by Skye Warren
We get closer, and my heart sinks. The building looked white from a distance, but up close you can see the way paint has peeled into yellowish grime. It’s an abandoned gas station.
“Right here.”
I slow and pull in. The part where you’d pay at the pump has been ripped out, leaving only two metal beams in the middle. It looks like something out of an apocalyptic movie.
He may be a cocky bastard, but he’s a prepared cocky bastard.
Off to the side is a car with a man standing next to it.
“Pull up next to him,” Grayson says.
The man’s stance is wide. Arms crossed. He doesn’t flinch as I aim a little too close to him.
Grayson squeezes my shoulder, and I straighten out and stop a few yards away. My foot is on the brake. He’s the one who reaches over to shift us into park. Then he turns off the car and puts the key in his pocket.
“Stay here,” he says before leaving the car.
Does he think I’ll obey? I sit very still, hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. But inside I am clawing my way out of here. I am straining at the chains, just as surely as he did in prison. In this much, we are alike. Neither of us will remain in captivity if we can help it.
There’s not much in the car. Damn myself for keeping it relatively clean. What am I going to do with a stack of student memoirs? Fold them into an origami gun? I have nothing.
Then I remember. Pepper spray in the glove compartment.
It’s really so little. But what else do I have?
Get away. Use the pepper spray. Take his gun.
And then what? If I had a gun, could I pull the trigger? If I knew I’d end Grayson’s life to save my own, would I do it?
Fourteen
~Grayson~
Stone’s standing beside a car, feet crossed at the ankles, coolly taking everything in. He didn’t even flinch when she was heading for him. The hard-ass.
I’m not going to let him be a hard-ass about this. I slam the door behind me and close the distance between us, grabbing him in a bear hug. After a second, he hugs me back.
“Fuck,” he says gruffly.
I close my eyes, gripping onto him. Knowing he and the crew were all out there, pulling for me, ready to help, that got me through. He lets me go and studies my face. I wonder if I look different.
He nods toward the car. “What the fuck?”
“Nothing. My chauffer.”
He pulls out a nine and hands it to me. “Do her and let’s go. Hurry up.”
My heart pounds. Something deep and visceral rejects the idea of a bullet in her brain. Of animals picking her apart. “She could still be useful.”
“To the cops, maybe,” he says. “She saw me, Grayson. There’s no choice.”
I glance back at Abby, sitting rigidly upright behind the wheel. Her glasses are on perfectly straight, but a strand of hair has escaped from her bun, and she’s staring ahead with utter composure, a look that is so her, just so very her, it does something to me. And suddenly all I can think is that she’s mine. It’s not even a thought, it’s a foghorn, blaring in my head: mine. “Here is messy. Bad place for a body.”
“Put her in the dumpster,” he continues. “No one’ll find her for a while. Nobody will think anything if dogs come sniffing around…”
My pulse whooshes in my ears. “No.”
“Fine. I’ll do it.” He takes his weapon back from me. “Go change. Got your clothes in the back of the car. Quick and painless, okay?” He chambers a bullet, weapon flashing in the sun. He catches me staring. “You like? Platinum-plated German number.”
I watch myself close my fingers around his wrist, my corded hand tight on his shooting arm, matching scars on our skin. “I got it under control.”
He stills and looks up at me, eyes like emeralds. Softly, he says, “Do you?”
“Yeah. I’ll handle her,” I growl.
He frowns. I wonder if he’s thinking about how I let them trap me, frame me. My stomach twists as I remember the spray of the cop’s brains on the pavement. The governor’s men pointing at me like I did it. The gun I hadn’t seen in forever, glinting on the ground. My gun, my prints. Masterful fucking frame-up job. We hadn’t even seen it coming.
“Grayson,” he says. “Don’t be fucked up.”
I grab the back of his head and pull him in, close enough to kiss, and look at him straight. “I said I got it.”
The moment draws out, then I feel him soften. “Fine, I get it. I understand.” He twists his arm out of my grip. “Two years. Okay. Fuck her and then kill her.”
