by Zoey Parker
“Just go,” she said. She rolled her eyes at him, and for a second he thought that she was going to fist one of her hands on her hip. She didn’t. “I'll be fine.”
“Promise?”
“That’s been coming up a lot lately,” she grinned. “Be careful or I might think you’re getting feelings for me.”
He didn’t bother with responding. There was no way to. And that hurt Victoria, just a little bit; part of her wanted him to have feelings for her. She knew she was starting to get feelings for him, and, much as she hated it, there was nothing she could do about it.
He finally agreed to go. He was going to rush, though. He didn’t say as much, but she could tell. Everything about his body language screamed rushed.
She stood on the porch, looking out into the driveway while he ran off. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal for him to leave her here. In most houses, the garage was right in front of the driveway. Usually.
But the safe house was not usual. Its layout was confusing, and the garage was all the way around the side of the house, a long walk, given the circumstances.
She watched Darren make his way over to the side of the house. She tried to follow him with her eyes as best as she could, but he disappeared out of sight quickly. She didn’t want to turn into some kind of paranoid woman, but she started to wonder exactly what she was choosing to do.
The trees all around her were blocking her line of vision. She wasn’t sure where she was supposed to expect Darren from, but she kept looking around anyway. She felt some anxiety rise in her chest, and struggled to push it back down.
She couldn’t freak out right now.
She just couldn’t.
Even still, her eyes kept going to the dead body at her feet. She raised both of her arms to each other, holding them in an attempt for warmth. She heard the sound of an engine. Her glances around became more worried, more fervent.
Where could she hide if she needed to?
There was nowhere for her to go. She felt the anxious feeling that was in her chest bubble up even more now, big and dangerous and something she had no way of escaping from.
But just as soon as that feeling came, it disappeared. She looked up to the car just in time to see Darren through the windshield; he was behind the wheel, making his way over to her. But he was having a hard time driving. The driveway was narrow. There was barely any room for any type of vehicle there, and she wondered if he was going to screw up and hit a tree or something.
That didn’t happen, though, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. Darren stopped the car just a few feet from where she stood at the front of the house. In the few seconds she was wondering exactly how this was going to work out, he hopped out of the car and came to her side.
“Okay, so.” He rubbed his hands together in the imitation of some kind of talk show host. He thought maybe the dark humor would make this whole situation better for her; it did. “I'll get the arms, you get the legs?”
Victoria had to acknowledge that she hadn’t really thought about how they were going to get the guy in the car. And the thought of moving him was starting to make her feel sick. But it had to be done. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to do it this way.
“How about you get the legs and I get the arms?”
It made more sense that way. His legs had to weigh way more than his arms did, and there was no way she was going to be able to pick that much of a man up, even with help. Hell, she argued that she might have a hard time picking up someone even smaller.
He agreed. “Okay. Lift at the same time,” he said.
Both of them made their way to the guy, getting on either side of him while Victoria struggled not to be sick. Darren looked disgusted, too, but neither of them said anything. And when they both finally got a grip on him, they kept up the silence. Victoria was holding onto his arms, and Darren was holding onto his legs, with Darren walking backwards, his vision blocked.
“Be careful,” Victoria said. She felt like his mother. Crap. That wasn’t the best thing to be feeling right now, but whatever.
He knew what to do. He had more experience with this than she did, in any case. “Just make sure you tell me what to avoid,” he replied.
And she did. There was a thick silence between them, save for the occasional “be careful” or the order to move to the left or the right. He was trying to avoid the trees. He’d parked the car as close to her as he could, but he was still some feet off, and he wasn’t really thinking about what he’d have to walk past when he parked it. She yelped when he almost hit his leg on a patch of stone, but he avoided it. Narrowly. Great.
This was not a good start. There were only a few more steps for them to go before they reached the car, though, and it wasn’t that difficult any longer. Even still, Victoria’s arms were starting to feel heavy.
Luckily, they were able to make their way to the car, as difficult as it was for them to keep going. She wasn’t sure that it was actually difficult for Darren, though. Still, her eyes were focused on him, making sure that there was nothing Darren was at risk of crashing into.
“So are we taking him to the trunk, or...?” Her voice came out too loud in the quiet morning air. Their feet crunched along the gravel, especially when they stopped, the heels of their feet catching on the ground.
Darren didn’t reply for a few moments, and all that did was make Victoria feel weird about everything. They continued on in silence for a couple of seconds before Darren turned his neck at a weird angle. Victoria had no idea what he was doing, but then she realized: he was looking behind him to check…something, and then he was looking to her because he had something to say to her about it.
