by A. J. Downey
“First off, you can put that away.”
“What? Why? You have one.”
“Yeah, and I’m taking point and know how to shoot, do you?”
“Yeah, how do you think I got here?” I demanded harshly. “I killed somebody.”
“Killing somebody doesn’t mean you know how to shoot, Mali. You got any practice hours in at a range or anything?”
I swallowed hard, “No.”
“Then do me a favor and put it away.”
“You do?” I asked, shoving the gun into my waistband.
“Tell you later,” he said and I scoffed. “Now is not the time to be stubborn, ‘k?” he bit back.
“I guess not,” I agreed, and it was totally bizarre. It was like there hadn’t been any kind of gap in time, like we’d picked up right where we’d left off. It was both comforting and disquieting.
I stayed close on Kyle’s tail as we surged across the basement floor, carefully working our way past shelving units and unused cookware to another set of steep stairs. Kyle went up to them, listened, and threw back a well-oiled hatch.
Diffuse light filtered down and he turned to motion me forward. He went up the steps and I followed him out, finding that we were up behind a gleaming bar in a restaurant that was closed for the day. He shut the trap and I watched him; the racking of a shotgun caused us both to whirl, hands up.
“What are you doing in my bar?” a man demanded.
“Just passing through, no harm meant, no harm done,” Kyle answered quickly.
The man was in his fifties maybe, and fit through the arms and chest, but a bit soft in the middle. His iron gray hair and beard were kept neat and he was pretty much the epitome of a silver fox. Keen blue eyes moved over us, narrowed and calculating.
“No harm meant? Then why are you both armed?”
“Running,” I squeezed out.
“Yeah, from who?”
“Don’t know,” Kyle said. “Mali, you got an answer for the man?” I shook my head and I heard Kyle behind me let out a sigh, “Seriously? Now would be a really good time to be honest.” The man looked at Kyle and lowered his shotgun slightly.
“I seriously don’t know!” I snapped defensively. “My dad got me into this mess then he fucking died, okay? I don’t know who’s after me. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be running from them.”
The man’s shotgun had come back up at my outburst, and he looked at Kyle, then me, then back to Kyle again. Those gaping black barrels lowered again as he said, “Against my better judgment, I just want you the fuck out of here. I’ll be calling the cops, though, so you better git.”
“Appreciated,” Kyle said and moved to go past me. I could feel him at my back and the man raised the shotgun and pointed it at us once more. A byproduct of Kyle’s sudden movement. I didn’t blame the guy, I would be as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
“Keep your hands where I can see ‘em and your finger off that trigger, son.”
“Copy that, Mister. Mali, move – slowly.” I moved forward, hands up and went past the end of the bar and the upraised section of counter. I slipped out into the dark dining room with its chairs overturned on the tops of the tables and Kyle followed me.
“Front door, you can unlock it, girly.” I swallowed hard and moved to the front door, my back itching between my shoulder blades as I unlocked the deadbolt then bent slowly to lift the bolt out of the floor holding it closed.
“Up top too,” the man said.
I reached up and slid the brass bolt down.
“I’m going to put my gun away before we go out on the street,” Kyle said and the man raised the shotgun to his shoulder and took better aim. I turned, chest squeezed down tight, and swallowed hard. Kyle lowered his gun and tucked it into the back of his waistband.
“That your bike in my alley?” the man demanded.
“Sure is.”
“You didn’t trip any of the alarms earlier, just the one in the basement. I’m inclined to believe you when you say you’re not looking for trouble but rather running from it. Still, I’m reporting this.”
“Understood.”
“You got a head start. Don’t let me catch you ‘round here no more.”
“You won’t,” I breathed.
“Now get the fuck out,” the man ordered.
I went out the door and glanced back at the gold leaf lettering on the glass, one-zero-one-three, just the address. I swallowed hard and Kyle let the door shut behind us. He grabbed me by the upper arm and towed me purposefully around the corner and into the alley.
