by Payge Galvin
“What money? What are you talking about?”
“That’s how you want to play it? All right. I’m going to torture your preppy little boyfriend here until you pay me the money he says you have. He tried to tell me he got it all, but I know that isn’t true. He finally confessed that you’ve got a couple of thousand. Now, we both know nice girls like you don’t walk around with that much cash unless there’s something you need in untraceable bills—maybe a weed buy, maybe some E, maybe some crystal. Doesn’t matter. You’re going to give that money to me so E.J. can stop bleeding. You can always get high later.”
She was shocked into silence. First, by the fact he really knew about the money … and then, a split-second later, by the realization that Elijah had lied about how much she had. He’d told Solomon a big enough number, but only a fraction of what she actually had.
He was still trying to protect her. Even now.
Hope took a deep breath, held it, and then slowly let it out. Her heart was pounding hard, but she kept her voice steady with an effort. “If I give you the cash, you’ll let him go?”
“Let him go?” Mr. Solomon sounded lazy and amused, and all too confident. “No. He’s a good earner for me. Besides, he recruited a girl to my crew, and he thinks the world of her.”
“You mean, you’re holding her hostage,” she said. “So what does my two thousand dollars buy?”
“It means I stop my friend Skinner from kicking the crap out of him and get poor Elijah some quality medical care.”
She remembered the bruises on his chest, and shivered. She managed to control her voice, and was surprised by how cool and distant it sounded. “Why should I care? I just met the guy.”
“Let’s not play. You tried to help him run away. There’s something there, and you know it. So just give me the money and let’s stop being coy about it. Couple thousand, you buy a man’s life. Pretty good deal, I think.”
Hope was concentrating so hard on his voice—his oily, smarmy voice—that she almost missed the sound of a door slamming down the hall, until a woman’s scream pierced the quiet. Hope yelped and dropped the phone. She jumped out of bed and cracked open her own door to look, then moved it open wider, because the noise was coming from Brittany’s room.
The door—broken around the lock—swung back and forth. Brittany was yelling now, in a panicked, high-pitched screech. “Get out of here! Help! Rape! Fire! Somebody call 911!”
The lights blazed on. In the glow, Hope saw the bald-headed thug who’d dragged Elijah off, silhouetted from behind. Brittany was standing on her bed, clutching a heavy textbook like a club.
“You’re not the right bitch,” he said. “Where’s the wallflower?”
“What?”
“The other one who lives here. Hope.”
Oh, God.
Hope eased the door shut, locked it, deadbolted it, and backed away. The phone was still on where she’d dropped it, and she picked it up and put it to her ear. “You did this.”
“Skinner? Ah, good, he’s there. Just give him the cash and you’ll never see any of us again. In fact, he’s going to want that backpack of yours. Just in case E.J.’s been lying to us about how much you’ve got in there.”
Hope hung up the call, grabbed her backpack and shoved the phone inside the outer pocket. She looked around at her new room, her small collection of precious things, and thought about taking her Bible. But she didn’t have room in the bag.
I can always get another Bible. He’s always with me.
She opened the window. When she looked down, it was a long, long drop to the grass below. But the one thing that they’d all joked about on the dorm were the very prominent big square blocks—some kind of architectural design feature—that made up an irregular pattern sticking out of the side of the building. Students were always rock-climbing the thing, though they got in trouble when caught by the campus cops.
Hope was not much of a climber, but she didn’t have much choice, really. She put the backpack on with both straps over her shoulders, and then took a deep breath. She crawled up on the casement, and backed out until she was dangling, arms fully extended, and her toes touched the first jutting block. She let go with her right hand, found another block to brace herself, and then slid her weight down to the next block. It was terrifying, and she didn’t dare look down. The cooling desert air whipped through her loose blonde hair, and above her she heard a banging that meant the bald man—Skinner—was trying to get into the room. Brittany must have (sensibly) ratted her out.
