The Great Escape

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  His nose was blunt, square at the tip. A wrinkled necktie poked out of the pocket of his ill-fitting suit coat. And that long, wild hair, all curls and tangles, looked like a finger painting of a van Gogh night sky made from a sloppy pot of black ink.

  For more than ten years, ever since Nealy’s first presidential campaign, she’d tried to say the right thing, do the right thing, always smiling, forever polite. Now she, who’d long ago mastered the art of small talk, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead she felt a nearly irresistible desire to sneer, ’S’up with you? But of course she didn’t.

  He jerked his head toward the rear of his bike. “Wanna go for a ride?”

  Shock radiated through her body, shooting from vein to capillary, piercing skin and muscle into bone. She shivered, not from cold, but from the knowledge that she yearned to get on that bike more than she’d wanted anything for a very long time. Get on that bike and flee from the consequences of what she’d done.

  He shoved his necktie deeper into the pocket of his suit coat, and her feet began to move. It was as if they’d detached from the rest of her body. She tried to make them stop, but they refused to obey. She came closer to the bike and saw a battered Texas license plate along with a dog-eared bumper sticker that covered part of the worn leather seat. The print had faded, but she could still make out the words.

  GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

  The message hit her like a shock wave. A warning she couldn’t ignore. But her body—her treacherous body—had taken control. Her hand tugged on the choir robe. One foot came off the ground. Her leg straddled the seat.

  He handed her the only helmet. She pulled it on over her wretched bridal up-do and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  They shot off down the alley, the choir robe billowing, her bare legs catching the edge of the wind, his hair flying, whipping her visor.

  She tucked the robe under her legs as he cut from one alley to the next, took a sharp right turn and then another, the muscles in his back flexing under the cheap material of his suit coat.

  They rode out of Wynette and down a two-lane highway that stretched along a craggy limestone bluff. The helmet was her cocoon, the bike her planet. They passed lavender fields in bloom, an olive oil factory, and some of the vineyards that were springing up across the Hill Country. The wind pulled at her robe, exposing her knees, her thighs.

  The sun dipped lower in the sky, and the growing chill cut through the robe’s thin fabric. She welcomed the cold. She didn’t deserve to be warm and comfortable.

  They barreled over a wooden bridge and past a decrepit barn with a Lone Star flag painted on its side. Signs for cave tours and dude ranches flashed by. The miles slipped away. Twenty? More? She didn’t know.

  As they reached the outskirts of a one-stoplight town, he turned toward a shabby convenience store and parked in the shadows at the side of the building. He jerked his head at her, indicating she was to get off. She tangled her legs in her robe and nearly fell.

  “You hungry?”

  Even the thought of food made her nauseated. She eased her stiff legs and shook her head. He shrugged and headed for the door.

  Through the helmet’s dusty visor, she saw that he was taller than she’d thought, about six feet, longer in the leg than the trunk. With his wild blue-black hair, olive complexion, and rolling gait, he couldn’t have been more unlike the congressmen, senators, and captains of industry who populated her life. She could see part of the store’s interior through the window. He walked toward the cooler at the back. The female clerk stopped what she was doing to watch him. He disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared to set a six-pack of beer on the counter. The clerk tossed her hair, openly flirting with him. He placed a few more items by the register.

  Lucy’s shoes were rubbing a blister on her feet. As she shifted her weight, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. The big blue helmet swallowed her head, hiding the small features that always made her appear younger than her age. The robe hid the fact that prewedding stress had left her normally slender figure a little too thin. She was thirty-one years old, five feet four inches, but she felt tiny; stupid; a selfish, irresponsible waif.

  Even though no one was around to see, she didn’t take off the helmet but lifted it slightly, trying to ease the pressure on the hairpins digging into her scalp. Normally she wore her hair almost to her shoulders, straight and tidy, generally held back with one of those narrow headbands Meg detested.

  “They make you look like a fifty-year-old Greenwich socialite,” Meg had declared. “And unless you’re wearing jeans, ditch those stupid pearls. Ditto your whole stupid-ass preppy wardrobe.” Then she’d softened. “You’re not Nealy, Luce. She doesn’t expect you to be.”

  Meg didn’t understand. She’d grown up in L.A. with the same parents who’d given birth to her. She could wear all the outrageous clothes she wanted, dangle exotic jewelry around her neck, even have a dragon tattooed on her hip, but not Lucy.

  The store door opened, and the biker emerged carrying a grocery sack in one hand, beer in the other. She watched with alarm as he silently stowed his purchases in the bike’s scuffed saddlebags. As she imagined him drinking the whole six-pack, she knew she couldn’t let this go on. She had to call someone. She’d call Meg.

  But she couldn’t summon the courage to face anyone, not even her best friend, who understood so much more than the rest. She’d let her family know she was safe. Soon. Just … not quite yet. Not until she’d figured out what to say.

  She stood in front of the biker like a big, blue-headed alien. He was staring at her, and she realized she still hadn’t spoken a single word to him. How awkward. She needed to say something. “How do you know Ted?”

