by Skye Warren
What are the odds he forces his way into my memoir class only to escape on the last day of class? It can’t be a coincidence. I think about the way he wanted to get in my class, even after it started. The way he was desperate to have his piece in the journal. What if he’d sent a message with it?
My face heats with shame and anger as I think about how Grayson’s vignette ripped out my heart.
Was it all made up? The whole boyhood captivity story? Manuel the Rat? I felt so sick about that little boy, scared and alone. And it was all a coded message. Now I know that Dixon’s name is Manuel. That means something.
I was shaking with fear before, but now I’m shaking with anger as I imagine his smile. Like a fool, I thought I’d helped him. I thought I’d made a difference. I guess I did make a difference—just not one I would’ve wanted.
He used me. Played me.
I memorize the license plate and pull out my phone. I need to call somebody. No one knows why the riot broke out. No one knows that Grayson is about to escape in that specific car except for me.
I slide down low in my seat. Do I dial 9-1-1? The prison front office? I have to tell someone—Grayson could be dangerous. No, he is dangerous. He could be a rapist, a murderer. I really wish I’d seen his file like the other guys. What did he do to get locked up?
I scan the parking lot, wondering if I should run back to the office and tell them, wondering if there’s still time.
I look over and we lock eyes.
He’s spotted me.
Get out! Start up the car and go! I’m still holding my cellphone in one hand so I can call 9-1-1, but that isn’t going to help me now. I hunt for my keys—where are they? Did I drop them on the way to my car? No! I unlocked my door. Did I stick them back in my bag? I do that when I’m distracted. I dig through my bag with shaking hands. Where are they?
When I look back up, he’s standing there. Watching me with cold eyes.
Shit shit shit.
Frantically I return to my bag, throwing out receipts and fluffed-out, unused tampons. This whole thing’s unreal, like I’ve stepped into a Salvador Dali portrait of a prison break.
I find my keys and shove them into the ignition.
Glass crashes in my ear. I swing my gaze around to a gun, held by a bloody fist stuck into my passenger window.
Grayson.
He reaches in and opens the door. “Drop the phone. Now.”
I drop it in my lap as he slides in, right over the glass, and shuts the door.
He grabs my phone from my lap and examines it.
“No calls went through.” My voice only shook a little.
“Good girl.” He sets the phone against the dashboard and smashes it with the butt of the gun—three hard, violent whacks and the thing is in pieces. He tosses most of it out, and casual as can be, he buckles up. “Drive.”
How dare he? How dare he expect me to help him? My lips press together, and everything in me revolts against him. He tricked me. He used me.
“I’m done helping you.” I look away, scanning the area for guards, anyone.
He sighs as if I’m making his life difficult. I want to punch him.
Something hard presses against my ribs. Fear clenches my throat. I glance down, already knowing what I’ll see. He’s pressing the gun right into me. A shot at close range from a weapon that large? I’m no expert, but I know that means death. He’s going to kill me. Tears spring to my eyes—tears of humiliation and horror.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” he growls in a tone that chills me to my toes. “I said drive.”
Twelve
~Grayson~
She’s smart, I’ll give her that much. I knew from the moment she saw me that she’d figured out about the escape. And the memoir.
The angry expression in her eyes tells me she’s feeling betrayed. Would she get all offended if a bear took a swipe at her? Because that’s what this is: nature. I learned about the natural order of things early on in life. Things you do to survive. Lessons you never forget.
“You gonna drive, or do you want to end up like your phone?”
Her eyes widen with that shocked flare she sometimes gets, and she puts the car into gear and starts heading toward the gate. Nothing like a violent little demo to spur a woman to action.
“So it was all bullshit,” she says. “Made up.”
“What? You don’t like Manuel the Rat suddenly? The poor little rat?”
Her soft, smudgy brown eyes shine with anger. The idea that my vignette might be fake has her angry, and that does something to me, even though it shouldn’t. Getting away—that’s what I should be caring about, not Ms. Winslow’s precious feelings.
