Run So Far

by Peggy Nicholson

  But McKay plucked her missile out of the air at chin height. It figured. Bitterly, she met his dark gaze in the reflection and found he wasn’t smiling after all. Somehow that was even more disturbing. She looked down again quickly as he turned away.

  And how was she to feel? Outrage chased confusion and something else in a dizzying swirl around her brain and came up headache as she watched him prowl the office behind her. She’d bumped her head, hadn’t she? Perhaps everything that followed that was delirium. Any minute now, the arrogant, restless shape making coffee at the back counter would simply—coffee?

  ‘Coffee?’ Behind her, McKay’s reflection set a mug on her desk, then stood back to sip from another. Dark eyes, narrowed in thought, watched her from over the rim as he drank.

  Figments don’t serve you coffee, Jolian concluded reluctantly. McKay would not simply vanish, he would have to be dealt with. Slowly she wheeled around to face him.

  He saluted her return to the world with a flick of his half-smile and then watched in silence as she drank. Unnerving. Behind a hedge of eyelashes, Jolian concentrated on the bitter drink, ignoring the loom of him. After a moment, he sat on the edge of her desk, but still he towered above her; he was just closer now. Too close. Finally, his empty mug clicked on the desk beside her hand. ‘So let’s talk about Jem, now.’

  She looked up to find those dark eyes waiting. ‘I’ve told you all I have to tell, Mr. McKay. You’ve wasted a trip, coming here.’

  But slowly he shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ His eyes roamed over her face and the smile flicked again. ‘He’s here in Boston, isn’t he?’

  Jolian looked down at the sketch pad before her. She reached out and picked up her pen, tapped it point down across the paper. ‘We have a toll-free number here, Mr. McKay. We take calls from all over the country.’

  ‘Yes, I know that now.’ Above her, a smile deepened the low voice. ‘But Jem’s here all the same, isn’t he?’ She looked up at him, and then wished she hadn’t, as his eyes caught and held her gaze. ‘I didn’t say that.’ His half-smile became a whole. ‘What’s the matter, Jolian, can’t you lie? All you have to say is “No, Fletch, he isn’t here”.’

  Fletch. An odd name. It was an effort to wrench her eyes away and down. She found the pad before her covered with big, wobbly stars. Automatically, she drew a careful five-point star, then a six-pointer.

  A knuckle hooked under her chin and tilted her head back to meet that searching green gaze. ‘I didn’t know there were any Puritans left in Boston,’ he murmured, one brow lifting slowly. ‘Can’t lie, takes her kissing seriously—’

  Jolian jerked her chin away and looked down again. She chose the largest star and began constructing rainbow lines between its points. The office door creaked open and she heard Ellen clicking discreetly across the floor towards her desk. Some help she had been! Should she call her?

  Standing, she met McKay’s brow-raised, mocking gaze. No, it was too late to run yelling for help. This was her tiger. She gathered their mugs, took them back to the counter, and stopped short. In the collection bowl, from among the dimes and quarters, a crumpled Ben Franklin regarded her stonily. A hundred dollars. The going rate for a pearl, a kiss, or two cups of lousy, warmed-over coffee, the arrogant—wheeling, she found him watching her. ‘Why don’t you just buy a new son, Mr. McKay, since money’s no object?’

  That brought his head up and his eyebrows down. ‘If I were buying flesh this minute, I’d not be after a son, believe me, love. What’s your price, by the way?’

  Insufferable! Eyes flashing, she whipped her hair back from a neck grown suddenly hot. ‘It’s out of your range, and it doesn’t come in a wallet!’

  ‘No legal tender, hmm?’ His dark eyes travelled slowly across her body, heating it as they searched for the price tag. ‘So what kind of ... tender do you accept?’ Beside him, the phone rang and he reached for it mechanically.

  ‘Don’t you touch that!’ Jolian was across the room before she realised it, her hand landing on top of his fingers. He turned and their noses nearly touched. At this range his eyes were enormous, deep pools of green flecked with sunlight. The phone rang again, and in spite of her downward pressure, he lifted the receiver. His lips twitched at the look on her face and he held the phone to her ear with mocking gallantry.

  ‘Reachout Hotline,’ she spoke automatically, beaming her rage into his eyes. Any minute now he should burst into flames.

