by Meg Jackson
The thought was too painful to dwell on, and he let it pass through his mind quickly, without lingering. His heart felt like it was in a vise, and every moment that passed brought him closer to losing her, tightened the screws a bit more. It would be better to just get it over with. The waiting to lose her – that, surely, was the worst of it.
It had to be. Didn’t it?
He left his apartment, trotted back to the bar. She hadn’t moved, was sitting behind her veil of hair at the bar. Didn’t even look up as he drew near. Honey and Endo were still acting like they had front-row seats to the hottest concert of the summer, though when he shot them a knowing sneer they got busy looking elsewhere.
He wondered what Endo was doing outside of the kitchen; as far as Reign knew, he was supposed to be on lunch duty. But it didn’t matter; being next in line to lead the club meant Reign knew about what happened at the bar but wasn’t required to give a damn about the day-to-day operations. He knew his interest lay mostly in his irritation over Endo and Honey acting like they had the right to peek in on this private moment.
He lay his hand on Gabriella’s shoulder and she jumped. When she looked at him, he saw only fear in her eyes. That was worse than the tears.
I’m gonna go kill her husband, he suddenly thought. I’ll go to Colorado and I’ll kill him and then she can come back to me.
You’re gonna do that like you’re gonna set fire to the bar, the rational part of him said. He knew he would do nothing of the sort. It was one thing to harbor a slave; another thing entirely to lynch the slaver. He didn’t need to make any waves outside of Utah, not for himself and not for the Black Smokes. His duty and his life were one in the same. She was his heart, but that had to take the backseat.
“Oh,” she said as he lay his gifts out on the bar.
“The phone can’t be traced to you. Neither can the ID’s. They’ll get you where you need to go, baby. And I’ll make some calls, and get you a contact down in Juarez. My number’s in there,” Reign said, pointing the phone, which Gabriella held, staring at it like it was some sort of strange alien food. She nodded, though. He reached out to her again, this time taking her chin between his fingers and lifting her face to his.
“You can call me whenever,” he said, keeping his eyes on hers although they wanted to look elsewhere. It hurt so much to look into those eyes, but it would haunt him forever if he decided this was the right moment to take the easy way out. “Say it. Tell me when you can call me.”
She croaked out something. He smiled, shook his head.
“Say it, baby.”
“I can call you whenever,” she finally said after taking a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes, opened them quickly when he gave her chin the slightest shake. She looked like maybe she was trying to smile back, like she was trying to be brave. That was a good idea. She’d need to be brave.
“I don’t know how these things happen, baby. I ain’t ever felt anything like this before in hella years. And three days was all it took. Damn, they say these words are hard to say but…shit, I never knew how right they were,” Reign said, forcing a chuckle. He was telling the truth; there were women, many women, too many women, who’d wanted to hear those words, and to whom he’d said them. They’d rolled right off the tongue, easy as pie, and he hadn’t mean them in the slightest.
Now, when it was true, when it was all he could feel, when it seemed like every speck of dust and drop of water on the earth had been put there just to bring him to Gabriella’s arms, he couldn’t say those words. They caught in his throat, threatened to choke him if he didn’t swallow. Or cough them out.
“I love you,” he finally managed, and watched as her face flit from joy to sorrow to joy to sorrow -- tossing and turning from one to the other at breakneck speed. She opened her mouth as though to say something in return, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he leaned in, met her parted lips with his own, and took all of her in that one moment. It seemed to stretch out forever and end too soon all at the same time, their tongues meeting briefly, one last breathless embrace.
And then she was gone.
25
The truck slowed to a crawl passing the motel and bar. A gleaming red Ford Mustang sat in front of room 7. So she got new wheels after all, Silas thought, happy he’d thought to double-check. He’d assumed something of the sort had happened when the car that had been parked outside her room had disappeared the second day she’d been there.
Of course, it was possible that the Mustang belonged to a new guest – but he knew enough about shitty motels in shitty towns to know that if it was empty and the staff had the choice to clean a dirty room and put someone new in it or not clean the dirty room and just put newcomers in a different room, the latter was the most likely.
There was still a little risk that she’d already skipped town, but Silas was confident enough she hadn’t not to risk going back into the bar to wait for her to show up. He was done spying; he’d been there too long anyway, and it would only draw more attention now that he’d skipped a day of pretending to be a barfly.
“That’s where she’s staying?” Jeremy demanded.
“Could be. Could be in her new beau’s room now,” Silas answered noncommittally. Of course, it was true. She was probably keeping her stuff in the motel room and lounging in bed with her biker stud at that very moment. Reign was probably tickling her in all the right places, making her squeal like a pig. The image amused him, especially considering the fact that the fuming, jilted husband beside him was probably thinking the same thing with considerably less good humor.
“Shut up,” Jeremy grunted, and Silas bit back a smile. He hit the gas and sped off past the bar. If he’d gone a little slower, if he’d rolled past a few minutes later, he would have seen Gabriella dashing from the bar to the Ford. He would have seen Reign follow her outside and stand watching from the wooden porch as she peeled out of the parking space. He would have seen her pull up beside him, their eyes locked, their mouths closed in solemn understanding.