Sirens sound. Reinforcements. Cherries flash in the distance. As long as the brawl keeps going, they won’t be able to do a decent count and they won’t know I’m gone. My gaze darts to the speedometer. She’s going thirty-five in a fifty-five mph zone. “You get this thing the fuck up to the speed limit, and you keep it exactly there,” I growl. “Drive natural.”
“Or what?”
I let my voice go cold. “You really want to find out? You think you know me?” She looks over at me, and I let her see all the hell inside me. “You don’t know anything about me. Nothing.”
She speeds up, eyes fixed on the road.
“Easy,” I say as the cops come over the hill from the other way—a whole line of them. I have a buddy waiting to meet us at a place just over the county line.
Stone. Tough motherfucker and loyal to the end. He’s been looking out for me since we were kids in that basement, and we’d do anything for each other.
Flashing red lights fill the rearview mirror, and my heart pounds. So far so good. More than good, because after all this time chained up and monitored and kept away from her, never able to touch her, she’s under my complete control, mine to do what I want with. It’s as dizzying as the sky overhead, wild and white with clouds.
“We’re just out for a nice afternoon ride, you and me.”
Her jaw is set hard. Yeah, she’s good and pissed. And scared.
I glance ahead at the fields rolling on. The wide-openness is hard to get used to after two years of being confined. God, walking out of the joint today through the parking lot with all that sky above me was so overwhelming I could barely act normal, and then there were all the cars I had to pass by, all the places people could jump out from. I knew people weren’t hiding behind cars, ready to jump out, but in prison you learn to avoid that kind of thing. Second sense. And then I spotted Abby, and everything evened out.
Abby became my anchor. She steadied me, somehow.
So I took her. There’s something about driving away, something sweet about freedom with a pretty girl in the seat beside you. Even if that pretty girl hates you. Even if the guys in your crew would all tell you to kill her. Maybe I should.
“See, here’s something for you to ponder,” I say to her as the fields flash by. “You’re smart, so you need to be thinking what you are to me right now. Do you know what you are to me, Ms. Winslow?”
Fear lights the fine, sharp features of her face. Her thoughts have gone dirty. Like I might rape her. The rims of her big, brown, frightened eyes are smudged with makeup. It’s a good look for her. I wonder if Ms. Winslow understands that to the outside observer, fear and arousal look like very much the same thing.
Just a little something I picked up back in the days of basements and rats—that it’s best not to show any fear when guys older and stronger than you are thinking about having a little fun, because when really sick motherfuckers see any kind of life there—fear, anger, happiness, anything—they want to fuck or beat it out of you. Then again, when you act dead, they want to get you lively, and that’s never good, either.
Tidbits that didn’t go into the vignette.
The rat’s name wasn’t Manuel, of course. The rat had no name, and he never came back, either. I told myself he found a better gig, and I really did believe it. I still believe he got aw
ay. But if I’m real honest, I know I need to believe it. I need to believe at least one of us came out of there okay, and it sure as hell wasn’t me or Stone or any of us.
I spent a lot of time imagining the rat romping around outside in the grass.
Especially when they’d do the films, because they’d make you feel good in a way you didn’t want to feel, but I’d be thinking about that stupid rat running around outside chasing moths in the grass.
And there’s Ms. Winslow with that quiet, prim look of hers and those brown eyes understanding something crucial about my time in that basement. It was nice for a while to have somebody else know. Sure, Stone and those guys knew the hard stuff, but I’d never told anybody about the sappy stuff and the way I’d imagine that rat running around outside like some cartoon character. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to tell all of it. How it was to hate somebody’s touch until you crave it. How it was that night when my crew and I killed them all. But it’s better for her if she thinks it’s made-up.
I look over at her driving, concentrating so hard, like she does with everything. She’s a perfectionist, my Ms. Winslow. She probably slaved over every little comma in that stupid journal.
