by Dan Padavona
“Well? Are you coming or not?”
The snap in her voice awakened an angry boy inside me. Indignation is a bitter pill.
She glared straight ahead, doing her best to ignore me as she glided through the trees. I was losing her.
I grabbed Becca’s arm and spun her around.
“What?”
She nearly spat the word at me.
“I’m sorry about the damn bike.”
“I’ve never come so close to getting caught before. And I’ve never had a roommate. Coincidence?”
“It wasn’t my fault. Remember what you told me the night we met? When I followed you into the house, you told me I made my own decisions. Well, so do you. You chose to break into Ji Lin’s house. That was your call. I realize you couldn’t have predicted his mother would die, forcing him to take an emergency flight home, but you also can’t blame me. Be reasonable.”
“Be reasonable? Your bike is still in the yard. What if he sees your bike and realizes someone was inside his house? What if the police release a photo and a friend of yours recognizes the bike?”
“Now you’re the one who’s acting paranoid.”
Was she? Riley would recognize my bike, as would Donna. Anyone who’d passed me on the street might remember. Even the psycho junkie knew my bike.
“And if I hadn’t stopped the truck driver, he’d have caught you. We’d both be sitting in a jail cell tonight.”
She must have seen the stark terror on my face. I tried to forget the image of the driver crumpling to the pavement, clutching his stomach. She laughed derisively and looked up at the gathering stars, as though they shared her exasperation.
“No, Steve. I didn’t stick a switchblade through his belly. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?”
My face flushed. I didn’t have a good answer.
“Yeah, I kicked him pretty hard. I did what I had to do to save your ass. He’ll be sore for a few days, but he’ll still be able to have kids when he finds that special someone.”
“Dammit, Becca. You brought me to a robbery and didn’t even tell me about it until the delivery truck was right in front of us.”
“If I had told you, you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“You’re wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Am I? Tonight needs to go smoothly, Steve.”
“It will, I promise,” I said. “Which is why we should get moving while we can still see. I’ll get the bike, and before the clock strikes midnight, I’ll get you into another house.”
She glared doubtfully at me. The wheels in her head spun.
“The foreclosure in the country you were talking about,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I suppose we don’t have much of a choice. Do you know how to get there?”
“I do.”
She stared off to where the woods thickened. Somewhere beyond the dense overgrowth lay Ji Lin’s house and one last piece of evidence linking us to the crime.
“Okay. Let’s get your bike. And this time, no loose ends left behind.”
Behind us, the ground swallowed the sun. It became increasingly difficult to see where I was walking. I kept butting up against branches, worrying one would poke through an eye. Underneath me, the leaves whispered conspiratorially of all things dark and dead in October’s night.
Light through the trees marked Ji Lin’s house. I wondered if he was inside making emergency flight plans to China or calling the police over some piece of evidence discovered in his backyard.
We stood before the tall wooden fence.
When I grabbed hold of the fence top, Becca pulled me back.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going,” she said.
“No. This is my problem. You said you’d let me fix it.”
“I changed my mind. I’m quieter than you.”
A night bird called from the forest.
“You’ll never lift the bike over the fence without my help. Why don’t you let me do this?”
“I don’t need to lift the bike. Once I’m sure it’s safe, I’ll walk it between the fence and the house and ride down Park Place. You can meet me there.”
I started to protest, but she was up and over the wall before I realized she’d started climbing.
“Becca, no.”
She landed with a soft thump. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see her anymore. I had the impression of a ground-to-sky wall between us, Becca impossible to reach. What if Ji Lin waited on the other side?
Or the junkie.
(Or Donna).
That last thought sent a chill through me.
Ridiculous.
It was, wasn’t it? When does obsession cross the line into insanity?
“Becca.”
I pressed against the cold fence wall, listening.
The night was cold and hushed as though the quiet came from six feet under.
“Becca.”
Still nothing.
Knowing she’d be furious with me, I grabbed hold of the fence and pulled myself up, dropping both our bags into the grass. I felt ligaments strain between my armpit and ribs as I balanced on top and scanned the dark backyard. My bike was behind the clump of trees in the back corner, but I could see neither the bike nor Becca.
The downstairs was awash with light. Someone passed by the sliding glass doors and disappeared into the kitchen.
When I looked back toward the trees, I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes had already adjusted to the lights.
Swinging my legs over, I dropped into the grass. I landed louder than Becca had. She was a lot better at this than I was.
That she wasn’t there to berate me made me uneasy. She was nowhere to be found, as though the yard swallowed her whole.
I edged along the fence, glimpsing the outlines of the fence and trees now, but still no Becca.
“Where are you?”
My whisper died in the darkness.
Then I saw her shadow emerge from the trees.
She walked my bike across the yard, wheeling it through the shadows. She hadn’t seen or heard me yet, or I think she would have scorned me for not following directions again.
She moved too slow, too cautious, seeming to slog through quicksand. The night closed in around her.
