Spin Out

by James Buchanan

  Finally, I was done…didn’t have no more to give. Slipped out of his slick hole and lay there all sweaty with him on top for a moment. There was something left to do though. I wrassled myself out from under and eased him onto the bed.

  Kabe’s face was all flushed and he still trembled. Caught the glimpse of what might have, maybe, been tears in the corner of his eye. That might have worried me some except that boy’s prick still bowed up, rock hard. I leaned over him and kissed his mouth. He darn near lunged into the contact, all hot and excited. I drove my tongue between his teeth. As I kissed him, I reached down and got hold of his prick in my fist. Didn’t even look, just started jacking him.

  Kabe fought that kiss with me, his tongue all wrapped around mine. I could feel his hips jerking off the bed as I pumped that warm piece of meat in my grip. The feel of that soft skin against the calluses of my palm was something else.

  I sped up, kept the pace fast, since he’d suffered enough for me to earn coming quick. Didn’t take long at all. Kabe groaned and turned his face away. Felt his dick throb in my hand. I looked down along his body in time to see the spunk jet out of him. Thick white streams of it all over his belly. I swept my fingers through that hot mess. Then I brought it up to my mouth and sucked it off. Salty, bitter and a little sweet…probably the best tasting thing on the planet.

  Kabe went limp about then. Well as much as he was able still trussed up.

  His breathing was all ragged. I eased myself down beside him, soaking up the smell of sex on his skin. Reached between his legs and fussed with unhooking his nuts from the cord.

  He pushed at my leg with his foot. “Oh shit, man.” Once I freed his lower anatomy, Kabe scootched up a bit so he could get his hands together and pull off the cuffs. I sat up some and helped.

  After we’d gotten his hands loose, I pulled Kabe into a hug, his back against my chest. I kissed his neck, the damp tangles of his hair tickling my nose.

  “Okay, I got to get up for a bit.” Kabe pushed away from me.

  Didn’t really want to ask, but I wanted to know. “You staying?”

  “Maybe.” He kinda shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Are we good?” That I wasn’t really sure I wanted to hear the answer on either. Not if it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

  Kabe thought for a long while on that. “Wouldn’t say good. You got a lot of making it up to me. And, we have some things to work out in the long haul.” He swung his legs off the bed and stretched. “We’re on the road to good.”

  I’d take that right then.

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  Chapter 23

  Came up out of the valley and turned onto the main highway. Life weren’t looking so awful this morning. Me and Kabe patched things up some last night. Still had quite a ways to go, ‘least though, we were on the right path to getting there. My two suspects cooled their heels in lockup. And the sun, well, looked like it might actually come out and warm everything up by afternoon.

  ‘Course it was still winter. Snow lined either side of the asphalt and a thin ribbon of dirty white wound down the middle…the only road showing was where the tires had cleared paths in the centers of the lanes. The main highway had a reasonable amount of traffic—maybe four or five vehicles within sight on the road besides mine. Terrible conditions. Meant filling up my day with chasing calls about fender benders and folks who’d slid off the highway. ‘Least it weren’t snowing as well.

  It’s just a habit of mine—me and every other law enforcement officer out there—I scanned the faces of drivers as I passed them. Most folk do this weird kinda dance with their eyes when they see a cop. They look right on at you. Then they realize they’re looking and think it might be a bad idea to stare at a cop, so they look away. Then they go an’ look back again ‘cause, well, it might be suspicious that they don’t want to look you in the eye. And they slow way on down. That kinda nervous prancing is pretty normal.

  What any officer is trolling for are those that either want to stare you down or folks who won’t meet your eyes at all. Both of those are darn suspicious in their own right.

  So, I’m driving and I’m scanning and this ol’ warhorse of a car is headed towards me. There’s this kid driving it. He’s got his eyes so focused straight ahead that I don’t even think he blinked none.

  And he ain’t looking at me.

  All that boy’s muscles are frozen and he cain’t see but this spot maybe twenty feet ahead of his tires. That’s the type of not looking that’s downright suspicious…especially since something about his face tickled the back of my brain.

