by C. M. Owens
I stop at the blue car in the lot, unlock it with the spare fob I have, and toss my things into the back.
“Well, alright. I’m done at the diner, so I’m going home. Be careful on your trip,” she tells me as I lock up the car and head into a different diner than the one she’s leaving.
Again, I tell her goodbye, but this time it’s for good. It’s time to start a new life, and with a new life will come a new phone.
Dropping the phone in the trashcan by the door, I walk toward the back, ordering a coffee as I pass the counter.
Julia had odd timing with her call, and I’m sure Rush thought I was setting him up for a trip to town, but all’s well that ends well. I wonder how long he watched my fake snuff film.
Is he so jaded that he watched it all?
Has Herrin fucked his head up so much that he enjoyed it?
Or did he barge into the faux fray to make sure he was the one who got to kill me, only to be severely disappointed by my absence.
“Karen!” a friendly redhead calls, and I prepare to put on one last show as Karen Canady, while I move to the table of five hulking men…who look a little less intimidating than they did this morning.
“Nice performance,” I tell them all dryly, causing them all to glare at me.
“You telling a cop we were threatening you was totally not part of the deal,” Tommy snaps, even as he tries to restrain a smile. “I almost shit myself.”
Laughing, I slide into the huge corner booth next to him, as Fiona drops off my coffee.
This is my out-of-town, nobody-knows-me diner that I visit on a very rare occasion, so as not to become overly familiar.
“Well, you were supposed to mention an anonymous tip that you forgot to bring up,” I say with an unapologetic shrug.
“Didn’t realize it was going to earn that sort of betrayal,” Tommy says, still grinning.
“You going to tell us who that show was even for?” Kevin asks from beside me, nudging me with his elbow.
“Or why you gave us money to buy a car and bring it here?” Tommy adds.
“Or why we’re meeting at a diner an hour away from your home?” Troy chimes in.
“Or why you called us from another phone number last week that is no longer working?”
“Anything you don’t want to ask?” I muse, deflecting.
I guzzle the coffee and lift my finger, signaling for a refill. I’ll be driving all night.
For now, I’m not worried about Rush finding me. I’ve already left him behind. He’s not going to find me on the interstate, and at least one of the Smiths will be taking my old car with them, while I take off in the one I had them bring.
“You in some kind of trouble, Checkmate?” Troy asks, piling onto their questions.
As my coffee gets refilled, I shake my head. “No trouble. At least not now. Long story with a lot of family drama. Not life and death or anything,” I lie, giving them a reassuring grin they seem to buy.
“It’s not really as weird as that time she had us make that video where we attacked her in her home,” Kevin says with a shudder.
“Wasn’t that two or three years ago?” Tommy asks, a smile curving his lips. “You never told us if you got that internship at that fancy filming place where you were sending that video.”
“If she’d gotten it, she wouldn’t have been waitressing at the diner,” Troy groans.
It’s sad when five overgrown teddy bears are arguing about ridiculous things makes you feel sort of feel lonely and jaded. Then again, there’s a reason I like these five. It almost reminds me of home—minus the guns, violence, and bloodshed.
“She’s doing that thing where she lets us talk, while we forget she’s evading questions,” Ladon says as he gives me a pointed stare.
“I’m just drinking coffee. It’s going to be a long trip.”
“Driving an hour south isn’t going to get you anywhere closer to New York,” Tommy says, sitting up as he gives me an incredulous look.
“True. I guess I should tell you I’m not going to New York. By the way, how’s Collin?”
Ask them about their baby brother whose death I helped fake, and they’ll finally shut the hell up about me.
“He’s going to be pissed when we tell him we got to see you again without him,” Tommy says with a wicked grin.
“So pissed. Should be fun when we meet him at the hunting lodge,” Troy adds.
“Thanks for detouring out my way. I really do appreciate it,” I tell them.
Five sets of shoulders shrug.
“Just happy to see you, Checkmate. We owed you one for all you did for Collin,” Tommy tells me. “Anything we can report back to our baby brother to make him crazy with jealousy so he might run off, chase you, and bring you back home with him? You’re the only girl he’s dated that my wife has liked.”
“Or that we’ve liked,” Ladon goes on.
“That’s only because none of you know the real me,” I tell them with a wink.
They laugh like they think I’m joking, not realizing that the sweetheart with some death-faking talents is a fraud. None of them would really like me if they truly knew me. They’d feel uneasy, uncomfortable, and definitely unwilling to come help me with my random requests.
Everyone likes the sweet, smiling girl. No one ever really cares for the damaged goods.
“Thanks for dropping off my car for me, but I need to get going,” I say as I finish the second cup of coffee and ask for one to go.
“No problem,” Kevin says. “But seriously, are you in trouble?”
I shake my head again, feeling a little impatient to shed Karen and be Kara for just a little while for the first time in so long. Just long enough to get settled somewhere and decide who to be for another seven years or more.
“No trouble, guys. I promise.”
“We should get going too. We have to go to our family lodge, and show Collin this,” Kevin says as he grins…and then he takes a selfie with his arm around me.
“And this,” he adds, stretching his arm out farther so he can get the whole table in.
