Outlaw

by Amanda Lance

  Sure enough! When I came jogging back and she had her hand pulling away from around one of the copper-coated pipes with this amazed look on her face that her fingers was covered in muck. In my mind though, I was thinking that it was a damn good thing she didn’t go and get herself electrocuted.

  “Don’t touch nothing.”

  She called out, her voice echoing in the hallway. “Don’t creep up on me!”

  I smiled. “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did!”

  Laughing, I shook my head and handed her my lucky jacket—especially lucky now, I thought, ’cause it was what I was wearing when I first saw her.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Technically, you’re a stowaway. You should try not to get caught.”

  I gave her my red ball cap (the only clean one I had) and tried not to laugh as she put it on. I knew it was gonna be too big, but as she fitted some of her hair under it, it fit better.

  “What happens if someone finds me here?” Her voice was shakin’ a little when she asked me that one.

  “They won’t.”

  “What if they do?”

  Stubborn.

  “They won’t, Addie. I won’t let ’em.”

  She laughed, but it was all nervous, and I decided I didn’t like it. “Yeah, right.”

  ***

  She didn’t seem to mind ’bout the long walk down the hall—or at least she didn’t complain about it. Actually, she was real quiet to the point that it had me thinking about how those gears in her mind were turning. What did she think of the dirty pipes hanging off the ceiling? Of the cracked-up floors that hadn’t been painted in a coon’s age? And right away that had me thinking about everything else that affected her. I mean, her head had to have hurt, right? What ’bout her torn up wrists and the cut on her foot? Did my jacket smell like smoke too bad? Was she hungry or thirsty? Did her eyes hurt from all that crying she did earlier?

  The wind looked like it was gonna throw her right off the deck once we got there, and it was clear she wasn’t ready for a change in the temperature. I yelled at myself for not giving her a proper warning. It was hurricane season now too, which meant the temperatures out there were just gonna be as crazy as she was.

  Her eyes did all the talkin’ for her as I saw her looking around the deck and at everybody who was working. I already knew that her old man was some numbers cruncher, and that she and her ma were both bookworms, so what were the odds she had ever been in a place like this before? That she had ever even known anybody who got their hands dirty for a living?

  I racked my brain again, trying to think of a funny way to call her a snob, but I wasn’t as clever as her and we both knew it. Anything I tried to say would just come out the wrong way and end up making things worse.

  Addie made a run for the side of the deck, where she grabbed on to the rail like it was the only thing keeping her in the solar system. I had to throw a glare at some welder who was giving her the eye. I woulda done more, but I was worried ’bout how green she was looking all of a sudden. Where’d we keep that sea-sick stuff again?

  I went in my pocket for a smoke even though I didn’t really want one. It was funny how I never seemed to know what to do with myself when I was around her. Yet it still seemed to me that blackening up my lungs was a better idea than thinking about all the things my hands wanted do to her.

  “You ain’t gonna jump, right? ’Cause I ain’t a great swimmer.”

  Looking up from the water, she glared at me and my lighter that wasn’t cooperating. Just when I thought that she had forgotten about me altogether, she went and pulled the smoke right from my mouth and threw it into the water.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if an octopus had come up on deck and ink blotted me. Still, she wasn’t done with me yet.

  “Did I hear you say Singapore back there?” I wasn’t too sure she wasn’t gonna try and push me overboard. “Did I hear you say six days?”

  Now, I needed a smoke more than ever. “Unless you’re a great swimmer, then…” ‘fore I could even think about lighting up that new one, she threw it away, too.

  “Yeah.” For a few seconds I just stared from my hands back to her. Was everything about her magic?

  Bent at the knees, she put her head between her legs, breathing so hard I could hardly hear her when she asked, “What then?”

  I knew that question had been coming, and I had already been practicing the answer for when it did. “The American embassy is real close to the port we’ll be at. You can go straight there.”

  When I got it out, she stood up and looked me in the eye. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised about what she wanted to know next, though she had some balls asking me outright.

  “How do I know you or someone else won’t kill me before then?”

  I went for my pack but decided against it. “Guess you don’t.”

  I could give her as much freedom as possible on the ship, but even then I knew it wouldn’t really be good ’nough to make her feel better about this whole thing. For as long as we’d all been working together, none of the guys and me had thought ’bout running girls, let alone ever talked ’bout it. I don’t even think it had nothing to do with Elise, didn’t even have to do with right and wrong. We were all past that morality stuff and what was good or evil didn’t matter as long as we were first at the finish line.

  When it came to running girls though, none of us could do it ’cause we’d all had at least one of ’em in our lives we’d cared enough ’bout to think about on a regular basis.

  I stared back at her. Maybe she could be my one.

  “She’s alive! She’s alive!” The urge to kill Yuri was stronger than ever when he grabbed her by the shoulders, nearly scaring her outta her skin. I told myself to remain calm, but another part of me was thinking ’bout all the ways I could get back at him for that.

  “Hey, take it easy.” I punched him in the life jacket and he took some pretend swings back, clearly not getting my meaning.

