Outlaw

by Amanda Lance

  “Yup?”

  “Nothing.” She sighed. “Just making sure.”

  “Don’t worry, darling. I ain’t going anywhere.” And there was enough truth in that to be sure. Addie had said she wanted to be with me, and after trying to send her away once I didn’t know if I’d have it in me to do it again—even if it was the best thing for her. What kinda life could I offer her, though? And how fast would it take her to realize that she didn’t like me at all?

  Chapter 17

  The first time I saw California I thought it was a joke. No way could there be that many different kinds of land in one state—that many different kinds of people in just one place. It was like every one of them clichés all wrapped up together, the hippies and the tree-huggers, the politicians and artists living in a great big bubble.

  I didn’t know there ever could be such a place.

  And even though she had grown up with dreams, with aspirations and all that stuff, I think her expression looked like mine probably did when I made that first run from LA to San Diego.

  Course, Healdsburg was way different than both those places—more laid back and wide with hills and lots of spaces between all the houses. On the weekends in town there were always farmer’s markets and gypsies with their jewelry and crafts on the sides of the roads. It seemed like you couldn’t go nowheres without seeing tourists or something ’bout a wine tasting. Overall, it was a decent place to hang up my hat between jobs. Better yet, it was a place I knew in my twitching toes that Addie would like. And that was a way better feeling than I expected.

  Like how there is when drama comes around, everybody in the driveway waiting for us like we were a bunch of war veterans who deserved a homecoming.

  “It usually ain’t this bad.” Addie’s eyes darted around and I thought she was biting the inside of her mouth again. Maybe if I could try to walk it off, or at least get out of the car, I’d ease her anxiety about all the theatrics everybody was putting on. The second I tried it though, it felt like my gut was getting opened again. I called out before I could stop myself and fell against the inside of the door. I cursed at myself. I couldn’t even get outta the damn car.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded; too afraid I’d puke if I tried to say something. For her though, I swallowed hard and tried to manage it.

  “Are you?” In the fresh light of mornin’ I could see just how bruised up her face was. Unfortunately, I didn’t have no energy to do nothing but hate it. Jimmy came around and opened the door before she could say anything and Elise practically kidnapped Addie for herself, all but forcing me to fall out of the door and try to follow our little parade.

  The girls chatted while the fellas half-dragged me into the house. I didn’t want ’em to, but since Addie asked, it made it easier for me to let them.

  “Oh man, oh man, oh man! I think you’re bleeding again, Charlie!” I tried shaking off Polo enough to look behind me, but it was rough. From what I could tell, Elise already had Addie under her wing and was probably planning one of those makeover things. At least though, I knew she was in a safe place.

  “Stop worrying about her,” Yuri growled at me. I was stumbling along so bad I knew I wouldn’t have been able to stand let alone walk without each of the guys under one of my arms, but I wouldn’t’ve admitted it for the life of me.

  “Right in here, gentlemen—”

  My eyes fluttered open and shut and by the time I knew it I was laying down on the bed in the downstairs guestroom. The really pretty one with all the flowers and open windows.

  “What—” I said, trying to laugh. “I don’t get to go to my room?”

  “Nobody is hauling you all the way up those stairs.”

  Polo laughed and laughed.

  Yuri and Polo left just as Addie came in. When I realized it was her, I tried sitting back up, but she was at my side in two seconds flat, pushing me back down and shaking her head. I smiled, but she wasn’t looking at me but over at Jimmy instead, who was makin’ all kinds of noise in the corner. I looked at him too and saw the bag of tricks he was setting up. Since Reid almost blew his hand off, Ben went ahead and bought one of those heart monitor things and the pole for the IV. And though Jimmy was a big enough guy to block part of my view I knew well enough by then to know that his toolbox was filled with bandages and tape, gloves and icepacks. And the worst of ’em all: needles.

  I flinched away when he stuck one of ’em in my arm.

  “I hate those things,”

  She sat on the opposite side of the bed, all but making me have to look at her. And though I was glad for that, I still felt myself cringing as that saline stuff starting going through me.

  “Don’t be such a baby.” She smiled. “This is your fault, you know. You said I got into trouble for not keeping my nose out of other’s people business, and then you turned around and did the same thing.”

  I leaned up as high as I could and kissed her forehead. I wanted to kiss other parts of her, but it took a lot of my energy just to do that much and I knew I wouldn’t be awake much longer. “That ain’t the same.”

  “It’s exactly the same!”

  Determined, I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “The main thing is that everybody is okay now.”

  Addie looked back over at Jimmy, but I didn’t have the heart to. Seeing a needle in me was one thing, but seeing all the stitch stuff and knowing how it’d go in and out of my skin was another.

  “Everybody will be okay, right?”

  I laughed a little at the sound of her voice rising up. What did she have to be scared about? She was back in the states and her family knew she was okay…

  She and Jimmy talked, but I smiled and stared at her like a dope. It wasn’t ’til I heard Jimmy say something ’bout knocking me out that I started getting nervous. Already though, I was real drowsy, and like a little kid I grabbed for her hand and held on tight. What if this was it? Dying I could handle. But what if I fell asleep and never saw her again?

