Outlaw

by Amanda Lance

  Outlaw

  by

  Amanda Lance

  Outlaw

  Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Lance. All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: March 2014

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1496172730

  ISBN-10: 1496172736

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To Scottie,

  Thanks for never being jealous of the book boyfriends.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  “What is dark within me, illuminate.”

  ~Paradise Lost, Book I, Lines 22-23

  Chapter 1

  Did you know that there’s $30 billion in cargo theft every year?

  If ya didn’t know, that’s a lotta dough available even for one guy in 365 days. If you know what you’re doing, anyway. That’s one of the main things ’bout a successful heist; everything’s gotta be planned out as much as you can stand it. If you get all the details and the possibilities, plot out all the extras, it makes it a hell of a lot less likely that something will go down that you can’t control.

  At least that’s how we usually do it.

  Hell, we were usually so organized before a job, we’d been known to practice how things were gonna go down. As much as we all complained ’bout it, though, we all knew it was good once we got in there and everybody knew what they were doing. We were so good that we were at the point where the stupid stuff—the security tryin’ to play hero or an asshole kid with a camera, all the crap that brings other thieves down—didn’t even phase us, wasn’t even an issue. We had backup plans for everything under the sun and planets beyond it. As invisible as we were, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe we’d gotten too used to plannin’ everything out. And that ’cause we hadn’t really done this one, it was gonna make us vulnerable.

  “Y’all know this is probably gonna go bad, don’t ya?”

  “Oh, la, la,” Wallace said. “Who knew you were such a negative Nancy?”

  I hit him in the shoulder. Hard.

  I hated the East coast. Even in the summer, everything looked too yellow and brown, like the inside of some nasty toilet bowl or something. At least in the south, the winters ain’t so bad. At least in the west there’s a lot more green.

  “I’m serious. We hardly know the layout of this stop; we ain’t sure ’bout the truck—”

  “He’s got a point, Charlie,” Yuri added. “If this truck is as loaded as Wallace says, then it might be worth the risk.”

  I made sure he saw I disagreed. “Ain’t nothin’ worth going to prison.”

  “Hey, Charlie, hey! If Ben says it’s okay, then it’s okay.”

  “Polo’s making more sense than Charlie? Must be a cold day in hell, huh, boys?”

  Wallace slapped the wheel and laughed. At the same time, just as Yuri reached over to smack me, I grabbed his wrist and twisted.

  “Damn.” I tried not to laugh while he winced.

  “Where’s your sense of humor, Hillbilly?”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Hard to laugh when we’re all doin’ something stupid.”

  Even at night, watching New York pass by from the SUV window didn’t look real appealing. Though, truth be told, I didn’t really know how it could to anybody. And maybe it was just Polo singing to himself “Are we there yet?” but my patience was wearing real thin, and I was on the verge of wanting to hit something.

  I blew my smoke in Polo’s face. “Will ya knock that crap off?”

  “Yeah,” Yuri said, still rubbing at his wrist. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  A minute. Ha. I shifted in my seat, still feeling uncomfortable even after I did. With every mile, I felt like we were getting closer to somethin’ real bad—a whole lotta trouble.

  Whatever it was, it made me uneasy as hell.

  ***

  The rest stop was packed, and the bad feeling got worse—twisting my stomach into all kinds of knots when I saw how many people were moving around the parking lot and going in and outta the shops by the gas station. Nobody wanted to say it, but I thought we were all thinkin’ it: it ain’t never good to be doing a heist in a busy area—unless it’s an airport or something. But this was different; people notice faces in truck stops.

  “This is bull!” We pulled in the back, between a couple of other trucks, but apparently I was the only one who was gonna say it out loud.

  “Will you relax?” Wallace laughed and shook his head. “Been awhile since you humped a sheep or something?”

  Yuri stopped me before I lunged over the seat. I was gonna stick my thumbs in Wallace’s eyeballs ’til they bled… but I guess I was gettin’ predictable. Either that or Yuri was turning into a mind-reader.

  “Hey, man, simmer down.” Yuri was dodging back and forth from me to Wallace like he was trying to figure out if he should let me go or not. Things got real quiet, and I got the sense that Polo was talkin’, but all I could see was The Red and once it got into my ears, I couldn’t hear nothin’ else.

  “…we got work to do.” Yuri did that half-laugh he always does when he’s nervous ’bout me punching somebody’s face in. “You can kick his ass later.”

  The doors slamming shut snapped me out of it. Luck let Wallace be the first one out with Polo being close behind, but it didn’t do anything to make The Red go away. Polo was like a little kid, real easy to take advantage of and real trusting of everybody. Wallace was the kinda scumbag to take advantage of that sort of thing. I could just see him getting Polo to confess to the cops to take the heat off him or maybe getting him to do something real nasty without Polo even being aware of it. Leave it to a jerk-off like that to use and abuse.

