by Loki Renard
He nods solemnly. “I’m sorry. That all sounds really fucked up.”
“Yeah. How about you? Brothers and sisters?”
“Two brothers. Both lost in combat.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry.”
He gives a slight shrug. “It’s what our family has always done. Listers have been giving their lives in battle for, well, forever. It’s an honor in our family.” He pauses for a long minute. “Used to be that coming back was shame.”
Something in his voice tells me that used to be might not be so long ago.
“Your family wasn’t happy to see you when you got back?”
“My father died in Vietnam. One brother died in Kuwait. The other in Iraq. My mother was used to loss. I’m not sure she knew how to take it when I came back in one piece. She died when I was on my final deployment. Before...” He trails off and doesn’t say what it was before. “I’m the last of my family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It happens.”
He’s a survivor, just like me. Maybe there’s more connecting us than mutual physical attraction and a one-night stand turned deadly. Maybe we’re both the sort of people bad things happen to. I’ve always known I was unlucky.
“Not your fault,” he says absentmindedly, his eyes on the road.
“I can still be sorry. You deserve more than that. I’d be so proud of you if you were mine...”
I trail off, blushing as I realize what I’m saying. It’s too much. Men don’t like clingy women. I can’t assume that just because he’s keeping me alive that he wants anything more than sex from me. I’ve made that mistake with every single man I’ve ever been with. None of them want anything more than a hot, wet place to dump their cum.
“You’re sweet,” he says, smiling over at me. “You’re a good girl, Jazz.”
“Thanks.”
I smile as the words good girl sink into me. I haven’t been called a good girl much before. Dirty. Whore. Slut. I’ve heard all of those things, but Jake talks to me like I’m more than a walking pussy.
“Okay,” he says. “We’re going to head up into the mountains soon. It’s going to get cold. And it’s going to be dangerous outside. Cougars. Bears. Predators. You’re going to need to stay with me. If you have another one of those moments like you had earlier, you really can’t give into it.”
Well, fuck. He already knows me better than most men ever do, and he’s getting ahead of that impulse. Smart guy. Caring guy.
“I’ll try,” I say.
“Nope. You’re not going to try. You’re going to do.”
I look over at him and then kind of wish I hadn’t. He has the sternest face of any living man, I swear to god. When I even think about disobeying him I feel my whole body and soul combined squirming.
“Okay, I won’t run.”
“Not from me,” he says. “You’ll run the fuck away from anyone who comes for us. That’s one time that instinct will save you...” He pauses. “So how come you didn’t run from Rodney? Didn’t he try to get you to leave town?”
“Because he wanted me to,” I say simply. “It’s not running if someone wants you to. It’s fleeing. And I wasn’t going to let him control me. He’s an asshole. He pissed me off so bad I wanted to stay just to fuck with him...”
“You did, huh?”
“I mean, I guess that wasn’t the best idea after all.”
“Maybe not.”
“Then again, fuck him. Who is he to run me out of my life? Not that it matters. He’s done it now anyway. He won.”
“Not yet, he didn’t,” Jake says grimly.
Not. Fucking. Yet.
Chapter Four
Jazz
We drive a long time. A real long time. Long enough to fall asleep. Long enough to wake up again to pine trees flashing by the window as the car rumbles over a dirt track, and not remember a goddamn thing as to how I got here, not until I look over and see the man driving the car.
For a brief second, the question what is super-hot neighbor guy doing driving me through a forest flashes through my mind... and then it all comes rushing back, making my stomach alternately sink and churn and jolt with the motion of the vehicle. He’s wanted for murder. I’m officially dead. This is a bad day.
“Are we almost wherever it is we’re going?”
“Uh huh,” he says. “We’ll be among friends soon. I mean, relatively soon.”
His friends maybe, not mine. I have the kind of friends who like my posts on Instagram, not the kind who let me stay when I’m wanted for murder.
“Are they from the military too?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Good guys. They’ll help. They don’t have much respect for civilian law or government, but they’ll go to Hades to help a friend.”
It has gotten cold out, and the car’s heater isn’t keeping up with the change in temperature very well. I sink down in the seat and try to crunch up on myself to stay warm, but the clothes I wore to tend bar aren’t exactly practical out here in the wilds.
I can hear the motor working to try to keep moving over the track that isn’t really a track anymore. Jake is pushing up between trees, forcing the car over rocks. I hear bangs and bumps and grinding sounds of metal on stone, which do not sound at all healthy.
“This is going to break your car.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m never going to be able to drive this car again anyway. This license plate is going to be on every system in the state, and I’m pretty sure the transmission has less than a mile left in it.”
A couple of minutes later, the car grinds to a halt against a rock and won’t move again.
“Tomorrow we’re going to have to leave the car and walk,” he says. “There’s no vehicle access where they live. But for tonight, we stay with the vehicle. It’s shelter, and protection from wild animals. In the morning, we’ll walk out the rest of the way.”
“How far is it?”
“About twenty miles, and about three thousand feet higher than we are now. It’s going to be a long day’s walk, maybe eight hours or so. Get some rest tonight. You’re going to need it.”
