SEAL'd Trust (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts)

by Gabi Moore

  We were no longer dealing with minor thugs, there was a problem that was getting larger — evidence obvious because Maurice was allocating more resources to securing what was he felt he needed.

  I didn’t have time to think about what that might be. In any case, it would only be speculation at best. In the moment, I was barreling down the highway, inches from launching a car over the cliff into the coastal waters below. I fucking had to pray that she didn’t hit any rocks. I took a look at the coast during the dip and saw that there was no sand. The cliffs looked like prime jumping locations, and I figured a risky drop was worth a hundred missed bullets. I suppose when you’re choosing priorities for people, you don’t want to be too presumptive.

  To tell you the truth, I didn’t choose that for her exclusively. I had my own reasons as well. I knew where this was headed, and I had made a promise to myself. I was going to honor the time-worn prohibition on murder. I had killed enough in my life, and I didn’t want to start again.

  Not for anything.

  As I regained control of the vehicle, a flash of fear passed through my vision. I saw Piper’s body hitting the rocks below the cliff. I thought about the terrible consequences of my behavior.

  “Possible consequences,” I reminded myself.

  It was also possible that I had taken the only course of action which ensured that she would not be caught within this fight; a fight that I was intentionally going to throw.

  At least she’ll have a fighting chance, I thought, consoling myself.

  I had to move on, and reassert a zen-like control over the way in which I drove the car. If I had any hope of transforming this into an opportunity for Piper, I had to drag out the chase as long as possible. Ideally, I would get in some more police trouble, and possibly bring these combatants down using the local police authorities. I set my jaw, and glad down the road, taking in a thousand different variables each moment. In order to make this work, I would need to give my all to the chase; only then could I be sure that I gave this my best shot.

  The car was gaining on me, which was in a sense, desirable.

  At least they fell for it, I thought, taking joy in what little success I could find.

  My vehicle simply was not made for this type of experience. I had chosen well, it was a convertible sedan — a relatively new model. The tires were in fine condition, and there was enough fuel to make it as far as I needed to go. High-speed car chases don’t tend to run cross country.

  The car was smaller than most cars, which gave it a bit of advantage in maneuverability, as well as initial acceleration. What it did not have, compared to the people who were chasing me, was potential for top speed. These people had resources, and likely this car was specially designated for jobs that required awareness and highly technical road maneuvering. These folks were equipped to manage what I was throwing at them, but I had to keep trying.

  I chose the coastal route for two possibilities.

  First, was the possibility that there might be a safe place to ditch Piper. I had actually thought I might be able to ditch her in the nature preserve, as there would likely be ample places for her to hide there, but the chase had been too dense, and that was no longer an option.

  Second, the only other reason to choose both the nature preserve and the coast is that both places are predominantly sculpted in the face of a dominant force of nature.

  You can’t really ask an ocean to move, in order for you to build a road through it. You can build a bridge, or you can build a cove. Either construct takes massive resources, which means the most likely possibility is a thin stretch of highway, full of hairpin turns. The same routine logic can be applied to forests, except that the reasoning is because of the innumerable amount of trees and hills which make straight shot construction cost prohibitive.

  Because I did not have the advantage of a vehicle that was endowed with top speed, I needed to be able to diminish their ability to utilize that asset. Quick turns, and drifting hundred and eighty-degree fishtails characterized my driving approach. I had hoped that there would be less of an absence of police officers, but I had never explored this region of the coast. In fact, I had no memory of spending time in Italy at all.

  Every new turn was a sign that I needed to be completely aware of the next tenth of a second. My consciousness was literally at the razors edge. I had to intuitively guess how much to compensate for in my drifting in order to maintain maximum speed, while still effectively taking the turn. Another hope in the back of my mind was that I might be able to drive so wild, and so on edge, that I drove the car behind me to make a mistake.

  I was praying that they would make a mistake and that they might be the first car to launch off the side of the cliff, or run sideways into the mountain — bringing an avalanche of rocks down onto their hood. Anything might have been preferable to the persistent, and incredible matching of whatever luck was able to bring my way. No civilization in sight and these fuckers were still gaining on me.

  Professionals… I thought, then I smiled and licked my lips. About time.

  Taking another sudden turn that nearly threw me into a cobblestone sign advertising the brand of a local neighborhood, I veered back toward the civilized community. The types of houses that surrounded me were sleepy, suburban, coastal units. Places with small streets and big grass areas. The people in these parts obviously appreciated nature more than luxury, because the size of the homes was relatively small compared to the apparent size of the lots.

  As I sped forward, I noticed that there were more houses, the more inland I moved. I felt a push on the left side of my rear bumper and had to turn hard to the right to avoid being throw in a spiral. The two of us skidded in a lock for a moment and then broke free once again. Things were getting more dangerous, though I still had one more reason to gain confidence — In spite of everything, they had not yet shot me.