I let him go. “Safer anyway, going in separate cars.” It’s true, and we both know it. “We have to get out of here. I’ll meet you back there.” At the Bradford, I mean.
“They’ll be looking for that thing.” He nods at her little car.
“I’ll change the plates. I got this.”
He grins. “Good to have you back again, brother.” He reaches into the car and pulls out a bundle. Clothes. I strip down to my boxers. He takes the guard uniform and stuffs it into a nearby barrel as I pull on the black T-shirt and a familiar pair of jeans.
“Fuck, yeah,” I say. He even brought my old work boots. He hands me money, identification, plus a phone. He offers me a piece, but I have the Glock I got off the guard.
“Take 54 to I-98,” he says.
“I know the way.”
Franklin City is at least ten hours away from here. Most people are moving out of Franklin City these days—huge chunks of it are abandoned, crumbling, not just the neighborhood where the Bradford is, but beyond it, like a spreading disease. And then on the outer edges of it are the mansions, like parasites, feeding. That’s where the governor lives.
Stone heads back to the Dodge. He assumes I’ll kill her, and that makes me uncomfortable—because I don’t lie to my guys. Especially not to Stone. We’re brothers. Closer than brothers. What is it called when you walk through the same fire and wear the same scars?
I go back to the Honda as he tears out onto the two-lane highway. I set my hand on the hood and suck in the sweet smell of freedom, waiting until his car is the size of a penny. I lean down and look at Abby. Still trembling. Is that all she’d do if I touched her? Tremble?
It fills me with an uncomfortable mix of hate and lust.
The car door is light as tin; I get a bad feeling, like I forgot something important.
It’s only when I’m seated and buckled up that I realize she’s gone past trembling. She’s in full-on earthquake mode.
She heard us talking.
Fucking old cars with their shit insulation. I reach for her, but she’s expecting that. She bolts from the car and runs on foot. My long-ass legs are folded into the floorboard and my shoulders are practically hunched, so it takes me a good sixty seconds to unbuckle, get out, and round the car, weapon in hand. By that time she’s across the street and racing into the woods.
I cross the road and dive into the brush after her. She’s going to be sorry she ran. I follow the sound of her crashing through the underbrush with Stone’s voice in my head. Shoot her. Get out of the area.
But I can’t—not yet.
That’s when the sirens sound.
Fuck!
The car is just begging for someone to stop and check it out, parked in an abandoned station with both doors hanging open. They’ll call it in. Find out it’s hers.
I’m going to catch her. And when I do, I’m going to teach her what happens when you disobey.
There’s a natural order to people: the strong and the weak. I’ve been the weaker one before. I know how much it hurts. But pain only makes you harder. Stronger.
Fifteen
~Abigail~
I run like hell through the woods, pepper spray clutched in my hand. The underbrush feels like nails, digging at my arms and cheeks as I pass, but it’s not the kind of thing you care about when an escaped prisoner is trying to kill you.
I crash over a bed of sticks and moldy leaves
in my stupid high-heel boots, running like crazy toward the darkest part of the woods—we passed a lot of fields, and that’s exactly where I don’t want to end up. Grayson would have a clear shot in a field.
Here is messy. Bad place for a body, he’d said.
I know the next stop would be somewhere good to leave a dead body. Maybe a river.
I jump a fallen tree and stumble, smashing my shin into a rock so hard it feels like I cracked a bone. I hear the brush snapping behind me, and something else—a siren! I jump up and keep going, racing madly. They’ll find my car. Will he forget about me and save himself? Maybe they’ll come out here with dogs.
I run, forearms first, fighting the underbrush. Stay alive.
I can hear him back there. Which means he’s close enough to hear me, and maybe close enough to see me in my bright blue sweater.
The siren is gone. Did it get turned off, or did the cop keep driving? I dart right, change direction, but I hear him again. I have no idea where I am, where the highway is, nothing. All I know is that I have to survive.
