by A. J. Downey
It’s been seventeen years, Mali… Everything is bound to be different now.
I hated the voice of reason. She was such a pragmatic bitch. I sighed and sniffed, racking my neck back and forth, working my shoulders loose and letting a deep breath rush out, then taking another one. I coughed lightly and got my shit back under control. Not a single errant tear snuck free. Small victory in a long line of lost battles.
The hotel room door opened and I watched Kyle pass the bathroom door into the rest of the suite, a shopping bag in each hand. I whipped my chap stick over my lips in the mirror and capped it, gathering up my few items to take back out to my bag.
“Mali?” Kyle called out, frozen at the foot of the bed, apprehension dripping from his tone. I smiled a little to myself.
“Right behind you,” I said softly, and he jumped. I smiled a little bigger and stepped up to my bag, stashing my little bit of shit back in the pocket I found it in.
Kyle’s eyes roved over the disaster on the bed, fixing on the laptop.
“Did you get on the internet?” he asked.
“Connection here is slow as shit, wasn’t even able to really get into my email,” I said, thrusting sketchbooks into my bag carefully, stashing my tarot cards back in the pocket they’d come from and just generally shifting things around to make room for whatever was in the bags he held, hoping I could make it fit.
“Shit, I should have said something. I didn’t think about it. Keep packing up, we have to go.”
“What?” I felt that familiar tingle of fear uncurling along the length of my spine.
“I brought it because I knew they could track it. It was supposed to be bait, I didn’t think you’d try to use it. I didn’t think –“
“Jesus, Kyle! Why didn’t you say something? Am I supposed to know this shit through osmosis?” I demanded, thrusting things carefully away, my fear bringing out the saltiness in me. It always did. I got scared, I got attitude – it was just a given about me and I wouldn’t apologize for it. Kyle didn’t ask me to, and he didn’t apologize either.
He just handed me the shopping bags and said, “We’ve got time, how long ago did you use it?”
“I don’t know, maybe a half-an-hour? Forty-five minutes ago?”
“Okay, we still have time, we just have less of it than I thought. Keep packing.”
I rolled my eyes thinking; like I’d stop, and stuffed clothes from his shopping excursion into whatever corners were left open in my damn bag. I rolled up the pair of jeans he handed me and stuffed them along the top, pulling the flap on the bag over and using the trident buckles, shoving them home with a satisfying click. All was secure. I hit the button in the center of the old-fashioned seatbelt buckle that served as a quick release on the strap of my bag and wordlessly shrugged into the leather jacket Kyle held out to me.
It suited me and I liked it. Although I have to admit, the reason I liked it probably had more to do with the fact that it was Kyle’s than any sort of fashion sense. Though, it scored points in that department, too.
I stood with my back to the bed and hauled my bag by one strap up over my shoulder, the buckle digging into my hand, keeping the strap from sliding through. I groped down by my opposite side for the swinging other half of the strap, grabbed it and hauled the two ends together, clicking the buckle home, yanking on it a bit to make certain it was secure, before letting either strap go. Kyle was watching me and I arched an eyebrow at him and asked, “We going, or are you just going to stand there with your dick in your hand?”
He scowled at me but got back into motion, shoving his underwear that I’d been wearing into the top of his knapsack. He stalked around the corner into the bathroom and gave it a sweep, scooping up the toiletries and dumping them into the top of his bag before cinching it closed. I felt my mouth turn down and head nod, I could respect that. Never knew when that kind of shit would come in handy and waste not, want not.
“Cool,” he said shrugging one strap of the bag onto a shoulder broader than I could ever remember. “Let’s bounce.”
I dragged my dad’s gun off the bed and tucked it down the back of my pants under the jacket and he gave me a nod and held out his hand, gesturing for me to come up behind him. He opened the door to the room and looked up and down the hall both ways.
