by Brook Wilder
“Do you have any information you can share?” Chance asked, turning to Gabe. “Anything you can give us that will help us with this?”
Gabe shrugged. “I don’t think Ben trusted me very much or he just thought I was some kind of tool he could sue because he never told me much of anything. He just gave me orders and I had to follow them because I had no other choice.”
Chance nodded. Hannah was afraid of that. Still, having Gabe was better than not having him. They at least had one extra man on their side and that was better than nothing.
A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and she got up to let Moose and Cindy into the room. They looked a little more tired than Hannah felt but a whole lot better than Gabe looked. No one was quite operating on all cylinders and that would make planning a bit difficult. But they had to start somewhere.
“We need a plan,” Chance said.
“What we need is all hands on deck,” Moose said. “I say we call Link and Scout and your mother here too. It’s dangerous to go out and meet them. But we’ve still got these rooms for the rest of the day. Let’s use it as a home base while we plan this out.”
“I agree,” Hannah said. “This is probably the safest place we can be to plan anything. Who knows what else Ben had bugged. None of our old haunts are safe.”
“I’ll give them a call,” Chance said, sighing and looking pensively out the window.
***
The cavalry arrived a few hours later and all shuffled into the room. The landlord of the hotel didn’t look to happy when he saw everyone crowd into the one room, but Hannah didn’t care. They had much bigger things to deal with than the snooty looks of some sleazy hotel owner. They all got into the room and shut the blinds, turning on the lamp that flickered a little irritatingly from the corner of the room. They pulled over the coffee table to sit around.
“Alright, so what’s the plan?”
“First, we need to get Hannah out of the line of fire,” Chance said. She opened her mouth to protest but he looked right at her. “She’s pregnant.”
That got her mouth to close real quick. She turned around the room to see several eyes on her. Well, that cat was out of the bag and it ruined any excuses she had to try and persuade him to let her go. It wasn’t even that she was gun-happy or anything like that. She simply wanted to be by his side when the fighting got tough. She wanted to be there in case anything particularly terrible happened to him.
But it would be irresponsible to put the baby in danger just so she could feel like she had some semblance of control in the situation. She needed to do the smart thing and stay out of it, stay safe, give Chance something to return to when all was said and done. So she let her protests die on her lips and nodded. This was a plan she would have to be able to get behind. The lesson of the past few days had been about trust. She needed to trust Chance to take care of himself.
“I can take her,” Kat said, speaking up while everyone else seemed to still be digesting the new information. “I’ll take her to a secure location and keep her safe.”
Kat spoke with conviction. It was her grandchild, after all, that was at stake now. There might be no person more suited for keeping her safe than Kat. Hannah nodded to her and they looked back at the group. Everyone seemed caught somewhere between surprise, shock, and saying congratulations. There would be time for celebrating later, however. Right now they just needed to keep moving forward.
“I want to be a part of this,” Scout said. “He played me. I want a shot at taking him down.”
“What you want is revenge,” Link warned.
“It doesn’t matter, if it helps bring him down—“
“It does matter if you do something stupid that gets you into more danger than you need to be in.”
There was a moment of silence before Scout spoke again. “I want in. I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
Hannah had to be proud of Scout for standing her ground. She shared Link’s fears that Scout just wanted revenge but the girl was certainly making a case for herself and it was hard to say no to. For all the pain Ben had forced her to endure these past few months, she was certainly shaping up to be quite the woman as a result. Hannah smiled at her.
“Very well,” Chance said.
“This actually works out,” Moose cut in. “If Ben is going to trust any one of us it’s going to be Scout.”
“Point being?” Chance asked.
“The police are on our side right? Maybe we can pull some reasons here and draw him out,” Moose said. “Scout, do you still have contact info for Ben?”
“As far as I can tell he hasn’t changed his number. He’s sent me messages once or twice since I last saw him.”
“Okay so we arrange a meeting with him. Hannah goes in wearing a wire. We’ll listen in and when we have enough for a conviction we strike, us and the police. He can’t fight off the entire world, even though he’s going to try,” Moose said.
“I can set it up,” Link said. “I have friends on the force. We can get a deal going.”
This plan had real potential. Though it sounded too clean-cut to go exactly correctly. But that’s how all things were in life. You got a little dirty and things got a little tough and nothing went quite according to plan but you kept going anyway because what else could you do but try?
So that’s what they decided to do. Ben was a snake in the grass but they knew that now and, for once, it seemed like they had the jump on him. They could take him out and all move on with their lives without having to worry about him stalking their footsteps or threatening their child (or future children of any of their friends and family). It was worth the risk for the sake of their future.