I kept glancing between her and the house, a nervous parent watching his child totter across a highway.
Go! I screamed inside my head.
What happened next remains a blur. A shape shot out from behind the garage.
A man.
“Look out!” I yelled.
It was too late.
Becca turned as the man tackled her. Their shadows and that of the bike collapsed against the dark ground. I lost sight of them. Somewhere in the yard, Becca grunted as she tried to throw him off.
He swore at her. Though I didn’t speak Chinese, the spiteful tone of his curse was easily recognized.
His hands were around her neck, her legs flailing and bridging as I threw my shoulder into his.
Ji Lin was strong; it felt as if I’d slammed into a brick wall.
I felt the breath rush from my lungs. He landed awkwardly on his arm, winced, and grabbed at his elbow. I leaped atop and slammed a fist against his jaw. Becca was on her feet and racing the bike toward the driveway.
“Leave him,” she said.
As I turned to flee he grasped my ankle and tripped me up. I smelled hard liquor and body odor as he fought his way on top. Apparently, he’d done his share of drinking on the plane and continued at home.
It was too dark to get a good view of his face. I hoped he couldn’t see mine.
His fingers shook as they wrapped around my neck. I realized he was drunk and out of his mind. How long had he waited for us? What scrap of evidence had he found that we’d lived in his house?
That police sirens weren’t wailing down Park Place terrified me. Ji Lin didn’t want the authorities to handle this. He meant to murder us.
I swung an elbow and c
aught him over his eye. He gasped and fell off.
I pressed my advantage and battered him with punches. Becca pleaded with me to run.
Something snapped inside me. My anger at Jenkins and the frustration of my failures were a fireball of hate. He covered his head as I rained more punches down on him.
I don’t want to think what I would have done to Ji Lin if his daughter hadn’t screamed. No longer a teenager with a messy room and rock-n-roll posters taped to the wall, she was a little girl terrified for her daddy.
The girl kept pleading for the monster to leave her daddy alone. I knew the police were on the way, yet I kept hammering fists against his face. It was the girl’s frightened cries that made me stop.
I started running and turned back.
Our belongings.
More shouting came from inside the house as I rushed back to the fence. I had to feel through the dark until my hands clasped our bags. Ji Lin lay moaning in the grass as I sprinted out of the yard.
“Take your bike,” Becca said as I ran into the driveway. “I’ll meet you at—”
“Jump on and grab hold of me.” She looked confusedly at me. “Do it.”
I climbed onto the bike. She straddled the seat and wrapped her arms around my stomach. I could hear the mother and son running down the steps to help Ji Lin.
Becca’s face was pressed hard against my back as I kicked the pedals. I had to ride standing up, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid riding double with Riley. I couldn’t balance. We nearly crashed on the lip of driveway and road as a siren screamed from the center of town. Then my muscle memory kicked in, and we flew down Park Place as if the devil himself was chasing us.
“He couldn’t see me,” I kept saying.
I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince myself or Becca.
By the time the police car thundered into Park Place we were on the west end of Old State Road, past the shopping plaza. Thankfully, the road was devoid of cars, the plaza having closed an hour earlier. Otherwise, someone would have noticed the unknown couple fleeing on a mountain bike made for one.
Ahead, the county road bore off to the left. A mix of Eastern White Pines and skeletal deciduous trees bordered the county road to either side. We’d have ample cover if vehicle lights appeared on the horizon.
Were it not for her tight grip around my chest I might have thought Becca was sleeping. I felt her breath on my neck, the softness of her breasts squeezed against my back.
The foreclosed residence lay no more than a half-hour away. Soon we’d be safe.
No headlights swept down West Road. No sirens or flashing lights screamed up behind us. We were nearly home free.
Then I glanced over my shoulder and saw the low-slung racing bike closing in on us.
CHAPTER FIVE
House on the Hill
“Who the hell is that, Steve?”
I could tell by the quaver in Becca’s voice that she was scared. I’d never heard her frightened.
I didn’t answer. I pedaled until my legs screamed for me to stop. The wind was an ice bath against my flesh.
We were on the county road, the black strip of blacktop devoid of street lighting. The moon hid behind a blanket of clouds; I couldn’t see a damn thing.
The lunatic junkie was closer each time I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t so much see him as catch dull glints off the reflectors and a shadow moving very fast through the darkness.
I knew I couldn’t get away from him riding double. I’d learned I couldn’t outrace him at all on a second-hand mountain bike. My tires were built to grip, not fly.
That’s when I got the idea to put my new bike to the test.
“Hold on tight.”
Becca hooked her arms under my shoulders and clasped her hands tightly against my chest. I looked behind and saw he was only fifty yards behind and closing on us. Ahead, headlights climbed out of a dip in the terrain. The oncoming car was at least a mile away and coming fast.
I yanked hard on the handlebars and angled for the ditch.
How far across was the ditch? Three feet from bank to bank? I was working off an uncertain memory and a fistful of prayers.