“If you show a bit more cleavage, he’s sure to come chasing after you,” Troy stage whispers.
Rolling my eyes, I laugh as I stand, going to the counter. The guys all toss down their tips, having already eaten and apparently paid. It took me a little longer to get here than expected.
I try to drive the speed limit. Given the obvious, I know that sounds weird, but high speeds aren’t my thing, and despite my charming tongue, I’ve never been able to talk my way out of a ticket. Cops can smell damaged goods like me from a mile away.
I’d hate to explain a backpack full of weapons minus their serial numbers.
“Hey, why five?” Tommy asks me as he comes to the counter, leaning up beside me. “You said back then you needed all five of us for the scene, and said the film was about a girl on the run from her criminal father who wanted to kill her for betraying him to the cops.”
“What do you mean?” I ask absently as I stir in some sugar for my to-go coffee and drop my own tip at the counter.
“I mean, why did you need five guys for the scene instead of just one or two? Five seems like overkill to rough up one woman.”
Smiling a little secretively, I answer, “Because her father would have never have believed any less than five could have taken her.”
“Oh, making the chick a badass. Figures. You look like one of those feminist, Wonder Woman fanatics,” he says, rolling his eyes, even as his grin tells me he’s kidding.
But I don’t smile back as I stare back down at the coffee. “Not a badass,” I say quietly. “Just a trained and desperate survivor.”
When my eyes come back up, he’s giving me a look that has me remembering I still need to wear my Karen Canady smile for just a minute longer.
The second it spreads, his eyes soften. “Call us anytime, Canady. Or marry Collin so we can see you a little more, you hermit.”
He drops my keys on the counter
and takes the other keys I brought in.
“Collin’s going to be really pissed that you gave me old Margaret. He knows how much you love that car.”
“You make it sound like we dated longer than a week,” I dutifully point out, forcing him to laugh a little louder.
“But that was the best fucking week. So much meat got stored in the freezer that season.”
“Obviously. I’m a superb hunter,” I tell him, same as always.
“All because you two scared all the hell out of the forest and sent the living things racing toward our end. Damn banshee girl.”
“The banshee was actually Collin,” I quip.
To this, he doubles over, laughing so hard he can’t catch his breath, and I savor this last moment as Karen. I wish I’d had more moments like this as her. She’s a rather boring girl most of the time.
He claps my shoulder on his way by, and the other four wave at me, calling out Checkmate as they go.
I wait a few minutes for them to leave so they don’t watch which direction I go. Once I’m sure they’re gone, I exit, sipping my coffee as I pull my keys out and head to the blue car. I’m not sure what kind of car it is.
Don’t care.
I gave them money to buy me something cheap, dependable, and great on gas. Then they held it for a year.
I’ve been planning ahead for a while.
I felt the clock counting down.
Growing up with a paranoid father who had/has a hellacious amount of enemies definitely stirs extra doses of instinct. You learn to feel danger long before it reaches the point of breathing down your neck.
Well…usually.
I stand corrected when there’s suddenly a hard body slamming into the back of mine, forcing me to drop the coffee as I’m crushed between a wall of muscle and a wall of unrelenting blue car.
My elbow jerks up, even though my space is limited, but a hand wrenches it back. Just as I start to scream, a piece of duct-tape is slapped over my mouth, muffling the sound.
My other hand is wrenched back after that, all of it happening so fast that I can’t get my mind to react quickly enough.
“Your fight has always turned me on, Kara,” a smug voice says against my ear, one sounding so distantly familiar, but still fresh enough that I know who he is. “Go on. See if I’m still the same weak boy.”
My lips tighten, causing the duct-tape to tug at my mouth, as I glare over the top of my car into the night.
The diner lights are bright, but they still don’t reach the car. This was a stupid oversight.
Turning my head a little, I stare through the window at Fiona waiting on her lone table, and the cook sitting on a chair, reading his newspaper.
Without another word, the bastard I once loved spins me around, somewhat painfully bringing my hands with him as he shoves them over my head and forces me to bend against the car.
Cold, arrogant, and unforgiving eyes meet mine, as the more dangerous version of the boy I used to fantasize about keeps me caged in.
“Now let’s take a ride,” he says with a smirk as he fastens my hands together with zip ties.
In the next breath, I’m slung over his shoulder with no more warning than that. If I wasn’t worried about him shooting holes in the diner, I’d struggle a little harder. But I know how much Herrin hates witnesses—witnesses don’t get to live.
That’s the difference between my father and I. We’re both survivors. I just happen to have a conscience.
Which is why I’ll be the one to die first.
“Your brother wants to see you,” he goes on, still smirking.
My heart leaps to my throat and plummets to my toes in the span of a few seconds.
Drex is the one doing this?
Betrayal never gets easier.
Chapter 5
RUSH
“Mmnnhmhnmmmmnn,” is the exaggerated sounds coming from her muffled mouth as she struggles with the oh-shit handle I have her hands secured to.
It’s been three hours of payback, so I finally reach over without looking and rip the duct-tape off. As expected, she doesn’t scream or even make a sound of pain.
Kara has too much pride and stubbornness built into her to show her pain.
