by J P Barnaby
“Cash?” she asked, turning her body toward his.
“He’s the big man, the one who came to the house.”
“What do you have to do?”
“It’s probably best that you not know. If I get caught, you and Aleks will need to take care of Hannah. He can’t testify because we’re married.”
“That’s why you got married.”
“One reason, yes. The other was for Hannah and her care. He’s legally her father too, so he can do what’s best for her.”
“You’ve got it all figured out.” It wasn’t a question, and the irony in her voice came through loud and clear.
“I don’t have anything figured out. I need to go. Hannah’s probably fidgety. We’ll see you tonight after the zoo.”
“I love you, Thomas, and I’m proud of you.”
“For God’s sake. Why on earth would you be proud of me?” He dropped her hand and stood up.
She looked up at him. “Not many guys would do what you’re doing, even for their children. Your father sure as hell wouldn’t have.”
“She’s everything to me.”
Thomas hugged her and then walked out of the hotel room. It took him just a minute to get down to the lobby where Aleks and Hannah waited. It made Thomas feel better that they didn’t go outside without him. They kept Hannah between them as they headed to the parking lot and the Prius. Thomas was struck by the tension and fear knotting Aleks’s gait even as he opened the passenger doors for them. Thomas felt it too—the weight of Saturday morning pressing closer. One more day and they would pass the point of no return.
They would both become felons.
Thomas buckled Hannah into her booster seat. With as little as she weighed, she might be a teenager before she met the weight requirement to use just the seat belt. It would take time, he knew, for her to even begin to get healthy. He should be thankful for the fact that she would, rather than impatient with the time it would take.
“Daddy, seat belt,” Hannah chided from the back after he got in. He reached over his shoulder and felt a hand on his leg. His body hummed at the warmth coming through his jeans from Aleks’s hand. But he managed to get the belt buckled and then put his own hand over Aleks’s.
“I like it when you hold hands,” Hannah said from the back seat with Lizzy looking over the console. “Kaylee tried to hold my hand at church once and Miss Glenda yelled at her. She said girls don’t hold hands.”
“Did you want Kaylee to hold your hand?” Aleks asked, his voice quiet.
“Not really. She makes fun of my hair.”
“It’s not wrong to hold hands with a girl. We talked about that. But Kaylee shouldn’t touch you without asking you first,” Thomas interjected. “No one should touch you if you don’t want them to.” He should have had those talks with her already, but she was never away from them, so he’d always been able to protect her—from strangers, anyway. God, he didn’t want to think about that right now.
“How come your alligator is named Lizzy?” Aleks asked, derailing the conversation, and Thomas could have kissed him.
“Oh! Because she’s Lizzy the Lizard!” Hannah made Lizzy dance for him as he turned to check behind them and put the car into Reverse so they could get around his mother’s car.
Aleks stopped and looked at her a moment.
“Hannah, an alligator isn’t a lizard.”
“It’s scaly and crawls on the ground. Of course it is!” Hannah said defiantly.
“Aleks,” Thomas said quietly.
“Well, it isn’t. They’re both reptiles, but alligators are of a different class.”
“She’s seven, Aleks.”
“I’ll show you when we get to the zoo, Aleks,” Hannah said and crossed her arms, huffing indignantly against the slight upon her stuffed alligator.
“She’s going to be a fun teenager,” Aleks said and pulled slowly out of the drive.
Hannah grabbed her phone out of a small backpack and then started to deluge them with a litany of facts about alligators, impressive for an adult, much less a little girl. She might have been behind the curve socially because of her illness, but she loved to read. The Kindle Aleks had brought home for her after the wedding cemented him as her very favorite stepdad ever. They were still working out the logistics of his relationship with her, but he’d won her over with his sweetness and presents.
Thomas would need to talk with him about that. He didn’t want his daughter to become spoiled or materialistic.
“Most lizards have dry, scaly skin,” she read as they headed for the highway. “They have four legs, clawed feet, and a long tail. That sounds like an alligator to me,” she singsonged in triumph. Thomas glanced at Aleks, who was smiling.
“Okay, now google ‘Is an alligator a lizard,’” he told her.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” Hannah insisted.
“Why?” Thomas was trying not to laugh out loud.
“Google’s broken.”
“Okay, why don’t you look up the zoo instead,” Thomas suggested. “They should have maps and lists of attractions. Make a list of what you want to see.”
For the rest of the drive, Hannah delivered a litany of the site’s animals that would have made Noah proud. She wanted to see the alligators, of course, but also gorillas and pandas and elephants. Then she saw the petting zoo and nearly collapsed in the seat.
Aleks pulled into the parking lot, a beautiful, woodsy area typical of most neighborhoods in Atlanta. Hannah didn’t even wait for Thomas to open the door—she ripped off the seat belt and jumped, Lizzy parachuting beside her.