  “Despite your people’s best efforts.” At least she was quick to bounce back.

  Yuri smiled. “Hey, you were right about this one.”

  I was scared she would ask about what he meant, but instead of askin’ she just glared at the both of us.

  He had taken off his gloves, making me think he was gonna stay. He musta just been taking up with Reid too, ’cause again he had to go and open up his mouth.

  “You know you’re pretty lucky, little girl.”

  She stared at me but I had nothing to say. I knew of course she had been lucky, real lucky. I’d seen the best of fighters get one bad swing to the head and get knocked out for the long haul. But I was sure that she didn’t need to know that, neither.

  “The way Wallace bashed your head in and had that chokehold on you, we thought you were worms’ meat. The only reason Ben agreed to let you come aboard was so that when you did keel over, we could just throw you overboard. Real easy.” I stared over into the ocean. How mad would Ben be if I threw Yuri overboard? “We left so much evidence at the house; we thought that would at least be a quick fix.”

  All temptation aside, I gave him a good enough punch that he finally shut up, not that it would matter though, ’cause she was off in another world somewhere, trying to remember where the blood in her hair had come from. She flinched real hard. Damn. I shoulda known she had a real bad headache.

  “Right,” Yuri said, putting his gloves back on. “Well, like I said, you’re lucky.”

  Lucky? Hell, he was the one who was lucky. Lucky he had walked away when he did.

  I stretched my arms over the rails long ’nough so that I could feel the stretch. There were a bunch of questions I wanted to ask her, but knew better not to. All in all, it was better to give her some space. There may not have been a door between us, but for all relative purposes there may as well have been.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  I knew what she was talking ’bout, naturally. But with that memo
ry of the fire in her eyes so close, I couldn’t resist messin’ with her.

  “What?”

  “Helping me. Why are you helping me?”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  And there is was: the fire in her eyes. But as much as I enjoyed it, I knew it would never belong to me, and that made me a whole lot sadder than I ever could’ve imagined.

  “I don’t know,” I said eventually.

  She crossed her arms over her chest; doing things to me she probably wasn’t even aware of. “If you people are trying to mess with my mind or something, it won’t work.”

  How did the gears in her brain work? And I mean, does she get tired thinking about everything all the time? Here I was assuming she had never known a blue collar guy, let alone a criminal, and here she was thinking like a serial killer or something… one of those sociopath people.

  “I ain’t got a clue what you’re talking ’bout.”

  She started stammering like Polo on a day that ended in Y. Was this a concussion? “If this is some way to get me to trust you, or get Stockholm Syndrome, it won’t work.”

  “Huh?”

  She rolled her eyes at me and I thought it was beautiful. “You guys probably set up the entire thing so Mister-Angry-Smash-Addie could almost kill me and you could save the day just in time and I’d feel loyal or obligated to you or something. That’s how kidnappers do that sort of thing, right?”

  I’ll admit that sociopath’s aside, it sounded like the kinda stuff Ben woulda thought of and it made me think twice that a chick had seemed to come up with it so easy. I thought women were only so deadly in comic books or when their babies were in trouble. Then again, maybe she was just the type with a good imagination. That was possible, right? I went for a smoke, real glad that she didn’t give me a hard time about it and the wind let up enough for me to light it.

  “All anybody ’round here cares ’bout is profit. Messing with people’s heads wouldn’t do nobody any good. ’Sides,” I smiled when I thought of how dangerous havin’ somebody like her around might be. “Ain’t nobody around here smart enough to think of something like that anyhow.”

  “Isn’t messing with people’s heads a key element in business?” she said, smiling all snarky at me.

  “How is messing with your head gonna help me?”

  She seemed to think about it before answering and I imagined the inside of her head like one of those old clocks with all the springs, gears, and weights working together to spin the dials. “Maybe you’re holding me for ransom. Getting me to cooperate would make your job considerably easier.”

  Now was a perfect opportunity to show her what I had been looking at, to show her just how much she should appreciate everything she had. “Come on, I wanna show you something.”

  I had been so excited to share something with her that I never thought about her hesitating to go back inside with me. By the time I did though, I realized she was already behind me and remembering how self-conscious she had been in the rest stop, I understood maybe she preferred being alone. But once she’d seen the computer, her mouth dropped open a little and I could practically see her imagining herself e-mailing and twittering, and I sure as hell couldn’t be letting that happen.

  I’d made another mistake and I had to search for a fast lie—something, anything that would sound believable enough to get us through the week. Luckily, it came to me just as I patted the bed for her to sit next to me.

  “We don’t got access for much longer, so you better hurry up.”

  It was real clear she didn’t wanna sit with me judging by her hesitation alone, but that was okay ’cause it gave me time to look her up online again. “I promise I won’t bite…unless you ask.”

  Still looking at the screen, I could see her roll her eyes, and though she sat real far away from me, her body language said something different with that blush of hers.

  I gave over the laptop and tried not to laugh while her eyes bugged out. I guess she hadn’t expected to be so popular, but that only added to my attraction to her. I didn’t think I had ever met a pretty girl who hadn’t thought she was the center of the universe.