When I enter a particularly thick, dark stand of trees, I decide to play my last card. I slip behind the first trunk, trying to keep my breathing under control.
I hear him slow.
And then nothing. I wait, back flat against the nubby bark, shin screaming with pain, pulse whooshing in my ears. My sweaty fingers are wrapped around the canister of pepper spray that’s so old I have no idea if it even works.
It’s all I have left.
Silence. He’s back there somewhere, just waiting. Watching. I picture his hulking muscular form.
I swallow, trying to remember where the last sound from him was. Two feet away? Twenty feet away? The waiting is getting excruciating. I look around for other weapons—maybe a rock to smash him with in case the pepper spray doesn’t work.
Nothing.
A twig breaks nearby. I stiffen.
Then another. Soft footsteps.
Then his voice. “Ms. Winslowwww,” he says softly. It’s almost a whisper. I shouldn’t be able to hear something that quiet, but the woods are strangely amplifying. It makes me wonder if he can hear my heart pounding.
My breath sounds hoarse in my ears; I will it under control.
Another soft crunch. It comes to me that I should throw something, to make a sound elsewhere and divert him, the way they do in the movies, but I’m afraid even to move. I curse my skirt with no pockets—no coins, no keys.
I think about throwing my glasses. I could probably make it through the woods without them, but I can’t part with them. My glasses are my security, and I have so little now to protect me.
Another step. He’s closer.
Silence.
Crunch.
Quietly as can be, I bend over, pick up a stone, and hurl it.
It hits a nearby tree.
I stiffen at the sound, a soft rustle. I don’t hear anything else for a long while.
And suddenly he’s in front of me. I hold up the spray and pump the nozzle. It hits him right in the eyes.
“Fuck!” He grabs me by the shoulders, eyes shut tight, coughing. He can’t see me, but he’s got me anyway. Tears run down his cheeks. I try to jerk out of his arms, but he won’t let go. I try to kick him in the balls, but I end up hitting his thigh. He swears and jerks me closer.
I feel my throat seize up like I can’t breathe. My lungs clench, desperate for air.
I spray again, getting him in the shirt. Still with his eyes closed tightly, he presses me against the tree with his big body. I writhe and twist, but he’s a big warm boulder, pinning me, pressing me with his body.
I’m coughing uncontrollably now, eyes watering. Tree bark juts into my back, and with him on me, I can barely breathe. He feels down my arm until he finds the spray and wrenches it out of my hand.
He’s blinded, or at least he can’t open his eyes. “Fuck!” he says again, tossing it.
I try to knee him, but all I can do is stomp his foot, writhing wildly, gasping for air.
“Damn it!” He twists me around, and my glasses fall off.
His eyes are still closed, but that hasn’t diminished his ability to hang on to me and control me like a rag doll. He puts a leg in front of mine and pushes me forward. All I can do is fall, but he’s got me. He’s lowering me, face-first, to the forest floor. He presses his knee into my back, one hand fisted in my hair, the other around both of my wrists. Sticks and pine needles feel rough against my cheek as his weight crushes me.
“Calm down,” he grates. “Give it up.”
I’m coughing, wheezing. I had asthma as a kid, and that’s what it feels like now as the pepper spray stings me all the way down. “Get off!” I gasp. “You’re too heavy—I can’t—get air.”
“It’s the spray,” he says. “Breathe normal.”
I gasp for air, panicking. “I can’t!” Is this how I die? Suffocation?
“Pretend,” he says, letting up his knee. He shifts so that he’s straddling my back. He grips my wrists now, pressing them above my head, and I feel his boots locked over my thighs. His weight is off my back. “It’s something every thug like me knows, how to not breathe in the fucking Mace. It’s cop killer 101.”
“You’re not a cop killer.” Or is he?
He snorts.
I choke and cough. I still can’t breathe. It’s not working! He’s going to let me die.
“Relax,” he says softly. “You’re making it worse by panicking.”