“I don’t know if I can rest.”
My head is spinning with the events of the day and it’s not helped by all the junk I consumed trying to eat my feelings. When he pushes the car door open, a blast of cold air enters and I’m suddenly very aware just how remote and wild this area is.
He dashes away a few steps, and for a panicked second I think he’s left me, then I realize that he’s just relieving himself behind a tree. He’s back less than a minute later, and responding to my comment as if I’d only just spoken.
“You’ll sleep,” he says, grabbing some supplies from the back of his car. “Might not feel it now, but once you lie down, you’re going to pass out, I promise. Put the seat back. I’m going to set up camp.”
“I thought we were going to stay with the car.”
“We are. With the car. Not in the car.”
He leans over into the back seat, getting stuff ready. I look over too and see that he is fully prepared for this. We haven’t just driven into the mountains without supplies.
“So you were just ready to drop your whole life and run at any moment?”
“Old habit,” he says. “When I served, we had to be ready to deploy any time. I like being prepared. And it comes in handy sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “Like when you have a one-night stand with a girl who brings murderous cops to your door.”
He shoots me one of his less than impressed looks. “What makes you think you’re a one-night stand?”
“Aren’t I?”
“Jazz, this is the precise opposite of a one-night stand,” he says, shaking his head. “You know I like you, right? Even if you didn’t need me to stay alive, I’d still want to date you.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says, giving me a flicker of a wink. “I promise I only go on the lam with girls I really like.”
“Such a gentleman.”
He laughs and gets out of the car, leaving me in the remnants of the warmth left inside the car as he starts setting up camp outside. I curl up on myself and watch him work, his massive body an incredible sight even in the fast-setting sun.
The car’s window is already starting to frost up. It’s fucking cold out there. I don’t understand why we don’t sleep in here. Surely it would be warmer? I can’t really question him though. There’s no doubt he has done this before. I can see his expertise in the way he unpacks everything and sets it up with practiced precision. He gathers wood from around the clearing we’ve essentially made using his car as a battering ram, and sets it up for a fire. Within minutes he has the fire going and is boiling water over it.
I sit snuggled up in the car, push the seat back, and try to get comfortable. To my surprise, I feel my eyes closing sooner than I thought they would.
I’m exhausted. My world has been obliterated. I knew Rodney was going to keep fucking with me, but I never thought he’d go this far. He literally wants me dead. He came to kill me. If I hadn’t hooked up with Jake last night, I would be dead by now. He would have shot me in my apartment and left me to bleed out among the broken pieces of my life.
In all the chaos of running and my confusion, I haven’t really confronted that fact properly. I’m alive, and it is only because Jake stood between me and the men who were going to end me because I’d become inconvenient. That makes me wonder how many other girls really left town. Are we going to be able to find Rodney’s other victims? Or have they all been in coincidental, tragic accidents, home invasions, and other brutal ends that a cop can stage without drawing suspicion?
A gust of cold air heralds Jake’s return. He has a foil ration pack, warm from the water it was submerged in to heat it up.
“Get something decent in you,” he says. “Then we’ll try to sleep. You can sleep in the car if you want. It might be a bit warmer.”
“Thank you,” I say, tears forming in my eyes as I peel back the plastic skin over the lasagna inside.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Are you okay... I mean, I know you’re not okay, but, baby, there’s no need to cry over rations.”
I smile through my tears. “I’m just so grateful. You saved my life today. And then... I tried to run, and I’m so stupid. None of this would ever have happened if I didn’t date Rodney in the first place. I don’t know how to pick a guy to save myself. I chose someone who was going to murder me just to tie up a loose end, and I almost ran from you, and you’re the one who helped me...”
I break down, tears running down my nose and dripping into my lasagna. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like my whole world has come to an end. There’s everything that happened up until today, and then there’s everything that’s going to come after. I’ve been at one of these turning points before, the day I ran away from the cult my mother dragged me into. I knew I was turning my back on everything. That was the day I became truly alone in the world. Today might be the day that I find out I’m not so alone after all.
“Eat your food,” Jake says gently, brushing my hair out of my eyes.
* * *
Jake
She’s a mess. I don’t blame her for it one bit. She’s held everything together so well, aside from that one little freak-out, which I can’t truly blame her for. It’s not surprising that she’s now a tearstained mess, poking her plastic fork into less than appetizing, all too quickly cooling vacuum-packed lasagna.
Men like Rodney, who seek out vulnerable people and exploit them, are the scum of the Earth. When I first saw her around the building, I saw exactly what he would have seen, a hot girl with a chip on her shoulder and all the marks of a troubled past. There’s just something in her eyes that tells a predator she’s a potential target, a vulnerability and a smallness that makes a good man want to protect her, and gives a scumbag like Rodney the taste of blood in his mouth.
I’ve known good men and bad in my time. I’ve been good and bad myself, but I’ve never been tempted to victimize a woman. That’s a line that’s drawn in your soul. You cross it, and you’re done. Forever.