Chapter 33
Hannah remembered seeing the tearful goodbye scenes in movies and always felt like they were overblown, stupidly romantic moments that would never happen in a moment of real crisis. But then she was standing there with Chance, looking into his eyes, and having trouble letting go of his arms around her.
“We need to move,” Kat whispered gently into her ear and she suddenly felt bad. She wasn’t the only one saying goodbye to someone who was going off to battle. Chance was Kat’s son. Scout was Kat’s daughter. Link was her husband.
Perhaps their entire time hiding out together would be a whole lot of commiserating. But for now she sought comfort in his arms. She tried to memorize his smell, the way his clothes felt beneath her fingertips. It wasn’t the last time she was going to be feeling him this close, she was sure of it. She would make sure of it. Even if she could only hope and pray from where she was she was going to be sure to see him again.
“I love you,” she whispered wishing they weren’t surrounded by their friends and she could show him just how much she loved him with every part of her body.
“I love you, too,” he said looking into her eyes as if daring the universe to tell him he was wrong.
They looked into each other’s eyes and felt a connection like never before. It hit them deeper and more fully than whenever they’d made love. They were bonded for life. Even if one of them didn’t make it out of this that would be it for both of them. There was no one else in the world for them except the person standing right in front of them.
“I’ll see you again soon,” Chance said, holding her chin gentling in the palm of his hand and pulling her in for a lingering and chaste kiss.
She held on for as long as she could before Kat pulled her away, whispering that they needed to go, that it soon wouldn’t be safe. They moved away as the cop cars arrived without their sirens blaring. This was a covert operation, and it required some unregulated use of police equipment. Hannah backed away and watched them step out of the car and make their way over to Chance who shook their hands and pointed out Scout.
But something was wrong.
“We received a message,” the one officer said and Hannah couldn’t help but stop moving towards the car to listen. “Ben wants to meet with her. In the next fifteen minutes. Alone.”
>
“That’s no time for a wire,” Link said.
“Exactly. I think we should call off the whole—”
“No.”
They turned to look at Scout who had that Hannahe resolution on her face as before. No, it wasn’t the Hannahe. It was harder. At this Chance stepped forward. “Scout this isn’t what we planned. We’ve seen what Ben was capable of before, we’re not having a repeat incident.”
“I’m smarter now,” she said. “Before I was a scared girl running off into the arms of a man and now I’m going to face him and make him pay. I’ve gotten older.”
“And bolder,” Link said. “Revenge makes people do crazy things. We need to call this off and come up with another plan.”
At first it seemed like Scout was going to obey, that she was going to begrudgingly take what they said and stay put. But that wasn’t who Scout was and it seemed like Hannah was the only person who noticed it before it happened. But she was too far away to do anything to stop it. Scout pulled the keys out from Chance’s hands and took off. Chance had longer legs but Scout had the element of surprise and by the time he realized what was happening she was already on the bike and starting it up. He called after her but she took off, without a helmet or a look back.
She headed off on her own to face down Ben.
Chapter 34
“Fuck!” Chance yelled at the top of his lungs as she headed off down the road. He kicked at a rock and sent it flying into a nearby parked car, denting it heavily but the cops in front of him didn’t seem to care.
Kat rushed forward. “We need to go after her.”
“How?” Chance demanded. “She just took off to God-knows-where.”
“How does she know where to go?” Link asked the police as calmly as he could.
“Part of the stipulation was that he would send her directions as she went. Our guess is she’s calling him and he’s tracking her via GPS,” she said.
“So still no fucking way to follow her,” Chance growled.
“Maybe it’s not quite what it seems,” Link said stepping forward.
Hannah followed his gaze and saw what he saw: a red trail on the ground. At first, Hannah thought the worst. She feared Scout had somehow hurt herself and not told anyone and was now bleeding out on the road, headed to face off against Ben incredibly wounded. But the color red on the pavement was too bright to be blood and a little too thick. Link took a swipe at with his thumb and brought it up to his nose, sniffing it.
“Paint,” he said. “She’s got paint on her.”
“And she’s using it as a breadcrumb trail,” Moose said, stepping forward. “She wants us to follow the paint trail.”
“Where the hell did she get the paint from?” Chance asked.
“There was some sitting in the corner of the lobby at the motel. That’s some foresight on her part.”
Maybe Scout really was as smart as she thought she had become thanks to her heartbreak and days spent in isolation. Hannah had to hand this one to her, she’d outdid herself there. She thought back to the tough, mean faced teen brat she met the first time she walked into the house. This woman was someone else entirely and, for all the danger and the devious parts of this plan, Hannah was proud.
