by Amy Faye
A thousand questions, and at the top of the list was 'how do I get past Danny?'
I wasn't thinking about doing it, of course. I wouldn't, not for a second. Helping a known criminal to escape, that's a felony. I'm not responsible for catching that sort of person, but I know enough about the law to know, you don't do that kind of thing.
It takes me from the department considering the option of looking the other way, to committing a big felony. So I'd be an idiot to consider trying to get Ryan past Danny, because that would make what little future I have, extremely short.
It would make my future extremely limited, as well. It'd be, well… I'd have to go with Ryan. More or less like he wanted, I think.
I'd have to jump the border along with him. At some point, of course, we'd both have to find places to settle down. They could be separate, but I don't speak Spanish, and I suppose, if you know someone already, you might as well stick with who you know, right?
So, I mean, it's not that we have a future together, but we could at least stay near each other.
If I were to break him out, which of course I wouldn't.
But I mean, maybe we would have a future together, too? Maybe that's not out of the question? It would probably be cheaper to get one house than two, for example. That would be, I think, totally reasonable. We could be like, room mates.
I mean, one of us could handle that. I don't know if Ryan could keep his hands off me, and I guess I wouldn't mind if that happened, every so often.
But I mean, I'm not really looking forward to it, or anything.
And that's only if I break him out, which I won't.
Or maybe, you know, we'll see how things go. Maybe we live together, maybe there's some kind of ongoing relationship, even.
Maybe we get married. I can't imagine that it's too hard to get married, even in Mexico. Maybe we have a couple of kids. Maybe Ryan teaches them to ride, maybe he teaches them how to shoot. Maybe we have a little family, down there.
Away from all the trouble. I don't know. That would all be in the future, and I'm not thinking about it at all.
Because first, I'd have to break him out of this hospital, and out of Federal custody, and that would be a Federal crime. I would be a fugitive from the law, and I'd be throwing away a very promising career as a law enforcement agent.
But then again, I guess I am thinking about it, because I just found myself wondering whether or not Brian still has those handcuff keys or not, or maybe Logan does as well.
But the handcuffs were always the easy part, because if I'm going to do it—and I'm going to, I know—then I'm still going to have to get him past Danny.
I don't know how I'm going to do it, not yet. But I have to figure out a plan, and I don't have a lot of time or many resources. So I'd better figure it out in a God damned hurry, because otherwise I'm pretty much out of luck.
Chapter Sixty
RYAN
I'm starting to really feel like Agent Ball and I have something going. He gets me. After all, I don't want to be talked to while I'm in the bathroom, and he doesn't talk to me. Not really outside the bathroom, either.
It's really a perfect setup. I think we could be friends. The past few days, we've grown very close. Specifically, I learned his first name from the time that Maguire called him by it, and not a whole hell of a lot else, which is exactly as close as I was to a lot of the guys in the club.
Hell of a lot of the guys back in Ohio, let me tell you. Knowing a guy's first name, might as well be best friends now. So it's not that surprising to me when I don't really want to kill the guy.
But if I have to, to get out of here, well, I guess that's how it's going to be.
Someone must be thinking the same thing as I am. I thought Logan was already making a break for the Mexican border when he left, frankly. It wouldn't surprise me if he's thinking about how to get me out of here.
Of course, Maguire is more resistant to my charms than I might have expected under normal circumstances. But even still, I have a sneaking suspicion that under that delicious hard shell she's got, there's a little soft spot in there.
Which means she might be thinking it, too. Or, she might be thinking about any number of other things. I mean, it's a whole new era for women in the workforce. They can do and say just about whatever they like, and far be it from me to assume.
But she's been thinking about something awful damn hard the past couple of days, as I start recovering more and more. She looks a lot better, now. More put-together. With me sleeping through the night, I don't know for sure, but I think she's been going home after I fall asleep.