  I followed behind the guys and did my best to keep an eye out while they talked to the driver of the truck. I could tell right away he was real nervous just by the way he had his feet tapping and was jingling the change in his pocket. We’d never worked with him before, and that made me even more leery. For all we knew, he was an undercover.

  “So everything on this truck,” I began, “is it insured?”

  This poor guy was looking back and forth like he had no idea how to answer, and when a charter bus flicked its headlights on and then back off again across the way, I swear I thought he was gonna have a heart attack and drop dead right then and there.

  “W-what does that matter?”

  Though I’d just started it, I threw my smoke at him. I figured it was better than my fists. “It matters, jackass, ’cause a lotta insurance companies put trackers on this stuff.” Just as this guy looked like he was ’bout to soil himself, and Yuri was trying to keep Polo from juggling garbage he found, I turned to Wallace. It pissed me off that he obviously hadn’t even though
t about this.

  “I thought you said this guy was on the level.”

  “Again, Hillbilly, relax. It’s insured, but not enough to put GPS on anything. Only enough to save the trucking company’s ass, should a theft go down.”

  “Yeah, yeah!” The trucker lowered his hat and looked over his shoulder again. For the second time, I wondered if he was one of them meth-heads but didn’t bother to ask. Maybe he just really didn’t know what the hell he was doing. But then there was something about the sound of Polo laughin’ and the horns honking in the distance that made The Red come back again. Like a heavy wave, it dragged me down, making me clench my neck, as I tried to hold myself above water.

  “If you try to tell me to relax one more time, motherfucker, I swear to God I’m gonna rip out your tongue and stomp it into the pavement!”

  My voice musta got a little high, ’cause then Polo and Yuri were quiet, and that poor driver paled over like a sheet.

  “Charlie,” Yuri started, “why don’t you take a walk?”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed. “Why don’t I go and do that?”

  I walked away fast enough to make a difference, but not so much that somebody who might happen to be looking would notice. Hell, if they wanted to do all the heavy lifting they could be my guests. I was on edge enough already; I hadn’t slept in days and couldn’t risk falling asleep on the ride back.

  Maybe a decent leg stretch and some caffeine would change my attitude.

  It wasn’t even funny, but the idea of “being on edge” made me laugh for some reason.

  I was real quick in grabbing my hat and glasses, and though it was as hot as hell, I kept my jacket on so nobody could see the guns or scars on my arms. At first, I thought that it was kind of a stupid idea, but the place was so damn busy that I got lost fast in a hundred different bodies and faces, tourists and old folks who shouldn’t even be driving at night, screaming kids and their tired-lookin’ parents who were all probably thinking the same thing I was: when does school start up again?

  I headed for the bathroom straight away. I didn’t have to go or anything, but my thought was that throwing some water on my face might cool me off. It probably wasn’t real smart to take my hat and glasses off, but I did it anyway, ’cause nothing ’bout that job up ’til that point had been smart, so what difference would it make anyways?

  I watched the water drip off my chin. The fluorescent light brought out the white of the scar from where I busted it on a coffee table as a kid. It’s probably the oldest scar I got, though there are a few I’m not too sure of. Maybe if I didn’t have ’em I’d be better looking, but who knows for sure. Like my old man, I gotta full head of hair, and I’ve been pretty lucky that my face isn’t a weird shape or anything like that. Still, maybe it’s better to be a plain-looking guy; other than my neck tattoo (or my unemployment stamp), I’m real average and people tend not to look at me twice.

  I glanced at my phone on the way out of the bathroom. I’d only been gone a couple of minutes, and I wasn’t lookin’ forward to gettin’ back to it, so right away I started looking ’round for a good excuse not to go back out there. The bad feeling was still in my gut, getting a little bigger every second, and I knew going back out there wasn’t gonna do nothing but make it worse. I gritted my teeth when I found the solution; the crowd moved away ’nough for me to see it. I was already on edge, so the last thing I needed was a booster, but on the other hand, caffeine was a better excuse to stay away than anything else I could think of. And I sure as hell wasn’t ’bout to admit I was scared.

  All that changed pretty quick, though, when I got a look at what was in front of me. I could see her, standing in line for coffee like the dozen other idiots who had come before her—only this one wasn’t no dummy, with her pretty little nose stuck in a big book; I could tell that right away. The rest of her was just as nice with soft but noticeable curves and legs that went on forever. Shiny, blonde hair bounced in the center of her head, and ’cause it was all pulled up, I could see how her shoulder blades curved in just the right way—straining maybe, to hold that big book in her arms.

  My feet started moving before my brain was working. I shoulda just walked away right the moment I saw how beautiful she was, but it was as if my toes had magnets in ’em, and my body wasn’t letting me go nowhere until I got to see her up close.