It’s then I think about touching her. Maybe just her neck or her cheek. I wonder if she’d jump. Or if she’d cry. Or hell, maybe she’d eat it up. There’s one thing I do know: she’d feel it. Really feel it, because it would be different and new and all wrong, just like me going across that parking lot, feeling that huge, crazy-ass sky blazing above me. Out of my cage.
Her lips are pressed together, eyes firmly on the road, but not just for safety. She’s also avoiding me, like I’m not here with a loaded gun pointed at her ribs.
How would her neck feel against my cheek? Does she smell like honeysuckle everywhere? What would her tits feel like in my palms underneath that kitten-fur sweater? She tries to obscure them with clothes, but you can tell they’re nice. I’m thinking B-cup, maybe C, depending on what kind of bra she wears, a topic I’ve mused on pretty extensively, let’s just say.
Yeah, I really, really want to touch her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s so hot, with those smudged-up eyes and pale skin and the way her pulse beats in her neck. I imagine her under me, skin to skin. How smooth she’d feel.
I run my thumb up the back of the Glock. A nice piece. Smooth and warm from the body of a guard who’s currently out cold. Two long years without a woman’s touch. I’d be mad with lust for any woman. I tell myself it’s not about this woman with her books and glasses and prim hairdo, trying so hard to drive naturally even though she’s shaking.
She doesn’t have experience at this, and she sometimes makes jerky movements, but I don’t yell at her for that. I don’t want to hurt her for things she can’t control.
I shift in my seat, shaking her out of my mind because I know how quickly things can go bad, and if she forces my hand, if it’s a choice between her or my crew…
She needs to not matter.
First thing Stone and I need to do when we get up to Franklin City is find some women to fuck so I can get my head back on straight. Right before we all make Governor Dorman sorry he was ever born.
I smile inside, imagining him hearing the news that I’ve busted out. Not like Dorman can go into hiding, being he’s a governor and all. No, he’ll be easy to find. Not easy to get to, with all that security, but we’ll figure it out.
More cops. She’s going fifty-five exactly.
“What you are is a liability, Ms. Winslow. You made the car, probably even memorized the fucking license plate. You were going to call the cops on me.”
“No,” she whispers.
Liar. She’s too smart to do otherwise. “So I took your car instead. But that means… It means you aren’t that useful anymore.”
She’s silent. I’m scaring her, but I need her to understand the thin ice she’s on so she doesn’t do something stupid.
“My point is, if you don’t drive perfect, then maybe I should be driving. Right? Am I right?”
She stares at the road, lips pressed together, which plumps them out a little bit, and suddenly it’s too much, and I reach up to her face. It’s like an out-of-body experience, seeing myself do it, taking this liberty just because I can. She jumps as I graze her cheek with two knuckles. I draw them slowly down her silky skin, toward her chin, drinking up the feel of her, rich with electricity, rich with peace. She’s mine, and I want her so bad, it’s like a fever.
I pull my hand away. She’s breathing fast, hands gripping the wheel.
Softly I say, “That was a question, baby. You need to answer my questions now just the way I’ve been answering yours these past weeks. And if you’re good, I won’t make you list off twenty motherfucking items in your house, okay?”
She looks over, anger in her eyes. I shift the Glock so it catches the light, reminding her who’s in charge. To remind me she’s expendable. The gun helps. It keeps us both focused.
She fixes her attention back on the road. “Fine. You’re right,” she says quickly. “If I don’t drive perfectly, you should be driving.”
“Very good, Ms. Winslow. But if I’m driving, how can I hold this gun on you? How do I know you might not jump out or do something crazy? Flag down cars or something. You see my dilemma?”
“Yes,” she whispers. I can tell from her face she really has worked it out, but I spell it out anyway.
“Bottom line, you drive nice, that’s one less reason for me to kill you.” I watch the lump move inside her smooth throat. A gulp of fear. It’s almost comical. “Gulp,” I say.
