Ford Security

by Clara Kendrick

  My best guess is he is going to try and clean up this mess before the meeting. He's going to try and make sure that Lola and I are out of the picture and he's not going to care about any collateral damage. He has a one-way ticket to fortune and power, but I'm going to make it my mission to stop it before he can ascend to the proverbial throne.

  The world has believed Seth Grimm has been dead for a while now. The vacuum that was left in his wake can only be sealed with the plan going off without a hitch.

  But first things first, Lola and I must survive this night.

  A pair of headlights flash from behind us as a car speeds down the curvy mountains of the Hollywood hills. And I deduce that the car is heading straight for us. My best guess is that Richard is in that car and if he sees us, he will run us right off the road. I grab Lola's hand and pull her into the collage of trees. We step forward until we’re out of sight of the road and spin around on our feet before dropping down onto our knees to watch.

  As expected, the car comes to a stop just behind Lola's car. The driver’s side door opens and a pair of boots hit the ground. It's the same boots Richard was wearing so I know it's him even before he shows his face by circling around the front of the car. His hand grips tightly around the gun that hangs at his side.

  I sink farther down towards the ground and Lola does the same beside me. Richard inspects the car, beginning with the shattered glass of the windshield. He makes his way around to the passenger side and peers in the window briefly before spinning around to face the woods.

  My eyes lock with his, but I'm not sure if he can see me. Still, it's better to be safe than sorry. I don't make a move, I don't move so much as an inch. I hold my breath in for as long as I can so as to make sure he can't hear me, either.

  His eyes veer sideways, the top of his head illuminated by the light of the moon. Deep in the heart of the city, the moon is just an abstract object in the night sky. It doesn't glow upon one’s skin as it does out here in the mountains.

  His face is unshaven and rugged. And his eyes are circled with dark wrinkles with bags that hang just underneath his eyes. His hair is short but tussled upon his head and he's wearing a business suit.

  If there's one thing I've learned in all of my years in the security game, it’s that you should never trust a man in a business suit. It's of my experience that they are the worst. Often times, the most evil people in this world dress to impress. It's like they're hiding behind fancy clothing to try and mask their true selves.

  Richard finally settles on the fact that we are long gone, even though we're only a few feet away from him. He drops his gun to clatter against his leg. With his free hand, he digs into his slacks and retrieves his phone. He presses one solitary button and then pulls the phone to his ear.

  He takes a step backwards to lean against Lola's car and crosses his feet over one another in such a casual way that it alerts my senses. It's like he does this every day. It's like this is what he does for a living.

  His eyes twist as he waits impatiently for whoever he's calling to answer the phone. And then finally, "You're not going to believe this," he begins talking to whoever it is on the other end of the phone. And though I can't hear what's being said from the other man, I can deduce that I will be able to figure out just enough by listening to Richard’s end of the conversation. "The first thing I'm going to say is that I don't want this to get out. It's actually imperative that this stays between us for the time being.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lola’s eyes shift to me. But I don't pay her any attention, because my focus is strictly on the conversation happening right in front of us.

  “Seth Grimm and his daughter, Lola, are still alive." He scratches nervously at the side of his head with the barrel of the gun as his lips hitch into a grin. "Or at least, he was alive until just a short time ago.” He chews into his lip as he listens to the man on the other end of the phone. He nods contemplatively and chuckles under his breath. "As it turns out, the two of them had faked their deaths. I'm not exactly sure why at this time, but I know it doesn't matter.”

  He’s clearly lying about the last part, so he’s definitely trying to angle himself into the best possible position. He’s known for a while that both Seth and Lola were still alive. Just goes to show you can’t trust anyone in this business.

  He begins to pace back and forth along the length of the car as he continues his conversation. "I'm fully aware of what this means, as I'm sure you are too. But there is a kink in the story. As it turns out, Lola and a boyfriend of hers killed Seth earlier tonight." He stops in place and taps the gun against his leg. "Well, I don't know why she would do that to be honest. But I caught both of them standing over his dead body.” He twirls his fingers impatiently in the air as the man on the other end of the phone begins questioning him farther. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, clearly annoyed. "I need you to assemble a team, and I need both Lola and her boyfriend Zach taken care of before sunrise. And I need you to do this without telling your man why they're doing what they are doing. And I need your word that this stays between us." He nods his head and rolls his eyes yet again. "Just know that you will be handsomely rewarded if you succeed. But if you don't, also know that I will have your head on a platter."

  Lola's hand drops onto my thigh. My attention is stolen momentarily as I glance down to see her hand on my jeans. I glance at her real quickly and shake my head before turning my attention back to Richard.

  "See, I knew we would be on the same page." He hangs up the phone and stuffs it back into his pocket before stepping back to his car and climbing into the front seat. When he's in the safety of his own car, I notice him dialing another number before pushing the phone against an ear.

  The bright lights of his phone screen illuminates half his face while the other half remains in shadows. He cocks his head sideways, waiting for someone to pick up the phone. And when his lips wrinkle into a smile, I know he's about to have another conversation. I only wish I could hear what he is saying.