  “You wanna hear something stupid?”

  “Always.”

  I could barely hear myself, barely keep my eyes open. “I—I’m kinda scared you ain’t gonna be ’round when I wake up.”

  “Nothing is going to keep me away from you, remember?”

  Her smile was the last thing I saw.

  ***

  It was easy to get my toes and fingers moving. Even with the brace my hand was in and the needle still in my arm I could get both of my thumbs moving across the inside of my hands without a lot of trouble. The rest of it though was trickier—especially since I couldn’t even get my head to move, or my eyes to open.

  The rest of my senses were workin’ pretty good though and I gave myself a mental pat on the back for that. I could smell something cooking close-by—something warm and sweet, by my guess. It faded in and out, but I thought I heard the funny kinda music they got on video games too, and Polo laughing. After a second of concentrating more though, I could hear the soft beeping of that monitor thing and the air coming through the vents. When I did, it made me panic like a nerd who forgot his homework. Something was on the tip of my tongue, an itch in a place that I couldn’t reach… but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was.

  For clues, I listened in more and moved around my wrists and ankles. I was all alone in the room but couldn’t put my finger on exactly where I was. Where were the fellas? More importantly, where was Addie?

  Prying my eyes open, I didn’t see much of nothing but a blur of shadows. Blinking a bunch of times didn’t help, but when I went to raise my hand to my face, my muscles cramped up so bad that it almost hurt. At the same time though, it made me more aware of the needle in my arm. I looked over and followed the tube that was going from my arm up to the pole with a bag of that fake water stuff. There was another yellow bag of medicine but I didn’t know what it was.

  I moved so I was sitting up in the bed a little better but it made my gut tighten up and the skin tingle so that it felt rea
l funny. In the dark, the white bandages around me were easy to see and made it even easier to remember what had happened. There wasn’t no pain though, ’cause everything there was pretty numbed up. I tested it real quick, sitting up all the way ’til my feet were just touching the ground. Whatever Jimmy gave me musta been good because I was still real dizzy—the shadows spun all around me.

  “Hey,” I called out but none of the sound came.

  I rubbed my throat and tried again, my head digging for where Addie was. There were a couple of images there, but everything else was fuzzy.

  “Hello there.”

  I looked at the sound of the knock at the door. Addie wasn’t the one standing there like I’d hoped.

  “Boss—” This time I got the words out, but they were all croaked. I wondered if I sounded like a frog.

  “Feeling better?”

  I shook my head, blinking away the light he turned on. Only one of the windows in the room was open, but I could see it was real dark outside—had been for a long time.

  “Should I retrieve James—?”

  “Where is she?”

  Ben sighed. “She went home, Charlie Boy. She went home.”

  “17-Year-Old Kidnapping Victim Found”

  Red Bluff, CA—The17-year-old girl kidnapped from a rest stop in New York late Wednesday evening has been found, and law enforcement officials are searching for the two men connected with the abduction, authorities said.

  Information released Thursday night revealed the teenager was found wandering around a bus stop in Anderson where she appeared disoriented and confused. A bus service employee who recognized the teenager from the nationwide search phoned police, authorities said.

  For over seven days, state, local, and federal officials searched for Adeline Grace Battes, while family members pleaded for her safe return.

  “This is a great day for the (Battes) family, and especially Addie,” Federal agent Adam Harpsten said. “But we are still actively pursuing the investigation into her abduction and those associated with it.”

  “She is shaken up but appears to be in good health,” a hospital spokesperson said. “She is resting comfortably and will be released soon.”

  The teen was taken to a hospital which remains unknown to the public for safety reasons. Upon hearing of her safe return, her family immediately traveled to California and was happily reunited with the teen.

  After they told me what Reid had done, I tore the IV from my arm but fell when I tried to get outta bed—apparently Ben had told Jimmy to give me an extra strong dose of painkillers just for that reason. Still, I screamed and swore, shouting out all kinds of names and cursing at everything and anything. I could tell I passed out again. Later on, I saw pieces of one of Elise’s vases in the trash.

  That all by itself made it good that Reid didn’t come back right away. On top of that though, I guess they had a decent description of him out there—somebody waiting for a bus caught sight of him when she got outta the car. Hell, they coulda thrown his ass in jail for life for all I cared, and for those first two or three days I didn’t have any trouble telling everybody I thought as much. The guys and Elise tried telling me that the whole thing was Addie’s idea though, that according to Reid she had been okay with taking some sleeping pills to make her not knowing nothin’ believable, that she had gone to him specifically because the others would have tried to convince her to stay… on paper it all made sense, but I still couldn’t stomach any of it, didn’t want to.

  What I hated the most was that I knew it was probably true.

  All over again she was in the papers, her face on the TV and the Internet. I spent all the time I was awake watching them, watching her, and trying to learn something I didn’t already know. The fellas did their best to keep ’em away from me—trying to distract me even with movies and promises to the pawn shop, the strip clubs…

  She was all I cared about though, all I saw when I had my eyes open or shut. I’d never obsessed about nothing before, but I definitely was then. Reeling in every memory of her I had, I tried to trace her face but it wasn’t the same as seeing her up close, as the glimpses of her I caught on the TV when she finally went back to her house.