Hope moved faster. She knew the door wouldn’t hold; the dorms weren’t exactly top quality construction in the first place. Halfway down she lost her grip on one of the blocks, flailed, and had to jump for the next one out of control. She landed with such force that she tore skin off her palms, but she didn’t fall. Quite. Her injured wrist twinged, but it held up. Bruised, not sprained, just as Elijah had said.
The block pattern ended about six feet from the ground. She jumped the last distance, and looked up at her darkened window. No one yet. She ran for the corner, and heard a sharp, frustrated yell echoing down just as she rounded it.
He’d made it into the room, and to the window. He’d seen her.
Hope put on a burst of speed and made for the corner of the parking lot. It was thick with cars, and she headed for the old Chevrolet her father had given her. The keys were buried in the pocket of her backpack, but she tried not to slow down as she ran for it, and she managed to drag the ring out just as she skidded to a stop by the car door. She didn’t drive it much—she preferred her bike—but it was gassed up and ready to go. The backpack caught on the door when she tried to throw it inside, and she lost precious seconds wrestling it; she looked back, and saw that Skinner had come out of the dorm and was frighteningly close now, and running at her full tilt with his shaved head down like a battering ram.
God, please help me … and it felt as if He did. A miraculous kind of stillness came over her, a clarity that she’d never felt before.
She tore the strap loose with a vicious tug, shoved the bag into the passenger seat, and got the door slammed and locked just before Skinner hit it with a bang that rocked the entire car on its tires and probably left a dent in the metal. Hope yelped in surprise and fear, but her mind was suddenly very clear, very focused. Get the key in the ignition. Done, first try, no hesitation. Turn the key. The engine caught with a roar. Put it in reverse. Skinner was battering the window with enough force to threaten the safety glass. She ignored that and slid the lever into place. Hit the gas.
Skinner yelled as her car slid smoothly out of the parking space, and for a second she thought she might have run over his foot (good!) but he was only shouting in frustration. He picked up something off the pavement nearby and threw it major-league hard at her window, but it was only an empty can of Red Bull, and it clattered and slid off without any effect.
Hope put the car into gear, hit the gas, and drove away.
Fast.
Thank you, Lord.
Her phone was ringing before she got out of the parking lot. She fumbled it out one-handed. “Don’t you dare—”
“Hope?” It wasn’t Mr. Solomon. It was Elijah. He sounded tense and out of breath. “Hope, you have to get out of there. Right now.”
“E.J.? Are you okay?”
“Forget me. Skinner’s coming for you and you have to get out of there. I’m so sorry. Solomon got the address from the magazine subscription form you filled out.”
“You told him about the money.”
He was silent. Well, not really silent, because she could hear his breath coming fast and in short, urgent gasps, as if he’d been running hard and for a long time—or he was in real pain. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I had to tell him something. He’s got a sixth sense about these things.”
“You didn’t have to tell him that!”
“Hope, I tried to tell him I took everything. He didn’t believe me. He asked me where you kept your money and I sai
d in your backpack, that’s all I told him. I didn’t tell him—what you had. You need to get the hell out of there, now—”
“I’m out,” she said. “Skinner busted my dorm room door in, but I’m okay. Where are you?”
“Solomon locked us into the motel room, but I jimmied the lock on the connecting door to the other room,” Elijah said. “I’m okay right now, but it won’t last. Hope, you need to go to the cops.”
“I can’t,” Hope said. She took a deep breath and heard that days-old ghost of herself saying to the room full of strangers at the coffee shop, We need to call the police. She’d had her chance to be honest, to be good, to be the person she’d always imagined herself to be, and she’d blown it. Oh, there had been reasons, maybe good ones, but she’d compromised herself. It was true: the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. And money. “Elijah, I can’t. If the police see the money I have … they’re going to ask questions. I can’t answer them.”
“Skinner’s coming for you, don’t you get it? Trust me, the money’s the least of your problems right now.”