  He finally twists the key in the ignition, bringing his car to a roaring start. His headlights flash on, lighting up the road and Lola's car, and lighting up the woods too. I throw one arm around Lola’s back and push her all the way to the ground so that we are lying face to face in the dirt.

  Her chest heaves as we wait in total silence. Waiting for him to leave so we can finally make our move, but I'm not sure if he has any intention of leaving. We wait in the grass for what seems like forever and he still isn't moving. I motion with my hand for Lola to crawl deeper into the trees.

  She understands my command and climbs to her knees before crawling away from the road. I give chase right behind her, with a beautiful view of her taut ass. A smile hitches across my lips but I shake it away because this is not the time to be idolizing her beauty. This is not the time to be fantasizing about her or her beautiful ass.

  As we continue to crawl through the woods, I hear a car revving from the road behind us. And then I hear tires squealing against the asphalt as a car comes to a dead stop. I glance over my shoulder quickly to see a black SUV pulling in front of Lola's car.

  It takes no time for a team of men to climb out of the vehicle and onto the ground. And in their hands, they carry assault rifles. These are men armed to the teeth and they know what they are doing.

  I see Richard climb back out of his vehicle to greet the men. And though all of them are wearing masks over their face, and dressed in all black, Richard seems to be able to pinpoint his contact immediately. He reaches forth and shakes the first of the five men's hand. And then he looks out into the woods, looks right at me but again I don't think he can see me.

  Richard chuckles gravely to himself and then points out into the woods. And then I hear him say, "I've been waiting for you to arrive. The targets are right there in the woods…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LOLA

  The second Richard says those words, I jump to my feet. But when I do, I notice that Z
ach is already on his feet too. He's faster than me, with lightning quick reflexes and in an innate ability to jump into action at any given moment. He's trained for this.

  I'm trained for this too, but in different ways. He spent his life serving this country first, and then helping people on his own accord after he got back from the war. I've been on the other side. I've lived a life under my father's rule and it’s there where I learned to protect myself.

  Fight or flight is a real thing. And both Zach and I know that the only choice we have right now is flight. We are unarmed and there are five armed men now giving chase to us.

  I don't look behind me as we run through the woods, but I can clearly hear their boots cracking twigs in half as they race behind us. I’m waiting for the bullets to start flying at any moment but when they don't, I begin to think that maybe they want to take us alive. But that thought is short-lived the second the bullets do start flying.

  The bullets chip against the trees, sending fragments of wood hurtling into the air. I can feel the rush of bullets as they fly past me. And I can hear the gunshots. It's a full-on assault and I guess that the men aren't shooting with accuracy. They're spraying the woods, hoping that they can kill us before we can get away or before the authorities can arrive.

  And with the amount of noise they are making, almost as loud as fireworks on the Fourth of July, the authorities will be here very soon. But I'm a dead woman, for all the world knows anyways, and I can't exactly run to the authorities with my problems. Because in doing so, I would implicate myself in my father's crimes since I have been a willing associate of his.

  The only thing I can try to do is to survive until sunrise. I’ll make it through the day and then survive long enough so I can send all of these people to kingdom come where they belong.

  The woods are dark around me, but I've been out here long enough already that my eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. Each and every tree is like a silhouette painted against the backdrop of darkness. And to my side, running at the same pace, I can make out Zach’s face and body. He grunts as he tries to run faster, his arms shuffling beside him as his feet kick against the ground beneath us.

  To my side, he comes to the abrupt stop. His boots dig deep into the dirt as he holds himself still. He looks either way before glancing at me and then reaching for my hand to rip me sideways and to the left.

  We run for a little longer before I realize that the bullets have stopped flying and the guns have stopped firing. I come to a stop, jerking in place and forcing Zach to jerk too as I spin around to look at the scene behind me. No longer do I see the men and I start to think to myself that maybe, just maybe, we were able to get away.

  Whether or not they have stopped looking for us, I need a break to catch my breath. I take a step backwards until my back is lined up against a hard tree. And then I close my eyes and exhale shortly as I fight to catch my breath and steady my breathing.

  Zach's boots crunch against the ground as he approaches me. And he puts a hand onto the tree next to my waistline. Though I can't see him clearly, I can make out that his eyes are boring into mine from above. In the moment I wish I could see his eyes, I wish I could see those green orbs.

  His eyes comfort me. It's a part of his entire persona and character. Without his eyes, he might as well be nothing more than a shadow in the midst of darkness. But when I feel his hot breath upon my skin, it seems to do the trick in calming me.

  I bite into my lip as I look up to him, as I look up to his silhouette. “Do you think they stopped?”

  “No,” he says, almost with a chuckle. “We couldn't get that lucky."

  "Yeah, you are probably right." I drop a hand to his hip and hold onto him firmly. "What are we going to do?"

  “I don't know,” he says, his voice hushed and husky. “The first thing we need to do is to get out of these woods and find somewhere safe so we can regroup. I think we’re being framed for your father's murder, but I don't know who could be the one doing the framing. It's not Richard."