Hoarsely, I try to get air. The sounds scare me. I really can’t breathe. I suck faster as the panic rises.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Shhh.” He brings his head near mine, breath tickling the back of my neck. “Pepper spray is an inflammatory agent, okay? It swells your throat and sinuses, but it doesn’t shut them.”
I gasp.
He continues to speak in his calm, strangely soothing voice. Why is he soothing me? I can feel him rattling against my defenses with every word. “You’re still getting air, okay? Focus on that, Ms. Winslow. That little passage of air you can still breathe through. Slow it down now, got it?”
I can’t slow it down. It’s like I don’t know how to breathe anymore, and I’m shaking.
And suddenly he’s stretching his big body over me, on top of me. His weight isn’t entirely on me, or else I’d be squished; it’s more of a dull weight, as though he’s holding himself against me, warming me, pressing me to the forest floor. Into my ear he whispers, “Breathe with me.”
I suck in a faint breath. “Get off me, you caveman!” Why is he even trying to help me?
“You’re okay, baby,” he says. “Match my breath.”
I feel his chest expand against my shoulder blades. He’s like a big, warm animal on me. I twist, but there’s no moving. He presses down harder, and something about his weight soothes me. I hate that he’s actually calming me, helping me. I don’t want him to make me feel good—he’s my enemy.
I wheeze lightly.
He breathes on, hot and slow against me. A bird calls in the distance. I can hear the hum of the highway, the drone of a helicopter. My eyes tear, and my limbs feel floppy and warm, and suddenly I’m doing it—I’m breathing. I take an almost regular breath.
“There you go,” he whispers.
“Fuck you. I don’t want your help.” I gasp in another breath.
His whisper caresses my cheek. “Nice and slow, Ms. Winslow.” There’s something sensual in the way he says it. “Nice and slow.”
He breathes again, as if to demonstrate. On the next breath I match him. Soon we’re breathing together. It’s strangely intimate, like we’re two wounded creatures under the forest canopy. It’s almost like dancing.
Almost like having sex.
I crane my head around just enough to see that he still has his eyes shut tight, dark eyelashes wet with tears from the irritation of the spray. Did I hurt him? Did I burn his eyes?
“Stop moving around,” he growls. “Lie still.”
Like I
have any choice with him pinning me. My heart pounds under his weight.
Breathe in, breathe out.
It’s as if we’re in some kind of time-out, a no-man’s-land with the two of us fucked up and lying on the forest floor on a bed of pine needles that actually feels sort of soft and nice. The moments stretch on and on. I wonder how long it will take him to recover.
Maybe I really injured his eyes. Could I have hurt his eyes permanently?
He shifts, and I think maybe he’s getting up. But he doesn’t.
In a weird way I’m glad. If he got off me, that would end this strange, relaxing time out. It would bring back the harsh reality of who we are to each other.
For now, there’s nothing I can do with him lying on my back, and I let my limbs go soft, let my breathing calm, giving myself permission to relax. I feel like jelly suddenly, spread underneath him, spine flattened out. Us breathing together.
My eyes drift closed. The warm patch on my neck feels lit up every time he breathes out, and I imagine his lips hovering just over my skin.
I imagine him kissing me there, and a wave of forbidden feeling swells through my core.
My eyes fly open. There is no way I’m turned on.
Except I am.
My heart races. My breath gets fitful again.
“Hey,” he says. And then more softly. “You’re okay.”
I become aware of a hardness against my thigh. An erection. A melty sensation pulses through my pelvis. I’m trembling deep down, and it’s not just fear; it’s excitement.
Horrified, I try to shake him off, and he tightens his legs and arms around me. I feel his weight and warmth keenly now. “You don’t want to give me any more trouble, do you?”
“No,” I whisper huskily.
The energy of sex runs wild between us, and I don’t know how to stop it. Does he know? I flash back on him in the prison waiting room, the way he looked at me, and all that power and beauty barely contained in shackles. How stupid I was to think he was beautiful.
“No, you don’t want to give me trouble,” he affirms. “So we’re going to stay just like this until my eyes can recover.”