“What the actual fuck happened to you?” she bites out instead. “And why does Drex want me? And lastly, can you please slow the hell down?! There’s no reason to be driving like a maniac!”
Lips twitching, I accelerate a little more, and if she could glare a hole through me, I’d have one gaping through the center of my head.
“Couldn’t you have tied my hands a little lower?” she goes on. “My arms have lost circulation.”
“Any lower and you’d be trying to swing open the door,” I tell her dismissively.
“A door I’m tied to that would drag me across the interstate while going a thousand miles per hour if I fell out? My self-preservation instincts would demand smarter actions,” she snaps.
“I’m about to stop for gas. I’ll adjust it then,” I tell her with a shrug. “But if you try to escape, I’ll bind your ankles too, and your arms will remain above your head for the rest of the trip.”
She glances around, taking in the scenery. She won’t try to escape in a place where there’s literally no one but one gas station attendant and an otherwise empty lot.
She’s far more calculated than that.
As soon as I park and get the gas started, I adjust her arms, warily regarding her the entire time. She groans as though it’s tortured relief to have her arms down. Like a soft, old habit, I gently massage her arms.
Her eyes swing up to meet mine like she’s shocked, and I stop immediately before shutting the door she’s no longer attached to.
The gas cuts off at the pump, and I finish up as I walk back around to the driver’s side and squeal back out in the next fifteen seconds.
She’s a little calmer when she asks, “What does Drex want with me?”
“If you hadn’t pulled that stunt at your house, I’d tell you. But since you did…”
I give her a fuck-off smirk as my words trail off, and I resume watching the road.
She snorts derisively. “You have no idea how much forethought and planning when into that video, along with everything else. And you flushed it all down the drain by popping up here. How’d you find me?”
“How’d you do it?” I ask her.
“That’s more complicated than the question I asked you,” she grumbles. “Pop is decidedly predictable in some areas. He’d never just show up and kill me in a town like that. In a town where people loved me. He’d have to take me, and he’d have to do it without fifty second-amendment-loving people rushing out with a gun to defend me if they heard my screams.”
“Fifty people,” I say around a laugh. “Funny. I don’t picture them as the gun-toting, life-saving townspeople.”
“That’s because you’re from Halo where the people have learned to be scared of their own shadows. But there, where nothing ever happens to show them how cruel and dangerous men like you can be, yes. All of them would come rushing to my aide. Hence the reason I chose the most popular neighborhood.”
She says all this like she’s smug and proud.
“Worked out great for you,” I point out.
She resumes glaring at me.
Annoyed, she adds, “I spent years trying to learn how to intercept video feed and run a loop like that. Self-taught myself mostly with internet tutorials. I only managed to take a couple of classes to fill in the gaps. It’s a plan I’ve been building for years, and it was flawless. So how’d you find me?”
One corner of my mouth tugs in a grin. “Things have changed. I had your phone’s GPS tracked.”
“I knew I should have thrown it away sooner,” she grumbles. “When the hell did you guys get that sophisticated?”
“We didn’t,” is all I say.
“That makes no sense,” she argues.
I remain quiet, letting her stew a little.
�
�So, were those really the presumed-dead Collin Smith’s brothers?”
“If I answer that, then you have to tell me what Drex wants with me,” she fires back.
I shrug noncommittally. “I’m not really bothered by unanswered questions as much as you,” I remind her.
She blows out a breath. “Those were really Collin’s brothers.”
“Is Collin really dead?”
“Ha! No. He’s probably at the lodge with his latest flavor of the week. I went to their lodge two years ago for a trip I got invited on when Collin swung through town. It was one of those really memorable weeks for the Smiths, because they found me utterly delightful as I helped them plot his great escape from his mound of unnatural debt. I was suddenly the little sister they’d never had, and they were really pissed at Collin for not immediately falling in love with me.”
To that, I snort. Clearly they have no idea what she’s really like. They’d have shit all over themselves.
“After that, I kept in touch with them, but not Collin. And he paid me a visit at the diner last year on his way through, trying to convince me to spend another week with him and his family before we faked his questionable-can-be-reversed-death loophole. I turned him down, but he stuck around all day trying to convince me otherwise, because his family really wanted Karen Canady back for another week.”
“Must have been some week,” I say a little too bitterly, which of course causes her to smile.
“I gave them the perfect girl. Of course it was a good week. Collin got the wildcat he wanted. The brothers got a little tomboy sister who could hunt, fish, and drink beer right alongside them. The wives got a sister who could cook, clean, and carry on exciting light-feminist conversations. I was like the missing piece. Which was my goal.”
Her head lolls to the side.
“But they never knew me or it would have been a much different week. They found it perfection. I found it exhausting. However, I did like them. I had some awesome hunting strategies, and I spent the week beating them all in chess.”
“So how’d you make it work? My PI said—”
“I just planted information where I needed it in case any PI came sniffing around me.” She gives me a pointed stare. “One thing I do know how to do is start very believable rumors. Herrin’s specialty, as I’m sure you’re well aware. In fact, I heard a rumor that I’m dead and Drex killed me on Herrin’s command. I also heard a lot of people believe that rumor. More people believe it than question it.”