As it was, he missed all that, but it worked out for him. If he’d seen all that, he would never have had the time to put his plan in action the right way. He’d have to make something up on the fly, something Silas was quite capable of but preferred to avoid whenever possible.
When he did see that car again, they were a mile or so ahead of her. He narrowed his eyes, squinting into the rearview, and muttered “shit” under his breath. Jeremy, who had nothing to do but listen to Silas’ breathing, picked up on it, his head snapping towards Silas.
“What?” Jeremy demanded. Silas rolled his eyes, favored Jeremy with a condescending smile.
“Nothing,” Silas said. “Just looks like you won’t have to do much waiting, after all. Looks like the girl’s on the move.”
He nodded towards the rearview mirror even as he sped up, breaking the speed limit without a whit of concern. Jeremy had just a glimpse of bright red on the road behind them before it was blotted out by the dust rising around the truck’s tires.
“Are we ready? Shit, are we ready?” Jeremy asked, lifting himself up in his seat, his eyes widening. Go ahead and have your little shitfit, kid, but don’t fuck this up for us, Silas thought.
“We’re fine. I’m just gonna put a few more miles between us. But you’re gonna have to be quick with that spike strip. You look strong enough,” Silas said, hoping his voice would be enough to calm the cop down. He only needed Jeremy to help him with the spikes that would rip Gabriella’s tires to shreds; after that, Jeremy could go full-on psycho.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jeremy said, now seeming eager to please. Silas could get used to this side of Jeremy. A few minutes later, the road was nearly enveloped by a fog of sand and dust, and the red Mustang was nowhere in sight. Silas veered off quickly, coming to a sudden stop on the side of the road.
“Now,” he barked, and Jeremy hopped to it. Musta been a great student at the Academy, Silas thought, noting how suddenly attentive and obedient Jeremy had become. A great c
lanking clatter from the bed of the truck as Silas got out told him that they’d have no trouble getting the spike strip on the road before Mrs. Policeman could catch sight of them. He watched Jeremy trot across the road, spreading the strip as he went. Silas leaned against the truck, a wicked smile on his face. This job was even easier than he thought it’d be.
26
It had gotten mighty dusty mighty quick. Stupidly, I turned on the windshield wipers, but they did nothing to dispel the blowing dust. Leaning forward, I squinted through the haze.
As the dust seemed to settle a bit, I noticed something glinting on the road before me; in the hazy heat waves baking off the tar, it was impossible to tell what it was, and to be frank it didn’t really make me think twice. I wish it had. When I look back on everything, it’s one of the things I can’t seem to stop fixating on: if I’d slowed down, if I’d realized, if I’d been more aware…
Reign says not to beat myself up about it. No one in my position would have done anything different. They make those things specifically so that you can’t tell what they are. They wouldn’t be very good tools if anyone could just tell they were there.
But you can’t help what your brain decides to latch on to when it comes to regrets.
At any rate, I didn’t slow down. I didn’t know what was coming. Even when I got closer and saw the truck pulled off to the side of the road; what did I know, then, about who was waiting in that truck? Why would I believe it was anything except a guy checking his voicemail, or a family of three consulting a map?
I just sped on, feeling low and like crying despite the image I was putting out into the world: I looked like Thelma, or Louise, driving off to freedom with the wind in her hair. I felt like hell.
Though, to be fair, I can’t say I didn’t also feel a little bit better by virtue of being back on the road; the directionless terror and anxiety that had taken up residence in my stomach seemed to be abating with each mile I put behind me. But Reign’s smile kept flashing in my mind, and with it I’d feel something new (and awful) in my stomach.
A falling feeling, like a dream you know you can’t wake up from, a dream where you’re tumbling headfirst into nowhere with nothing to stop you or slow you down. All I knew was that I was leaving behind the first thing that had made me happy in years, and I was leaving it behind for a future that was uncertain at best.
But all those thoughts would be cut short soon. Does it sound crazy if I say that it was almost a relief when I heard the awful popping noises, and suddenly felt my new car skidding, veering wildly? At least it was a respite from my thoughts, of Jeremy and Reign and everything in between. I only felt fear, mortal fear, temporary fear.
In a panic, I clutched the steering wheel, reality still elusive, my mind fixated on nothing but keeping myself from turning the car over and being crushed into the dirt. What the fuck, I thought as I heard the terrible screeching of metal against pavement, my car slowing even as it slid across the dusty road, my heart falling as the panic was replaced by a sense of hopelessness. I still thought that it was just bad luck; a flat tire caused by some act of fate, a way for the universe to punish me, a sign that nothing would ever be easy, nothing would ever come cheap.
The Mustang finally came to a screeching, painful stop – in the middle of the highway. I was done. I hunched forward, my forehead meeting the front of the steering wheel. I bet you’ve found yourself doing the exact same thing at some point or another: groaning, two hands still on the wheel, rubbing your forehead against the leather, back and forth, hoping that when you come back up and open your eyes and look around everything is, somehow, better.
Of course, sticking your head in the sand has been proven to work zero times out of ten.