“Clear,” he declared in a low husky voice and we went out, one after the other, the soles of my knee-high Doc Marten’s hushed by the plush luxury hotel’s thick hall carpeting. We smoothly made our way to the elevator and he pressed the button.
“Nothing’s wrong, act natural when we hit the lobby, move for the parking garage elevators. Don’t look around, just… talk to me,” he said.
“About what?”
“Um,” he smiled faintly and said, “Remember that time we were out in that spot in the woods and you were bossing us around and…”
I felt myself blush, hard… we’d probably been about eleven and these older kids had rolled up on their bikes and one had shot me with a BB from his slingshot right in the ass. It had hurt but I’d been determined to execute building the fort we’d been attempting and had just kept prattling on. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize why everyone else was so quiet behind me. It also took another agonizing shot to the back.
“Why you have to remind me of that?” I asked, scowling. We stepped onto the elevator down to the lobby. Kyle didn’t immediately answer as I went back inside my own head to that day.
I’d cried, the BB had torn my favorite tee and had embedded itself in my back, next to my shoulder blade on the inside of it. It’d hurt so bad, and the other kids had followed the older teen’s teasing and laughter. I’d fallen into the mud by the creek with that second shot, writhing. My jeans had protected me from the first shot, which he’d hit square in the back pocket. The double layer of denim too thick to penetrate but it had still stung like a son of a bitch.
“Yeah, I never forgot it either,” Kyle said quietly and we stepped off the elevator into the lobby which wasn’t too crowded. We moved over to the elevator down to the parking garage.
“So why you have to bring it up now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, I just thought of it for some reason…”
Kyle had stood up for me. He’d shouted at them and started throwing rocks. Had hit the kid who had hit me and the kid had gotten off his bike and come down the ravine. He’d popped Kyle a good one, knocked him on his ass in the mud beside me; gave him a bloody nose. I’d stabbed the little bastard in the leg with my pocket knife.
It’d been a big mess. Kyle and I had booked it, adrenaline pumping, through the woods that smelled of wet, green, and growing things all the way back to his house. His mom, a nurse, had me sit down at the dining table with my shirt off, a towel clutched to my chest while she spent the better part of a half an hour digging into the hole in my back with tweezers going after that damn BB. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe.
The older kid and his parents showed up at my house; we hadn’t told Kyle’s parents I’d stabbed the kid. I thought for sure my dad was going to beat the shit out of me for stabbing the little prick. I hadn’t told him at all what’d happened in the woods. The parents handed him the pocket knife he’d given me for my tenth birthday and he stared at it in his hand for a long time.
He’d surprised me. He stood up to them. Stared that kid’s parent’s right in the face and praised me for defending myself and told them to get off our front step. I’d been elated for all of five minutes. I’d finally done something right… until I hadn’t. Once they were gone he’d taken a belt to my ass for leaving the knife behind. Drilled into me that you never, ever, left anything behind.
Then he’d hugged me, soothed away my tears and took a look at my back and asked me brokenly why I hadn’t told him…
I was scared… I’d said and he’d looked startled and for a while, he quit drinking and things were better. For a while…
“Dad beat my ass after those people left,” I said finally an
d Kyle looked over at me sharply.
“I thought you said you hadn’t gotten in trouble for stabbing that fuckwit.”
“I didn’t,” I confessed. “I got in trouble for leaving the knife, for leaving evidence, behind…”
“Shit,” he said and I could tell he’d had no idea. His face contorting, warm brown eyes roving over my face as the doors slid open to the second elevator, spilling us out onto the level of the parking garage that held his bike.
Kyle hadn’t gotten in trouble for anything. He’d told his parents everything, including me using my knife to defend us from the older boy who must have been fifteen or sixteen. They’d left it up to me to tell my father and I told them I had. My dad had never contradicted that.
“Why did you bring that up?” I demanded once again.
“Because I wanted you to remember that you were a badass from an early age. That, and I remember – get you fixated on something and you’ve got a one-track mind. You did great. Now get on and let’s get out of here.”
