He peeled out onto the road, his gaze flicking to the rearview mirror constantly. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“We have to ditch the truck,” I said, letting my voice tremble.
“Not gonna happen. I just got this truck. I’m not-“
His gaze snapped to mine, but he didn’t finish his sentence when he noticed the gun I had trained on him. I purposely let my hands shake, giving off the air of terror. His eyes widened and slowly moved back to the windshield.
“Would you like to tell me why you’re holding a gun on me?”
“I don’t know you. I don’t if you’re here to bring me back to my husband or not, but I can’t take that chance.”
His brows furrowed. “What are you talking about? Your husband?”
It was all a lie. One that I planned to keep going until I either ditched this guy or figured out what his agenda was. “Did he send you?”
“What are you talking about? I was there with you on the side of the road. I was almost crushed right alongside you. How could I possibly be working for your husband? I don’t even know who you are!” he shouted.
“Yeah? Then what were you doing at the gas station?”
“Getting gas,” he said incredulously, his eyes flickering to the gun. “That’s usually what people do there.”
“You were watching me. I saw you watching me the whole time, and then a knife was in my tire and you magically appeared.”
“I didn’t magically appear. I live in this town. I get gas there regularly. And if you want to know why I was staring, it’s because I thought you were hot.”
I couldn’t decide if he was lying or not, but from my experience with men, they could all lie easily with smiles on their faces. It was just too convenient, but I had bigger problems right now.
“Look, we need to get rid of the truck. We need to make you disappear.”
“I can’t just disappear. I have a life, and as soon as I drop you off at the police station, I’m going to get back to it.”
I snorted. “Are you really that stupid? They saw your plates. They said they were getting rid of all the evidence. If you go back home, they’ll kill you and your family.”
He shook his head, laughing slightly. “What kind of world do you live in?”
“Apparently, I’m the only one that lives in the real world, because when those men crashed into us, I took that as a serious threat.”
“No, this doesn’t happen. This is a small town. We’re in Indiana. Nothing ever happens in Indiana.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Ever heard of the Spilotro brothers? They were found dead in 1986 right around here, beaten to death and buried in Willow Slough.”
“They were gangsters.”
“Yeah? What about Larry Eyler? The Highway Killer? That happened around here too. So, don’t sit there and tell me that this shit doesn’t happen around here. You have so many freaking cornfields that it’s easy to bury a body, which is exactly what will happen to us if we don’t get rid of this truck!”
He thought about that a moment and then cleared his throat. “Assuming that I believe you, where would we even get rid of the truck, and then how would we move on after that?”
“Do you have any swamps around here?”
Josh
“Are you sure this is a good place to dump the truck?” she asked for the third time.
We’d been hiding out in a cluster of trees, waiting for dusk to fall. There was a swamp that we could dump the truck in, but there were houses around. We couldn’t just do it in broad daylight.
“I’m sure. The Kankakee River always floods and this swamp never goes down. Even if it does, they won’t find the truck until we’re long gone.”
She nodded. I noticed the gun was still in her lap and she had a tight grip on it. I knew how to fire a gun. I grew up hunting after all, but that was with rifles, not handguns. And I wasn’t stupid enough to try and take the gun from her when she was shaking so bad. That was asking for an accident. Besides, she seemed truly terrified and that gun appeared to be the only thing giving her strength. I just hoped she didn’t shoot me.
“I’m Hannah,” she said after a minute. “I just thought…maybe you should know my name.”
“Josh.”
“So, you’re a mechanic around here?”
I nodded. “I work at the shop in town.” I huffed out a laugh. “Well, I did.”
“I’m really sorry you got dragged into this.”
“Then stop pointing the fucking gun at me.”
“Not until I’m sure you didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“And how the hell am I supposed to convince you that I didn’t?”
“You can’t.”
“Look,” I said, pulling out my wallet. She immediately raised her gun, but when I showed her my wallet, she lowered it marginally. “My license. I live in in town in an apartment.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. My husband could have hired you because he got word that I was in the area.”
I sighed and put my wallet away. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I stopped on the side of the road to help you and suddenly…” I snorted in laughter.
“Is this funny to you?”
I rubbed my eyes, shaking my head. “Lady, this is so fucking far from funny. Someone tried to kill us, now we’re on the run, ready to dump my brand new fucking truck in a swamp and go God knows where. I don’t know a single fucking thing about you! And who the hell is your husband that he would send people to kill you? Did you witness a murder or something?”
“Look, the less you know, the better. He’s not someone you want to mess with and he’s very powerful.”
“Did you know that when you married him?”
She squinted out the window and sighed. “Sometimes you don’t get a choice in things that happen to you.”