  I reached on over and tapped the license plate number into my mobile computer as I drove on past him. Didn’t take but a moment for the database to spit out the registration as belonging to a Charles Smith. Moment I saw the name, and the address in Escalante that went with it, the face clicked. I knew why the face bugged me: Alex Smith. Seen his mug a thousand times in my file. The boy I hadn’t been able to get my hands on. Just needed that tick to put two and two together. Now I figured why he didn’t want to look at me none.

  Had to go down just a bit farther, to where I could manage a safe U-turn. Then I punched the gas just a bit to catch on back up to Alex. Alex must have caught me in the rearview, ‘cause he started picking up speed as well. Even as I’m going on after him, I ran through the road conditions in my head. Right there. Right then. Well, a little bit of speed weren’t putting nobody in danger. Still, I reached back over my left shoulder with my right hand, grabbed the seatbelt and buckled myself in.

  That knucklehead didn’t seem to want to slow down. He had to know I was on after him. Still, time to stop playing around—I hit the switch and lit it up. Red and blue flashes glinted off his rear windshield. He sped up some more.

  Now I knew two things about Alex. One, he was a moron to think his old junker would beat my police V-8. The other, well, that level of stupid equaled panicked, and panicked equaled something to hide.

  I flipped on the siren to go with the lights and grabbed the mike for the PA. “Driver in the red Chevy, pull over!”

  For a moment, I thought sanity might control. He started to slow and drift towards the shoulder. Everything seemed to be going nice and easy. Then that state of teenage idiocy grabbed hold of him again.

  Alex punched it.

  Where’d that boy think he was going to get off to? No sense trying to puzzle that one through. As I radioed my location and who I was after into dispatch, I ran through the safety issues again. I mean, I’m tailing him like a coyote on a rabbit. We’re weaving around vehicles and darting back into the correct lane. Every second I’m registering where the other cars are, what’s the road like, and how fast are we going relative to everyone else out there with us. At any moment, for everyone’s safety, I might just have to say “the heck with it” and let him go.

  And that…that was about his only shot of getting away from me right then.

  We came up over a big hump in the road. Saw Alex’s car pick up a little air and throw off sparks as it came down. I got a second of my own gut floating in freefall ‘til my tires reconnected with pavement. Then that feeling that things weren’t right crawled its way up my spine. Sheer walls up on the left, deep old wash on the right and we’re beating the devil into a hollow where I ain’t got no view of what’s coming over the hill in the other lane.

  Then I caught the glimmer off the road up ahead…like gloss spray paint covering the asphalt. Knew that sign—black ice. Conditions were ripe for it, lee of the mountain, early morning and just enough tires over the surface to melt the snow but not enough to keep it from re-freezing.

  Alex went into the bottom of the depression. Saw the back end of his car drift over right. Just about the time I thought he might go off the edge, into the snow where, strangely, he’d have more traction, Alex hit the brakes. Hard. Didn’t have to be sitting there with him to know it. Car fishtailed wildly then the rear whipped off left. Pulled him all the way ‘round in one ful
l circle, and then some. He slid sideways up the hill.

  Me, I took my feet off the brake and the accelerator. With as big and as heavy as my Explorer was, didn’t slow me down near enough. I just focused on staying pretty straight as my tires skimmed along glass.

  Up, on the opposite lip of the hill, a big rig crested the rise. Headed right for us. The hollow bellow of its air brakes grabbed my insides and shook ‘em like bees in a bottle. That old red car slid toward a mouth of chrome fangs. The eighteen-wheeler smushed itself against the rock wall. Slow motion like, the trailer swept over both lanes. Like a pinball lever, it smacked Alex’s car. Alex spun back towards me…both of us still skating over the asphalt. I yanked my wheel right. Deep ditch there. Better than under that rig. I’m going up sideways. Alex headed down straight at me. The impact as the front end of his car clipped the back end of mine darn near knocked the teeth outta my skull.

  Then I didn’t know, or care, where anyone else was. My vehicle whipped around. I came off the road sideways. Snow and rocks slammed up against the passenger side. I hit something. No clue what. All I knew, I slid sideways. The shock jarred through the frame of the vehicle. It echoed up on through my legs and arms. For a moment, my body shuddered in time to the Explorer.