It's good for her. Good for me, too, in a sense. She smells like her again. The way I'm used to her smelling. Her hair looks nice. It looked great before, but now, when it's clean and she's had a chance to run a brush through it… it looks like hers.
I don't know how to open up the conversation, though. They tell me Brian's out of the hospital, up in Tucson. Don't know how long he'll be in getting here, but I think he's supposed to be coming to visit.
That'll be a good time to get me the hell out of here, probably. With four of us—excuse me, three of us, since there's no reason to be sure that Sara would join me—it can't be that hard, can it?
Then again, it's just going to be putting my brothers in more danger, and I'm not going to do that. Not again. Not after what happened. Not after how bad Brian got messed up. I can't see that happening again, no matter what. It's off the table.
I lay my head back. I'll think of something, I'm sure. It's just a matter of time until something comes along and shows me a solution to my problem, but until then…
Brian comes in. He's lost weight. The guy was already thin, and now he's downright skeletal. I don't know what they've been feeding him over there, except that it's sure as hell not enough.
Still, he smiles. I know a lot of guys get out of shit like that, and they can't get over it. It sticks with them, the rest of their natural lives. I don't want that for Brian. Don't want it for Logan, either. I swallow hard.
I don't have long to get the hell out of here. Not long at all. Soon, very soon now, they're going to tell me to get the hell out of this hospital, and I'm going up the river.
Straight up the river to D.C. where they'll charge me, try me, and sentence me to life in a hole in the ground. Especially killing some big A.T.F. guy, they're going to put me in a hole so deep I forget what the sun is. But I did what I had to do.
I hope nobody sees my face as I try to get used to the idea of my new home, what I'm going to have to get used to over the next few years. The next several years, in fact. Probably the rest of my life, but I never figured on living that long in the first place.
I never had anything to live for, except my brothers, and if I could launch them off like a damn rocket then that would be good enough for me. Fizzle out after that.
I just can't shake the hurting feeling that it all gives me. I don't like it one damn bit, and I want it to stop. But it's not going to, not ever.
So instead, I sleep. I go to sleep early that night. I like to stay up late, because at least then there's something on the one channel I get on the flat-screen. But I'm feeling pretty down, and with feeling pretty down is feeling pretty damn tired, and I just want to sleep.
I wake in the night, though. Something moves in the bed. Shakes me awake. A hand. The hand's attached to a woman. Maguire leans in and whispers into my ear.
"You want to get out of here?"
I nod my head.
"Come on."
She sticks a key into my cuffs and undoes them. Easy as that. I'd imagined it would be harder, but I guess she's a cop, and that's how it goes sometimes.
My wrists hurt. They always hurt more, somehow, after the cuffs come off. As if now that I've got a little freedom, my wrists are going to make me suffer for putting them through that kind of hassle.
Some clothes are folded at the foot of the bed. They look like mine, more or less. I fit them on quick
ly and quietly. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to ask questions.
She beckons me over to the door. I follow. Not loud, but I could be quieter. Every step makes me wince. I should be damn quieter, but I just… can't. The boots keep making noise on the floor, no matter what I do.
Danny Ball's asleep in a chair outside. He doesn't move as we walk by. I try to keep my steps extra quiet, and I don't wake him up. Thankfully for me, at least. I don't know how it's going to affect his career, if we get out of here.
But I know how it's going to affect mine.
When we've turned the corner, Maguire stops sneaking so much. We straighten up. I don't have a mirror, but I'd say we almost look like two perfectly normal people walking through a hospital. Sure, it's late, but I have to hope we can get out of here.
Nobody stops us. I expected someone to. I've been stopped just visiting hospitals before by over-zealous nurses who think it's their damn job to play security. But this time, when I'm breaking out of a prison bed…
Now's the time that they've decided that it's my business whether or not I walk out of the place.
It shouldn't feel this easy. Shouldn't feel this calm. But it does, somehow, as we're walking out. I don't know what the hell is causing any of it, but I'm pretty satisfied either way.
