by R. J. Lewis
“Shut up, Mills.”
“No, you shut it –”
“We got heat!” the man called Roz yelled. “Hang tight, it’s going to get bumpy.”
“Cops?” one asked.
“I wish.”
I jumped as popping sounds hit the van. Bullets, I quickly realized. The man called Beckett threw me off him like I was a bag of potatoes. I fell to the ground, hands over my head as more sharp sounds tore through the van. A bullet seared a hole through the floor of the van, inches from my head. My heart dropped as I broke out in shakes.
“Get alongside him!” Beckett screamed.
A moment later the van door slid open. I looked up, eyes wide as another van came alongside us. We were on the backroads, taking the industrial route passed car shops and quiet garages. The black van careened close to ours, their van door open, a man with a big gun pointed at us. The man Beckett leaned out, his knee painfully pressing into the middle of my back as he sprayed bullets. The noise burst through my eardrums. I covered my ears, crying into the carpeted floor.
“Nixon, would you help me the fuck out!” Beckett screamed.
In response, I felt another body come over. “Get off the girl,” the man demanded.
The pained pressure on my back eased. I felt the man’s rough hand grip my arm and haul me back, away from the door. My back slammed into the other side of the van. I kept my hands wrapped around my ears and curled into a ball. Gunshots sounded out all around us, the van took a nasty turn, and I screamed as I slammed into a body behind me. The person threw me back down like I was a ragdoll and shouted, “Another car coming up behind us.”
Then the other door slid open.
Oh, my fucking God.
More shots fired, and I was in the midst of it, the perfect target.
Someone shouted, “The girl is in the fucking way.”
Bullets tore into the van. More holes burned into the metal body, somehow missing me.
“Throw her the fuck out!”
OH, MY FUCKING GOD!!!
A hand gripped my arm. I gasped as I was dragged to the opened door. We were going so fast. Everything whizzed on by, too blurry to see. I was going to hit the pavement and die. I tried wriggling out of the man’s grip, but it was no use. He was too strong, and I was too weak, and FUCK THIS SKIRT I was so cold.
“Toss her out now!” came from another just as the guy began to push me over the edge. I shut my eyes, waiting for my life to flash before my eyes, but nothing flashed before my eyes. It was just me and this immobilizing fear all the way to my imminent death.
“No,” a voice suddenly retorted. Another hand grabbed my other arm, hauling me back into the van.
“Nixon, let her the fuck go!”
“No.”
“She’s dead weight!”
“I’ll take care of her.”
The hand that had tried pulling me to my death let go. The other hand pulled me into a solid chest. “Hold on,” he shouted down at me. I dug my fingers into his sweater and felt him leaning out of the van. My stomach dropped. Wind whipped around us. I cracked an eye open, watching as he raised his other hand up, a smaller gun in his grip this time, and fired a series of bullets.
We were leaning out too far. I was sure he was going to drop me. I gripped him so hard, I felt my nails penetrating the skin of his chest. He fired more rounds as I screamed, burying my face into his neck, enveloped in the strong scent of him.
“Got the wheels,” he yelled. “He’s done!”
A few moments later, Beckett screamed, “Hit the driver! Van’s just flipped to its side.”
“Inside, everyone!” the driver Roz ordered.
I clung to the man they called Nixon as he retreated back, slamming the door closed. The other slammed shut at the same time. He sat down and I fell into him, gripping his sweater still like I was going to be thrown out any second. I was shaking all over. My hair was in my face. My teeth were chattering, and I could hardly get a breath in. I felt his arms moving, heard him saying, “We’re not far from the next vehicle, are we, Roz?”
“No, buddy, we’ll be there in no time.”
“Anyone behind us?”
“No,” Beckett said, his voice making my skin crawl. “They won’t be far though.”
“Hear anything on the police scanner, Tucker?”
“Oh, they’re looking,” Tucker said. “Witnesses caught the van, but no licence plate. They’re going to be not far behind us if we don’t shake tail.”