Her eyes flash at me. “Fuck you,” she says.
“Are you offering?” I ask, the feel of her skin still blazing on my knuckles.
She sniffs angrily, like that’s an outrageous idea. I flex my hand. Her cheek felt warmer than I expected. Her belly would feel warm under that sweater. And she’d be jumpy with every touch. Oh, Ms. Winslow would be very, very jumpy, tensing with every slide of my finger, every kiss, every little invasion. That’s how she’d be at first, anyway. I’d make her keep the glasses on the whole time. Unless I went ahead and broke them, like I was thinking earlier, to put her off balance. “Do you need those glasses to drive?” I ask.
She furrows her brows, trying to decide whether to lie or not.
“Never mind,” I say.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to meet my friend in a secluded area.”
She gives me that look again. The flare of surprise—and a little bit of something else too.
“Why, Ms. Winslow, please. Mind out of the gutter.” I smile and sit back. The smile is there to put her at ease. Stone’ll want her dead. It’s going to be a problem.
Another pair of cop cars heads over the hill. “You just drive nice, okay?”
“Nicely,” she snaps.
“What?”
“Drive nicely, that’s how you say it. Not drive nice.”
Oh God. Nicely. Correcting my grammar even at gunpoint. I’m so fucking hot for her, I think I might burst into flames.
Thirteen
~Abigail~
The car feels unwieldy in my hands, as if I’m suddenly driving around an elephant instead of my trusty old car. The steering wheel tugs and gives unexpectedly, and it’s hard to keep the speed at exactly fifty-five. Any second now he’s going to notice.
And then he’s going to kill me.
Out here with Grayson, anything goes. That’s what the crisp air and too-bright sun are telling me. Anything goes.
The patch on his guard uniform says Dixon. Guess Manuel gave it to him. Or Grayson took it.
“Is Dixon okay?”
Grayson chuckles. “He’s okay. He’s fifty grand okay.”
A bribe, then. Dixon took a bribe to look the other way, to give up his uniform to help Grayson escape. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Dixon was supposed to be one of the good guys. “How did you know he would take it?”
“I wanted
to get in your class, but it was full. He took my iPod and got me in.”
My hands tighten on the wheel. “So?”
“If someone’ll take a small bribe, they’ll take a bigger one.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s the world. I called in a few favors…made a few bribes…threatened a few people. Like you.”
“They’ll catch you. They’ll hunt you down like an animal.”
“I don’t think so,” he says, his voice more thoughtful than afraid. “I’ve been planning this since I got inside. No, I’d been planning it since before then, since I started doing shit that could get me arrested. And now that I’m out, I’m not going back anytime soon.”
“You could just not do illegal things.”
“That’s no fun, sweetheart. And you look like you could use a little fun.”
The woods get thicker as we drive, with fewer dirt-road turnoffs. The town where I live is a half-hour drive south of the prison, and we’ve been heading north forever. Nothing’s north. I haven’t seen a cop car for a long time. Did I miss my chance? Should I have crashed this car right in front of the cops so they’d have to stop? But for all I know, my little blue Honda would explode on impact. Or maybe the man beside me would shoot as soon as I turned the wheel. It takes a lot to invite death instead of postponing it.
Because that’s all I’m doing here, by obeying him. Postponing death.
Suddenly he rests his palm on my shoulder. The pressure is light and affectionate, like the touch of a friend. Or a boyfriend. Heat builds under his palm with the thin fabric of my summer sweater acting as a conduit. I’m acutely aware of the satin bra strap that he’s almost, almost touching…and I know he could do more.
He could move the strap aside. He could make me have sex with him, and there’s nothing I could do to stop him. That’s what the hand on my shoulder tells me.
“Turn right here,” he says. I see the building up ahead.
It’s a gas station! That’s my chance to escape. He has to know it, but he’s not acting concerned. Nothing ever concerns him. That’s going to be his downfall—that confidence. If I can find a way to use it.