I rolled my eyes. This woman was one non-stop unanswered question. “So, what the hell do we do from here?”
“We’ll have to find another car and get out of here.”
“I could ask one of my brother’s to meet us,” I said, pulling out my phone.
She snatched it out of my hand and pulled out the sim card, then smashed it under her boot and tossed the phone.
“What the hell? That was my phone!”
“And that’s how they’ll find us!” she shouted. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“About what?”
“You kept a phone on you? Are you stupid?”
“No, I’ve just never taken On The Run 101.”
She rubbed her hand over her forehead and sighed. “We need to do this now. If they’re tracking you already, then it won’t take them long to find your last phone location. We need to dump the truck and run.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem. I’ll just go drive my thirty-thousand dollar truck into the fucking swamp, leave my family, and go on the run with a crazy, married lady that says people are coming after us.”
“If you would rather take your chances with them, then by all means, stay behind!”
“Why are you including me in your escape anyway? You don’t know me. You think I’m working with your husband.”
“Because I don’t want another death on my conscience,” she shouted, her voice shaking.
This was insane. She was insane. I couldn’t believe that I had gone along this far with her. There was no logical reason for me to believe that I was in any danger. Whoever her husband was, the chances of him giving a shit at all that I was on the side of the road were slim to none. I was crazy, actually considering going on the run with her. It was insanity. I needed to get out of this truck and get a few moments of peace where I could think this through without having a fucking gun pointed at me.
I opened the door and ignored her when she called my name. I started walking for the trees.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, following behind me.
“I’m going to take a leak.”
“Now?”
“No, in ten minutes. Right now, I’m just getting the fuck away from you and your crazy idea that someone is going to come kill me. This is insane. This is so far beyond fucked up that I don’t even know what to say.”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re really just fucking crazy. Maybe you need to be locked in an insane asylum or something.”
I turned and kept walking and I heard her stomp back to the truck. When I was far enough away from her, I leaned back against a tree and took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to think about any of this. I was sure that she was off her rocker, but if she wasn’t, if I was wrong, I could put my entire family in danger. I felt like there was something bigger I was missing, but at this point, I really didn’t want to know. I just wanted to go back to my life, and as I stood there under the trees in the fading light, I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. I would talk with the sheriff in the morning and get this all sorted out. As for Hannah, I felt bad for her, but this wasn’t my mess to deal with. Whatever was going on with her husband, if she chose to keep running, that was on her.
I turned toward the tree and took a piss, then zipped up and headed for the truck, but stopped in my tracks when I saw Hannah running toward me. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me behind the tree.
“What-“ She slapped her hand over my mouth and peered around me. That’s when I heard the sound of a door slamming. I nodded to her, letting her know that I understood. I slowly shifted to get a better view. It was the guys from earlier if I was seeing this right. They had guns out and they were checking out the truck.
“Engine’s cold. They’ve been gone for a while,” the first one said.
“We have to get rid of the truck.”
“We could leave it here. Everyone would think he was just a missing person.”
“Yeah, and then there would be police out here combing the area. You heard what the boss said, no evidence left behind. We can’t leave any trail.”
“We don’t even know who this guy is,” the first argued.
“It doesn’t matter. He saw what happened, and now he has to disappear. No trace of him. He needs to vanish. We can watch his apartment and his parents’ house in case he goes back there.”
“And what if he turns up?”
“Then we make sure he disappears again, along with all his family. There’ll be too many questions, and we can’t risk that.”
“And the girl?” the first guy asked.
“We’ll find her. She can’t run forever.” He tossed the first guy the keys to my truck. “You get rid of it. Make sure no one finds it.”
Within minutes, my truck, along with their car, were gone. And then it really started to sink in. Whatever the fuck I had gotten wrapped up in, it was life and death. There was no going home. There was no getting out of this. I had to run, and since Hannah seemed to know so much about running, I stood a better chance of staying alive with her by my side than if I ran alone. I couldn’t go back to my brothers. I couldn’t call Ma and tell her goodbye. I couldn’t ask my dad for advice. This was it.
I looked at Hannah, and she looked at me sadly. “Believe me now?”
We’d been walking through the darkness for a few hours now. It was best to stay away from town and anyone that might recognize me, or so Hannah said. I wondered about how she had been running for four years. She seemed to know a lot about it. How many close encounters had she seen? How did she always seem to know what to do next? Was that something she just picked up after a while?
“Where do we go from here?”
She thought about it a moment. “We need to change our appearances. I was going to dye my hair. We’ll need to cut yours completely. And we need to change the way you look.”
“How?”
“We’ll get to that. For now, we need to find a way out of here. Do you know any place we can steal a car that won’t be noticed immediately?”