“Put this on,” he demanded, thrusting a helmet at me. I took it dumbly, and hands shaking put it on my head. He got onto the matte black Harley-Davidson like he knew exactly what he was doing, and started it up. I swallowed as he leaned it up off its kickstand and onto its wheels.
I was staring up the alley at the blank brick wall at the end, every single one of my runner’s instincts on high alert. I could feel it without seeing, they were close. A wolf on the scent, the pack closing in. Kyle’s voice shattered the illusion of calm, the resoluteness with which I had stared down my fate starting to crumble within his presence.
“Mali, keep it together, get on!” he demanded over the chug and thrum of the motorcycle. I got on behind him and put my arms around his waist. His presence here was a game changer. Resist, and he would die with me, and I didn’t want that for him. Knowing he was out there, knowing he was safe, had kept me going on some of the darkest nights of my soul.
He twisted the handlebars and the throttle and pointed us down the mouth of the alley. He looked both ways and pulled out onto the street. I looked back at the bar we’d come out of. The hanging shingle above the door proclaiming it to be The Cormorant Bar and Grill. The man with the shotgun stood in the front window talking into his cell phone, shotgun at his side, keen blue eyes whipping over us and the bike and I swallowed hard.
“He’s on the phone with the cops! He’s reporting your plate!”
“Don’t worry about it!” Kyle called back. “I got this, you’re safe now!”
Safe. Me…
Yeah, right.
I cursed when the whoop of a siren went up, god, not even a block away. I would rather die than spend a night in a cage with real bars. The imaginary box and prison I’d been living in for so long was one thing, but there would be no way my gypsy heart would survive in a cage of concrete and steel.
“Kyle…” I said urgently and he turned at the next light, stealing down a different alley that branched into a ‘T’ and turning right down it, carefully walking the chugging beast between dumpsters and trash cans, through stinking puddles, even as the rain soaking us lessened and a fine mist started to fall.
“Tight, Mali. Hold on tight,” he ordered and I settled up, fetching close to his back, arms wrapping around a waist that was far more solid than I’d ever remembered the boy being… because he wasn’t a boy anymore, no more than I was the girl he’d known.
He nosed out of the alley, looked both ways, and turned left up the one-way street. He blended us back into city traffic, which was light this time of day, and headed for the freeway.
Probably eight blocks from freedom and the open road – our luck ran out.
“Shit!” he swore and I caught his worried gaze in the side view mirror. I glanced in the glass itself, diverting from the sliver of his face to the scene behind us and met the grill of a big, black, SUV; GMC spelled out backward in angry red letters.
“Not today, Satan… Not. To. Day.” I muttered and gripped Kyle hard, jerking my chin down once. He swerved out between cars and twisted down on the throttle. The motorcycle wailed like a possessed beast, tires spinning on the wet pavement before lurching forward. The wind roared, my hair whipping out and streaming behind me. I heard a crash behind us, the scream of metal as the big black SUV bullied its way between cars, knocking them out of its path.
Oh, man, did they ever have a hard-on for me? Well, I had a
lady boner right back, the adrenaline coursing through my veins, the helpless anger spiraling out of control, the barely suppressed rage blowing its lid… and I had a big, black, shiny fucking target for all of it right behind me.
I tore a page out of my favorite sci-fi series playbook, that if someone was trying to kill you, that you go on and try to kill them right back, and so I lifted the compact black handgun out of the back of Kyle’s waistband.
I twisted fiercely, holding onto him with one arm, sitting up straight, letting the wind push my arm out and back, my hair whipping forward, lashing my cheek as I sighted down my arm and fixed my gaze on the giant black target. I tried to fix my aim on the indistinct images of the men in behind the windshield’s glass, their features hidden by the glare of the sun through leaden gray clouds.
