by Teagan Kade
Bobby nods to Hunter. “What about you, Big Boy? Got anything to add?”
Hunter glances up. “Where were you the night of the sixteenth?”
Bobby bursts out laughing before his expression suddenly turns grim. He leans over the seat. “Rumor is Siddell here likes pain, the really kinky stuff, but you… You try that shit again and we’re going to have a problem.”
“Is that so?” replies Hunter, the testosterone level in this vehicle climbing by the second.
I look out the window and realize where we are. We’re not headed to the station. We’re headed away from it, down to the docks.
The Captain’s car pulls into a side street, Hunter indicating and following.
What the hell’s going on?
The Captain’s car stops ahead, brake lights red, the street too narrow for us to pass.
I look back to the rear-view in time to see Bobby raising his gun.
“Gun!” I shout.
Hunter shifts left just in time, the first two shots punching through the windscreen. It’s deafening, my ears ringing, but I jump up and manage to swat at Bobby’s arm as he lets off another round, this one barely missing Hunter’s head and shattering the driver’s side window.
I reach for Chewie… until I realize we handed in our weapons at City Hall.
Hunter turns and grabs Bobby’s wrist with one hand, punching him square in the nose with the other, the impact driving Bobby into the other corner of the car’s rear.
He’s dazed, but he’s not out.
I stretch to take his gun, but I’m forced to duck again when the front windscreen shatters.
I twist to see the Captain stalking down the street, his gun high.
I open my door and start to get out, keeping my head low as shots pepper the bodywork of the car. “Go!” I scream.
I’ve seen more bullets flying in three days than I have my entire working career.
Hunter does the same, the two of us moving around to the back of the car while the Captain continues to fire. He’s shown his true hand now. He can’t afford to let us get away.
I join Hunter, the two of us sprinting for the end of the street.
Another shot echoes off the walls of the buildings enclosing us, a white jab of pain following around my upper thigh.
I stagger forward but Hunter’s got me, helping me to my feet. “Come on.”
Ding. Something goes pinging off a street sign as we hit the main road and break left. We’re running out of time. They’ll be on us soon, but at least we’re in the open now.
I spot a taxi up on the next road, shoving both my fingers into my mouth and whistling as hard as I can.
It continues ahead. Please, please.
It takes a right and darts towards us, coming to a quick stop.
I open the rear door, Hunter bundling me in from behind. “Drive!” he shouts.
The driver, a young Latin man with pompadour has clearly watched enough procedurals to know the drill. He plants it and we take off, a final glance out the window to see Bobby arrive first, his gun in hand, blood streaming from his nose.
The Captain joins them, the two of them standing there like a couple of wayward tourists as we rejoin the flow of traffic.
Hunter takes hold of my leg, examining it. “Are you hit?”
I roll over slightly onto the other ass cheek, my thigh out. My pants are torn, bloody.
Hunter reaches down and tears at them, looking over the wound.
I wince as he tests the surrounding area. “No entry, a graze at most. You’re lucky.”
I relax back into the seat, the bullet graze burning like hellfire. “What now? We’re pretty low on options here.”
“We could go to the press,” Hunter suggests.
“We don’t have enough evidence. Hell, we don’t even know the full story here, how deep this shit show goes or who’s part of it, but one thing is clear.”
“What’s that?”
“We can’t stay here with targets on our backs. They just tried to take us out. We’ve got to run.” My head’s telling me it’s the coward’s option, but given the choice of being a coward or being dead, I think we have to go with the former.
“Run to where?” asks Hunter.
“It doesn’t matter as long as we cover our tracks and keep a low profile. We need time to think and plan and work out what in god’s good name we’re going to do to stop our heads being blown off, because the longer we stay here, the higher the chance we’re done away with just like Rachel. She knew too much, and they killed her,” I snap my fingers and fight back a sudden splinter of emotion, “like that. Sure, taking out two detectives is certainly levelling it up, but apparently that’s not an issue either now.
Hunter takes out his cell, removing the SIM. He opens the window and tosses it into the wind. “Let’s get to it then.”
I take mine out and do the same, crushing it under my heel on the taxi’s patchwork carpet for good measure.
There’s no point going back to our apartments, so I have the driver take us to an address in Queens.
The taxi drives off, the sky overhead a blunt gray as Hunter takes in the terrace house before us. Its state of dilapidation probably isn’t filling him full of confidence. “Is this some kind of safehouse?”
I run up the front stairs and hit the doorbell. “Not quite.”
The door cracks open, two beady eyes staring out of the darkness. There’s a beat before it opens fully, the elderly man beyond stepping forward. “Grace? Is that you?”
I smile. “Hi, Arthur.”
He whistles. “Boy, have you grown. What’s it been? Five years? How’s your Pop?”
“He’s… not doing so well.”
Arthur rubs at the furrows in his brow. “Oh, hell, is he…?”
“No,” I shake my head, “he’s fine, but,” I gesture down to Hunter, “my partner here and I need a favor, two cops to another. We need Rosanne.”
*
We’re standing in the tiny garage around the back of Arthur’s place.