  ‘Jolian?’ The girl’s voice was a panting, throat-straining whisper. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes! Suzie? Are you all right?’ Jolian squeezed the receiver and stared through the clear eyes before her, picturing instead a girl huddled over a phone in the dark somewhere.

  ‘No!’ The girl swallowed audibly. ‘I’m ... in trouble, Jolian, I ...’ Her voice caught in a whimper. ‘It’s Tony. He wants me to ... to ... to ... to...’

  ‘To be a prostitute?’

  ‘How ...’ the girl gulped and tried again, ‘how did you know?’

  Jolian fought back the angry laugh, kept her voice briskly confident. ‘I’ll tell you later, Suzie. Now tell me where you are. Are you out on the street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know the name of it?’

  ‘No,’ the thread of hysteria tightened in her voice. ‘No, he wouldn’t—’

  ‘What do you see, Suzie? Tell me.’

  ‘Tall buildings, dirty bookstores, an X-rated theatre, ugly men—oh, Jolian—’

  ‘Give me a name, Suzie,’ she commanded quickly. ‘What’s right across the street from you?’ And where was her pimp? He wouldn’t be far away.

  ‘The Pussycat Lounge—’ Suzie was answering mechanically now, like a good child, but she was still panting.

  ‘Okay, I know where you are, Suzie.’ The Combat Zone, of course. ‘I’ll have the police there in five minutes.’

  ‘Police?’ The word shrilled wildly through the room. ‘No! Jolian, you c-c-c-can’t—’ Her voice fractured into a series of stuttering hiccups. ‘My mother w-would...’ Any second she would hang up now.

  ‘All right, Suzie, no police. I won’t call the police. Suzie, listen to me!’ It was hard to shout and sound calm at the same time. ‘Suzie, are you listening?’

  The hiccup might have meant yes.

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll stop the car in front of the Pussycat Lounge. I’ll honk the horn three times—beep, beep, beep. When I do, you come running, okay?’

  ‘O ... kay.’

  ‘Right, now get off the phone before Tony sees you. Stand where he told you. If anyone asks you to go with him, say you’re sick—very sick. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Be brave, Suzie, and listen for me.’

  Starting to hang up, Jolian discovered she still trapped McKay’s fingers against the phone. Her other hand gripped his wrist in a stranglehold. He grinned as she blinked. ‘Any time, General.’ He replaced the receiver for her and stood up.

  He was forgotten already. Bike—collect it later. Shoulder bag. She opened it wide, swept her tools into it and wheeled towards the door. ‘Ellen, I need your car,’ she announced, striding into the main office.

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ McKay told the open-mouthed woman as his hand closed on Jolian’s arm. ‘She’s got mine. You hold the fort.’ He opened the door and swept her out before him. ‘Let’s go.’

  McKay’s car was a four-door rental, double-parked in front of the pizza parlour. He pocketed a parking ticket without reading it, had them moving before she could slam the door. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Straight ahead, but stay right. We’ll go right in about a mile.’ She stared ahead eagerly, caught herself against the dash as the car slid between two taxis and accelerated away from a blare of horns and yells.

  ‘Hang on,’ he told her needlessly.

  ‘Right. And right next corner.’ Hooking an elbow over the seat back, Jolian turned to watch him. Looming headlights backlit the hard, straight lines of his profile for an instant, showed her his l
ips tucked up in that unrevealing almost-smile. The long-fingered hands on the wheel were relaxed. The dark eyes moved constantly, sparking as the street lights flickered past. He was enjoying himself, wasn’t he? ‘Okay, take a left here, Mr. McKay.’

  ‘Fletch,’ he reminded her, cutting in front of a wall of oncoming traffic. His smile deepened as she gasped, then it faded again.

  Jolian let out her breath slowly. ‘An ... odd name. I’ve never heard it before.’

  Eyes on a fast approaching traffic light, he answered her absently. ‘Family name—Fletcher. As in Fletcher Christian.’ The light turned yellow and the car surged ahead. ‘Mutiny on the Bounty?’

  ‘Oh.’ His face flashed bloody as they swept under the light. Yes, he looked like a mutineer all right, or rather, a pirate, with that glinting, reckless look. Like a man with nothing to lose. Arrogant and outrageous as he was, she was suddenly glad he was here to help her ... presuming they arrived alive.

