by D. L. Wood
“A little seedy?” Chloe questioned. “You said it was a little seedy.”
Jack shrugged. “Okay, maybe a lot seedy. But it’s clean, and out of the way, and the only traffic coming by here is for the motel. And we had to get out of sight. Sampson’s bound to be combing the streets for you. For us.” He pulled into a spot in front of the lobby. “I’ll get us a room.”
“You don’t think this is exactly the kind of place they’ll expect us to go?”
Jack shrugged. “I hope not. But I’ve got to get cleaned up, and we need to regroup. I’m not ready to drag anybody else into this yet. Are you?”
Chloe shook her head.
“We’re just gonna have to take our chances tonight.”
“You need a credit card or something . . . wait, no.”
Jack nodded in agreement. “We can’t use plastic.”
Chloe’s face dropped. “I’ve only got fifty, maybe fifty-five on me.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got enough to cover us for a while.”
“What about after that?”
He smiled and reached over to squeeze her hand. “We’ll drown in that river when we get to it.” He opened his door and stepped out. “I’ll be right back.”
Through the lobby’s large window, Chloe watched Jack approach the counter and ring the night bell. Eventually a yawning wide-mouthed teenager stumbled through the doorway behind the counter. It was well after midnight, and from the look of the boy’s tousled hair, Jack had woken him from a deep sleep. The two spoke briefly, then the clerk pushed the register to Jack. He signed it, slid the book back to the clerk, and tossed two bills on top of it. The clerk withdrew a key from a drawer and handed it to Jack. As he walked back to the car, the lobby lights flicked off.
“Number twenty-four,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Thought it’d be better if we were on the end.”
He parked as far around the building as he could to hide the car from the road. Gathering what little they had, they walked the few yards to room twenty-four. The door squeaked noisily on its hinges as Jack swung it open.
Run down was an understatement. A queen-sized bed covered in a thin, flowered spread that had seen too many guests took up much of the room. The rest of the sparse furniture was mismatched and duct-taped together in places, and the standing lamp was missing all its bulbs. But it was clean and, as exhausted as Chloe was, that was good enough for her. She dropped her things on the floor and fell backwards onto the bed. Jack locked the door and latched the chain.
“I’m not moving from this spot,” she announced, closing her eyes. Jack sat down beside her.
“Why don’t you get some rest?” he urged. “I’ll stay up for a while.”
“You wouldn’t think I’d be able to sleep right now, you know?” she muttered. “But it’s all I want to do.”
“It’s fine.”
She breathed in deeply, ignoring the slightly ruined smell of the linens. She just needed to disconnect. To escape. Just . . . for a moment . . .
She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until the sound of running water ushered her back to consciousness. Groggily, she raised her left arm to her face and checked her watch. It was 1:03 in the morning. She had been out less than half an hour, but the heaviness in her limbs made it feel like it had been half the night. She squinted and blinked, trying to moisten her dry eyes.
“Jack?” she called out weakly.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting up. The room was dark except for the sliver of light emanating from where the bathroom door sat slightly ajar.
“Just cleaning up,” he called from behind the door. “Go back to sleep.”
A glint of metal on the bedside table caught her eye. The sight of it chilled her.
“Jack,” she started nervously, “whose gun is that?”
“Mine,” he answered matter-of-factly from behind the door. “Or at least it is now.”
“I didn’t know you liked guns,” she said tentatively, lowering her feet over the bed’s edge.
“I wouldn’t say liked, exactly.”
She focused on the gap in the doorway. “So what did happen to you earlier, after I called?” She pushed off the bed and moved to the door, leaning her face into the gap. “You never said how you got all wet—”
The rest of her sentence was choked off by a horrified gasp as she caught a glimpse of Jack through the opening. She swung the door open to him sitting on the closed toilet lid, left leg propped up on the tub. Drops of blood from an ugly gash on his calf peppered the floor. A second gun lay beside him on the edge of the tub.
“What happened to you?” she shrieked, gaping at the wound.
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” she gasped, pointing at the blood. “How did I not notice that before? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wasn’t important. It’s fine. I’ve pretty much stopped the bleeding.”
Her face contorted as she scrutinized the gash. “Is that . . . a gunshot wound?”
“Just grazed.”
“Just grazed? Are you kidding me? You need a doctor, Jack!” Nausea rolled over her as she pushed away thoughts of what could have happened to him. All because of her. All her fault.
He pulled his leg back. “I’ll wrap it up and be fine. Besides,” he smiled, “it’s only a flesh wound,” he finished in a poor attempt at a cockney accent.
“That’s not funny,” she mumbled, as she took the rust-colored washcloth from him. “Here, let me do that.” She rinsed the cloth in warm water from the sink and wrung it out, a stream of reddish-brown trickling into the basin. She soaked the cloth again, then wrung it over the wound to irrigate it. After repeating the process several times and being certain the wound was free of debris, she hung the cloth over the edge of the sink and got up off her knees. “Don’t move,” she ordered and went into the bedroom.