  “What—”

  I laughed. “You’ve been front page news for the last day or so.”

  I watched those green gems of hers move across the screen and tried to gauge her reaction. What did she think ’bout all those stupid humanity pieces or the dumbass article ’bout the restaurant she sometimes worked at? The other ones filled with quotes from her neighbors and her old man’s boss?

  What did she think now that she knew about me?

  “Is that stuff true?” she asked.

  I shrugged. What was I supposed to say? Yeah, I’ve water-boarded a guy before? That one time I even pulled out somebody’s eyelashes? “You can’t believe everything you read.”

  I was hoping for a smart-aleck remark, something that I coulda just laughed at and had fun with. As much as I had hoped for it though, she had to just come straight out with it, breaking my balls, as usual.

  “Are you a murderer?”

  I skated around the answer like some fop. “Only when I got to be.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  I’ll admit that one knocked the wind out of me. She still thought I was gonna hurt her? That I wanted anything bad to happen to her? “I thought I made it real clear I wasn’t gonna do that.”

  “Why?” There was a hint of brashness to her voice that I could hear. Maybe I was wrong, but I thought that it meant she was angry. All the mixed emotions was splitting me up the side.

  “’Cause I don’t kill girls.”

  Then, she got real mad at me again. “That’s sexist.”

  “Are you complaining?” I laughed, unsure of what else to do.

  “I guess not.”

  Her face lit up like a Jack-o-lantern on Halloween. “It’s still sexist.”

  “Sides,” I told her “You make me laugh.”

  “Um, thanks?”

  “And you can’t kill a dead girl.”

  I handed her back the computer and tried not to let my finger brush up against hers this time. “This stuff is hilarious.”

  I woulda paid for that expression of hers when she read that article about her being dead and all. I’ve hardly read any books, but that thing about a face reading like one makes alotta sense now.

  “This is a nightmare.”

  Strange how I could be jealous of those finger of hers, the way they moved through her hair—all the other parts of her they got to touch.

  “Really?” I said, “I think it’s pretty funny.”

  “Oh yeah? Do your—colleagues think it’s so funny?”

  I shrugged. “Nah, they’re real mad. But they’ll get over it.” Or they would if they knew what was good for them.

  Next thing I knew I saw her trying to open up another browser, no doubt tryin’ to get in touch with somebody just like I had predicted. I snatched the computer from her hands real fast though, taking it before she could even curse at me.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I only pretended to sound mad. Addie was mad ’nough for the both of us.

  “I have to contact my dad. He has to be going crazy!”

  I got up and went across the cabin, basically as far away as I could get while still being close to her. “Sorry, can’t let you do it.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me? He thinks I’m dead. You can’t so this to him. It’s cruel!”

  She reached for the computer, but seeing the way her eyes had moved before she did, I had her move, and held the laptop above my head, laughing while she tried to make a jump for it. Judging by how bold she was being, I guess I had been wrong ’bout her not caring for her own people— ’bout how much she knew they cared for her.

  “He doesn’t think you’re dead.” I laughed harder with each jump she made. That was it, I decided. She had definitely been a bunny rabbit in another life. Maybe even a Playboy one.

  I moved the laptop to my other hand while
she tried to be sneaky and go behind my back. Even though she was pretty fast for a girl—distracting me with how good she smelled and all—my longer arms and bigger body gave me the advantage, keeping the computer way out of her reach. In truth though, I coulda played that game all day with her as long as she kept pressing up against me like that.

  “He knows you ain’t dead, okay? Just relax for a second.” I could hardly say it with a straight face, but I must have done it okay enough because she stopped reaching for the computer and those great big eyes of hers got all squinty with questions.

  “What do you mean?”

  I explained to her ’bout the press release and how her dad basically called them a bunch of asshats for calling her dead without a body. Of course I left out the part about how she and her old man kinda had the same scrunched up faces when they were mad. I didn’t want to let on that I had been staring at her, or thinking about her that much to begin with.

  The confusion left her face fast when I told her ’bout what her old man said. I guess that was just the thing she expected from her old man. I thought I should throw in an explanation for good measure. “They’ll be tracing any account linked to you, so you can’t be contacting nobody.”

  I took out the Wi-Fi card and hid it deep in my pocket, knowing full well she wasn’t gonna be going in there. “Sorry, but that’s how it is. Something else and I’ll try to help, if I can. Can’t do nothing ’bout that one, though.”

  Her face fell. “Please, just—just go away.”

  It was a weird feeling to be split in half like that. In one respect I wanted nothing more than to give her what she wanted, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to leave her, either. And for a guy who just normally does what he wants, it was hard for me to know what to do.

  One thing though, was that I could see the way she flinched at every creak and crack of the ship. She was sitting on the floor now, against the wall, and rubbing the side of her temples until, like, she had little red marks on the side of her head. So I moved to grab her some aspirin, cursing at myself ’cause obviously the noise bothered her again.

  “Here,” I tried to say softly.