  He turned back to fasten the clasps on the saddlebags. The bike was an old Yamaha with the word WARRIOR written in silver across the black fuel tank. “We did time together in Huntsville,” he said. “Armed robbery and manslaughter.”

  He was baiting her. Some kind of biker test to see how tough she wasn’t. She’d have to be crazy to let this go on any longer. But then she was crazy. A bad kind of crazy. The crazy of someone who’d fallen out of her skin and didn’t know how to crawl back in.

  His shadowed eyes, heavy with another kind of threat, slid over her. “You ready for me to take you back?”

  All she had to do was say yes. One simple word. She pushed her tongue into the proper position. Arranged her lips. Failed to force it out. “Not yet.”

  He frowned. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  The answer to that question was so obvious even he could figure it out. When she failed to respond, he shrugged and climbed back on the bike.

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, she wondered how riding off with this menacing biker seemed less chilling than facing the family she loved so much. But then she didn’t owe this man anything. The worst he could do was—She didn’t want to think about the worst he could do.

  Once again the wind tore at her robe. Only her hands stayed warm from the body heat radiating through his thin suit coat. Eventually he turned off the highway onto a rutted trail. The bike’s headlight cut an eerie pattern across the scrub, and she held tighter to his waist even as her brain screamed at her to jump off and run. Finally they reached a small clearing at the edge of a river. From a sign she’d seen earlier, she guessed it was the Pedernales. A perfect place to dispose of a dead body.

  Without the roar of the engine, the silence was suffocating. She got off the bike and backed away. He pulled something that looked like an old stadium blanket from one of the saddlebags. As he dropped it on the ground, she caught the faint scent of motor oil. He grabbed the beer and grocery bag. “You gonna wear that thing all night?”

  She wanted to keep the helmet on forever, but she took it off. Pins tumbled, and a wedge of oversprayed hair poked her in the cheek. The quiet was dense and noisy with the rush of river over rock. He lifted the beer in her direction. “Too bad
this is only a six-pack.”

  She gave a stiff smile. He popped the top, sprawled on the blanket, and tipped the longneck to his mouth. He was a friend of Ted’s, wasn’t he? So he had to be safe—despite his threatening appearance and boorish manner, despite the beer and the frayed bumper sticker.

  GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

  “Have one,” he said. “Maybe it’ll loosen you up.”

  She didn’t want to loosen up, and she had to pee, but she hobbled over anyway and took a bottle to keep him from drinking it. She found a spot on the far corner of the blanket where she wouldn’t brush against his long legs or breathe in his general air of menace. She should be drinking Champagne now in the bridal suite of the Austin Four Seasons as Mrs. Theodore Beaudine.

  The biker pulled a couple of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches from the grocery bag. He tossed one in her general direction and opened the other. “Too bad you didn’t wait until after the big wedding dinner to dump him. The food would have been a lot better than this.”

  Lump crab parfait, lavender grilled beef tenderloin, lobster medallions, white truffle risotto, a seven-tier wedding cake …

  “Really. How do you know Ted?” she asked.

  He ripped off a big corner of his sandwich with his teeth and spoke around the wad in his mouth. “We met a couple of years back when I was working a construction job in Wynette, and we hit it off. We see each other when I’m in the area.”

  “Ted hits it off with most people.”

  “Not all of them good guys like him.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another noisy swig of beer.

  She set aside the beer she wasn’t drinking. “So you’re not from around here?”

  “Nope.” He balled up the cellophane sandwich wrapper and flipped it into the weeds.

  She hated people who littered, but she wasn’t going to mention that. Devouring his sandwich seemed to require all his attention, and he didn’t volunteer any more information.

  She couldn’t postpone a trip into the woods any longer. She took a napkin from the grocery bag and, wincing with every step, limped into the trees. When she was done, she returned to the blanket. He chugged some more beer. She couldn’t stomach her own sandwich, and she pushed it aside. “Why did you pick me up?”

  “I wanted to get laid.”

  Her skin crawled. She looked for some indication that this was his crude attempt at a joke, but he didn’t crack a smile. On the other hand, he was Ted’s friend, and as odd as some of them were, she’d never met any that were criminals. “You’re not serious,” she said.

  He skimmed his eyes over her. “It could happen.”

  “No, it couldn’t!”

  He burped, not loud, but still disgusting. “I’ve been too busy for women lately. It’s time to catch up.”

  She stared at him. “By picking up your friend’s bride while she’s running away from her wedding?”

  He scratched his chest. “You never know. Crazy women’ll do anything.” He drained his beer, burped again, and tossed the empty into the bushes. “So what do you say? Are you ready for me to take you back to Mommy and Daddy?”

  “I say no.” Despite her growing apprehension, she wasn’t ready to go back. “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Panda.”

  “No, really.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s hard to believe that’s your real name.”

  “No skin off my nose whether you believe it or not. I go by Panda.”

  “I see.” She thought about it while he ripped open a bag of chips. “It must be nice.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Riding from town to town with a made-up name.” And a big blue bike helmet to hide beneath.

  “I guess.”

  She had to stop this, and she gathered her courage. “Do you happen to have a cell I can borrow? I … need to call someone.”