Chloe returned with a long strip of white fabric and knelt down beside him. “Let’s just pray they washed the pillowcases sometime in the last decade,” she remarked as she wrapped the strip tightly around his leg twice to cover the wound, then secured it with a knot.
Jack checked the bandage for himself. “Not bad,” he admitted.
“This is insane,” she pronounced in a hollow voice, slumping dejectedly against the bathroom doorframe. Her gaze rolled up and settled randomly on a spot on the wall tile, where it stayed, zombie-like, for several long moments. “What are we gonna do?”
“You,” Jack started, peeling her off the doorframe and ushering her back onto the bed, “are going back to sleep. I,” he said, sitting down in a rattan chair by the bed, “am taking first watch.” He held one of the guns ready in his right hand, as he slid the second gun off the bedside table and held it out to her. “Take it.”
“But—”
“You need to be armed, Chloe. Understand? Now take it.”
She slipped the gun from his open hand and laid it beside her pillow. Jack eased forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he spoke.
“We’re going to do exactly what we planned. Tomorrow we find a computer, take a look at whatever’s on that flash drive, and figure out what’s going on. Then we’ll see about getting off this island and in touch with someone we can trust.”
Chloe rolled over to face him. “What happened to you, Jack?”
Ignoring her, he brushed a wisp of hair from her face. “Your forehead’s starting to bruise,” he said.
She pressed him. “Jack.”
He sighed heavily. “I went home and found the boat trashed. Then you called. Right after, two guys came at me, and, long story short, I got the jump on them. This,” he said gesturing at his leg with the gun, “is where one of them grazed me, but . . . well, he got it worse. I took the guns off them.” He leaned back in the chair. “Nothing else to tell, really.”
He made it sound so simple. So normal. As if any of this was normal. As if any of this could even be digested.
�
��How did you even do that?” she asked desperately. “One unarmed guy against two guys with guns? You could have been killed. And that’s the second time you’ve nearly been killed over me.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“You were lucky.”
“I prefer to think I was protected.”
She squeezed the pillow beneath her head and sighed. She just didn’t have the energy to wrap her mind around it. She drew her knees to her chest, wishing she could just go back to sleep. Back into nothingness. But the images lingered.
“He told me he was going to break my fingers one by one,” she said quietly, not meeting Jack’s gaze, and not knowing quite sure why she was telling him this.
“Who?”
“The detective. Sampson. He was twisting this one,” she said, and wiggled her pinky at him weakly. “But then the phone rang and he got called off.”
Determination shadowed Jack’s face as he turned her face to his. “You’re safe here,” he promised, certainty casing each word.
Safe, she thought, sinking into his green eyes. She could wrap her head around safe.
“You hear me?” he pressed, his voice low and steady. “Nothing will happen to you here.”
Her need to believe him battled her fear. “I’m scared, Jack.”
He nodded his understanding, but a rock-steadiness emanated from him. “You. Are. Safe. We will work this out in the morning.” He gave her hand a small squeeze. “Now go to sleep or I’m going to.”
It sounded so good to her—sleep and safety. When she was asleep, none of this was happening. None of this was real, and Jack would be watching over her. Jack, her unexpected savior. This man she barely knew, who had put himself in harm’s way for her. Twice. What would I have done without him? The universe had sent him to her at exactly the right moment.
The thought momentarily sparked something in her belly that felt almost like . . . doubt. But she let the flash slip away as quickly as it had come. Because she needed to believe in him. There was nothing else. She simply had to.
She closed her eyes. “Jack?” she murmured.
“Yeeessss?” he drawled, feigning exasperation.
“Thanks.”
Rocking forward, he bent over her, soothingly tucked a few wisps of hair behind her ear and in a low voice whispered, “You’re welcome.”
* * * * *
She was snoring. A good sign. He relaxed a bit, leaning into the chair as he watched her breathe, in and out, in and out. He ran a tired hand through his hair, resting it on the back of his neck where he could feel the beginnings of a knotted muscle. This was going to be harder than he thought. Much harder.
NINETEEN
When Chloe finally stirred the next morning, she had about ten seconds of blissful forgetfulness before everything came rolling back. A burst of panicky nausea punched her in the gut as she rocketed up, expecting to see Jack asleep in the old rattan chair beside the bed. He wasn’t.
“Jack, you in there?” she called out hopefully towards the closed bathroom door. No answer. Throwing herself out of bed, she swept towards the bathroom and swung the door open. Empty. She checked her watch. 7:38 a.m.
Scratching sounded outside the front door. The lock clicked. Someone was turning a key in it.
Chloe dashed to the bed, fumbled amongst the pillows, then snatched up the gun, diving down beside the bed just as the door opened. Peering beneath the bed, she saw a man’s leg in the doorway.
She readied herself to swing her arm over the bed and take aim.
“Chloe?” a familiar voice called out.
Her pounding heart slowed as she exhaled in relief. “Really, Jack? Why didn’t you say who you were?” she groaned, rising to her feet and brandishing the gun in front of her as he locked the door behind him. “I could have shot you.”
“Not with it like that you wouldn’t,” he quipped, nodding at the gun. “Safety’s on.”