  I figured that had to indicate that they were going for a capture. If they were simply trying to eliminate the threat, then there were other ways that they could have accomplished that feat. They could have set up snipers in a road block at the end of strategic sections of road. They could have used explosives, or high-powered weaponry to decimate the vehicle or me. They could have done a lot of things, but the fact that they obviously had instructions to take me alive gave me the only other edge in the game that I felt I had left.

  Now I had more reasons than ever to play my boldest cards.

  The streets were growing more narrow and had begun to transfer back into unpaved roads in some of the neighboring sections. I was growing more and more uncomfortable, as signs of the area being densely populated began to surface. People were hiding, scared in the doorways of their houses, or diving out of the way as the two of us sped down the street. We had attracted the attention of at least one more member of the local law enforcement, but this was some form of strange rural sub-division, and they didn’t have the resources to manage a situation like this.

  Sure, they would call in, and more equipped members of nearby municipalities would be en route. Unfortunately, the nearest area that had access to that level of transportation power were likely a solid fifteen minutes away, on the outskirts of South West Rome.

  The engine was starting to lose power as the tires were not equipped to ride on the dirt roads. The persistent bumping from behind only made matters worse. I was hardly able to make any headway because I was constantly fending off attacks from behind. They knew what they were doing, and had placed me in a primarily reactive position instead of a position where I could claim a creative advantage. I saw a bridge over a low river coming up in the road and decided to make one more desperate motion toward a non-reactive position.

  The ascent of the bridge was met with my pedal fully depressed to the floor. I hadn’t reached maximal acceleration yet, but I was getting there, and whatever I could put together would have to do. At the base of the wooden bridge, I modified my direction a few degrees to the left in a slight skid. I was hoping to mak
e it seem like the dirt road had taken a toll on my ability to remain in control. I wanted to feign failure so they would be overconfident and push to make their final move.

  The feint worked, and I heard them rushing in for another hit from behind. I had shown them my ass, and they were eager to fuck; far too eager for their own good. Instead of correcting, which would have been necessary to continue forward on the bridge, and would have slowed me down enough to where they most certainly would have made contact with my tail and pushed me into a roll — I drove straight off the apex of the bridge.

  The materials for the bridge were wooden, and I wouldn’t have been able to manage this feat otherwise. The wood snapped and exploded around me, some of it actually came up and broke the windshield of my car. Wood and glass sprayed across my face, though I had the foresight to cover my eyes with the crook of my elbow right before impact. I was being reckless, I know, but I hoped that I might have enough acceleration to stick the landing on the other side of the creek, and move onto the country roads which permitted me to play to my strengths in the chase.

  Had I made the same attempt while headed straight, I would have been in the same position my assailants were in at the moment, only with fewer pieces of wood breaking through their windshield. They had been unprepared for my maneuver, and given the momentum they had built before attempting to ram the back of me, they were forced to head straight over to the end of the bridge. While they were wildly skidding on the dirt, attempting to change directions, I was actively testing the tensile strength of the shocks in my little roadster.

  I smiled, exhilarated, and feeling a renewed sense of hope. The speed had been enough to propel the vehicle forward over the water. While I had landed on the uneven ground near the edge of the river, I had enough momentum behind me to push the car past the final berm which led down to the shore of the waterway. I too bumped and skidded, though the angle of my trajectory was such that I needed far less correction in order to regain my speed on the road perpendicular to the bridge.

  “FUCK YEA!” I screamed, pounding my hand down on the steering wheeling, and jamming my foot onto the floor.

  That had worked out better than I expected.

  I’d like to pause for a moment here in my reverie, and share with you an object of my most sincere hatred.

  If there is one thing that I hope never to see here in the country of Italy — one thing besides the ghost of a dead dictator, or perhaps some kind of demon-spawned straight from the catacombs beneath the Vatican — it would be a goat.

  Up until that particular moment, just one or two turns after my landing, I didn’t feel so strongly about goats, and then I did. I have a feeling that sensation is going to stick with me as long as I live, which at this point, I’m not sure is going to be too much farther in the future.

  I’d like to introduce this scenic moment to you by playing a bit of an imaginative scene in your mind.

  Imagine you are driving down a country road, being chased by bloodthirsty bandits, and you just imagined that you were able to make your escape last a bit longer than you would have otherwise hoped for — Your vehicle is not doing amazingly but is holding out well enough under the circumstances. What’s more, is that you have temporarily felt the soaring heights of elation, as you pulled some particularly clever move out of your ass, and now felt like you had a prayer at moving things in your favor.

  Now imagine the eyes of a goat.

  In fact, there’s very little reason for you to imagine just one set of eyes because the reality of the situation is that there are at least twenty of those soulless, unholy fuckers staring you down from the center of the road. Their bodies are spread out like a scatterplot diagram, and there is no way for you to maneuver between them. They literally stretch, unapologetically from the river to the prairie just to the north of the river. There is no way around them, and what’s worse is that you have very little time to decide what you want to do about the vehicle you’re in, and how you may or may not protect your body from the impending pain of a direct collision with two or three, three hundred pound animals. To paint this picture just a little more clearly — imagine they have horns, and imagine they are refusing to budge, or get spooked. They have literally frozen in time, right in front of your path.