“Where are you?” She stopped the car for a red light, and wiped her damp palms against her skirt. “I can come get you. You can go to the police. Tell them everything.”
“I’ve got a record for fraud; I’m not exactly police-friendly either. Even if I do try it, Solomon will just stick the others in a van and hit the road before I can get anybody to believe me, and then it’ll be too late. Avita … I told you, I can’t abandon her.” He was quiet for a few seconds, and when he came back, his voice was very soft. “I have to go. I think he’s outside the room. I can hear him yelling.”
“That’s probably because I got away from Skinner,” Hope said. “So I can’t go to the cops, and you can’t either. Right? What are we going to do?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then she heard him let out a breath. “I don’t know. I can’t figure you out,” he said. “I thought you were a soft touch, and then I thought you were some crazy idealist. Now I’m really not too sure what you are. Doesn’t matter, though. You need to run and keep on running. Solomon’s going to make me tell him everything now. I can’t protect you this time. I know how much I can take and he’s going to hit my limits. I’m sorry.”
The light turned green, but Hope didn’t really notice beyond a vague impression. She was too busy concentrating on the sound of Elijah’s voice, on the tense, worried tone in it. “I’m coming.”
“Hope, don’t.”
“Shut up, I’m coming to get you. Can you get out somehow? To the parking lot?”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into!”
“I know you’re already in it,” she said. “And I know that I need to help you get out of it.”
He was quiet again for what felt like a long, long moment. A car cruised up behind her and honked loudly; Hope flinched, and realized that the light was still green, and going stale. She hit the gas and hurried through—not fast enough for the car chasing her, which whipped around her and roared off. It was filled with drunk college guys, one of whom leaned his bare ass out the window as it sped past.
Honestly.
“We’re at the Rio Verde Valley Inn off of 298. First floor, southwest corner of the building. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. If you don’t see me, keep driving and don’t stop; toss your phone on the way out of town so they can’t track it, and whatever you do, don’t look back. Understand?”
He sounded serious—serious and scared. She swallowed hard and said, “I understand. But you’d better be there, E.J. I mean it.”
He hung up without replying. She stared down at the phone for a second, then turned left at the next intersection and dropped the phone into the passenger seat. It was at least five more miles to the motel. She’d only noticed it vaguely before, as an annoying neon blinking sign with a cartoon-y man in a nightgown and cap lying down on a mattress; the building had always looked more like a prison than a good night’s sleep, to her.
She supposed that impression might have actually been correct after all.
It occurred to her that she should be watching out for Skinner; he knew what her car looked like, after all. She tried to spot him as she drove, but if he was behind her, he was too good at it for her to see him.
She managed to make it to the Rio Verde Valley Inn’s blue neon sign in record time.
The parking lot was, as always, about one-third full, mostly of anonymous sedans and a couple of dusty pickups, with one familiar panel van sitting near the far corner. She supposed at least a few people checked in were there to actually sleep, not party, but she suspected that the cars probably changed in the lot at least three times during the night.
The southwest corner was where Elijah had told her he’d meet her. Hope took the turn into the parking lot and cruised slowly past the lined spaces and rooms with lighted windows. All the curtains were closed. She waited for someone to burst out of a room and charge at her—like Mr. Solomon—but it was quiet out.
Elijah, ominously, was nowhere to be seen.
She slowed even more, craning to look around. Shadows moved inside of the occupied rooms—and some of them were obviously occupied with each other, considering the interestingly intertwined silhouettes she saw—but she didn’t see anybody waiting outside.
If you don’t see me, keep driving, he’d told her. And that was good advice, of course; if he couldn’t get out of his room, or decided it was too big a risk, then she needed to get the hell out of here and make a new start altogether—somewhere Mr. Solomon couldn’t follow, or wouldn’t bother. It meant giving up her life here, but it wasn’t much of a life, really; she could start over somewhere else. She had the resources in the bag sitting on the seat beside her.