  "What?" I question incredulously. “It's obviously Richard!"

  "No." He shakes his head vigorously. "He had nothing to do with it. Didn't you hear what he was saying on the phone?"

  I drag my palm against my forehead, trying to figure out who in the hell it could be if not Richard. But Zach definitely has a point. The way Richard was talking to his associate on the phone leads me to believe that he really does think that either Zach or I killed my father. It doesn't matter how ridiculous of a claim it may sound like. To get to the bottom of this, I must figure out who killed my father. “Let's assume for the moment it wasn't Richard. Nobody else knew about my father being alive, or about me being alive either for that matter." I push my tongue against the inside of my cheek and shake my head. "The only way is if you told someone—”

  “That's ridiculous,” he scoffs, cutting me off. And then he purses his lips and looks away. There's something written on his face that I can't quite pinpoint, but it looks an awful lot like guilt. Not guilty in the way that he killed my father, because I know he didn’t do it since he was with me, but a different kind of guilt.

  I reach up to him and cup a hand against his cheek and make sure he looks at me directly. "Who did you tell?"

  And look at me he does. “The only person I told was Zane."

  "Well obviously he didn't set us up."

  "How do you know that?"

  I roll my eyes and scoff playfully, press a palm flat against his chest. "Because he would never do anything to hurt you."

  "Yeah," he says lowly with a light chuckle, "You are right about that."

  My eyes search the woods around us, looking for the men who chased us. But they are still nowhere to be seen. I’m starting to think that they backed off, but they won’t stay backed off for long. They have a goal and they won’t stop until that mission objective is completed. And that mission objective is both Zach and I being dead.

  I swallow nervously and question Zach, "What should we do?"

  "The only thing I can think of is getting the hell out of these woods and then we'll figure out our next move after that."

  "Yeah, that sounds like a beautiful idea."

  He reaches for my hand and I don't hesitate accepting it. He cocks his head over his shoulder to make sure that the coast is clear before he begins to step away from the tree and even deeper into the woods. The woods aren’t very deep however and pretty soon we will come to a clearing of a road.

  From behind me, I hear sirens and then I see flashes of blue and red lights. The police will be here soon and by the time they arrive, both Zach and I need to be long gone. We need to be as far away from the scene as possible. Based on the proximity of the sirens of the squad cars, I can only guess that the five men with assault rifles have loaded themselves back into the van and are long gone too.

  I'm not worried about the cops finding my car, because the car isn’t in my name. Not my real name, anyways. If they run the plates through their database, it will come up with my fake identity that I created after I faked our deaths.

  Zach and I continue through the woods, heading farther away from where we came in from. Finally, we reach a clearing and run out into the middle of a two-lane road. Just up ahead is a small parking lot carved into the side of the mountain. It’s often used by hikers or sightseers. There are four cars parked there under a bright streetlamp.

  We are not going to get out of these hills without a vehicle.

  "I'm assuming you know how to hotwire a car?” I question Zach half jokingly. "I mean after all, that something that's right up your alley, right?"

  He looks down at me as we cross the road and a cute grin hitches across his lips. “”You really think you know me, don’t you?"

  "Yeah, I think I have a good grasp on who you are."

  "Whatever," he scowls. "I'm thinking I quite like the white SUV."

  He's talking, of course, about the first of the four cars parked underneath the bright lamp. All four s
eem to be unoccupied, so they’re all technically for our taking. The SUV, however, is different from the other three because they are merely cars, and I've always figured that Zach was the kind of guy who preferred utility vehicles over compact vehicles.

  And yeah, I kind of think I know him better than he knows himself. After all, that's one of my specialties. I'm able to see people for who they are and that's why I am so easily able to manipulate people. It's a talent I've been working on from a very young age. When I was younger, I used my wits and intelligence to twist my parents’ arms so that I would be the more favored child. It was because of my skills that I often got away with things that my sister Lola couldn't.

  And no matter how many times I think about her or say her name out loud, I still can't quite come to grips with the fact that both me and my sister share the exact same name. And though my parents always called her Lolita as to separate the two of us, I never found myself able to call her anything but her born name.

  I come to a stop at the rear of the vehicle as Zach bends down and grabs a large rock from in front of the SUV. He looks back to me and then looks both ways, making sure nobody is in the vicinity before he smashes the rock against the window, shattering it into a thousand different pieces. He bends over and pulls his boot off of one foot and then uses it to scrape the remnants of the glass from the window so that he won't cut himself.

  He reaches inside the window and pulls the door handle so that it pops open. And then he smiles at me, smiles a smile that would make me believe he's more than proud of himself. And hey, in the moment I'm quite proud of him but I'll reserve my judgment until I see if he can actually hotwire this hot ride.

  He climbs into the driver’s seat and then pops the passenger door open so that I can climb inside to join him. The lights flash on above us as he leans over to get a good glimpse underneath the ignition. He pulls out a plastic shield from just below the steering wheel. Different colored wires are exposed and I don't know what any of them mean or what any of them do, but he seems to know exactly what he's doing as I predicted.