The Road To Deliverance

by James, Harper

  She realized she hadn’t noticed the phone stop ringing, knew he was right.

  ‘You’ll have to do it.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You know what I was saying before we were attacked—about a screwed-up ending to a screwed-up story?’

  At that moment all she wanted was for it to be her who’d been shot—then she’d curl up and die and not have to listen anymore. She kept on nodding. It was all she was good for.

  ‘Yeah, well, Jay doesn’t know it either. I need you to tell him. And I want you to tell him face to face, okay. Not over the phone.’

  He ran the back of his fingers down her cheek.

  ‘You don’t get off that easily.’

  Then he told her the screwed-up ending to the whole screwed-up story.

  She listened in silence, too dazed to say anything. She wanted to touch him, was scared to, scared in case he shrugged her off, because who he really wanted to comfort him was Jay, not somebody he met two days ago.

  She did it anyway.

  Ran her fingers through his hair, cupped his head in her hand. She couldn’t have said a word if her life depended on it. Her throat was so thick there was barely room for the oxygen she was heaving in to go down, let alone words to come out the other way. They stayed like that a long time.

  ‘I’m taking you back with me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you here.’

  ‘I like it here.’

  He rubbed the back of his head into her lap. As if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  ‘Yeah? I’m not sure about your grasp of the female anatomy, but if I go, that bit goes too. And your head’ll be in the mud.’

  ‘Mud sounds good.’

  There wasn’t any point arguing. Even with a bullet in him. She helped him up, got him as comfortable as possible. Propped him up against a small tree. She sat next to him, two people sitting together in a puddle in the pouring rain. Her vision was a blur. It’s the rain she told herself even if it does feel a lot like hot, stinging tears.

  He took her hand. His fingers were cold, most of the strength gone from them.

  ‘You know how you ran out on me at the hotel—’

  She stiffened, her breathing on hold. What was he about to say? That it was all her fault? The final accusation of a dying man.

  ‘It worked out for the best in the end.’

  She choked back a gasp, a tide of self-loathing big enough to drown her rising up inside her for thinking he’d ever accuse her.

  ‘If you hadn’t run off, we’d have gotten here six or seven hours ago. Whatever made them call it off hadn’t happened by then. They’d have killed us, then him. They never meant to let him go. We’d all be dead now.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  He squeezed her hand. She wished she deserved to take the credit for it, knew it for what it was—serendipity, pure and simple.

  ‘I’m right. Thanks to you, you’re both still alive. Stick with him.’

  She opened her mouth to protest. He put his finger on her lips, the cold touch of death silencing her.

  ‘I know you’re married already. But I’ve been watching you. I’ve seen something change these past days. I’m not sure you’re going back to your husband.’

  ‘You don’t know a thing about me.’

  ‘I know enough—’

  ‘What is this, some dying man’s prophecy vision . . . crap?’

  He gave her a knowing smile, couldn’t hide the effort it took to squeeze it out past his teeth, gritted so hard his jaw quivered.

  ‘No. I understand people, is all. If you go back, you go back. But I haven’t heard you say it. And if you don’t, you and Jay will be good for each other. Trust me, I know him.’

  ‘Sounds like you know everyone.’

  He shrugged and wished he hadn’t.

  ‘What’s he going to think of me when I tell him I left you here? He’ll hate me.’

  He barely had the strength to shake his head.

  ‘He won’t hate you. You tell him I wouldn’t go. And why. He’ll believe you.’

  She didn’t want to leave him. At that point she wouldn’t have swapped sitting next to him in the mud with the rain beating down on their faces for anything in the world.

  ‘You’ve got to go, Sarah. The police might come along any minute. How are you going to explain a pile of crystal meth on the ground, a man with a bullet in his guts and you without a scratch?’ He cocked his head. ‘Actually, how do you explain it?’

  Ordinarily he’d have gotten a slap or a dig in the ribs. This time she threw her arms around his neck, hugged him so long and so tight she thought she really had suffocated him, he was so quiet. He pushed her away at last.

  ‘Looks like your Zippo’s mojo worked after all, eh?’

  He dipped his head suddenly. For one heart-wrenching moment she thought he’d died. Her breath caught in her throat. Then he lifted his hand. Took hold of the dog tag he wore around his neck, pulled it over his head. He held it towards her.

  ‘It hasn’t got any fancy verse on it, but I want you to have it. A little reminder of your time on the road to deliverance.’

  Perhaps it was a state of receding lucidity, of diminishing reality, as his severed abdominal aorta continued to spill his life’s blood and his stomach dumped bile into the peritoneal cavity, or maybe it was one last conscious decision—whatever it was, he wasn’t being completely honest with her. There was more to it than that.

  A lot more.

  He put it in her hand, closed his over it as if performing a solemn rite of transfer. He mumbled something as he did it, something she barely heard that made no sense at all.

  ‘May God defend me from my friends.’

  She wanted to ask him what he meant. Surely, he didn’t mean protect him from Jay, from his misguided good intentions that had set all of this in motion.