I scowled deeply at him and felt a sudden spurt of anger. “Don’t manipulate me like that. I fucking hate being manipulated,” I spat. He carefully considered my face.
“Duly noted,” he said softly and the apology was carried in his tone.
I got on behind him but would be staying pissed for a while.
6
Data…
She scowled, eyes unfocused and brooding behind the clear safety lenses I’d handed back to her. She was still pissed and I felt like a total shit. She stayed that way for over an hour into the ride, her expression smoothing out about a half an hour before hour two… I figured now would be a good time to pull off and eat. I’d texted Dragon what I could from the elevators on the way down to the garage and was pretty much itching to check out any responses by now. Freeway riding didn’t exactly afford any stoplights to check messages, and unfortunately, traffic was clear; the road wide open in front of us, so there wasn’t any stop and go to afford me a similar luxury.
I pulled off the freeway and I felt her perk up behind me, curious. It took an effort of will to keep my eyes on the road and off my mirrors to see what she was doing. It was drawing on towards evening, and we wouldn’t be making it to Point Nowhere before dark. There wasn’t any way.
“Why are we stopping?” she yelled when we reached the bottom of the off ramp.
“Food!” I called back.
“Good idea, I forgot about that!”
I laughed at that and shook my head, turning us out onto the surface streets in the direction of where the blue signs boasted food could be found. At the next stoplight, I called out, “What looks good?”
“Don’t give a fuck, it’s just something you eat so you don’t die!”
I tilted my head and couldn’t argue with her there, then again, Mali had never been picky out of necessity growing up. Food had been sometimes hard to come by for her and her pops, and he was one of those guys that were too proud to hit up the food bank. I turned into a Cracker Barrel Country Store’s parking lot and let Mali off the bike. I backed it into a vacant parking stall and lowered the kickstand, shutting off the engine.
She stood not far from me, working loose the chinstrap on her borrowed helmet and I watched her for a minute.
She looked like she was born on the back of a bike, long legs covered in tight denim, flowy, loose black tank under my worn jacket that fit her better than it’d ever fit me. She was beautiful. She looked over at me and arched one brow.
“K, now I’m fucking starving,” she said and I smiled and got up.
“Me, too. Let’s eat, then we’ve probably got around four or so more hours to go.”
She groaned and sighed out, “There had better be a hot bath or a shower at the end of this rainbow,” she grumbled.
I took that into consideration and murmured, “I’ll see what I can do.” I don’t think she heard me. She was up on the faux rustic front porch, opening up the door to the country store part of the building. I went in after her and we found the hostess.
“Two, please.” Ever polite until someone gave her a reason not to be, I let her take the lead. No reason not to. She was a fierce, capable woman and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that she’d turn out to be anything else. We dropped into a two-person booth and Mali immediately lost herself behind a menu.
I pulled out my phone. Four missed text messages from D.
1/4: We’ll get on it, get Point Nowhere setup in no time. Just get your asses here, carefully. Any idea who’s doing it yet? Let me know what’s up. I can’t start working angles until I know.
2/4: Do you need your computer systems brought out to Nowhere?
3/4: That was a stupid question. Of course, you do.
4/4: We’re almost set up here. If you stop, let me know where, for how long, all that happy horseshit.
Me: We’re stopped, about four hours out at a Cracker Barrel. Food then we’ll get right back on the road.
I set the phone aside and perused the menu myself. The waitress came by and asked for our drink orders. I looked over my menu at Mali who had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes matched by the ghost of a trouble-making smile on her lips.
“What can I get you to drink?” the girl asked and Mali ordered a sweet tea. I cocked my head and let my gaze rove her face and ordered the same.
Her smile grew a bit wider, despite the tiredness creeping in and she asked, “Do you know what you want to eat?”
