by Zahra Girard
I had so much promise. And now I’m nothing. Just a loser with a bloody foot who is stuck in a cabin with some guy who thinks it’s a good idea to call himself ‘Blaze’.
When my screams die, Declan — no, Blaze — lets out a sigh and his grip on me changes. It loosens. And his face changes. The anger softens into something almost approaching understanding.
“I’m not going to let you go, Tiffany. I can’t do that,” he says. His voice burns low with compassion. “I wish we weren’t here, but we are. And that’s not going to change. Now, your foot, are you OK?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. I am so not OK on so many levels; this goes deeper than the stone in my heel.
“Let me help you.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say ‘yes’, he lifts me up and tosses me over his shoulder and carries me back to the cabin, stopping only once to kneel over and pick up my discarded heels from the side of the road.
I stay on his back as we reach the cabin, as he knocks over a little statue of a turtle and opens a hatch on its belly to reveal a hide-a-key. It’s not objectionable. He smells nice — a woodsy, smokey scent that’s not out of place with the surrounding forest. His back is firm, muscular, just like the rest of him, and his butt is nice — I’ve got a magnificent view of it, slung across his shoulders and with my face resting against his low back just a foot from his backside.
If only he hadn’t literally kidnapped me as part of his escape plan from an abortive bank robbery. And gotten me fired. And had such a terrible credit history. And put a gun in my face. Even a great butt doesn’t excuse all those massive red flags.
Declan — Blaze — puts the key in the lock, turns it, and, with an audible and deep-throated grunt, muscles open the front door.
The inside of the cabin assaults my nostrils with its mustiness. It smells like a tomb and feels about as lively as one, too. A shroud of dust covers everything, and the furniture looks like the relics of a long-dead era; furniture that, in color and form, would be more at-home in the 1960s; pictures of people I don’t know — most of whom are probably dead by now — hang on the walls. And there’s a dead rat sitting right in the middle of the combination living room-kitchen-dining room; an open-plan prison, just for me.
“Gross,” I say, on seeing the dead rat.
Declan nudges it out of the way with his shoe, sending it flip-flopping into the corner where it lands in a puff of dust. As light as a feather, he sets me down on the mildewy couch and, with a gentle touch that belies his raw strength, he takes hold of my injured foot by the ankle and props it up on the coffee table.
“Stay here for a second, Tiffany. I’ve got a first aid kit, I’ll be right back.”
He’s gone for a second and then back with a tin box with a big red ‘X’ on it. Out come bandages, antibiotic cream, and a pair of tweezers.
A moment passes where he holds my foot — gentle, careful — and frowns down at the rock protruding from my heel.
Then he’s up again, fetching a tea kettle, which he quickly fills with water from the tap and then sets on the gas stove, which he lights.
“Are we having tea, now?” I say.
He shakes his head. “No, but I need to boil this water to disinfect it before I use it to clean your wound.”
It’s not long before the kettle is boiling and Declan is kneeling in front of me, kettle on the floor and tweezers in his hand.
“I’m not going to lie to you, this will hurt. Hopefully, you won’t need stitches, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
I chew on my lip. He sounds confident — capable, even — but knowing what I know about him, I’m not so sure.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I was a smokejumper — you know, those firefighters they send in by parachute to remote fires — with the Northern California Redding 5 crew for a while. I know a bit of first aid, at least enough to see us through here. You ready?”
I don’t have time to answer before I’m howling — the tweezers take hold of the rock in my heel and I feel every twist, turn, and pull send excruciating fire through my body.
“Take this. Drink,” he says, pulling a flask from his first aid kit and handing it to me.
Screwing my nose up, I open it, take a sniff, and flinch.
“What is this? It smells like nail polish remover.”
“Whiskey. It’s for drinking, not smelling. Trust me. Drink it. You will need it in about five seconds.”
I take a suspicious sip; the inside of my mouth catches fire.