At least there’s whoever’s in that truck, I suddenly thought, happy to at least not be all alone. I heard the sound of slamming doors from behind me. I was so thankful. I was so stupidly, naively thankful that I wasn’t going to have to try and push my car off the road by myself, that maybe someone would keep me company while I waited for a tow truck in the blaring heat. Maybe they could help me put on the donut that had come in the truck, and I wouldn’t need a tow at all…
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a bit of trouble, miss,” someone said. Not just someone. I knew that voice. I knew that voice when it yelled, when it whispered, when it cursed, when it said “I love you.” I knew that voice better than I knew my own.
My heart went cold, my blood stopped flowing, and my stomach packed a bag and took a flight straight up my throat. My mouth felt dryer than the air around me. No, no, no, no, I thought, unable to lift my head from the wheel, trying frantically to tell myself it was just a trick of my addled mind. I knew it wasn’t, but it was all I could do to keep myself from pissing my pants.
It was impossible. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair! He couldn’t be here! He couldn’t have found me, and he couldn’t have fucked up my car, and he couldn’t be standing beside my passenger-side door, and he couldn’t be there! If he was, it just meant that I was destined for misery, that I would never have a good thing in my whole entire life, that I must have been some sort of awful in a past life and was paying for it now.
There was silence for a long moment. A silence that felt heavy, full of things that were going to be said, full of words waiting to be screamed. There was only one way to confirm what I knew to be true, or to prove that I was just experiencing some sort of desert psychosis. Slowly, with my breath still trapped in my lungs, as though if I didn’t breathe it would stop happening, I began to raise my head.
I didn’t make it very far.
My forehead hit the steering wheel again, this time with the help of a strong grip on my hair. I heard a crunch as my skull met the leathery surface, and my last thought before everything fell into a world of painful red flashes was that I’d been asking for this. Maybe since I’d left, maybe since I’d married him, maybe since the day I’d been born, I’d been asking for this. Pain unfolded inside me like a snake that had been waiting to strike. The world dissolved. After that, there was nothing but pain.
27
Silas grimaced. The sound of flesh hitting flesh seemed to ricochet off the endless sky. From a distance of about fifteen feet, he watched as his client unleashed his rage, in earnest, on the girl. He’d pulled her out of the car by her hair as she screamed and kicked, and now held her against the car door as he screamed obscenities and continued to assault her pretty face.
Silas wished, vaguely, for a cigarette. He felt unusually uncomfortable watching the violence before him; typically, nothing bothered Silas much. He’d killed enough men – and women – on his own, in brutal enough ways, to be immured to watching anyone suffer. He could sit through a snuff film with a large popcorn and a soda and not feel squeamish.
But he felt a little bad for this one. The metal on the side of the car must have been hot enough to scald, which was bad enough without having your husband give you a five-finger talking to. Her face was starting to look a bit like hamburger meat, blood smeared across her cheeks and bubbling around her lips, opened in a soundless screech. He looked at his watch; Jeremy had been going at it for two minutes now, and his wife was starting to slump against the side of the car, the strength to stand being siphoned away.
“Think that’s enough, partner?” Silas asked, raising his voice to be heard above the sound of Jeremy’s fists. The cop didn’t seem to hear. Silas walked forward; the cop caught sight of him and raised his face, a snarl across his mouth, splatters of his wife’s blood on his lips.
“You want her walking and talking enough to keep making you dinner, don’t ya?” Silas said, his tone normal now as Jeremy’s arms ceased their wild flailing. Jeremy turned to him, panting, and slowly wiped at his brow with his forearm. His eyes were inhuman, his face sweaty and red. He mumbled something unintelligible, but clearly malicious. But he kept his hands away from Gabriella, who had crumpled to the ground, still shielding her face
, shaking and whimpering.
“Alright,” Silas said, walking closer. Jeremy seemed to be deflating, his shoulders falling, his breathing becoming steadier. “Let’s get her in the truck.”
“In the truck? I’m driving her home,” Jeremy said, his voice strangely soft after all his screaming.
“We still have a few details of our arrangement to work out, if you recall,” Silas said, his eyebrows rising. His gaze settled on Jeremy’s eyes, which were fading fast. Jeremy, in turn, looked down at the cowering Gabriella. He seemed like a different person than he’d been just moments before, a flicker that could have been regret coming over his eyes. Silas walked towards the two figures and bent down before the girl, who was emitting a series of puppy-like noises. He reached out for her, meaning to lift her, but Jeremy pushed him away.
“Don’t touch her. I’ll do it,” Jeremy growled, looking protectively at Gabriella. Silas wasn’t surprised, and backed away with his hands up.
“Just don’t dally. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can take her home,” Silas said over his shoulder.
“What about the car?” Now, Jeremy sounded completely drained, the question falling to the ground flatly.
“What about it? I don’t care what happens to it. Do you?” Silas really didn’t care about the car. He knew that if it was registered, it sure as hell wasn’t registered in her name. And only a few people would be able to recognize it, anyway. And if Reign found it and recognized it? That would only work in Silas’ favor: it’d get him all riled up, make him lose focus, help convince Reign that she really was in deep shit. Reign might walk right into Silas’ arms without the need for anonymous packages and ransom letters.