She rotated the gun to get a look at the safety mechanism, which sure enough, was still engaged. She could feel heat rising in her face. “I . . . I just woke up, you came in . . . I just grabbed the thing. I wasn’t thinking.”
He raised his eyebrows and smirked. “We’ll have to work on that.”
She didn’t bite. “I woke up alone and thought you . . .” She hesitated, embarrassed now to tell him what her first thought had been.
“You thought I left,” he finished for her. He plopped down on the bed, laid his head back and closed his eyes, releasing a satisfied sigh. Moments later he opened his eyes to find her still standing, looking abashed.
“It’s okay,” he offered. “I would have thought the same thing.” Her shoulders sagged, and she sat down beside him. He closed his eyes again. “You looked so peaceful . . . you needed rest. I didn’t want to wake you. I stayed right in that chair all night,” he said firmly, but reassuringly. “I only left about a half hour ago. Went down to that convenience store off the highway,” he said, tossing a paper bag onto the bed, “picked up a couple things.”
She snatched up the bag and pulled out a couple of Cokes, some bananas, and a box of Pop-Tarts. Jack held out a hand, and she passed one of each to him.
“Sorry about the breakfast. There wasn’t much to choose from.”
“It’s great,” she mumbled, taking a bite of the stale blueberry pastry. “Did you sleep at all?”
“I caught an hour or two.” His eyes flicked open. “But I’m a light sleeper. It was perfectly safe.”
“It’s fine, really. I’m glad you slept. I’m not complaining,” she offered. “Thanks for letting me rest.”
He nodded and pushed himself up, leaning against the rattan headboard. “So, I think we’re okay for now. No traffic. Only a few cars here.”
She popped open the Coke can, took a sip, and set it on the nightstand. She lifted the bag again. “What else is in here?” she asked, rummaging through it. “Tylenol. And bandages, bottled water, and . . .” She stopped short, pulling her hand from the bag to reveal a cheap, flip-style cell phone. “For me?”
Jack nodded, extracting a matching one from his front pocket and wiggling it. “I took the batteries and SIM cards out of ours last night while you were out. On the off chance that Sampson might try to use them to find us.”
She nodded, then pulled from the bag an old box of hair dye so dusty, it must’ve been on the shelf for years. A raven-haired woman sporting a very nineties hairstyle graced the front. Chloe eyed Jack suspiciously. “Really?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s a small island. It can’t hurt. There’s another one in there. Blond. I’ll let you pick—ladies first.”
Her gaze drifted back to the soiled box for a moment, then, very reluctantly, she sighed and nodded.
“There’s some scissors down in there, too.”
Chloe squeezed her eyes, as if shutting out the idea, but after a moment nodded again. “So what next?”
“I did some thinking while you were getting your beauty sleep,” he said, “and I think our best bet is to get in touch with the U.S. authorities. We can’t trust anybody down here.”
“That, I totally agree with,” Chloe said without hesitation.
“Well, don’t get too excited. I’m not sure it’ll do much good. There’s no U.S. presence here. No embassy. So the best we can do is a phone call to the closest one. We’ll have to check that when we get to a computer. And even if we get through to someone who matters, I’m not sure what they’ll be able to do down here. But we’ve got to get help from somewhere. Maybe they can smooth our way out of here and back home.”
“Sampson will be watching the airports.”
He nodded. “That’s why we need the help,” he said, pushing out of the chair. “But we’ve got to be able to back up what we’re saying. Before we do anything, we’ve got to get a look at that flash drive and figure out what and who we’re dealing with. I checked up front. They’ve got nothing we can borrow. Just an ancient desktop—doesn’t even have a USB port. Anyway, they’d be standing over
us the whole time.” Jack checked his watch.
“So, what, we head to, some place with public access to computers? Like a copy shop or library . . . or, hey, there’s a cyber café near the airport.”
He shook his head. “Too obvious. I think we have to assume they knew the flash drive was in the envelope and that they might be expecting us to try to get a look at what’s on it. This isn’t New York. There’s only a couple of ‘office away from the office’ shops here. They’d be watching them. The library too. And I don’t think we should get anywhere near the airport.” He paused. “I tried calling a guy earlier—”
“I thought we agreed not to involve any more friends,” she interrupted, looking surprised.
“Well, he’s not a friend, exactly. He’s, well, it’s sort of hard to explain, but trust me, he wouldn’t mind. And he owes me a favor.” He held up a hand to hold her off when it looked like she was going to protest again. “It doesn’t matter anyway. He didn’t answer. And we can’t wait on him. Sometimes he’s out of pocket for a while.”
“Okay, so what else?”
“We could try picking one up at a pawn shop, but I don’t think we should chance running a credit card. I’ve got about two hundred cash, but we’re gonna need that—”
“Hotels.”
His eyes flicked to hers and doubt creased his mouth. “Hotels?”
“We just worm our way into one of those complimentary business offices at the hotels. Most of the larger ones have them now, or at least a couple of computers available for airline bookings. There are dozens and dozens of hotels just on this side of the island alone. They can’t possibly watch them all.”