  His arm sagged, grip loosening. Then his hand slipped off hers completely, dropped cold and semi-lifeless into his lap, left her clasping the dog tag tightly in her fist. She didn’t look at it. She wouldn’t do so until it was too late.

  He couldn’t have given her a coherent answer anyway, his body entering stage four hemorrhagic shock, a global loss of motor function, consciousness slipping into merciful oblivion, a whispered valediction on his lips.

  ‘Go now. Be safe.’

  She ran to her car and drove like she wasn’t ever going to stop. Before she did, she retrieved his gun from where it had ended up, kicked out of his hand and down the road when they were first attacked.

  Because she wasn’t the woman she used to be. Not by a long stretch.

  Chapter 38

  ‘I’LL PAY for her gas.’

  The gas station owner nodded at the guy in the gray suit, put the phone down reluctantly. Gave Sarah a dirty look. Like he reckoned a spell in the county jail was exactly what someone looking like her needed.

  ‘You’re luckier than you deserve.’

  Ten minutes earlier she’d coasted into the gas station after running on fumes for the past twenty miles. She’d filled up without thinking about it, not realizing she had no means of paying until after it was too late. The guys who killed Cole had taken everything. The only thing of value in the car was Cole’s gun. It hadn’t taken much thought to decide walking into the store with it in her hand as an offer of payment was a bad idea, likely to get her a shotgun in the face.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the guy in the suit. ‘If you give me your details, I’ll send you the money.’

  He smiled at her, don’t worry about it. He was paying a lot of attention to Cole’s dog tag. She’d put it around her neck a few miles back. After the phone call on Cole’s phone, the one she’d thought was Jay. Whoever it was had hung up. Putting it on had made her feel better for reasons she couldn’t explain.

  Now she was wishing she’d left it on the car seat.

  ‘That’s a nice dog tag. I’ll take that a
nd we’ll call it quits if you like.’

  She didn’t like at all.

  It wasn’t only the sentimental value she’d already attached to it. She planned to offer it to Jay anyway. This guy gave her the creeps. A bit like Jacob, except different. She got the feeling a kick in the balls wouldn’t be enough to put him off. Cut them off, stuff them down his throat, maybe.

  Her hand went to her neck.

  ‘I couldn’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  Like it was no skin off his nose. Like he was going to get hold of it later anyway.

  She gave him a big smile, almost burst a blood vessel squeezing it out. She half expected the owner to point out where the restrooms were.

  ‘Thank you again.’

  She moved towards the door. He came with her. The owner was watching her intently, convinced she was going to steal something on the way out.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ she asked him.

  He sure as hell wasn’t expecting that, was at a loss for words for a long moment. That told her everything she needed to know.

  There was a rack of snacks by the door. She swung her hip into it, knocked it over. It fell into his legs, bags of potato chips and popcorn scattering across the floor.

  ‘Sorry,’ she called to the owner who was already on his way, thinking it was a ploy to get a free dinner.

  She nipped through the door, let it swing in Gray Suit’s face as the owner collided with him from behind. The pair of them trampled the snacks into the floor, bags popping, spewing their contents everywhere as they tried to disentangle themselves, to get out the door first.

  She made damn sure she took a good long look at the only other car in the gas station before she hit the highway again, foot to the floor. She wasn’t surprised to see it was a dark blue Ford Fusion.

  SHE LOOKED IN HER mirror again. He was still there, keeping pace with her. She glanced down at Cole’s gun on the passenger seat, marveled at how much a person can change in only two days. She’d spent her life doing everything in her power to avoid guns. Now she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather have on the seat next to her.

  The idea started forming when she saw a sign to a public boat ramp. Then another sign warning her about the bridge ahead icing in cold weather. Suddenly she was on it—the bridge where US-59 crosses over Lake Texana. She knew what she had to do.

  Flicking on her turn signal, she pulled onto the shoulder where the road crossed open water. Popped the hood, quickly ran around to the front of the car.

  Cole’s gun was tucked into her skirt.

  The car that had followed her all the way from the gas station pulled up twenty yards behind her. Dimmed its lights, left the engine running. With the hood up, she placed the gun on top of the engine, kept her hand on it. The car door opened. Gray Suit climbed out. As she knew he would.

  She moved to the side where he could see her, hand hidden behind the hood.

  ‘Oh! Hello again.’

  She put a lot of helpless into her voice, some relief too.

  ‘Engine trouble?’

  He started to walk towards her. His hands were empty, jacket still in the car.

  ‘The power suddenly went.’ She tried a sickly smile, heart thumping. ‘I’m not having much luck tonight.’

  ‘Lucky I happened along.’

  He was ten yards away. In the open ground between the two vehicles, a two-foot-high safety barrier the only thing between him and the water. She brought her hand out from behind the hood. Swapped the gun into her right hand. Pointed it at his chest in a double-handed stance. All in under a second.

  ‘Don’t come any closer.’

  Seemed he had problems with his hearing. He took another step towards her.

  She didn’t waste time with all that I’m warning you crap. Fired at the ground, a foot to the side of him.