I nodded. “There’s a junk yard we can go to.”
“No offense, but we need a vehicle that runs.”
“We’ll find what we need. This guy collects cars to rebuild for teenagers. People donate old vehicles to him, but they have to be in working order.”
“That’s nice of him,” she said sarcastically.
“It is nice of him,” I shot back. “See, that’s what it’s like living down here. People help each other out. I don’t know where the hell you’re from, but this town helps each other.”
“Sorry,” she said regretfully. “It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone that helped anyone else just for the sake of it.”
I didn’t say anything else. If I was going to run with this woman, I needed to not want to strangle her. It was the middle of the night by the time we reached the junkyard, which was good because I wasn’t about to steal a car in the middle of the day. We ran across the empty field in the darkness, up to the edge of town where there was a junk car lot. The security was non-existent, aside from a dog that was lying by the gate. And since he didn’t move when we came close, it wasn’t likely that he would attack us.
I slipped in and found an old car in the back that didn’t look half bad. Popping the hood, I took a look underneath and saw that it looked okay. “You ready to find out if this works?”
“Now or never.”
I got in and hot-wired the car, thankful that it started up. “I’m not sure how far it will get us, but as long as we can get out of here, we should have some luck.”
She hopped in the passenger side and we took off down the road. “We should probably drive for a few hours and then find an all night pharmacy.”
I nodded. It sounded like a good plan. I drove for the better part of an hour, all the while I was looking out every window, expecting at any minute to get shot. This was insane.
“So, who is this husband of yours?”
“It’s best if you don’t know,” she said hesitantly.
“I beg to differ. I’m in a car with you, on the run. I think I at least deserve to know who I’m running from.”
She fidgeted with a necklace she was wearing, but didn’t answer.
“Do you know how he found you?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I could have sworn that I covered my tracks.”
“You said you’ve been on the run for four years. That’s a long time. Did you ever think about finding someone that could help you?”
“Let’s just say that he has a long reach and it’s not likely anyone would be willing to help me.”
I rolled my eyes. This woman was so evasive. I doubted I would ever truly know who we were running from. I just needed a solid plan. By the morning, everyone would be wondering where I was. My brothers would be searching for me, and when they told my parents I was missing, my ma would be in a panic. I just had to stay calm and figure this out one step at a time. As soon as we were far enough away from home, we could take a breather and I could figure out some sort of plan.
Hannah
If he was here for me, he was doing a great job of acting. However, he did bring his phone along with him. Anyone knows that when you run, you don’t have anything on you that can be tracked. He could have done that on purpose, in the hopes that those men would find me. And then the men showed up when he went off to ‘take a piss’. That could have been him leaving so he didn’t get caught in the crossfire. And stupidly, I had gone off to warn him that we had company, because I was concerned that he would get himself killed. Because as much as I didn’t trust him, I also couldn’t have another person’s death on my conscience. Until I knew for sure which side he was on, I had to play this smart. He couldn’t know who I really was, and I couldn’t afford to let my guard down around him. If he did lure me into a trap, I had to be prepared for it. Better to have him close and be in control than to cut him loose and have him follow me and set a trap.
“We should pull over at this motel,” I nodded up ahead. “We can find a pharmacy and change our app
earances.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” he said, pulling into the lot.
“Well, like I said, I’ve been on the run for a long time. Wait here,” I said as he parked. “I’ll get us a room.”
“Do you need cash?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
I shut the door to the car and pulled my hood up over my head. Most of the time, motels didn’t have cameras, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I quickly got us a room and motioned for him to pull down to the end of the lot. I always got an end room if possible. When I opened the door, I immediately checked my exits, which weren’t looking too great at the moment. I knew that I could make it out the bathroom window if I needed to, but Josh was bigger than me.
I walked back out into the room to see Josh standing there, looking really uncomfortable. It didn’t matter what he was thinking though. We needed to get to work. “Alright, give me the keys and I’ll go grab us some supplies.”
“So, you can ditch me?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I’ll go grab the supplies.”
“You don’t know what we need.”
“You know, I think if you wrote down what you needed, I would be able to manage.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t trust you to not get caught.”
“Well, if I do, you won’t have to drag me around with you anymore.” He sighed. “Look, why don’t we both go?”
“Because they’re looking for two people. If only one of us goes, it’ll be less conspicuous.”
“Sorry, but there is no way I’m staying in the motel by myself while you leave. I’ve seen the movie Vacancy.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a motel. It’s probably safest here right now. We’re registered under fake names and no one knows about the car yet.”
“Fine, then you won’t have any problem staying here,” he said with a smirk.
Wanted Dead or In Love: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 3) Page 2