“We’ll torch the car and dump the girl. Then we’ll take the backroads all the way to the highway.”
Relief ballooned inside me, along with sheer terror. I dug my fingers into the man’s shirt, aware I was clawing at his chest. He didn’t wrap his arms around me like the other man did, but he didn’t push me away either.
“Not long now,” he whispered so only I could hear. “Hold on.”
*
I held on, quite literally.
My mind had hushed the entire time. I couldn’t bring myself to think of what had happened. It was like my emotions had shut down, and I was an apathetic ball of nothingness.
Shouldn’t I have been screaming? Crying? Begging for my life?
I just sat there, in a random guy’s lap, clinging to him because he had kept me from eating the pavement.
Never mind an innocent man had died. Hell, maybe this guy I was sitting on shot him to death. It didn’t even matter. What mattered was he had stopped the dickhead that had grabbed my arm and been willing to obey orders to throw me out the fucking door.
And because of that, I was tethered to him. Amongst the evil, he was…well, less evil than the rest.
The silence in the car was tense. Everyone was on high alert, their adrenaline through the roof. I could feel it strongly, though I couldn’t feel it in the man who was holding me.
No, he was totally relaxed.
It couldn’t have been ten minutes before the van took a few turns and stopped. The engine went off and the silence didn’t last long. My heart sped in my chest as everyone began moving quickly. The man I was sitting on didn’t move so fast. He sat there a few moments longer, his breathing calm; I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. In a sudden move, I felt his nose press against the back of my head, heard him inhale the scent of me quickly before he pulled away.
It was so quick, I almost missed it.
Then he shuffled down the van and grabbed at the door. He slid it open and nudged me off him. I stepped out into the cold, snowy day. The sky was overcast, and the light had lessened. The storm was coming, I knew, and I was going to be left in the middle of nowhere. Which was fine, I thought, as I spun around, in the wide open, spotting another black van nearby, but it was a normal family van, totally inconspicuous.
The man that had saved me took me by the arm and walked quickly away from the van and from the group of men. The roads here were dirt, and the fields on both sides looked neglected, not a single resident or business close-by.
“Follow this road out,” he told me. “You’ll find a farm a few miles from here. I saw cars out the front. Someone will be there to help you.”
I didn’t even wait for him to finish. I pulled my arm from his grip and began running, which was fucking tough to do in these boots. I didn’t have my backpack or phone on me, but I didn’t give a fuck about that.
I wasn’t much of an athlete. I already felt cramps in my side, and the cold air was hard to breathe in. My hair fell over my face as the snowfall grew thicker. I couldn’t feel my legs. They were so numb and stiff and fuck this skirt, but I was sure I’d damned it enough already.
I didn’t glance back once, but I smelled smoke in the air. I knew that van was getting torched. They would hop into their other van and leave, and I would go home and drink more coffee and cry to Kim and this would all be over.
If I’d still had social media, I could have written a post about it. People would share it. Maybe I’d be inspirational.
I’d harp on about never taking life for granted again, and God, I wouldn’t.
From here on out, I would pay more attention to school, make more friends and lose my virginity.
Yes, I told myself. When this was over, I was going to be a new me.
I hadn’t run far, my heart was beating in my ears, but I heard something louder coming up from behind me. I didn’t turn to look, but my chest tightened as fear took over once again.
“Stop!” a yell sounded out. Beckett’s voice.
Tears sprang to my eyes. No, no, no.
“Or I’ll shoot you.”
Out of breath, I immediately stopped, though maybe I should have kept going. Maybe it would have been easier to die from a gunshot wound than whatever else this guy had in store for me. Because, I was certain, if he took me again, I was not going to make it out of this.
“Please,” I begged, turning around slowly, my hands up.
He stood, feet from me, a gun pointed at me. It was terrifying to look into the end of a gun barrel. It was not a good way to go.
