“The stuff inside will break.”
He shrugged. “It’s got to get over somehow, and I don’t think it should be on your back while you’re carrying me.”
I took the bag by the straps, swung it high, and eyeballed the roof. I let it go without a second thought and it streaked across and landed between two vehicles.
“That worked great,” Mac said, his thumb extended. “So will this.”
He drew me backwards by the hand, counting off twenty steps.
“I need you to pick me up,” he said.
I scooped him into my arms. He was bigger than me, but he weighed next to nothing.
“I need you to get a full, running start, Grace. And when you hit the wall, you need to use it as leverage to push off. That should make things easier.”
“Do you actually trust me?” I asked him.
“Yes. Now, get yourself together and get us across.”
I refused to think. I just did it. Mac bounced against me as I raced headlong toward the ledge. I was hauling some serious ass as I leapt, my right sneaker tagging the top of the wall just like Mac had suggested. And boy did I take off—like a rock skipping across a lake. I kept looking straight ahead as I sailed over the empty airspace between buildings. I cleared the other ledge with ease—but I kept on going. I was more than halfway across the width of the parking garage before I started to arc downward. There was not much opportunity to consider my landing spot either. The roof of a green sedan looked to be the most inviting and softest place to come down. My feet struck first, crushing the top of the car in on itself. I stayed upright the entire time, continuing to hold Mac securely, but also cognizant about not squeezing him into an inadvertent pulp.
“Holy fuck,” I said. “Holy fuck.”
Mac rubbed my arm. “You were awesome. But we need to keep moving.”
I grunted my wholehearted agreement as I lowered him onto the concrete. “I assume you’ve got a vehicle over here somewhere. I sure hope it wasn’t this one.”
“Nope, it’s back this way.” He jogged off in the direction I’d just leapt from. “I probably should have thought of that possibility, but I didn’t.”
I climbed down and chased after him. My head was a little clearer, but not by much. I think the exhilaration of the jump had helped more than anything. Endorphins are a vampire’s best friend, but I did not know that just yet.
“You should probably do the driving,” I said.
“I was planning on it. You are staying low in the back seat. At least until we get a few miles away.” He picked up the duffel I’d thrown and went four car lengths down. He unlocked the trunk of a dull-as-dirt white Civic, late 80s make. I wasn’t sure how much it was going to have under the hood.
He stowed the duffel and shut the trunk and went around to the driver’s side of the car.
“There’s blood under the seat if you need it.” He opened the door for me and pulled back the seat.
“Thank you.” I said, climbing in and trying to find a comfortable position in the tiny sliver of foot space. When all was said and done, my legs stretched all the way out to the passenger side.
The seat smacked back against me as Mac got in as well. The door closed lightly. I could hear keys jangling, and then the engine starting. We backed up and sped on our way. It was nine loops down before we stopped spinning in circles. I wanted to look up, but knew that I shouldn’t.
“How close are we to an exit?” I asked him.
“About two hundred feet. Close.”
“Which side are we coming out on?”
“The side facing the front of the building. It’s the only way out. This is why I need you to keep that gorgeous face of yours out of view.”
I smiled. “Is there any sign of a commotion? Is anyone out there looking for me?”
“There’s no sign of anything. The windows are dark.” He sounded distracted, and of course he would be. “Be quiet now,” he said a few seconds later. “We’re taking a left.”
My cheek was pressing against the vinyl of the seat. “Drive slow. Driving fast will just draw attention.”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said.
We drove on, stopping at several lights. I had no idea what direction he was going in after a while, which made me crazy.
“I think we should ditch the car as soon as possible,” I said.
“That’s precisely what we are on our way to do. I have a van parked on a side street near this rundown strip mall where I get my hair cut. People are used to seeing me go in and out there.”
“And that gets us what?”
“Well, the neighborhood is kind of sketchy. When we ditch this car I plan to leave the window open and the keys in the ignition. My hope is that someone will steal the damn thing before someone else can track it down.”
“It’s worth a shot, I guess. Creative thinking.”
“Thanks…but this is only the beginning. There’s a lot of organizing still to do. I’ve got about a week’s worth of blood refrigerated in the van, but that’s it. Where to stash you is still an issue. You can sleep in the van tonight, but I did not know what you wanted to do long-term—so I could only plan so far ahead. I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me to stay. I’m here for you. I’ve got money and some decent contacts in the vamp community. We can find a blood source there, I’m almost certain.”
The car kept rolling along. “I don’t need your money, but thank you.”
“I’m not sure if you realize this,” he said, “but when you were declared dead, your account with the credit union was emptied out and passed on to your brother. There’s nothing left.”
“That’s not where I kept my money, not most of it at least.”
“You had other money?”
“Yeah, my inheritance from my father. I distributed it to separate offshore accounts, under a handful of assumed names.”
“Why in the world would you do that?”
“Because a paranoid weirdo raised me to be a paranoid weirdo.”
“How much do you have altogether?”
“A lot.”
“How much? I’m curious.”
“4.25 million. But that was last time I checked. I never paid much attention. I lived off my take-home pay.”
Muttering, Mac repeated the 4.25 number several times. “So, you really don’t need my money.”
“No, not really.”
“The question is, do you need me?”
I reached forward and patted his hip. “Clearly, I do. I couldn’t have escaped without you.”
I felt the car slow and caught a glimpse of a beat-up gray van. It was time to make our big switch, to start all over again.
With access to stockpiles of cash, anyone with half a brain would’ve headed straight out of town. Hell, with a covert government agency bearing down on their ass, a truly intelligent person would leave the country—maybe even the hemisphere. Just so I’ve made everything perfectly clear. Someone out there crossed me, and I am the dumbest bitch who ever lived.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
THE UNDERGROUND
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Arvin Loudermilk hand wrote his first novel—a high school superhero fantasy based embarrassingly, and almost entirely, on himself—at the age of seventeen. A ‘sequel’ followed, but his focus soon turned to the intricacies of comic book writing.
In May of 1989, Arvin met Mike Iverson, a skilled illustrator and designer, and together they created the comic book series Vigil, a crime fiction epic featuring a gun-wielding vampire vigilante. Hot on the heels of a thousand pages of Vigil, they produced a sci-fi comic called Collective.
In the years that followed, Arvin became more and more convinced that Collective and Vigil would be natural fits in the world of prose. The development process to shift to this ne
w creative platform was long and frustrating, but the end result, an assortment of novels and novellas, began its long-term publishing schedule with the 2012 release of In a Flash.
One of Them (Vigil #2) Page 6