Then I’m howling again, as he wets some gauze with the hot water and begins cleaning my wound. The whiskey tastes better, this time; it’s an essential burn that takes my mind off the fiery pain in my foot.
“There,” he says. “Done.”
I take another sip from the flask, emptying the last drops into my mouth.
“That hurt,” I say. Already, my lips are tingling.
Blaze takes the flask from my hands, shakes it, and gives me a look. “All of it? You were thirsty, huh?”
“What did you expect? You pulled a boulder from my foot.”
“I reckon you’ve got about twenty minutes before it hits you. And then it’ll hit you again tomorrow morning.”
“I’m an adult. I can handle alcohol.”
“Sure, you are. But I still say you’re going to regret it.”
“Says the guy who goes around calling himself Blaze. How did you get a nickname like that?”
He shakes the flask again — checking that it’s empty — and shrugs. “It’s a road name. But I got it over a game of pool with one of my brothers.”
“I don’t remember you having any brothers. I mean, not that I paid much attention, but I think I would’ve noticed. Especially if they looked anything like you.”
He smirks. “What do you mean by that?”
My cheeks feel hot. I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or the fact that he’s still got his hands on my calf and he’s looking at me in a way that he’s most definitely never looked at me before.
“I mean, you’re big. Like some kind of colossal Paul Bunyan. Except with a gun and a motorcycle.”
“Wasn’t Paul Bunyan huge to begin with?”
“Shut up. I might be misremembering that. I am a little drunk, after all.”
“That’s fair. I don’t have any brothers, exactly. I’m talking about the other members of my MC. The Twisted Devils. We’re family.”
That sobers me up enough that I try to stand. And immediately regret it. I collapse back on the couch in pain and Blaze is there in an instant to keep me steady.
“Stay still,” he says, worry in his voice. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“You’re in a gang?”
“It’s more than that. Listen, I didn’t have a lot of options when I first met them; I got myself kicked out of the fire crew because of some dumb decisions I made. But I found a family and I consider myself damn lucky to have done that.”
I take a breath. He sounds genuine. And my worry subsides as I realize that, if he really intended to hurt me, he wouldn’t have bothered to bandage my foot. Still, it takes a few more breaths before my heart calms all the way down. He’s a criminal, after all, and he looks more than capable with the gun he’s been toting around.
“Why then did you need the fifty thousand dollars? And why go to a bank? Why not just take some cash from the gang you’re in?”
He laughs. “Saint Tiffany, you don’t know shit about being in an MC.”
My cheeks feel hot; I’m not used to being laughed at or feeling out of my depth. “No, I don’t. Edify me, Blaze.”
“Do what, now?” He says, looking confused.
“It means ‘educate’,” I say, feeling a little less embarrassed. It’s a minor thing, but I feel a little more in control now.
“Then why not just say that?” He says. “The MC doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to just throw around at any old problem. It’s a mostly legit busine
ss — trucking and auto repair, mainly — and taking out that kind of cash would be a really bad move. It would hurt people.”
I nod, starting to wrap my head around the structure of his gang. A legitimate business, small-scale, that dabbles in a few illegal enterprises to supplement cash flow. Probably on the scale of a small or medium-sized enterprise; a sudden and unexpected withdrawal of fifty thousand dollars would be a crippling blow to an organization like that.
“So, why do you need the money?”
“It’s personal.”
I can feel the alcohol working its magic. My cheeks and lips feel warm, my fingers and even my toes are tingling, and the searing pain in my heel is nothing more than a dull throb. And my tongue is so much looser than it usually is.
“Come on, Blaze, you got me fired, you took me hostage, you stuck a gun in my face, and I’ve seen your credit history. We are way past the point of claiming something’s ‘personal’ as a valid excuse.”
“You’re still hung up on that credit thing, huh?”
I sit up a little. “I mean, it was just so low. Like, when I was studying finance at Stanford, you would’ve been textbook for a high risk client. Honestly, I might even look up a couple of my old professors and pass them your information as an example to use in their class.”