  He dug into his suit coat pocket and tossed her his phone. She failed to catch it and had to fumble in the folds of her robe.

  “Good luck getting a signal out here.”

  She hadn’t thought about that, but then her ability to think logically had deserted her hours earlier. She hobbled around the clearing on her now-torturous heels until she found a spot near the riverbank where she picked up a weak signal. “It’s me,” she said when Meg answered.

  “Luce? Are you all right?”

  “Matter of opinion.” She gave a choked laugh. “You know that wild side of me you’re always talking about? I guess I found it.” Nothing could be further from the truth. She was the least wild person imaginable. Once maybe, but not for a long time.

  “Oh, honey …” The signal was weak, but not weak enough to mute her friend’s concern.

  She had to go back to Wynette. But … “I’m—I’m a coward, Meg. I can’t face my family yet.”

  “Luce, they love you. They’ll understand.”

  “Tell them I’m sorry.” She fought back tears. “Tell them I love them, and I know I’ve made a horrible mess of everything, and that I’ll come back and clean it up, but … Not tonight. I can’t do it tonight.”

  “All right. I’ll tell them. But—”

  She disconnected before Meg could ask her any more questions she had no way of answering.

  A crushing fatigue swept over her. She’d slept badly for weeks, and today’s awful events had used up whatever energy she had left. Panda had disappeared in the woods, and as he came out, she decided to let him get drunk in peace. She gazed at the blanket spread on the hard ground and thought of the narrow, comfortable beds in the private presidential quarters of Air Force One and the blackout shades that covered the windows with the push of a button. She gingerly lay back on the farthest edge of the blanket and gazed at the stars.

  She wished she had a biker name to hide behind. Something tough. Something strong and menacing. Everything she wasn’t.

  She fell asleep thinking up biker names. Snake … Fang … Venom …

  Viper.

  Chapter Two

  THE DAMP MORNING CHILL AWAKENED her. She eased her eyes open to see straws of peach pushing through the low clouds. Her body ached everywhere; she was cold, dirty, and as nauseated now as she’d been when she’d fallen asleep. This was the first day of what should have been her honeymoon. She imagined Ted waking up, thinking the same thing, hating her …

  Panda slept next to her in his wrinkled white dress shirt. He lay on his back, his wild, irresponsible hair in chaotic twists and snarls around his head. Blue-black stubble covered his jaw, and a dirty smudge marred his blunt-tipped nose. She hated being so close to him, so she came awkwardly to her feet. His suit coat slipped off her and dropped to the blanket. She winced as she wedged her feet into her stilettos and limped into the trees. On the way, she spotted six empty beer bottles tossed in the weeds, sordid symbols of what she’d gotten herself into.

  Ted had rented a honeymoon villa on the beach at St. Barts. Maybe he’d go by himself, although what could be worse than a honeymoon for one? Not even waking up at the side of a river in the middle of nowhere next to a surly, hungover, potentially dangerous biker.

  When she came out, he was standing by the river, his back to her. Last night’s fantasy of Viper, the tough-talking biker girl, faded away, and it seemed rude to ignore him. “Good morning,” she said quietly.

  He grunted.

  She quickly looked away, afraid he’d decide to pee in the river while she watched. She yearned for a hot shower, clean clothes, and a toothbrush, the exact comforts she would have been enjoying if she’d walked down that aisle. A pot of coffee. A decent breakfast. Ted’s hands on her body, coaxing those delicious orgasms from her. Instead she was surrounded by empty beer bottles and a man who openly admitted he “wanted to get laid.” She hated the mess, the uncertainty. She hated her panic. He still hadn’t turned, but she didn’t see him fumbling with his fly, so she risked a question. “Are you … going back to Wynette this morning?”


  Another grunt.

  She’d never been comfortable in Wynette, although she’d pretended to love it as much as Ted did. But whenever she was there, she could feel everybody judging her. Even though she was the adopted daughter of the former president of the United States, they made her feel as if she weren’t good enough for him. Of course she’d proved them right, but they hadn’t known that when they met her.

  Panda continued to stare at the river, his long body silhouetted against the limestone cliffs, his shirt a mass of wrinkles, the tail hanging out on one side, everything about him disreputable. Her shoes were torturous, but she wanted the punishment of pain, so she didn’t pull them off.

  He abruptly abandoned his lookout duty to stalk toward her, the heels of his boots grinding into the dirt. “Are you ready to get back to your screwed-up life?”

  More than ready. She was done with postponing her responsibilities. Even as a fourteen-year-old, she’d been responsible. How many times over the past seventeen years had Nealy and Mat told her they couldn’t do their jobs if she weren’t such a good caregiver to her siblings?

  She’d worked hard at her own job, too. At first she’d used her bachelor’s degree in social work to counsel troubled teens while she got her master’s in public policy. But after a few years, she’d left the casework she loved and begun using her famous name for the less satisfying—but more impactful—task of lobbying. Thanks in part to her, important pieces of legislation had been passed that helped disadvantaged kids. She didn’t plan to give up her lobbying work after she was married either, no matter how tempting. She’d fly to Washington for a few days every month and do the rest of her job from her Texas base. It was long past time to face the consequences of what she’d done.