Hunter leans over to me, whispering. “Who is this guy?”
“He used to work with Dad back in the day—vice squad. We can trust him.”
Arthur pulls a sheet off the car in the center of the garage, a cloud of fine dust fanning out through the space.
I cough, admiring Dad’s old 1971 Buick Gran Sport in custom ‘TNT’ red.
Arthur stands with his hands on his hips, nodding in approval. “Been sitting here for nigh-on ten years now, but I keep the fluids up, air in the tires, start ‘er up every so often… It hasn’t been registered in years, you know.”
I open the driver’s seat and slide in, breathing in the soft leather. “That’s going to be just fine for our purposes.”
Arthur leans on the door sill. “Is it something I can help with?”
“No,” I state, “thank you, but we’re on our own here.”
He hands over the keys. “She’s all yours.”
Hunter pokes his head through the passenger-side window, his voice low. “There is no way this thing is going to star—”
I turn the key and the 455-cube eight rumbles into life. “What were you saying?”
*
On the road, the Buick’s surprisingly well-balanced.
Hunter’s smiling from the passenger seat, his hand running over the dash. “Isn’t the idea to remain inconspicuous? We’re driving around in the vehicular equivalent of an A-bomb here.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. We’ll keep off the toll roads and drive east, see where we end up. You like it? Ol’ TNT here?”
He grins with appreciation. “I like a woman that knows how to handle a couple of cubes, sure.”
“You know a bit about cars?”
“My brothers and I had something of a pet project, a 1966 Mustang. Cayden’s got it now, but I don’t know. We had everything growing up, but puttering on that thing? It kept us grounded.”
I think of my own father asking me to hand hi
m various items as I sat on a milk crate next to the toolbox, the smell of grease and transmission fluid, the sun baking the concrete underfoot… It feels like so long ago now, before the Alzheimer’s ravaged his mind and body. “I get it,” I reply, applying pressure to the accelerator, the Buick purring. “Good cars get you from A to B. Great cars… Well, they just get you into trouble.”
We drive for the better part of four hours, finally pulling into a roadside diner-slash-motel when the color above abandons the sky.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HUNTER
The giant diner sign buzzes above us, casting everything around it red and unfamiliar. “Where the hell are we going to go?” says Grace, hands on her head.
I exhale. It’s been a long drive, a long day. “We could go to Wrightworth. I’ve got contacts there, good guys who’ll do right by us.”
Grace shakes her head. “No, they’ll know your background, where you’re likely to go. Besides, it’s got to be a forty-hour drive at least. We can’t use our cards, and I’m we’re not exactly swimming in dollar bills, y’all.”
“So we drive,” I offer, “just keep on going.”
“Until we hit Mexico?” she laughs. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not terribly fond of tacos and Tequila.”
She looks around nervously. “In any case, we can’t stand around here all night.”
We pay for a room and settle in.
Grace yawns, surveying the space. I wasn’t expecting much for thirty dollars a night, but the curtains are shredded, a crack running across the roof, and a drip, drip, drip is coming from the bathroom I just know is going to send me insane.
“Where the hell are we again?” asks Grace, falling back onto the bed.
I pick up the motel brochure on the dresser. “Duncansville?”
“Never heard of it.”
I take a seat beside her prone form on the bed. It’s marshmallow soft. “I guess we’re outlaws now.”
“Bonny and Clyde, running from the law.”
“The law running from the law,” I correct. “How’s the leg?”
She rolls up the leg of her pants, looking over the patch-up job I was able to put together behind a pharmacy in Altoona. “No bleeding, my leg is still attached, which I suppose means you’ve got a burgeoning career as a surgeon ahead?”
“What was Bobby saying before, about you liking pain?”
She purses her lips. “My sexual proclivities might tend towards the extreme.”
“How extreme?” I laugh, “and why is this common knowledge?”
“Because I say it like I play it, Beckett.”
“You can call me Hunter, you know. I think we’ve crossed that bridge.”
She uses an elbow to prop herself up, looking down at my crotch. “We came pretty fucking close to death today.”
I take in her flushed face and parted lips. “And all this danger is turning you on?”
“You know what the one benefit of hiding out is?”
“I could hazard a guess.”
I thought she’d want to sleep, but it seems Grace’s sex drive is even higher than my own.
She comes up onto her knees, undoing the buttons on her shirt. “Get your fucking clothes off, baby. Let’s see if we can bring that bad boy back from the dead.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GRACE
Naked, bare as the day I was born, I take in his prone form, my eyes slowly raking across the chiseled lines of his chest. It’s so wide, so fucking hard, ink cutting through its glossy shadow.
His eyes are lingering just as long on my chest, at the pink fingers of my nipples so flushed and erect. “It’s not polite to stare,” I suggest breathlessly.
I don’t know if it’s the life-threatening situation we’re in or the crappy motel with its paperbark curtains and fifties trimmings, but I want to get dirty.
Hunter sits up and grabs me around the waist, pulling me forward over his torso. “I was done with polite a long time ago.”