  Now, the reality of the situation is that the moment where they were frozen in time was not terribly long. They eventually did move, but only after I careened off the side of the road and knocked my forehead into the steering wheel.

  Right about that point, I imagine the goats were scared shitless and ran away, but in that crucial moment, when I had to decide whether or not I wanted to hit the river, or hit the goats — they remained either frozen in terror or agents of my personal impending apocalypse.

  I’m going to bet on the latter, though you’re free to come to your own conclusions.

  I recall the pain of being caught outside of the vehicle. Initially, the only pain I felt was gracefully not present in my body. The pain itself had transferred into disturbed visual and aural phenomenon. My head felt injured, and there was blood on my hand when I reached up to touch my forehead. The sounds around me were muted, and strange hallucinatory distortions came into my brain. I thought, for a moment, that I heard someone telling me something, but when I listened closer, the sound ran away from my awareness. The sound was there, but the meaning was absent.

  Lights flashed in my vision, and the actual details of the environment around me were lost. I remember the cold feeling of rushing water, and I remember my head going under. By impulse, I pulled myself up once more, though I was only able to bring myself up once before falling back down to the current. The water wasn’t particularly wide, but my strength was failing me. I was certain that I would drown, then and there, somewhere in the Italian countryside — the haunting cause of my undoing, and the final vision in my mind before unconsciousness:

  The haunting, double slits of an animal whose place in society was to indulge human beings in their desire for Ricotta.

  Right about then, everything went dark. My body began to grow cold, and I felt a strange sense of peace wash over me.

  You did it, I thought. You saved the girl, and didn’t kill anyone — not even a goat.

  Some small, non-visible part of myself was proud for a moment, and I allowed myself to think that there might be some hope for me in judgment. I may have been a trained murderer, but at least the cheese supply for the countryside just south of Rome could enjoy a total absence of interruption.

  Death smirk.

  Then something awful happened, something even more terrifying than the eyes of the goat.

  I retched water and began to cough. I tried to look around, but all I found was darkness. I had a sack placed over my head, and my wrists were bound behind my back. The hum of the car was underneath my body, and my face bounced along the bristly fabric of the trunk.

  I was alive, that much was evident, but I had no idea at what the cost. All because of a goddamned goat, here I was, being cast into the wilderness for the sins of the people.

  It’s only appropriate, I thought, waiting for whatever the hell happened to be in store for me at the end of the trip.

  Chapter 23 - Angela

  God fucking damn it, this is ridiculous, was a phrase that I found myself repeating over and over that week.

  I lost interest in all of my projects at the same time after Piper came over that week. Sure, I fucked the hell out of her, and whenever I start up a sexual relationship like that, my life gets a bit screwy. There is generally a great moment of personal victory — a type of ego boost if you will, knowing that the outside world has validated me in some way, and finds me to be attractive and interesting.

  I know very well that this sort of behavior smacks of codependency, and that I shouldn’t validate myself based on the perceptions of others, regardless if they are long time friends or not. Knowing something, and being able to act on it are entirely different things.

  In spite of the fact tha
t I have the mind of a genius - or perhaps because of it — I don’t have quite as strongly developed an emotional level of maturity. Strictly speaking, I mean the ability to independently navigate my life, while still being within the context of a relationship and not actually being swallowed whole by the damn thing.

  In this particular case, it was better that I was obsessed, because my attention to detail in the most extreme form ended up being a source of salvation for the object of my desire. In my own mind, I ended up avoiding the consequences of behaving like a stalker, because everything ended up being incredibly useful. In effect, I had the same form of confirmation bias as the NSA. I laughed as I reviewed the nearly endless files that may have been tangentially related to Piper’s former boss.

  She owes me a fucking orgasm, I swore to myself, trying to make myself feel better about the fact that I had not slept properly in days.

  If I had some kind of lab bitch to do this work for me, that would have been preferable, but unfortunately, no such person was around. I suppose that is the whole concept of slavery, and autonomy. I had to be my own lab bitch, for better or worse. The only perky sex treats I would get from my lab bitch were exclusively masturbatory, and unfortunately far too predictable to be of any interest at all. I tried to put all of that behind me, and simply analyze the data.

  The most difficult part of the whole thing was the initial finding of Maurice. I literally had to go through the police database, as well as the private cellular database. Piper’s history ended up being the best link I had to the man, but they had been pretty discrete about their relationship, and their methods of communication were mostly clandestine and personal.

  The trail went dead cold far too many times for that route to be productive, at which point I was basically trolling for silver fishes in an ocean of data and not getting much of anything that was worth any value. What ended up working out was the cell phone I had given to Piper.