“OK, I’ll make you a deal: you shut up about my credit score and swear to tell no one else about it — even though I don’t give a flying fuck about what the number is, or really even fucking understand it, I’m just tired of your gloating — and I’ll tell you why I wanted the money.”
I nod, chastened. “OK, deal.”
“I need it for my mother. She’s in debt. A lot of debt. And I’m the only help she’s got. I’ve disappointed her a lot in life, I know she’s not proud or happy about the decisions I’ve made, but I can’t let her down. I have to come through. She raised me all on her own and, if I don’t come up with the money, she’ll lose her home,” he says. He looks so different as he speaks — smaller, scared, and uncertain. This isn’t a problem he can fight his way through and it’s shaken him at a deep level.
He might be out of his element, but this is my realm of expertise. And I know all about what it’s like to try to overcome a loved one’s disappointment; working at some no-name bank at a job that’s barely more than a predatory payday loan salesperson is not how I saw my life turning out. It isn’t how my dad saw things turning out, either.
“OK, Blaze, I’ll help you.”
His grip on my leg tightens at those words. And his downcast look turns hopeful. “You will?”
I nod. I intend it to look confident but, with the alcohol burning through my veins and turning my cheeks a furious red, I feel the nod come across as a sloppy wobble.
“I will. I’m sure there are a lot of options for your mom, things that maybe you or her haven’t thought about, and we can sit down and sort things out together. Even though it seems complicated, there are rules that we can use, these sort of things — loans, bankruptcy, foreclosure — all work inside a defined legal framework, so I am certain we have options. Do you have any of her information here with you?”
He squeezes my leg again. Gentle. And fixes me with a concerned look. “I’d like that, Tiffany. But we can talk about it later — you need to get some sleep.”
I let his words sink in. He’s right. My eyelids feel like they’re lined with lead, they’re so heavy. I’m drunk on cheap jet-fuel-strength whiskey, I’ve lost a fair amount of blood, and I’m suffering the adrenaline crash that comes from being held up at gunpoint and whisked away on the back of an outlaw’s motorcycle; to say I need a little sleep is an understatement.
“OK, I’ll take a nap. Then we can talk about your mom,” I say, frowning as the words come out more slurred than I intend. This whiskey is no joke and my cheeks flush even more in embarrassment at how unintentionally drunk I am.
My eyes shut before he even releases my leg and sleep takes hold of me in an inexorable grip. My chest fills with a deep sigh and I squirm and shuffle into the crevasses of the old couch, hunting for the perfect nook in the cushions.
The air leaves my lungs in a sough as darkness fully subsumes me. At the fringes of my consciousness, I hear a deep voice. “Sleep easy, Tiffany.”
Hours pass in seconds.
And then flaming pain and a sick worry in the depths of my stomach rends my slumber to pieces.
I sit up, not by choice, but because every muscle in my body contracts in agony as a miserable howl rips my lips open.
I’m drowning in icy fire. Sweating, shivering, inflamed and freezing.
Blaze bursts through the front door of the cabin, his cellphone clattering forgotten from his hands.
“Tiffany, what is it?”
I don’t answer, can’t answer.
One calloused hand tenderly touches my forehead. There’s a sucking sound as he takes a quick intake of breath. Worried eyes look down at my foot. I follow them.
My foot is angry red and swollen, with a black hue starting to color the inflamed veins that spiderweb from the wound.
“Infected,” he says. A whistling sharp intake of breath. “Bad.”
“How bad?” I gasp, forcing the words out between teeth clenched so tight they feel like they could crack.
He peels back the bandage and kneels to inspect my foot. Darkness crosses his face, and he grimaces.
“If you don’t get to a hospital, you will die.”
Chapter Four
Blaze
Her oval face becomes the most perfect, pretty mask of shock I’ve ever seen; no matter what she might suspect — and she’s not dumb, I’m sure she suspects the truth — hearing that you’re on the pathway to death always hits like a punch to the gut.