  Everything shifted. My stomach hovered between my throat and my belly. I hung from the seatbelt. Pencils and cards and change and paperclips off the floor floated in a haze before my face. Up, down and sideways didn’t relate to nothing in my vision. A lifetime of air rushed past my ears.

  An explosion of sound blew through my mind. Whirlwinds of glass and metal clawed my face. I felt the seatbelt lock. The shock slammed me against the seat. There weren’t no breath in my lungs. The bark of a shot screamed through my mind. Muffled mayhem roared in the background. My vision filled with a silky cloud of white. Pain flowed from twenty points in my body.

  And then, then I just didn’t think no more.

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  Chapter 24

  This rattle, like some fool tapping on my window, tugged at my eardrums. Although, not so good, ‘cause this metallic hiss, maybe from Kabe’s radio getting knocked off the station, sounded just below where I could put a bead on the direction.

  ‘Round behind all that, the muffled, off-key moan of my alarm clock did this slow dance on the inside of my skull. Normally, I come to before my clock…although I felt like I’d been run over—a few times. Maybe I’d caught some bug and the fever messed with my head. I reached out with the hand that weren’t pillowing my head to hit the snooze. Took me a try or two before my fingers slid along the cold barrel and rough plastic of the forestock on my shotgun.

  Why the Sam-Hill was my service shotgun in my bedroom?

  I opened my eyes. Couldn’t quite focus on this tangle of white sheets in front of my face. Especially as they felt all dry, scratchy, like I’d been walking through a dust storm without shades. That alarm just kept droning on with a wounded dog howl. Then the rapping started again.

  “Hey! Hey!” Some fool whispered, “You okay?” A chorus of coyotes wailed off in the hills. That and that high-pitched tone in my ears made it hard to really hear him good.

  I turned my face towards the voice. Right in front of me, a laptop terminal hung lopsided off the support. Just beyond it, fogged up in the widow, there was this face I couldn’t recognize, heck, could hardly see peering through the glass. Why was someone idiot pounding on my bedroom window? With my shotgun behind my shoulder…

  I weren’t in my bedroom.

  Heck, I was in my patrol vehicle. Something must have happened, ‘cause that darn fool really wanted my attention. Lord, I’d have to get out and figure out what. First I shut off the engine. Then I went for the handle of my driver’s door, squeezed and pushed. The realization that it didn’t budge none rode this avalanche of pain roaring along my nerves. An oozing wad of hurt ran down my left arm and up my left leg and met up somewhere just below my rib cage to have a big ol’ party. Ground my teeth together and tried to answer whoever it was. Nothing but a feral howl got past my lips. Laced my right hand through the brace for the shotgun and shook it like an animal fighting a cage.

  My head reared back and I sucked down a lungful of air…silt and muck slid down my windpipe. I clawed at the belt cross my body, ripped the neck of my shirt and fumbled for the Velcro straps on my body armor. Anything to ease up my chest. This boulder lay on my lungs not letting me breathe. I heaved a couple three times and hacked up a bloody froth onto what I figured were the shreds of the airbag.

  Fool, up where the passenger-side-turned-into-the-roof, hissed, “The cop’s coughing up blood!” at someone else. Off in a corner of my brain—the three percent that weren’t wrapped up in hurting like the devil on judgment day—I thought, no duh, idjit.

  Rode out that first wave of pain feeling like I was going to puke up everything I’d ate for the last month. Didn’t stop hurting, but I managed to reason some. I needed to get out of my vehicle. I sucked in two deep breaths, at least as deep as I could catch, and reached along my right side to fumble at the seatbelt release.

  My right hand didn’t seem damaged. Still, I couldn’t get the darn belt unlocked. Every second, every breath I tried to pull into my lungs, shrunk the cab just an inch smaller. I closed my eyes and yanked on the webbing of the seatbelt. S’posed to keep me safe, ‘cept now that locked up mechanism penned me in. No matter how I pulled it weren’t tearing loose. I knew I couldn’t do it…no one could, but I couldn’t stop myself from fighting with it.

  This pounding, a lot more like two stones hitting each other, sounded up above me. I was too caught up in trying to breathe and trying to get undone to do more that crack an eye and look up towards that window. A gal, almost swallowed by her black turnout coat, pounded the passenger window with the butt end of her rescue tool. “Hey!” She yelled down at me. Sounded like I heard her through ten feet of water. “Calm down, deputy. We’re here.”