  He flicked a glance her way. ‘Much further?’ They were gliding through the dirty canyons that were the backside of downtown Boston now. The streets were darker here and the people moved differently. Some scurried with quick glances over tight shoulders. Others shambled blindly with heads down.

  ‘No, just a few blocks. See the neon signs and the traffic up ahead? We turn left there.’

  ‘Can you drive, Jolian?’ McKay spared her another glance.

  ‘Yes, why—’

  But the car pulled over and stopped and he was out of his seat already, opening the back door. ‘Scoot over and drive, then.’ Kneeling on the floor behind the driver’s seat he peered over her shoulder. ‘Come on.’ Shakily, Jolian swung the car back into the traffic. It was getting thicker now, slow cruising, the passenger’s heads craning as they scanned the crowded sidewalks and the store-fronts beyond. ‘Why?’

  His breath warmed her ear. ‘She’s expecting you, not a man. We don’t want to scare her away. She sounded half out of her wits already.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jolian scanned the sidewalks ahead. Pictures of women on every grimy store-front, but few women on the street. One older woman walked slowly, hips swaying in her tight, cheap dress. Another lounged in a doorway, eyes distant and dreaming. College boys in a nervous, laughing huddle before a store offering ‘ADULT books, rubber and leather goods.’ ‘LIVE NUDES’, promised one sign in neon red; ‘BOSTON BUNNIES’, blinked another in flashing white light-bulbs., Young men swaggered in blue jeans and undershirts, a white-bearded man, staggered through the trash in the gutter, a plumply dapper man in a checkered suit dithered before a door offering ‘PRIVATE BOOTHS—254—’

  ‘Do you see her?’ Fletcher McKay’s voice came from behind the seat now.

  ‘I don’t even know what she looks like!’ Above a dark entrance just ahead, a lighted marquee barely had room among the rows and rows of X’s to show the film title in smaller print. And beyond that, a blue neon sign flashed. A cat-eared woman with impossibly long legs high-kicked the can-can ... kick ... off; down ... off; kick ... off ... ‘But there’s the Pussycat!’

  ‘Jolian, she’s probably been picked up by now. But if she comes, lock the door after her immediately and take off, understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jolian swallowed and slowly, deliberately, hit the horn. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Faces in the car just ahead glared back at her, mouthing soundless words; hands gestured obscenely. But on the sidewalks, no one turned to look. The men drifted on their way, absorbed in their endless prowl for something money would never buy.

  ‘Hit it again.’

  Jolian rolled down her window, leaned out to show herself and tapped the horn again. ‘Suzie, where are you?’ Up ahead and across the street, a girl plunged between two parked cars. Dressed in hot pants, teetering on backless spike heels, eyes wild and mouth open, she dodged blindly through the slow-moving traffic. ‘There she is!’ Waving frantically, Jolian leaned out of the window. ‘Suzie!’ The girl staggered forward and caught herself against the car’s hood, fingers spread wide, panting, staring through the windshield like a deer frozen in the oncoming headlights.

  Jolian leaned over to throw open the passenger door. ‘Suzie, get in!’

  The girl blinked and moved again, leaning against the car as she hobbled around the front of it to half-fall inside. ‘Jolian?’

  ‘Yes, Suzie. Get your feet in and shut the door.’ The girl scrabbled at it. From her movements and the smell of her, she was half drunk. Jolian leaned across her to help.

  ‘Hey!’ The door handle ripped out of her grasp just as Suzie shrieked in her ear. A snarling face and wide shoulders filled the doorway, thrust into the car. ‘Whad’ya think yer doin’! Tha’s my woman!’

  His eighty-proof breath searing her face, Jolian reeled backwards to clutch at the steering wheel as the girl shrilled again. ‘Tony, no!’

  But one fist buried in the girl’s long hair, he dragged her towards the door, his other hand groping in the pocket of his jacket. And he was smiling. ‘I told ya, baby—cross me once an ya’d be sorry. Real sorry.’ Crazed eyes on the squealing girl, he didn’t see the man looming up behind the seat until large hands caught his wrists. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Coming with us, punk?’ Fletcher McKay’s voice was low and deadly, the one sound of sanity in this shrieking bedlam. ‘Drive, Jolian,’ he commanded, grunting as the man struggled in his hold.

  The pimp’s feet were still on the ground outside; did McKay mean to—

  ‘Drive!’ he gritted. The pimp heaved beneath him, still fighting to get his right fist from his pocket. ‘Come on, Tony, the cops’ll ... love you.’