His hands adjusted their hold on the guy’s arms, and that was when Victoria realized that they were both having a hard time holding onto him. Victoria’s issues with it were almost definitely related to strength; Victoria didn’t think that that was the case with Darren. It wasn’t. He was trying to hold onto the guy with one arm, his other hand going to touch the car as he tried to wrench open the trunk.
“Would you mind getting that for me?” he finally asked, as his hand went back to adjusting the weight of the man in his arms.
Making her way around Darren and the guy, she got to the trunk. She put both of her hands on it for a moment without thinking, but then she realized she was fumbling around for the handle. She finally found it, and tugged on it, only to realize that she was trying to pull open the handle for the window on the back of the car. Great. She wasn’t used to seeing those on anything other than SUVs, and she hadn’t had to be in one of those since she was a child. But she felt like she should’ve known that, and the fact that she didn’t was all the more embarrassing.
Taking a deep breath, she wrenched the trunk’s handle. And the car alarm promptly started screaming. The door itself hadn’t actually opened. As she tried, she found a resistance there, and then the horns started to blare.
“Um,” she said.
“I forgot to give you the keys,” Darren said. He sounded way more collected than she felt, and, probably, sounded way more collected than her own voice did.
“Oh,” she paused, making her voice sound even smaller than she felt like it probably did. “Right. Um. Would you mind passing those to me?”
He threw her a look over his shoulder that just about killed her on the inside, but then he started laughing. “My arms are kind of full, Victoria.”
“Oh. Right,” she said. “I'll just grab them, then.”
She made her way over to his body and tried to avoid the other body he was actively holding in his hands. She wasn’t sure where he’d have the keys, but she guessed they were somewhere in his pocket. But which pocket? She didn’t know. Her hands went over to the pocket on his hoodie, only to bump into something and –
“Left jacket pocket, princess.”
She felt a surge of heat, embarrassment, and anger flush through her, but she said nothing. She’d kind of earned that humiliation; the entire situati
on was ridiculous. Finally, she managed to fish the keys out of his pocket, and then she unlocked the car with a beep. Then she threw open the door.
Just as soon as she did that, Darren threw something else. The body landed in the trunk with a small thud, and Victoria tried hard to contain her wince. She succeeded. Mostly.
“Do you think maybe we should cover that?” She nodded towards the general direction of the trunk. She was okay with dealing with this, but she didn’t really know how to talk about it.
“Nah, it's fine,” he said. He looked around him for a second before putting his hand on Victoria’s side, and then pressing his palm out towards hers. “Pass me the keys.”
She glared at him for a second, but she wasn’t really sure she wanted to be driving anyway. And for this, she would have to be the navigator. She put the keys in his hands, and then, without waiting a moment to hear a word he said, opened the passenger’s side door and got in.
He followed.
Chapter Fifteen
Victoria
The drive was long and, for the most part, silent. There just wasn’t that much to talk about. And of the things Victoria did want to talk to him about, she wasn’t sure that now was a good time to be asking about them. So for the most part, they just sat in the car in silence for the hour and something minutes it took for them to get to the city.
Not that it took very long. Darren sped the whole way. If a police officer decided to pull them over for going over the speed limit, they’d probably find the body in the back of the car, too, and then they’d both be royally fucked.
But that didn’t happen, and Victoria could breathe easy. A little bit. Her chest felt tight, and like she was trying to force something to stay inside of her even though it was doing everything in its power to burst out. For the most part, Darren looked calm and collected – except for the fact that he was barely breathing at all, and he was holding his face a little too tightly for it to be natural. So neither of them were in the best state of mind, fine, but –
“Did you just run that red light?” Victoria couldn’t believe he’d done that. She thought the general belief Darren held was that you should never break more than one law at a time, and she called him out on it.
“Yeah.” He sounded like his mind was on something else.
“Maybe don’t do that,” she said. She was getting pissed off with how careless he was being, and the fact that this was making her angry wasn’t helping her ignore the part of her that was scared.
He didn’t apologize, but he did slow down, and she started to breathe a little better than she had been previously. But only a little. She could tell by the streets they were going down that he was deliberately avoiding the part of the city she lived in – or rather, that she used to live in – and the spot where she worked. Which sucked, because the both of those would be a good place to drop off a body.
The car started slowing down even more before they came to a stop. Victoria looked out of the window and saw that there was nearly no one around where they were, though, so that wasn’t as much of an issue as it might’ve been. But still.
“Aren’t you worried someone’s going to see us?”