Behind him the white van was being swallowed by giant flames. The black van was moving in our direction, and I knew, straight away, this was over.
I wanted to fall into a heap and sob.
The van stopped beside us, and the door slid open. The tall man I’d been clinging to jumped out, his movements furious. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was pissed.
“Beckett, let the girl go,” he demanded, his voice harsh. “She’s seen nothing.”
“Are you fucking serious, Nixon?” Beckett retorted. “She’s seen us. She knows what our car looks like, and you just let her know where we’re going –”
“I won’t say anything,” I interrupted, hysterically. “I swear it! I won’t. I really won’t.”
“Shut up,” Beckett barked at me. “She’s seen too much.”
“This is your fault!” Nixon gritted out.
“Don’t point the finger at me –”
“You took the girl to start with –”
“Try serving ten years in prison and not feeling your dick burst at the sight of that!” He pointed the gun at my bare legs. Then, to my horror, he pulled the balaclava off, revealing his face to me. Blonde shaggy hair, deep brown eyes, an angry looking man damning me with his eyes like I was to blame for all of this. “There, she saw me now, it’s too late, anyway.”
The man driving slammed a fist into the steering wheel. “We don’t have fucking time for this, Beckett –”
“I want the girl to come with us, Roz.”
“Then fucking take her, or have her eat a bullet, I don’t give a fuck. We gotta go now before this storm gets worse.”
“Tell Nixon to back down.”
But Roz didn’t have to say a word. The man called Nixon slid into the seat next to the driver and slammed the door so hard, the whole van shook.
Beckett looked at me now and gestured for me to move.
I had no choice. I looked around, hoping for some miracle, but there was nothing.
I must have moved too slow because the guy suddenly came at me, grabbing me harshly on the arm and pulling me to the van. I winced as he painfully deposited me in the middle aisle seat. Then he slid in next to me and slammed the door shut.
“She’s your responsibility, Beckett,” the driver Roz said, shaking his head. “No one’s gonna be cleaning up after your mess.”
“I got it,” Beckett retorted, hand still gripping the gun. “Let’s just go.”
And we went.
28.
Victoria…
We were on the road for hours. The first hour was filled with backroads and quiet streets. As more populated streets came into view, Beckett said he needed to cover my eyes.
“In case she sees where we’re going,” he explained.
“We’re not covering shit,” the guy behind us said. Tucker, they’d called him. “She’s seen your face, Beckett.”
And that was all that was needed to be said. My fate was sealed. I was going to die because this fucker had taken his mask off.
No, I admonished myself. I was going to die because I’d chosen to wear this fucking thrift store bought skirt in the wintertime.
I was so stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I shut my eyes tightly, fighting the tears. The apathy was kind of fading now. Replacing it was dread and terror and sadness; a swirling tonic of depressive emotions that was going to shut me down very soon if I accepted defeat.
“You don’t need to do this,” I found myself saying. “I…I have a shit memory. I don’t even know what you look like, honest. I haven’t looked at your face since you threw me in here.”
“Shut up,” Beckett simply retorted. “You’re a fucking liar. Bitches like you always lie.”
“I’m not lying –”
He gripped my hair and pulled suddenly, screaming, “I said shut the fuck up!”
I shut the fuck up. My scalp burned from pain as he tugged a few moments longer before finally letting me go.
Okay, this time I couldn’t fight the tears. They slid down my face rapidly, one streak after the next, trailing down my neck and to my collar bone. I was so fucked, and scared, and just fucked. I sobbed quietly, clasping my hands tightly, digging my nails into my skin. I flinched every time Beckett moved beside me, but I didn’t dare move. I kept myself still, only trailing my eyes around me, taking in my surroundings.
We were speeding along the highway now, leaving the city behind.
“We gotta take our masks off, man,” the guy Mills said. He, too, was sitting in the seats behind us with Tucker. “We’re going to be spotted otherwise.”