Jazz can’t know it, but I fully intend on finishing what I started today. Those three escaped with their lives, but after the reports saying Jazz is dead, and the obvious implications of that, I will kill each and every one of them. I don’t care if I have to stay on the run for the rest of my life. There is some justice in this world that has to be done, and I’m going to make sure she’s safe before my time comes.
“Mmm,” she says, hesitantly nibbling at a plastic forkful of her food. “This is... good?”
“Nope. It’s not. It tastes like the inside of a dog’s ass, but it’s nutritionally complete and balanced, so I want you to eat at least half of it.”
She nods and takes a reluctant bite.
“Good girl,” I praise, and her eyes light up.
She likes being my good girl. I don’t think she’s heard that phrase very often in her life. I know how the world treats women like her. You have to come from the right kind of family. You have to dress the right kind of way. You have to conduct yourself in a certain manner to be a respectable woman, and Jazz has none of that, and does none of that.
Jazz is obviously not her real name, but I’m thinking it’s a moniker that has stuck so firmly she probably wouldn’t tell me the original version if I asked. I am curious though. I want to know everything about her. What makes her tick. She’s bright. I can see it in her eyes and I can sense it when I talk to her, but the life she was living was far from good for her. Nothing I can do about that. What I can do is make sure the life she has ahead of her is so fucking good that the past becomes a distant memory.
Chapter Five
Jazz
We’ve been walking for forever. Jake woke me up this morning as the sun was rising. He already had everything packed and on his back. We started walking then, and we’ve been walking for hours now, well past the height of the heat of the day, which barely reaches us through the trees. I can feel night threatening to move in again, making the shadows a little longer, the air a little chillier. Jake warned me today would be a big, long day, but I didn’t understand just how exhausting it would be on every level.
I am not sure I can take another step as we come up over the ridge we’ve been clambering up. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life. It’s the kind of tired that makes me feel as though the energy has been drained from every cell in my body. The kind of tired I could sleep all day and not recover from. Emotionally and physically, I’m exhausted. There are tears in my eyes, not because I’m sad, but because I’m just that done.
“You still there?” Jake turns around to check on me, just as he has a dozen times before. He’d have me out in front, but he’s taking point, as he calls it because if we run into any kind of predator he wants to get to them first.
“Yeah,” I sniff, trying not to sound as weepy as I am.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I repeat, my voice cracking. I’m so fucking far from okay. I don’t know if it’s even possible to be okay anymore. The day really is starting to fade, and I’m not sure I can do another night out here. We had the car to sleep in last night, but now we’re out in the open, exposed to the elements. I never thought about things like wind and rain and cold in the city. I mean, I did, but it was more like window dressing for whatever kind of day it was. Something to look out at from the inside. Now the whole world is outside and inside has gone away and I’m not entirely sure I’ll survive.
Jake’s big hand reaches down and helps me up over a rock. It’s hard to lift my legs that high now. It’s hard to do anything. I think I’m hungry, but my stomach doesn’t feel empty, I’m just low on energy, so low that just breathing feels like an effort.
“I’m okay,” I say, before he can say anything else.
“I’m not so sure you are,” he says. “We can’t stop. It’s not far to the cabin, but night’s closing in on
us and I don’t really want to be out in it. We’re going to have to push. Can you do that?”
I nod, even though I don’t know if I can. Jake is in his element out here. This is exactly where someone like him belongs. He’s a big, wild beast of a man. He could move over this country all day. The trees are like toothpicks next to him, rocks are just pebbles. He could turn the ocean into his bathtub, the way he seems to me right now, so much larger than life. He’s a man who makes the whole world seem small, including me.
Jake starts walking, and I start following again, but it’s impossible to keep up, as much as I try. The higher we get, the more we start crossing scree-filled slopes, loose gravel in between trees where the soil is all gone, if it was ever here.
I slip on the gravel and end up on my hands and knees, swearing through teary eyes as I fight to get upright again.
That big hand reaches down for me again, and this time he does more than just help me up. This time he lifts me off the ground completely and swings me around onto his back. It’s weird because his pack is in the way, so I end up clinging to his shoulders and kind of dangling, one of his hands back holding my thighs up.
“Hold on,” he grunts back at me.
“You can’t carry me,” I say as he starts lumbering along. He’s so fucking huge and so fucking strong. It’s easy to forget how fucking strong a man like him can be, but I’m feeling it now with every movement he makes beneath me, his massive body carrying me with apparent ease.
“Sure I can,” he says. “Used to carry more than you in pack weight every day.”
“Then why have I been walking all this time?” I smile a little at the back of his head, trying for a little levity.
“It’s good for you,” he says. “Builds character.”
“Is that what all this is? A character-building exercise?”
“This is survival,” Jake replies.
I go quiet. I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what to say at all. I wrap my arms around his neck, trying not to choke him in the process, and I hold on, resting my head on his shoulder. I feel so fucking safe with him. It would be easy to forget what I left behind and just let him become my everything—but I can’t do that. That’s what desperate girls do, and as desperate as I am, I can’t let myself act that way.