I pulled the trigger, the gun belching smoke and flame, fighting the kick as it reverberated down my arm. I hit, the bullet pinging, and I just kept firing, pulling back on the trigger over and over and over again. The SUV swerved, hitting the curb and rocking, tipping in slow motion onto its side before skidding and sending sparks out from beneath it, the image of it growing smaller and smaller the further we pulled away. I twisted back around and kept the gun out, clutching around Kyle, bracing my arm across him as he pulled us up onto the ramp across the damn bay bridge, leaving Indigo City in the dust.
2
Data…
I had ridden all night to get to her. The GPS had declared the ride would be eight hours, but with traffic and other setbacks, it had been more like nine and a half. When I’d reached Indigo City, it’d taken me the better part of the morning setting up at an internet café to do the recon required to make such an exit strategy.
Now, four hours into the ride back the way I’d come, I could feel Mali flagging against my back. We’d made it two hours outside the city and I’d pulled off behind a strip mall. I’d swapped out the bike’s plates with still-shaking hands and peeled off the artificial skin to reveal the real one underneath. I dug out my cut from the saddlebag, big ass safety pin along the side of it. That was to let any territories I was passing through know I meant no harm. I gave Mali one of my old jackets that I’d grown out of but had kept around and she’d tucked her hair into the collar.
Inside ten minutes worth of effort, it was presto change-o, and we were off of any law enforcement’s radar. Not that they’d be looking too hard, especially once they realized that nothing had been stolen from the bar. I couldn’t say if they’d be looking for us after the stunt Mali had pulled back near the on-ramp to the bridge. That’d been crazy. As for what had gone down before that at her place? I somehow doubted the guy I’d winged there wanted any kind of attention. I mean, what was he going to say? That he’d busted up her place trying to kill her and that I’d shot back?
Still, we needed to go to ground. The rocket fuel of adrenaline had worn off what already felt like an age ago, and combined with the utter lack of sleep that I’d had, and the fact that when I’d knocked on her door, she didn’t look like she’d had any either? We weren’t fit to ride much further. Especially not under the dangerous conditions of getting rained on while fuckin’ doing it.
I pulled the bike into the driveway at one of the nicer hotels my phone had pulled up for me. It had a garage, which was a bonus. I parked on one of the lower tiers and we took the elevator up. Mali didn’t speak. If anything, she stood probably as far as she could get from me inside the small box. Shivering, and silent, uncomfortable and… broken. It blew my mind, especially after what I’d seen her do. After what we had pulled off. That was one hell of a getaway.
Seeing her like this, it was like a punch to the gut. So far removed from the vibrant and carefree best friend I had grown up alongside since the third grade.
She wasn’t a child anymore. Nor was she a teenaged girl. She had aged beautifully into the woman that stood beside me. Her long dark hair as long as it had ever been, the ends dipped neon pink. Her figure filled out and lush, her dark eyes still lined in black but something about it, the line of it too crisp to be makeup – that, and it hadn’t run with the rain at all.
When she’d answered the door I’d seen the watercolor fantastic ink beneath her skin. Her arm sleeved out in vivid flowers. I wanted to see more of her, but I wasn’t about to push my luck. As it was, I pulled out one of my more impressive, black credit cards from my wallet that was under the name of one of the many shell corporations I had set up just for an emergency like this one.
I marched to the hotel’s front desk and ordered a suite while Mali stood off to one side and a bit behind me. I could feel her like my shadow and I was grateful she hadn’t cut and run on me. I didn’t know the shit she’d been through, had no way of knowing, not until she told me.
There were more immediate needs to be met, though. While I was dying to know what had taken her from me for the last seventeen years, I was more interested in making sure she was warm, dry, rested, and fed, first. That she was capable of going back into what was likely to be a very dark place. My obsession for answers took to riding bitch in the face of all of that. I had her by my side. No one knew where we were, yet. We had time, for the first time in forever.