Because as we walk out casually, we get out the door, and Maguire pulls me in for a kiss, and that makes the past couple of days pretty damn worth it. Now we just have to get real gone.
Chapter Sixty-One
MAGUIRE
I suppose that the best time to leave was when we did it, anyways. I suppose that at night, that would be when Ryan would know the right people to talk to. He'd know where to go, how to get there.
I'm in the passenger seat. I'm not sure if that's totally wise, honestly, but it really doesn't matter all that much in the end. I could have driven, if I chose to, but I wanted to let him do it this time, and he did.
The car pulls up in front of the house. An hour to get his stuff together. He comes out with two bags, drops them into the trunk, and I guess that's him ready to go. It occurs to me suddenly that he has no idea where my apartment is.
He takes the bike, though. Of course he takes the bike, I should have expected it, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me. I move over to the driver's side and he follows behind.
Walking into the apartment, it doesn't take me long to realize that I don't know… honestly, I have no idea what I'm taking. What I want to take. I grab a bag and throw some clothing in it. Enough to last me a week or two, I suppose.
None of it was ever that important to me. I never needed anything here. I was always at the office, so there's really very little in the apartment that I need.
The thought sends a chill down my spine. I have to stop myself from getting too morose, to find a way to put a tent-pole to stop my sagging mood as the night goes on. There's hope, though. I at least have that much.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I know it's not going to be that I throw myself into my work, running after another pretty-boy gangster.
The bag's pretty heavy. I sling it over my shoulder and carry it down. Ryan's waiting on the Indian.
"Okay, now follow me," he says softly. He waits until I'm in the car to kick-start the Indian to life. He's already spent a minute getting it turned around before I came back outside, so it's no trouble to let out the clutch and get the bike moving.
He takes it real slow until he sees I'm behind him. It wouldn't be any good to get lost. If I'm following, I'm following. The night's getting pretty late, though.
Danny shouldn't have done me the favor he did, but I can't take it back now. Any minute now, he should 'notice' that we're gone, and then it's up to us to get the hell out of Dodge before they can find us.
Won't take long after that until they drop it. He eases himself onto the highway. I don't know about him, but I settle into the drive. It helps to take off the edge of tension that I've got building up in my chest.
Then, a mile or two before the border, we pull off to the side. There's tracks worn in the road, not so visible that you'd notice just driving by. It feels like we're following them, but I have a suspicion that Ryan knew the route before they were there.
He seems to be going by windage. We turn back south at a particularly nasty-looking tree. The tracks turn with us. A mile or two more, and you can see a chain-link fence that's been poorly-repaired from someone cutting it right in half and splitting it a mile wide.
Ryan's bike slows to a stop, and he gets off. He points back at the trunk as he walks up. I pop it and when I see him again he's closing the trunk, a pair of bolt cutters in hand. It doesn't take long to get the fence popped apart. He pulls it open by hand, holds it for me.
This is really the moment of truth. I don't know that there's going to be any coming back from this. I knew that I couldn't go back from the minute that I put those keys in his handcuffs, but now it seems to be a real, conscious choice.
Am I doing this?
I close my eyes and ease onto the gas. The car rolls forward, slips through, and my headlights illuminate into the dark night. It doesn't occur to me until I'm all the way through that maybe it'd be smarter to leave them off. That way, nobody comes to investigate the far-off lights heading right through.
Oh, well. Too late now. Ryan heads back and jumps onto his bike. It growls loud enough that I feel it in my chest as he comes through behind me, and gestures me to follow. He drives through the night, mostly without lights.
Twenty minutes later, we're finally back on a real road, and then thirty minutes after that we're in a town. Ryan smiles and presses a kiss against my lips as we sit in a Mexican cantina as the sun rises.
I don't know what our plans are. I don't know if Ryan knows, either. But I know that whatever they are, we're going to figure them out together.
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