  She was young, that much I could tell. And though she was real pale-like, I swear she smelled like sunshine and maybe the outside after it rains.

  She hadn’t seen me yet, hadn’t seen much of anything outside that book of hers—definitely hadn’t heard those squeaky boys walking past her, acting like they had the ability to see through her clothes—not that I could blame them. But it made me wonder if she had any idea just how pretty she was, how attractive. Being unsure and protected under my sunglasses, I closed my eyes and inhaled her smell. Did all real pretty girls smell so wonderful, or did they just smell so good ’cause they were pretty?

  Suddenly, I really wished I could see her face better. With only a side view, I had no idea what her mouth or eyes looked like and found myself having a hard time picturing them. Maybe, though, if I could get her to talk to me, she would turn in my direction. Hell, I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d get her number or anything, but who would pass up an opportunity to have a conversation with a pretty girl? I watched as she turned a page and smiled. Searching my brain for even something remotely clever to say, I felt like the dunce everybody always said I was. When it finally did come to me, I had to clear my throat once, twice, and dig my hands into my pockets to keep ’em from shaking.

  Why’d I have to do it? Why’d I have to go and open my big freakin’ mouth?

  “Did you know the Vitruvian Man was named after General Marcus Vitruvian? It’s s’posed to be ’bout balance in man and all that.”

  Great, I scared the hell outta her. I musta, since she jumped so high she coulda been reaching for the ceiling. Not knowing what else to do, though, I laughed. Later on, I told myself it was just ’cause of the look on her face, though—not ’cause she made me so nervous.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” I tried. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  More people had gathered in line behind me, making the line go almost to the building’s center pillar. After she noticed this, she glanced back at me, her frown getting deeper when she noticed the smoke behind my ear. The second I realized she disapproved, I kinda found myself wishing I had thought to hide it in my pocket.

  It didn’t take a detective to figure by her clean nails and fresh smell that she wouldn’t like a smoker. But she was looking at Da Vinci, so I knew she had a brain in her head, and that gave me something to work with—so I could find some common ground to get her to talk to me.

  By all of my accounts, most girls who looked the way she was lookin’ tended not to bother learning anything beyond grade school… along with some other choice skills, of course. Even as I thought it, I knew I should have backed away. What if she started thinkin’ about the fact that I was wearing a jacket in the summer? Or sunglasses at night?

  But I didn’t back off. Instead, I just stared into those emerald eyes that weren’t lookin’ away from mine.

  “Yikes.”

  What did she just say? Was that even English? “Huh?”

  “You didn’t scare me.”

  Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t look away then. A sheer rosy color blossomed on her cheeks as she whipped her back ’round, and it spread to the fine muscles of her slim arms, bringing out freckles I hadn’t noticed before. I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t ever seen nothing so beautiful in my life. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I kept right on lookin’ at her…

  I knew I could never sketch nothin’ that good looking.

  It coulda been my imagination, but it seemed like the more I stared at her, the more she changed color—going from a light pink to a bright red then back to pale white again. And just as I was about to rub my eyes and question if I was seeing stuff, she blushed one mor
e time, and I thought maybe she was having a hard time breathing, like those kids with asthma..

  “You all right?”

  I didn’t mean to make her uncomfortable, but obviously trying to be discreet bothered her, and she looked spooked. Her eyes got wide, and she frowned. I tried to think of a joke, but nothing was comin’ to me.

  “You look like you’re gonna fall over,” I said.

  “I—um, just seriously need coffee.”

  I coulda been wrong, but I sort of thought with the way her voice was cracking that she was trying to sound tougher than she really was. And since girls who looked the way she did were usually all ’bout themselves, I let myself think that maybe she was tryin’ to sound that way ‘cause she thought I might like it. I did. She was all soft, though, like a doll or something, and that, and I liked that, too.

  If it were up to me, I woulda spent the rest of the night just looking at her, but my phone rang, and it was another reminder of the kinda stuff I couldn’t have.

  I barked into the phone. “What?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe I saw her ears perk up a little bit. Even though I was annoyed by Yuri’s panic, there was somethin’ about the possibility of her curiosity that kept me under control—like if a girl like her could be interested in a scab like me, then I should try harder to keep The Red in the cage.

  “Charlie.” There was all kinds a swearing and carrying on in the background, and right away I knew I was right all along bout my bad feeling. “You need to get back here.”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  I turned on my heel and headed for the nearest door, doing my best to blend in with the crowd and fit in with people who have all kinds of things but never seem to go nowhere. It didn’t matter who I ran into or who flipped me the bird as I passed, ’cause I knew I was the only one who could fix the trouble outside, but I also wanted to put as much distance between me and that mystery girl as possible.