I lift myself up and scoot forward until the hot divide of my sex is inches from his face. “Pity. I was going to let you lick my pussy if you said please.”
A wry smile forms, his fingers gripping my ass hard. “Hmm, quite the conundrum.”
I shift forward so he can feel the heat radiating from the space between my thighs, see how wet I am for him, his tongue and lips. “Be a good boy. Say it.”
“Fuck that,” he says, drawing me down against his face. His tongue drives deep into my slit. I want to pull away, resist and play this game out, but with the lapping of his tongue leaves the last bit of control I had.
I run my fingers through his hair, pulling him against me, crushing him against my slickness.
He’s greedy, his tongue lashing my clit and folds, dipping and curling and ever-exploring the folds and recesses that have suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree at his touch.
He draws away panting hard, his lips glistening with my desire. “You taste so fucking good, so fucking wet.”
I pull his head back into place. “So get back to work.”
I grind against him—against the rocky ridge of his chin, see-sawing on his beautiful face until everything swells and knits inside me, building and building in both excitement and trepidation.
A tingling starts from my toes, running up between my legs to meet his tongue, a billion tiny butterflies swimming around in my stomach.
I reach back with one hand and take hold of his cock, softly stroking it while I continue to rock gently against his face.
I bite my lip to stop a loud moan from escaping my mouth. No one would care in this shithole. I don’t imagine someone screaming is a rarity, but I want to hold it in, to quietly tread the edge of insanity until I can’t take a single second more.
His tongue flickers against my clit and I let out a pained whimper, my breath hitching when his cock jerks in my grip. He can’t get enough of me, of my sex.
Normally I look at fear and spit in its face, but this situation we’re in is different. This is life and death, which is perhaps why I’m so scared, knowing this could be the last time we’re together, the last time I’m alive, truly. It’s a funny feeling staring into a mirror and finally seeing your mortality staring back. Already I know the climax that is coming is going to be far stronger than any I’ve weathered before, a cataclysm of sensation that might take me well before a bullet does.
Wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I ponder.
Hunter throws me off him, taking me by the ankles and flipping me over.
“What are you d—” I protest, but I don’t get that far before he slams into me with one hard thrust, now the aggressor, the timidity from our initial encounter gone.
Right now, he’s more animal than man.
He presses my head into the mattress with one hand, the other on the small of my back drawing me harder, deeper against his mighty cock.
My eyes roll into the back of my head, my mouth caught open in a silent scream, because this, this is new territory.
And I goddamn like it.
I’m so fucking full it’s ridiculous, stretched wide by his length. There’s a soft burn, a welcome burn as he fucks me, doing his best to drive me through the mattress with every powerful thrust.
I glance back and note the sweat beading across his forehead, how tight his jaw is caught in concentration. He’s fighting it, holding off the inevitable.
I move my hips as much as I can, the ache between my thighs building, my tongue suddenly dry and limp in my mouth.
He flips me over again—far from gentle—and presses his lips hard against my own. He sucks my tongue into his mouth, his lips stained with the aftertaste of my own tart arousal. I moan against his lips, clawing at his scalp, gripping him with such strength there’s no doubt it’s going to leave a permanent mark.
My body shivers as the head of his cock presses against my opening.
He folds my legs, pressing them against my chest and sliding slowly into the tight grip of my pu
ssy. I bite my lip lest I scream like the blue bloody murder. He’s so deep in this position I can feel every ridge and bump on the surface of his cock, the silky shaft of it so fitting against my own wet flesh.
His sickeningly blue eyes are not his own as he stares down at me, his powerful hands holding my legs in position. He slams into me with fresh violence. He’s out of control, wild. I only want more, all of him—whatever wasted end that means.
I know my own eyes are dilated and distant as I watch him work. His chest flexes with every pained thrust, that tight tingle that started in my stomach starting to turn inward and threatening to explode.
I try to match his movements as best I can, but he’s too powerful, in complete control. All I can do is surrender.
One of his hands lets go of my leg. He flattens it out and slowly moves it up my chest before reaching my breasts and the sensitive treasures they hold. He takes a nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
I tense, knowing what’s coming.
He twists, enough for me to see stars, and this time I can’t contain the scream, letting it fill my lungs and throat.
My entire body tightens like a mouse trap.
Who the hell is this guy?
Hello, the real Hunter Beckett.
“Is that how you like it?” he barks.
“Yes,” I moan, breathless. “Yes.”
He twists harder and at the same time uses his other hand to swiftly spank the upturned cheek of my ass.
I gasp, chocking, because this is insane—the pain and the pleasure and everything swirling and mixing together inside me like a hormonal maelstrom.
“Hu—”
That’s all I can get out as he twists the nipple again, spanking the same cheek so hard and directly the sweet pain of it spans out through my entire body.
It’s my undoing. My core clenches for what seems like eternity before I fall, convulsing and flapping on the mattress in the throes of the greatest orgasm of my life, so deep and powerful I shake like I’m having a seizure.
Hunter screams himself, letting go of the nipple and gripping my thigh, his entire weight coming over my body as his cock starts to pulse and fire.