The driver immediately grabbed at his mask and tore it off. Oh, God. I shut my eyes quickly and covered my face with my hands.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Beckett barked at me, a smile in his voice.
“I don’t wanna see,” I cried, pressing my palms into my eyes. “Honest, I won’t say anything –”
“Leave her alone,” Roz said to Beckett. “If she wants to cover her face, who are we to stop her?”
“Pointless,” Beckett muttered.
“Cover her eyes,” a deep voice said. Nixon. “In case something happens, we can’t have her see us.”
Suddenly, no one argued that.
“I’ll do it,” he said, and I heard his movements from the front seat. Hands grabbed at mine and gently pulled them away from my face. “Keep your eyes shut. I’m going to tie a piece of cloth around your head, alright?”
I nodded, taking in deep breaths as he wrapped the light material around my eyes, tying it at the back of my head. I felt his breaths, he was so close. His gentleness eased me, just a tad.
“Please, don’t let me die,” I whispered, unable to stop myself. “Please, Nixon.”
Oh, God, this was going to sound so stupid, but I’d watched a documentary once about abductions. I heard a girl who’d managed to escape say she’d gotten through to the kidnapper when she made him realize she was a person and not a thing.
Maybe saying this guy’s name would make him realize that.
But he didn’t respond as he pulled back. I heard him adjusting himself in the front seat, and my heart beat harder now as the car blazed by, hitting soft bumps along the way.
*
I wished I could say I’d fallen asleep, just so I could have been spared a minute of fear, but that wasn’t the case.
I was aware of everything around me. Wide awake, listening to everything they said, just in case I did somehow get away.
“How much gold you think we snatched?” Tucker asked curiously.
“Six duffle bags worth,” Roz answered. “Heavy fucking bags, too.”
“Sucks to be the bikers today,” Mills snickered in the backseat.
“Who operates a stash house in the open like that?” Beckett scoffed, his fingers occasionally skimming along my bare leg. I shuddered every time he did it, and I didn’t doubt he liked my reaction
. “Those idiots were asking for it. Just gotta ride out the heat now.”
“This’ll get buried in a week’s time,” Roz said. “Cops have too many drug operations to worry about a bunch of bikers getting ripped off at one location. The One Percent will have other bases. Hobbs was right. It was the perfect set-up for us with the war on the streets escalating lately. They won’t know who hit ‘em.”
“I disagree,” Mills muttered. “This is going to wipe the One Percent out. Think about it…all that dough sitting pretty in one spot. Who does that? An act of desperation. They were going to move all of it at once.”
“You saying they have nothing left?”
“Maybe.”
“They would have protected their nest hell of a lot more, then.”
“Think of the attention that would have brought on them if they were suddenly hanging around a random adult shop. The only competition they’ve been facing off with is the Vipers. They cracked into a bunch of their nests, made the One Percent paranoid as fuck.”
“The Vipers are small time.”
“Not after this.” Mill let out a laugh. “This…this is going to rile the nest up, guys.”
“That’s why we’re laying low.”
They didn’t talk for a while after that.
The drive felt endless.
At some point, the radio went on and a countdown of the hottest tracks blasted out of the speakers. But the speakers kept making this scratchy sound and the driver kept banging the roof of the dashboard.
“Could’ve made sure the speakers were working before you stole this fucker, Mills,” Roz said in annoyance.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mills retorted, “I didn’t think to consider your entertainment when I was robbing this thing in the dead of night in front of a house with four fucking dogs yapping every two minutes.”
The radio went off.
More silence.
Another hour went by.
Maybe two.
Maybe it was ten fucking minutes.
I felt Beckett’s body close in on me. His thigh pressed against mine. Emboldened now, his entire hand wrapped around my bare knee, squeezing it. I felt his head come close to me, felt his nose brush against my shoulder as he inhaled sharply. I swallowed hard, trying not to let my fear show, but I just wanted to cry and push him away.