“So, we follow her right?” Moose asked. “We go out and follow her right?”
“Damn right we do,” Chance said.
They clapped hands and headed over to their rides. There was no time for a second goodbye and there really was no room for one either. Though Hannah might have liked another go at saying goodbye to him, she didn’t blame him for heading off. She just hoped he was careful.
***
Chance and Link took the streets on their bikes before anyone could say any different. For a brief moment, it felt like it always had, the wind in their faces and just the two of them. Link was Chance’s born right hand, his body guard, his mentor and closest ally. And now they were riding off together to deal with the issue of Ben Andrews and the plague he’d brought into their homes and their families.
Behind them, Moose and Cindy followed in the car. They were like the Spanish Armada headed for the shores of England but they’d end their battle with much better results. He’d kick Ben’s ass and kill him if he had to, fuck any sort of deal they had with the police, this was about family and the politics of the street. Ben had disrespected him and endangered the people he loved most, he wasn’t going to get away with it.
Link was calling into the station to let them know plans had changed. It was better this way. They didn’t have to worry about sneaking around or keeping the element of surprise. They’d just take Ben on head first. Chance was always better at things like that anyway and Ben didn’t do well when he wasn’t able to slither about.
They followed the trail of red for some time before Link held of the signal to stop. Chance almost ignored it. But Link gave him a dangerous look and he killed the engine on his bike. Behind them the car stopped too. Moose and Cindy got out in a hurry, rushing over.
“Everyone okay, what’s going on?” Moose asked.
“Another change of plans,” Link said, looking at his phone. “Scout knows where Ben is leading her. She wants us to ditch the bikes and follow in the car. She said the bikes are too loud.”
“I thought we were over this trickery, sneaking around crap,” Chance said.
“We’re going to do what we need to make sure he doesn’t hurt my daughter,” Link said dangerously and Chance backed down like an overzealous puppy who had just been schooled by the pack’s alpha. “From here we go quietly. Got it?”
“Got it.”
They all got into the car and slowly followed the trail of read. Chance hoped to God it wasn’t an omen of what they’d find when they got there.
Chapter 35
“You know this place we’re heading to?” Chance asked.
Link had elected to take the wheel, shoving Moose and Cindy in the back while he and Chance sat up front. They’d veered off from the red breadcrumb trail that had been left for them and turned down a more desolate, tree covered dirt road. Chance was fairly certain he saw one or two “No Trespassing” signs hanging up on trees outlining the road. He wondered who owned this property and who might be watching them as they drove through it.
“I do,” Link said. “It’s a place I used to catch your sister when she thought she was so good at sneaking out,” Link said. “She would meet Ben here in the middle of the night to do things I don’t even want to think about my daughter doing.”
Chance shuddered. He didn’t want to think about his sister doing anything either. It was bad enough knowing, in theory, that she and Ben were together in every way a couple could be together. It was another thing all together to actually think about it in action.
“This meeting spot makes sense,” Link said. “Maybe Ben does carry a flame for her after all.”
“Or maybe he’s got a sick sense of humor,” Moose said from the back seat and Chance couldn’t help but agree with that.
He had a bad feeling about this. It felt like they were twisting down a road that they would never be able to escape from. He thought back to how much he hated horror movies and couldn’t help but feel like he was suddenly back in the middle of one. Everything with Ben recently felt like a horror movie and it only fit that the climax to their story took place in some dark, isolated woods where God knew what was waiting for them.
They didn’t have to wait long to find out. They turned around the corner and saw exactly what was waiting for them.
Ben was not there. With Scout. And Hannah and Kat. The hiding spot Kat had planned to take Hannah to safety was the place Ben planned to make his grand finale. He had every single one of them standing rigid in front of them, a gun, perhaps, hidden away and pointed in their direction. Chance imagined he smiled from some hiding spot at the car as it pulled in and it took all of Chance’s energy not to jump out of the car and race towards the man, tackling him into the ground. But that gun would go off at least twice be
fore he’d ever get there.
He thought of what Link said about revenge. It could make you do dangerous and stupid things. He had to control himself if he was going to get everyone out of this alive. The car came to a stop and got out. As soon as the door opened, all three women began screaming.
“Stay there!” Hannah yelled. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Get out of here!” Scout yelled.
The party in the car paused and looked at the women in confusion. They were moving an inch, as if glued to the ground. They were screaming for them to run away. Why?