But you said you’d do something good with it, her conscience whispered. What happened to giving it away to a charity, or to people in need? Why can’t you just start handing it out to the homeless? There’s probably a half dozen within a block of this place.
“I’m doing something good,” she whispered aloud, to silence that increasingly loud voice. “I’m helping Elijah. And his friend.”
What do you really know about this friend Avita anyway? You didn’t even ask him, did you?
How do you know Elijah didn’t just lure you here so they could rob you?
She hadn’t thought of that before, but suddenly it seemed like an imminent, chilling threat. This was the kind of place where screams for help went unanswered, after all, and the police response was slow. Hanging out with a hundred thousand plus in cash at a sketchy motel seemed like a really bad idea.
She yelped when a form suddenly lunged out of the shadows and into the white glare of her headlights, and she slammed on the brakes more out of instinct than real thought. The thin shriek of tires skidding sounded very loud to her in the silence.
Elijah looked terrible. They’d avoided bruising his face, but she could tell from his pallor and the tense way he held himself that he was hurt, maybe a lot. He pressed one hand to his side, and beneath it, his shirt leaked red. The other hand he held out, palm out, in a silent plea to stay still.
Then he leaned forward and rested that palm on the hood of the car, breathing hard.
Hope didn’t think, she just jammed the car in park and jumped out to grab his arm. His weight sagged against her, and then he managed to find his strength again and pull away. “Help her first.”
For a second she didn’t know who he was talking about, and then she saw the dark-haired girl huddling in the shadows near the parked panel van. She looked young, very young—sixteen, maybe seventeen. Too young to be out on her own living like this.
And very, very scared.
“Come on,” Hope said, and gestured to her. “It’s all right. Come on.”
The girl got to her feet, moving awkwardly, and Hope realized that it was because of the high round swell of her stomach. She was pregnant, at least six months gone. Painfully thin, against that lush curve.
“Avi
ta, come on!” Elijah said. “It’s okay. She’s a friend. Hurry!”
Avita took a few steps toward them, but before she could reach them, the door swung open from one of the motel rooms, and a big, beefy man was silhouetted in the glare of lights. She cried out and backed up. When Elijah tried to go to her, he staggered again.
The man lunged forward, grabbed Avita by the elbow, and yanked her toward the door. “No you don’t,” he said, and shoved her bodily inside.
Elijah let out a groan that sounded more like frustration than pain, but he didn’t try to go after her. Instead, he yanked open the passenger door and practically fell inside. “Go!” he yelled at Hope. “Come on, move!”
She slid in behind the wheel, slammed the door, and put the car in drive. As she hit the gas and made a wide, fast turn, she saw the man in the doorway—Mr. Solomon, she guessed—watching them. He wasn’t trying to come after them.
It looked like he was … smiling.
Hope saw why as she completed the turn and headed for the exit of the parking lot. Bathed in the neon blue glow of the sign sat a parked black sedan with heavily tinted windows, squarely blocking the way out.
“You have to get past him,” Elijah said. “It’s Skinner.”
“I can’t! He’s blocking me!”
“Ram it! You can’t let him get you!”
Elijah was right, because the driver’s side door of the black sedan opened, and the bald head and broad shoulders of Skinner emerged. He was pointing something at them.
He was pointing a gun at them.
Hope felt a wave of freezing cold, then burning heat, and something just clicked inside—that same God-granted survival instinct she hadn’t known she had, and it made her shove the gas pedal to the floor, whip the wheel aside, and hope like hell her sensible old car was up to this challenge.
Skinner saw what she was up to and ducked back in his car, just before her Chevrolet hit the curb two feet from his front bumper with a bang hard enough to make her see stars. The tires jumped the concrete and dug into the narrow rock strip, then spun with a shriek on the sidewalk. In another second the car banged again as the back wheels followed. Then they were thrown around by the next hard bounce, hitting the street.