  One side of my brain whispered I should listen to her. The other side drowned it out, screaming GET OUT! I followed it. I kicked at the dash with the leg that didn’t feel shredded by a bear. This little part of me stood like ten feet away shaking its head and saying, Joe, boy, you done lost it. Didn’t matter none at all. I wanted OUT! I’d chew off my arm at that point to get OUT! All sorts of prayers from my childhood swirled in and around my mind. Couldn’t finish a darned one of them, but knew He had to understand I needed Him right then.

  Her, “He’s in shock!” barely registered over the pounding of blood in my ears. “He’s panicking! Breaking glass!” I caught the almost leaden smack of the tool against the window. The sizzling spider web of glass fracturing shot down my spine about a second before the metallic crack of the actual shatter. Could hear her pulling the tempered glass out of the frame. Not too much fell on me, but what did burned like sin across my skin.

  I huffed in breaths of frigid air like some junkie starving for juice. All of it still filtered through this drizzle of muck from my nose. With the window open, I realized that howl I’d been hearing was my siren still going. Somehow I managed to fumble my fingers around the console beside my seat and kill the switch. One level of assault on my ears dropped away, but they still rang.

  “Joe!” A guy in a buff colored fire coat, striped with patched reflective tape, scrambled up over the passenger side and slid down the hood. He tossed a black helmet at his feet as he knelt down. I lay, sorta, on my left side and stared at him. He pressed his face against the windshield. I barely recognized Nash Potter through the haze of fractured glass. “Calm down! Don’t panic!” He shouted at me through a layer of jello. “Hang on, we’re gonna get you out.” ‘Least I thought it might be him…hard to tell. My vision still weren’t completely right, least not on fine details, and I couldn’t fully hear him through the ringing in my ears.

  Realized, maybe, they all weren’t whispering. I spared a prayer that this all didn’t leave nothing too permanent with my eardrums. Panting like a ‘coon
being chased down by a pack of dogs, my body shook and I couldn’t keep from tugging at the belt across my chest. The cold air and an open window eased me some. Still felt penned, all in pain, like some animal in a snare.

  Nash stood. “Let’s get this windshield out of the way!” Things got kinda jumbled and crazy. Someone passed down a turnout coat. Told me to cover my face. Didn’t want to, but I did. The smack-crunch of an ax on the window frame shuddered the vehicle. Had to bite my lip, ‘cause each time the impact hit, the hurt shot through my nerves like a swarm of angry hornets. Can’t even say how long it took them but finally someone reached in and pulled the coat off me.

  A voice that sounded of the angels themselves, said, “Hey.” Kabe, all got up in borrowed turnout gear, reached through the open part of the windshield.

  A firefighter caught up his hand. “Get back!”

  Two words. All Kabe hissed was two words, “Make me!” and the man dropped his grip. I don’t think I’d ever seen a look that hard in Kabe’s eyes. Don’t know as I could have stood my ground afore it.

  I latched onto Kabe’s fingers like they were the last inch of rope between me and a thousand foot drop. I tried to say, stay with me or don’t let me go…nothing but, “Lord, almighty…” came out in this hoarse wheeze.

  “Okay, Joe.” Kabe squeezed my fingers. “I have to move just a moment.” That made me tighten up my grip. “Look, okay?” He started prying my fingers off his hand. “Paramedics here need to check you out.”

  Somehow I managed to stutter out, “Don’t leave.” Couldn’t stand the plea in my voice, but I just got a shred of sanity to hold onto and there he was saying he’s gone.

  “Joe, Joe, Joe.” He used my name like a momma shushing a baby. “They need to check you. They need to put a cervical collar on.” Kabe started to pull away and I grabbed at him. “No, Joe. Keep still. Trust me!” Stroking my hand, he pushed it up against the steering wheel and wrapped my fingers around the hard plastic. “I can’t do this…couple months from now and my cert comes through.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be your paramedic then.” After one more hard squeeze, Kabe backed away. “Right now, you got to let the professionals do their job.” It was like every inch he moved away strung the muscles of my heart out across the shattered glass in the frame of the windshield.