I heard water gushing through a drainage creek. I pushed faster, knowing it would take considerable speed to safely clear the far bank. Wavering would cause the back tire to clip the edge.
We’d break our necks if we were lucky.
Branches whipped at our faces. I felt Becca squeeze harder—she sensed what I intended.
We both yelled when the mountain bike took to the air. Becca lifted several inches off the seat. Had my sneakers not been wedged inside the pedal straps, I would have flown backward with her.
Time stopped. I heard the water rushing underneath, felt its chill against my ankles. We were weightless, a split second away from escape or obliteration.
The landing knocked the breath out of me. The frame groaned and sprang back. I concentrated on keeping my grip of the handlebars as the tires jounced and the bike wobbled.
Our momentum nearly threw Becca off again. She gripped her knees against my sides to regain balance.
Now we were one entity, Becca, the bike, and me, tearing into the forest.
I heard the junkie gaining on us, screaming he’d kill me and the whore.
“Throw down your pack.”
“What?” she asked.
“The packs. They’re weighing us down.”
We tossed my backpack and our sacks of food into the trees. I made a mental note of where we’d dropped them, never believing I’d see those bags again.
Without the added weight encumbering us, I was better able to dodge trees and handle bumps.
Maybe I couldn’t beat the junkie’s bike in a race, but he was in my territory now. The mountain bike’s tire treads were wide and jutted, designed to go off-road. The tires chewed into the undulating slope of dead leaves, rock, and dirt, and carried us through the forest.
I slowed down. Sure, I worried we’d slam into a tree, but I was more concerned over the deep gorges that cut into the landscape. They were impossible to see without moonlight.
Several minutes later, when I could no longer hear him behind us, I pulled the bike into a clump of pines. My legs were numb as we crawled under needled boughs and settled against the sticky trunk. The cold was a knife blade against my sweaty skin. It was too dark to see anything but the suggestion of shapes.
An owl hooted nearby. I listened for tires digging through leaves and snapping twigs. The forest was dead quiet.
The pine scent erupted. It reminded me of Christmas trees in the living room during the holiday season, made me long for home. Then I thought of Becca: Becca, who’d never had a real family Christmas, Becca, who was homeless. Becca, who needed to rob produce trucks today so she could eat tomorrow. I doubted I’d ever again feel sorry for myself.
My lungs burned when Becca pulled me around. I couldn’t see her, only felt the heat of her anger.
“You want to tell me what the hell that was about?”
“I don’t know who he is,” I said.
I told her about the chase through town and how the junkie had tried to inject me with a needle.
“Jesus.”
“He’s out of his mind. He’ll kill me if he gets the chance.”
We sat in silence, listening to the night as the cold desolation of the forest crept around us.
It seemed fate kept throwing roadblocks between us and the old house on Myers Road.
“The sooner we get away from this town, the better.”
We.
Hearing her include me in her plans made something warm flutter in my chest.
“You sure? It seems all I’ve done is mess things up for you.”
She sighed.
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault Ji Lin found your bicycle. If I’d paid closer attention to his social media accounts, we could have been in another state by the time he made it home.”
“You can’t monitor all day and n
ight. When will you sleep?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sometimes it’s just bad luck,” I said. “Like this crazy guy following us. If I hadn’t passed his house at precisely the wrong moment, he wouldn’t even know I exist let alone want to kill—”
A branch snapped.
It sounded like a shotgun blast amid the quiet.
We slunk back against the trunk. I suddenly felt as if we’d backed into a corner and given ourselves no route for escape.
Minutes passed without another sound.
Trees shed branches all the time. Maybe that’s all I’d heard.
Holding Becca’s arm, I started to crawl under the boughs.
I froze at the rustling of leaves.
Someone was coming.
The footfalls brazenly swept across the forest floor. Whoever it was made no attempt to mask his approach.
“Where you at, boy? Can’t hide all night.”
The junkie.
A gorge lay nearby. His echo bounced off its walls and came back to me as a wraith’s cry.
I couldn’t judge how far away he was. His voice seemed to come from everywhere.
“I’m gonna kill you and the girl. Then I’ll lay her corpse over a rock and have me a dead whore. How’s that taste?”
Closer. Forty or fifty yards.
Dried leaves rattled as he pulled on a branch and snapped it off. I heard the tree swaying back and forth in his wake.
“My town, my forest. Nobody comes or goes without the mayor’s say-so.”
He stood no more than ten yards away, close enough for me to smell his sweat stench.
“And nobody gets out alive.”
He knew where we were. Somehow he homed in on us despite the absolute darkness. Could he see the bike between the trees?
I felt Becca slide her hand into her pocket. The switchblade.
Twigs and leaves crackled in front of us. He was only a few feet away.
I sensed her thumb on the release.
Becca’s body shifted. I imagined her on one knee ready to plunge the blade into our pursuer’s throat. If the junkie stuck his head through the branches, he’d get a helluva surprise.