  The wound in my gut closed up, but the one in my chest just reopened again and again.

  As soon as I was able I left the house, got out and scooped up everything with her face or name on it. I’d seen her less than a week ago, but it was looking better and better for the guys that she hadn’t said nothing. Still, just to be sure, Ben said he would take Elise and Ty on a little “vacation.”

  They were closing up the house when I was working on another sketch of her. I’d heard something about Yuri going to meet some girl and then going off to join Polo in Washington and I’d even been invited to meet up with Reid for some “high tail” in Vegas. Everybody was working real hard to get me to feel better, to snap out of it. Didn’t they know that that was never gonna happen—that I wasn’t gonna be better ’til I saw her again?

  Ty was sitting in some kinda baby chair with all kind of mirrors and shiny things on it. I sat on a kitchen stool, supposed to be watchin’ him while Elise mumbled to herself, checking stuff of her list of “must-haves.” She said something to me, but I didn’t pay no attention. Why couldn’t I get her eyes right, or the nose? It all seemed so important suddenly, like if I didn’t get it down right, I’d forget it all together. But what about the rest of the stuff? It once seemed impossible, but what if I forgot the sound of her voice, or the way her fingers felt in mine?

  “It’s all for the best, you know.”

  I hadn’t heard Ben come in, but he sat on the linoleum by Ty so that I couldn’t avoid looking at him.

  “I don’t care if this is your house.” I seethed with The Red, which seemed to come more and more with every day away from her. “If you say that one more Goddamn time I’ll break your jaw so you can’t say it again.”

  Ty kicked the pinwheels attached to his chair, making them spin faster.

  “How are your sutures holding up?”

  “Fine. Coming out tomorrow.”

  “Taking the antibiotics?”

  I nodded. He didn’t need to ask if I was taking the painkillers or not. We both knew I wasn’t.

  “Good.” He turned the music on Ty’s chair and the little guy laughed—for the first time, I noticed it kinda sounded like Ben’s.

  “You could always come with us, you know. The change of scenery—”

  “And ruin your family time? Nah, I’m good.”

  “Do I really have to tell you that you are family, Charlie Boy?”

  “Sorry, man, I just…I miss her.”

  He nodded. “The sooner you let her go, the sooner you’ll feel better.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “It might not be up to you.” He sighed again, getting up when Elise dragged her bag down the staircase.

  He made a joke about her packing light that I normally woulda laughed at. But instead, I stared at the outline of her face on the paper before tearing it out altogether. I couldn’t even get that right. Head in my hands, I put my elbows up on the table and tried to get myself straight. Ben was right; it wasn’t my choice no more—never was. But I knew I had to see her again even if it was the last thing I did.

  Hell, especially if it was the last thing I did.

  Chapter 18

  I still told myself it was wrong even after the gang left and I finished healing up. I repeated it to myself for a week or two even after she was outta the spotlight and things started to get back to normal. I kept my time doing everything I could to not think about anything else but about just how wrong it was.

  Course, none of that worked.

  So I gave in. After giving it a good cleaning, I covered the inside of the trailer with the sketches that were decent enough to have a home on the wall. When I lifted or went running, I listened to the radio stations nearby her and wondered if she was listening to ’em too, pretended she was, and ima
gined she liked all the same songs I did. I ignored them when the guys called or sent me stupid postcards and instead spent nights walking around town, looking in the windows. What would she think ’bout that old typewriter in the antique place? Would she like the onion rings at Pearly’s? What about wine? I had a hard time picturing her drinking, but if she did, would it be red or white? Pink or ice? Would she giggle if the bubbles from champagne tickled her nose?

  I left the day before Polo was supposed to get back, knowing full well that he wouldn’t know whether or not to tell the fellas, and that they wouldn’t even be too sure of what to do when they figured out where I’d run off to. Forget about the fact that I was fresh off the ten most wanted list and still shoulda been holed up in a cave somewhere, I was still enough in my mind to know that if I didn’t see Addie again—and soon—that I’d go crazy in the long term.

  That first day I drove a good ten hours before crashing at a crummy motel just inside of Nevada. As much as I needed to sleep though, I couldn’t. Technically, I might not have been that much closer to her, but every mile felt like a lifetime and I couldn’t bare keep my eyes shut, let alone relax. The next day I didn’t stop ’til I was well into Wyoming.

  A week into it I was strung out and tired, but I felt better than I had in months, more energized and excited like a little kid going to a carnival or something. I’d just gotten into Jersey and the idea that I could ever be that close again had me reeling and my blood pumping. For the fourth time I stayed in another crummy motel, trying to steady my hands while I shaved. She was over an hour away, but it seemed like she was almost close enough to touch.

  My hands were shakin’ even worse by the time I got to Summit, a lame town in what seemed like an even lamer state. But Jersey wasn’t lame no more ’cause I knew that was where Addie was, where she’d grown up and lived the great life she’d had until I had walked into it.