  He was good. Barely flinched. Slowly raised his hands to shoulder height, palms towards her. He glanced down at her registration plate. She saw him repeat the number to himself.

  ‘Why are you so interested in the dog tag?’

  He frowned. Then shrugged amiably. She almost believed him. Except no garden-variety Good Samaritan stands there cool as you like when a distraught woman fires a gun at his feet.

  ‘I was only trying to be kind. Make you feel better about letting a stranger pay for a tank of gas.’

  It almost sounded plausible. And if the man who gave it to her hadn’t died by the side of the road less than twelve hours ago it might have been enough.

  ‘You’ve been following us from the start.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And who’s us? I can’t see anyone else.’

  Saying that didn’t do him any favors. It brought it home to her how on her own she was. She wasn’t in a position to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘Jump in the lake.’

  She reckoned the creases in his forehead were genuine this time.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do it. You’re going in one way or the other. Up to you whether I shoot you first.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. All I’ve done—’

  He took another step towards her. She fired again, so close this time he skipped sideways.

  ‘Okay. Take it easy.’

  ‘Walk backwards. Until you feel the barrier.’

  He did as he was told, hands still up.

  ‘Step up onto it. Keep facing me.’

  He climbed onto it, wobbling precariously. Without warning she fired a third time. Through the barrier immediately under his feet. His cool deserted him completely, arms wind-milling, a shocked yelp, mouth wide open.

  Then a very loud splash.

  She ran to his car as he cussed at her, thrashing wildly in the water. The keys were still in the ignition. She pulled them out, threw them far out into the lake. His jacket lay neatly folded on the passenger seat. She stared at it for a long moment. Did she want to know who—or what—he was? He’d have cash in his wallet too.

  No. It was a step too far.

  It was also a bad decision.

  Angry shouts from the water below snapped her out of it, sent her running back to her car.

  She sure hoped he wasn’t just a really nice guy helping a young woman in trouble in the middle of the night.

  SHE COULDN’T RELAX, wasn’t happy with the way he’d memorized her license number. It didn’t matter that they were stolen plates. He had the details of the car she was in right now. The way he was dressed worried her too. He was either a genuine businessman that she’d shot at and tried to drown or he was a movie-style shady government agent.

  Either way, she fully expected to hear the thwap, thwap, thwap sound of the police helicopter as it hovered above her within the next five miles, maybe sooner, her subsequent arrest a text book example of tactical efficiency.

  Despite all that, the helicopter hadn’t arrived by the time the fuel gauge needle dipped into the red again. Nor had she been forced off the road by promotion-hungry patrol officers, spread-eagled across the hood of the car, nose squashed into the metal.

  Once bitten, twice shy, she’d ignored every gas station until finally around 5 a.m. Monday morning the engine coughed and sputtered, then died. The car coasted gently to a stop on the shoulder somewhere past the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge on the I-10 near Grosse Tête, Louisiana.

  She left it there, the last but one link to her old life discarded, cast off as if it were as natural as a snake shedding its skin. She set off walking, striding purposefully down the shoulder. No ID, the strain of the last three days in her face and body, hair sufficiently butchered to make her unrecognizable as the person she used to be.

  It never crossed her mind that she could not have made herself more vulnerable if she tried.

  But it was her lucky day, long overdue. The blast of an air horn was witness to the accuracy of Cole’s remarks made right back when it all started. Within five minutes she was in a nice warm truck cab, filled with
the haunting, melancholy lyrics of Iris DeMent singing Easy’s Gettin’ Harder Every Day.

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ the driver said as he leaned over, helped her climb up. ‘Someone run you over with a freight train?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  Chapter 39

  TWO HUNDRED MILES LATER the trucker dropped her off at a gas station on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama. From there she hitched a ride downtown, made her way to a café to wait for Jay.

  She sat in a window seat, nursing a cup of bitter coffee, scanning the street for him. She was more nervous than she’d been kneeling in the mud next to Cole with a gun pointing at the back of her head.

  She’d called him the previous night on Cole’s phone as soon as it had enough charge, before the trouble with Gray Suit. That was when she got the first inkling of how difficult it was going to be.

  He’d thought it was Cole.

  She didn’t think she’d ever forget the mix of relief and pleasure he crammed into that one short name.

  Cole?

  She sure as hell wouldn’t ever forget what it felt like to grind that same relief and pleasure into the dirt. Or the way he repeated her name dumbly when she told him who it was.

  Sarah?

  That translation was easy to do. Not so easy to hear.

  Not Cole?

  He’d recovered well.

  Thank God you’re okay.

  The damage was already done.

  He’d almost climbed down the phone, desperate for her to tell him everything right then, the anguish in his voice like a scourge lifting the flesh from her bones.

  Cole wasn’t coming back, was most likely dead by now, was all she told him. No how or why. And it wasn’t only because she’d promised Cole to do it face to face. She needed time to get it straight in her mind first.

  Because she had no intention of telling him the truth.

  After that, they’d kept in touch by text, zeroing-in on the location of their rendezvous as they drove towards each other, diverting to Mobile for no reason other than that’s the way the trucker was going.