  Jolian stepped on the gas and moved out slowly.

  ‘Hey!’ Rage turned to alarm in the coarse voice as he stumbled alongside the car. ‘Le’ go!’

  ‘Faster, Jolian. You sure, Tony? We’ve got lots of room here.’

  ‘Lemme go!”

  ‘Right you are ... punk.’ McKay’s tug turned to shove and Jolian saw the pimp sprawl backwards toward the kerb and sit down—hard. ‘Step on it, Jolian.’ McKay reached out to slam and lock the door, turned to stare back at his victim.

  Jolian obeyed automatically, one hand on the back of the girl beside her. Huddled into near-fetal position, face hidden against her knees, Suzie was silent now, only her shuddering suggesting that she was still conscious.

  And she was shivering too, Jolian realised as they turned a corner and picked up speed. God, if Fletcher McKay hadn’t been there...

  ‘Pull over,’ he directed suddenly. ‘I’ll drive.’

  Obeying gratefully, Jolian wobbled around to sit outside the collapsed girl, sat stroking her tangled hair with shaking fingers as the car glided and turned through the dark streets.

  Finally he spoke again. ‘Okay, Jolian, no one’s following us. What now?’

  She looked up from the girl beside her. It took a moment to place herself. ‘Oh ... okay. Go left at the next lights. We’re taking the Mass pike out to Newton.’

  Fletcher McKay swung the car into the turn. ‘What’s out there?’

  Jolian stroked the girl’s hair and spoke the words to her, making them almost a lullaby, a chant to call her back from the nightmare world in which she’d been lost. ‘Oh ... a warm bath, something hot to eat, a bed with clean sheets ... and a good ... long ... sleep, for starters.’ And tomorrow, some decisions to make with the help of Hannah Bernstein, child psychologist, and the hotline’s crisis intervention expert. Underneath her hand, Suzie stirred and heaved a deep, slow sigh.

  ‘That sounds like the ticket.’ Above her, his low voice was warm and smiling.

  It was nearly midnight when Jolian finally left Hannah’s house in Newton and wandered back to the car parked out front. She felt as if she were floating. Was that the weight of Suzie lifting from her shoulders or just fatigue?

  The damp night had grown no colder and Fletcher McKay had rolled down the car windows. He’d had quite a wait. Suzie had clung to her as the one known object in a world filled with uncer
tainty and menace. It had taken Hannah more than an hour to weave her motherly spell of comfort and common sense. At last the girl had dropped off from sheer exhaustion while they sat beside her bed, a night light glowing in the corner of the small pink bedroom, and Jolian had tiptoed away. Hannah, she suspected, would sit there all night.

  Someone else had dropped off as well, she observed, leaning in at the window. Fletcher McKay had turned sideways to stretch his long legs out on the seat. His head was thrown back against the door at an awkward angle, but he slept with his mouth closed, she noticed approvingly. And a very nice mouth it was, too. Beautiful wasn’t quite the right word for it, not masculine enough to describe its chiselled, perfectly defined form. And handsome was too trite...

  One corner of that mouth lifted slowly in the dim light, and then the second. ‘Think you’ll be able to give the cops a complete description?’

  It was too dark for him to see her blush, Jolian told herself firmly, getting into the car as he moved his legs. ‘Sure. Tall, dark, and badly in need of a shave.’ She grinned as his hand jerked towards his chin and then stopped.

  He laughed under his breath. ‘Badly in need of some food as well! Where can we eat, this time of night?’

  Jolian frowned. In spite of his piratical jaw and tousled hair, and the split at the shoulder seam of his coat she spotted as they passed under a street light, Fletcher McKay did not look like a man who ate at greasy spoons and hamburger joints. She could think of nothing else that would still be open. At the very least, she owed him a decent meal. ‘Take a right here, Mr. McKay.’

  ‘Try Fletch and I might.’

  ‘Fletch,’ she murmured reluctantly, and the car turned.

  When at last they turned on to her street, nothing stirred, nothing but a few dry leaves scattering before the damp breeze. He parked the car and looked around slowly. ‘There’s a restaurant here?’

  ‘Best in town.’ Suddenly this didn’t seem like such a good idea after all. He wouldn’t misinterpret this gesture, would he?