“I’m dying?”
I put on a hand on her shoulder. She’s soaked in sweat and shivering. This is way, way beyond anything I’ve got the talent to manage, and that is saying a lot.
“Your wound is infected. Bad. I don’t know what it is — viral, bacteria, whatever — I just know that, with the symptoms you’re showing, you need a full-fledged doctor to take care of you or else I’ll be digging a six-foot-deep hole back behind this cabin.”
“You wouldn’t really bury me out here, would you? At this crappy cabin? It’s so gross.”
I can’t help it — I laugh. Even on the verge of death, she’s still got a stick up her butt.
“No, I’d take you to a cemetery. One of the nice ones. You’d have the finest tombstone and the best hole in the ground you could ever imagine.”
She rests back against the couch, nods, satisfied. “Thank you. OK, so let’s not let that happen. Can you take me to a hospital?”
I hesitate; I’m about to disappoint a pretty woman and, though there’s a first time for everything, this is not one of those firsts I will cherish.
“No.”
Her eyes widen. Then narrow to angry slits. “What? Why?”
“After this morning, I’m going to be on a wanted list. Wouldn’t be surprised if my handsome mug was circulating through every hospital, police station, and post office in the county and making every woman who sees it stop in their tracks and pray they get to be the lucky one to spot me.”
“You are insane. Take me to a hospital,” she says. “I do not want to die.”
Her voice is fading by the second and what little anger she had summoned up earlier is now nothing more than irritated pleading.
“I can’t,” I say. Then I stand up and lock my hands behind my head and start pacing. “But I will not let you die. I promise.”
“You’re not instilling me with much confidence, Blaze,” she says.
I ignore her. Keep pacing. Keep thinking. There’s no way I will let her die — as much as it pains me to admit it, I need her help if I’m going to save my mom from being evicted, or worse.
“I have an idea,” I say and then, rather than explain it and have to deal with her objections or smart alec remarks, I scoop her up into my
arms and start carrying her outside.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going for a ride.”
“So you can hasten my death? I’m not in any condition to be on your motorcycle. Call an ambulance.”
“I’m going to. Just not here.”
“What? Why?”
“Wanted list, remember? I still need a place to hide out and, if I call the paramedics here, I’ll have to find somewhere new. And I like this cabin, I have a lot of good memories here.”
She huffs. It’s weak, but she’s still got enough haughtiness to turn her nose up at me.
“So where are you going to take me?”
Still holding her, I open the cargo compartment on my bike and take out a length of cordage. Then I set her down, gently, and wrap the cord around her, take my place on the bike, and tie the same cord around my chest, securing her in place. There’s no way I’m letting this woman fall — she might be my only hope to get out of this mess.
“There’s a gas station a long ways back. Far enough they shouldn’t be able to trace me back here.”
“You’re going to leave me at a gas station? I could die of an infected foot at Bob’s Gas & Gulp?”
Taking her hand in mind, I give it a squeeze. “I won’t let you die. I promise you. Now, be quiet, I need to focus.”
Strange enough, she keeps her full lips closed. As the miles go slowly by and I ride with more focus than I’ve ridden in a long time just to keep from spilling the both of us on the highway, she leans into me. First, it’s light, just a gentle press of her tits against my back but, as time goes on, she’s leaning into me more and more. Harder. Until her weight is full against me, and I can feel the strength leaving her body. There’s not much time left.
“Hang on, Tiffany,” I mutter, my voice getting lost in the wind as we speed down the highway.
When we reach the gas station, I throw one hand behind me, clutching her by her ass and pressing her tight against my back as I stand up. She’s light and, though it’s awkward as hell grabbing her by her ass and having to keep my focus on saving her life instead of enjoying how plump her ass is, I get her off the bike and, after untying her, lay her gently down on the sidewalk next to the sliding door entrance to the gas station.