She stood apart from me again in the elevator up to our room, her gaze vacant and fixed on the buttons. I didn’t try to make her talk. I didn’t try to intrude on her thoughts. I simply stood by and watched her, my own gaze roving over her from head to toe. Her hair was windswept and tangled, the dark roots fading into a bright, neon pink where it trailed over the cracked black leather of my old jacket. She clutched at the broad strap of her messenger bag between her breasts, her knuckles mottled white with how hard she gripped it.
She was still on high alert, hours and hours later, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get her to relax or calm down. It had to be exhausting. I knew I was tired, I’d been here multiple times before, but only to visit. She lived in this state, all the time… I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that was like.
The elevator dinged when it hit our floor and Mali nearly came out of her skin, she jumped so hard. I held out one hand, gesturing for her to go first; the other hovering over her back, but I didn’t touch. Not yet. She looked both ways before stepping off and I had to use my arm to stop the elevator doors from closing on us.
“No one knows we’re here, it’s cool.”
“Credit cards can be tracked,” she said and I smiled.
“True, but they don’t know who I am and the card isn’t in my name. Cash for a place like this would be even more suspicious, as it is – we’ll be lucky to have a night before we have to bounce. The only thing more likely to draw police scrutiny than paying cash for digs like this is a scruffy looking fuck like me dropping a black corporate card like I just did, even if it is legit mine.”
I slid the key card the front desk had given me into the lock and pressed down on the handle. The door swung open and I gestured for Mali to go through ahead of me. She searched my face, looking me over with serious scrutiny before she took a deep, steadying breath and preceded me into the room.
I shut the door behind us and I could easily imagine the vibrating hiss of closing an airlock, shutting out the rest of the world, leaving us hermetically sealed in imaginary safety for just the time being. I latched the deadbolt and swung the arm of what passed for a chain over into a latched position.
Mali stood still by the king-sized bed staring at it, her hands still wrapped around the strap of her big vinyl messenger bag. I went over to her slowly, almost afraid if I moved too fast I might spook her. She lifted the bag over her head and let it drop to the bed and I pulled off my jacket and cut, hanging them on the back of the desk chair. She slipped out of my old coat that looked good on her and tossed it onto the bed behind her bag. Suddenly, we were just standing there within two feet of each other, her dark eyes roving over me, up and down, as if memorizing every etched line of my face.
“Hi,” she said finally, and I smiled and held open my arms
for a hug. The faint ghost of a smile graced her lips and she closed the gap and fit so perfectly into me, like my lock had suddenly found its key. I let my arms go around her and held her back, close.
She made to pull away but I wasn’t ready to let go. We had a lot of missed hugs to make up for. She stood stiff and unsure and hugged back but again tried to pull away. Again, I just wasn’t quite ready to let go. She stilled and let me hold her, her body still stiff and trembling against my own. I waited and waited for it, but finally, with a harsh sigh, she relaxed and really hugged me back.
“I missed you,” I said, breathing in her slight scent of coconut and lime, whatever soap or shampoo she used. I didn’t know, I didn’t care, she just… she just even smelled the same and I felt the years pressing down on us. The pain welling up fresh. She had been my best friend and she’d just disappeared without a trace.
“I’m sorry,” she said thickly, but aside from the slight change in her voice, there was no indication that she was any kind of upset, near tears, or anything else. There was nothing except that strange, maligned tone.
“Tell me what happened and I’ll let you know if you have anything to apologize for,” I said gently and let her go this time when she leaned back to look at me. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears but she’d be damned if she would let them spill over. Instead, she looked pointedly at the gauzy curtains covering the suite’s window.
“I still don’t know exactly what he did; he took that secret to the grave, but the night that we disappeared, they came for him. I came downstairs and he was on the floor. A man was standing over him with a gun and… and I used my dad’s gun and shot him, and I kept shooting until I was sure daddy was safe. He made me pack a bag and we were gone, just like that, and we’ve been ghosts ever since.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug and I felt mine drop slightly. It didn’t make sense. I had been past her house the day after and nothing was out of place. No blood, certainly no sign that anyone had died there… which made sense to my adult brain even if it’d gone over my teenaged head.