“No,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting ready to hop out of the car. “Get out, follow me, and be quiet.”
“And you say that like you weren’t the one who was freaked out earlier,” she muttered.
She didn’t think he heard her. He didn’t say anything and his back was to her, so she couldn’t tell. But there was a small smirk playing on the edge of his lips, even though she couldn’t see anything from where she sat. One quick unbuckle later, she was opening the door and dragging her legs out of her seat.
And then to the trunk, where they had to struggle with lifting the body and then finding a way to close the door after. That was simple enough, and they continued on their way. This time, though, Darren was the one leading, with Victoria having to walk backwards. She had to resist the urge to look behind her, but she couldn’t.
“Just trust me,” Darren said, noticing that she kept stopping herself from turning her head. “I’ve got this. Move to your left.”
She did, and noticed that she’d narrowly avoided side-swiping the wall of a building next to her. There was another wall coming up on her opposite side, and the alley they were going through was narrow – even for her. She kept up her pace, slow as it was, but she stopped when she misjudged a step. Her foot caught on a loose stone and she accidentally moved the weight in her hands, sending the guy smacking into one of the walls.
“Don’t do that,” Darren hissed.
“It was an accident,” she hissed back.
They kept going. There was only so much space they need to get through, anyway, and they finally got there. The thin alley they were in started to branch out, turning into some kind of mini courtyard. There was a fountain in the center of it – without running water and in bad repair, naturally – and a couple abandoned benches that Victoria didn’t even have to look at to assume they had gum caked under them. The cobblestones hurt her ankles when she walked on them.
Yup. This was where they were going.
“So,” she asked, her voice coming out a little shaky from the chill. “Are we just dropping him off here?”
Darren pointed his chin in the general direction of a building somewhere behind them. They were probably just going to throw him in there. Yeah, that made more sense. It made a lot less sense to just leave a dead guy sitting around on the bench like he was waiting for someone to come pick him up.
He wasn’t gesturing towards the building, though. They were just a few steps away when he paused, and the force of him suddenly stopping made her lurch forward.
“We’re stopping here,” he said.
She didn’t ask. He moved the weight in his hands, adjusting his body so that the guy they were both holding started to gently slope down.
“Wait,” he said, even though he wasn’t stopping his movement, either. “Let’s leave him by this bench.” He nodded to one of them, an average-looking, kind of decrepit bench just a few feet off from the waterless fountain.
So they were seriously just going to drop this guy on a bench and then leave him here – exactly what she was afraid was going to happen, and didn’t want to happen. But it didn’t seem like they really had that many options, so she had to go with it.
They worked together a little bit to make sure that neither of them was risking hurting the other. Darren could handle it, and Victoria could force herself to handle it with help, but there was still the fact that there were carrying a 170-ish pound load between the both of them.
Once they’d gotten that all figured out, they put him down. And then Darren set the scene to make it look like whatever had happened, had happened there, and then they walked away.
# # #
They didn’t get really far before they had to talk, but that wasn’t going to happen when they were just a few steps from the spot where they’d just dropped off some dude they’d just killed. That Darren had just killed. While Victoria technically hadn’t killed the guy, she was complacent in it, especially in helping Darren with dropping off the body.
She didn’t want to think about that.
So they couldn’t just stay in that area to talk. Even if they hadn’t just dumped a body off there, it wasn’t the best place in the entire world to go – that was exactly why they had gone there to dump the body, after all. It wasn’t too unbelievable that there could have been a murder out there by those benches. She tried to quit thinking about it, but it kept coming to mind, even as she threw open the car door. It slammed shut loudly, and she winced, but a little humor might even do the situation some good.
At the very least, it'’ keep her mind off of things. Maybe.
“Do I have to be quiet?” she whispered.
Darren looked grim, but at that he smiled. It was small, but it was a smile nonetheless. “No,” he said, getting into the car and buckling in. He looked over
his shoulder to make sure that there was nothing behind them, and then he pulled out. “You can talk.” He paused. “If you want.”
“You act like it’d be better for us to just sit here in complete silence,” she countered.
He met that with a few seconds of saying nothing, but as soon as he started talking she realized that it was intended as a joke. “It might be better. Sometimes, at least.”
“You’re going to make me slap you.” She rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t actually. That would be terrible, although she could imagine being drawn to the point of just needing him to shut up. Like the first time they’d ever argued, in that bar.
The bar. She wondered if they were going to drive by it; they didn’t. She looked out the window, watching the streets go by. They were heading in the opposite direction from the way they came, and it was probably for the better. She realized as the car started to speed up, though –