open, he’d have walked right through it.

  Movement registered in the periphery of her vision as she watched him disappear inside. Her head snapped around. A dark blue or black sedan pulled into the lot. She wasn’t a paranoid person—not before any of this happened anyway—but she’d have sworn it was the same Ford Fusion she saw when they stopped for gas.

  It was too far away to be certain. There are a lot of dark-colored sedans on the road, lots of them Fords. How likely is it that one of them pulls into a gas station without filling up and then stops at a convenience store and nobody gets out to buy something? Or even to stretch their legs.

  She was wasting time thinking about it.

  Later, she might re-evaluate whether that time was wasted or not, might even have chosen to pay more attention.

  She had more pressing problems. She went to work immediately, bending forward, making a start on the knots in the rope around her ankles. Like before, they’d worked themselves tighter over the past hours. With her hands tied and her fingers almost completely numb it was hard going. Pretty much impossible in fact. She glanced up a couple of times. He was still inside the store. What was taking so long? She didn’t suppose it was because he was having difficulty choosing from the huge range of mouth-watering food on offer.

  Finally, she made some progress on the knots, got one end loose at the expense of two broken nails. She was busy prying the other end free when the whole car rocked with a noise like somebody jumped on the roof. She shrieked. Jerked upright, banged her head into the seat in front. Cole’s face glared at her through the window on the side furthest from the store. He’d snuck out when she wasn’t paying attention, circled around to catch her unawares.

  Anger twisted his face into something unrecognizable. Any second, he’d rip the door off its hinges, drag her out. She was wrong. He climbed in the front. Threw a plastic bag on the passenger seat. Then he backed out, straightened up, drove back alongside the pickup—on the other side this time, putting it between them and the store.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The words rode out on a rising tide of fear as he climbed out again. ‘Cole! What are you doing?’

  She knew exactly what he was doing. It only made it worse. And he was serious this time.

  The panic kicked in with a vengeance. Back of her neck cold and clammy, a sharp pain across her chest. Except this time there was no vague sense of terror, of impending doom. There was nothing vague about it. She was right back in the four-foot crawl space, a hysterical scream on her lips.

  Cole yanked the door open, snapped her mercifully back to the present. Grabbed hold of her upper arm, pulled roughly. She leaned back away from him, threw all her weight into it.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sarah? I thought you were dying to get out of the car. Now you won’t budge. Don’t you want to stretch your legs?’

  He pulled harder. She leaned back more, wedged her feet against the center column between the doors.

  ‘Let go of me,’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want to get out.’

  ‘You should have thought about that before you tried to untie yourself.’

  She was lying almost flat along the back seat. He was halfway in the car, his body hovering over hers. Anybody would have thought they were about to make out in the back. Nothing was further from her mind. If she knew how, she’d have sat up, butted him right on the nose.

  He saw her thinking about it. Let go of her arm. She fell flat on her back, head crashing into the door behind her. Then he clamped his arms around her lower legs and pulled.

  ‘Nice calves,’ he whispered under his breath.

  She thrashed and twisted in his grip, tried to kick him off. She was wasting her time. It was like a grizzly bear had hold of her, dragging her back to the cave for the cubs to eat.

  ‘Stop squirming around.’

  His breathing was labored, face flushed. A warm glow of satisfaction filled her, watching his chest heave with exertion as she struggled h
arder still, tried to bring her knees up into his face. Thrusting her hips, she forced a grunt out of him as his head smacked into the door frame with a satisfying thump. They’d see who ran out of steam first.

  She heard him laugh. It didn’t stop him pulling, dragging her slowly but steadily across the seat. She threw her arms up and behind her head, tried to find the arm rest. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly. She got one hand hooked underneath. Then the other. They stayed like that a long moment, her body stretched out like she was on the rack in a medieval torture chamber.

  Her aching fingers were giving way already. He suddenly stopped pulling. With the pressure gone, she relaxed automatically. It was what he wanted. He gave a sharp jerk, broke her fingers away.

  ‘Still time to stop and get out like a lady.’ Then he laughed again. ‘Scrub that. Too late already.’

  What the hell was so funny? Then a sudden gust of wind brought her up to speed with a jolt.

  She looked down at her legs. With the panic at the prospect of being put in the trunk and all the furious exertion of wriggling and writhing, she hadn’t noticed her skirt riding up her thighs as he dragged her across the seat. It was right below her ass.

  Running her eyes down her body she took in the crumpled skirt, then the smooth skin of her bare thighs, her bloodied knees and finally, only inches beyond that, Cole’s stupidly grinning face, his hair in disarray as if his dad had just come by and tousled it.

  ‘I was going to say you’ve got some balls.’ His voice caught in his throat. ‘I can see from here that’s definitely not the case.’

  ‘Idiot.’

  She put a lot of heartfelt feeling into that one little word.

  They stayed like that for a couple of moments until she realized he’d be happy staying there all day if she didn’t do something. The exertion and the laughter had expunged the anger the text message had caused.

  ‘Put me in the trunk if it makes you feel any better,’ she said, confident he wouldn’t do it now his anger was spent.

  ‘You can eat your sandwich first.’ He released his grip on her legs, dragged himself out of the car. She wanted to slap the smirk off his face as he pulled the knots tight again before pushing her legs back down into the footwell.