I got back to the menu murmuring, “No, not yet,” and decided that she was definitely up to something. I’d seen that playful look a thousand and more times and it always preceded some sort of shenanigans.
The waitress came back and asked us, “Do you know what you’ll have?”
Without missing a beat, Mali said, “I’ll have an explanation over why Brad’s wife was fired.”
I choked on my sip of tea and laughed, the girl blinked and blushed slightly, fighting not to roll her eyes. I couldn’t help it, maybe it was the stress or the long, hard miles, but I laughed and laughed over her jibe over the viral internet sensation that had been some dude named Brad demanding to know why Cracker Barrel had fired his wife over their Facebook page.
“I wouldn’t know, it didn’t happen at this location…” the girl shifted, kind of uncomfortable, and Mali rested her chin on her hand.
She wrinkled her nose in the cute, impish way she’d always had and said, “Oh, well, in that case, I’ll have the catfish.”
I watched her as she placed the rest of her order and ordered what I would like, going through deciding on like the million different sides that they had. The girl took our menus and left hurriedly and I shook my head.
“Some things don’t change,” I said.
“I was just thinking that earlier…”
“Oh yeah? About what?”
“You set the table.”
I paused and thought about it, nodding. “We always have dinner at the table.”
“Yeah, that was a tradition that was lost after we had to bounce.” She looked bitter and uncomfortable, shifting in her seat.
“Can you tell me anything?” I asked. She looked around the restaurant and shook her head slightly and I nodded saying, “Fair enough.”
“I’m not trying to weasel out of it,” she shot back defensively and I shook my head.
“I know you aren’t. We have time.”
She turned her head and stared out the slats of the wooden blinds, across a short expanse of blacktop parking lot and into a copse of trees across the way. I didn’t say anything else. Something about what I’d just said had her retreating back inside her head… lost in thought. I let her stay there so I could study her profile.
Again, she was stunning. Her body coming into its own as a woman had none of the awkward angles or knobby points she had just been coming out of at the age of sixteen. Her neck was long and graceful to the point I just ached with wanting to put my lips against it, to feel her warm pulse against them, to breathe in he
r sweet and spicy scent that was just purely her.
All of the feelings I held when we were teenagers came raging out of nowhere as if they’d never left and it was devastating. It was as if a nuclear bomb blast went off in the center of my being and the blast was simply this is real… It was like it finally hit me, there, in the restaurant of all places that my quest was over. I’d found my princess… but then again, didn’t I have to defeat some mega boss to make her mine?
I ran a hand over my face and shifted in my seat and she turned sharply. Her quick brown eyes roving over my face, quickly assessing, calculating, but whatever she was thinking she kept it to herself.
My phone buzzed at my elbow and I picked it up. Dragon had responded and I frowned slightly at the text.
D: Well bring it on home. We’ll figure out what to do from there.
I was way ahead of him. I already knew what I was going to do, I just needed my systems and a place to lay low until it was done. I smiled faintly to myself and texted back,
Me: Stay in the cage, P. I got this.
He shot back with a quick: We’ll see about that, and I chuckled.
Me: Mali wants a hot shower when we get there. Not sure what can be done about that.
D: YOU stay in the cage. If anything the rest of us got a better idea of dealing with females at this point.
Me: Mali’s different.
D: That’s what every single one of these assholes says about their girl.
Me: She’s not my girl, D. She’s just a friend.
D: Sure. That’s why you dropped everything to ride to the rescue.
Me: Fuck you! lol
D: I’ll leave that to her.
Me: Seriously, just a friend.
D: Uh huh. Get your asses back here.
Me: Sir, yes sir!
D: Fuck you.
“What’s so funny?” Mali asked, expression slightly soured, tension radiating from around her exotic eyes.
“Just the guys,” I answered and she frowned slightly, letting her eyes rove my cut. She opened her mouth to ask something but, as if on cue, our waitress returned with our plates. Mali shut her mouth and leaned back as the girl set hers in front of her.