“It says stroller rental is just inside the entrance and straight ahead,” Thomas read from the map on his phone.
“Daddy—” Hannah started to pout, but Thomas held up a hand.
“Honey, you’re still very weak, and you’re going to get tired easily.”
“But a stroller? I’m—”
“I have a better plan,” Aleks said, cutting off the argument as he made the short stroll to the back of the Prius. He popped the trunk and pulled out something that looked like an umbrella with four wheels.
“Miss Hannah, you keep that mask on, you wash up before and after petting any animals, and you don’t give your dad a hard time today, and you can ride in style.” Aleks unfolded the collapsible hiking wagon and added a small soft-sided cooler.
Hannah ran over and hugged Aleks and then climbed into the wagon to test it out.
“You only need to ride in it when you get tired, and the cooler has a couple of snacks and drinks so you don’t get hungry or dehydrated. We good?” Aleks grabbed the handle from where it had fallen on the ground.
“Mush!” Hannah cried, and Thomas glared at her.
“Uhm, yes, I’m ready,” she amended and Aleks laughed.
As they headed off toward the entrance of the zoo, he watched Aleks with Hannah. The man was meant to have kids. He probably would have, with his kind of money. Thomas just hoped that over the next couple of weeks, he’d be able to find the key in that code to get out of their situation. The thought of what they had to do tomorrow crushed him. He felt like they were Han and Luke in that trash compactor, the walls closing in and nothing they could do about it.
Only he and Aleks didn’t have a droid to save them.
They decided to hit the petting zoo first, while Hannah’s energy was at its highest. Hannah nearly forgot to wash her hands at the station before running off only to get them filthy again on a goat. About half a dozen kids ran around near them, not many for a warm and breezy Friday. Thomas appreciated that, because the kids who were present stared at Hannah as she approached. One even backed off and ran back to her mother.
Thomas sighed and followed her in.
She stopped about a foot from the goat with a brush that she’d picked up off a table. Uncertainty blazed in her eyes, about the only part of her face visible over the hospital mask.
“Will it bite me?”
&nb
sp; Thomas was about to answer when another kid stepped up.
“No, he hasn’t moved at all. Hey, are you sick or something?” he asked, and Hannah looked back over her shoulder.
“I have cancer,” she told him bluntly. It was the first time Thomas had ever heard her say it aloud. In all the years they’d been dealing with this shit, she’d only ever said “sick.” God, she was growing into such a big brave girl. After all the shit he’d done, Thomas had no idea how he deserved such a beautiful daughter in his life.
And look where it had gotten her—on the wrong side of mafia thugs.
The little boy brushed the goat right next to Hannah, and Thomas thanked God quietly that there’d been no altercation. Kids have no filters. They aren’t born with them, and while they develop the ability to control what they say over time, it does take time.
“Okay, Hannah. We have a whole zoo to see. You want to check out some pandas?” Aleks asked, and she wandered back over to him.
“Wash your hands,” he instructed, and even though he hadn’t touched anything, he washed his too for good measure.
On the way to the pandas, they saw kangaroos, tigers, and all manner of birds. They’d just gotten to the back of the park when a couple texts came through on his phone from a blocked number. He hung back with the wagon while Aleks took Hannah up into the trees to look for animals.
The first text had a picture of Hannah with his mother at the house. His mother pushed her on the swing while Hannah laughed. It was a beautiful picture, but horribly tainted by the source. He looked at it again and saw that it had been taken from some distance, but the second one, that one came from a cell phone camera. It was a picture of Hannah petting the goat.
They were here, and they were watching.
He didn’t want to say anything in front of Hannah. His mother said Hannah didn’t understand what had happened the day Cash showed up with his goons. Since she hadn’t gone inside, the encounter hadn’t scared her. Maybe she was used to Daddy and Meemaw being scared. She’d never asked anything about it.
Thomas forwarded the texts to Aleks, and they rejoined him a minute later. Aleks’s face had gone white, but he didn’t say anything. He knew they were safest right where they were at the zoo, with hundreds of people around them. Hannah, who had missed the frightened glances between him and Aleks, hopped back in the wagon and asked where they’d go next.
The zoo had lost its magic for Thomas, but he forced himself toward the Asian forest anyway. They were coming out of the panda area when Hannah spotted the gift shop and darted from the wagon. Thomas’s heart stopped as he lost sight of her.
“Hannah!” he cried and raced toward the store after her. If they caught her alone, they could take her. He couldn’t even think about that.
She stood in front of a five-foot-tall panda near the front of the store, and Thomas caught her by the arm.
“Don’t you ever run off like that again. Do you know what could happen if you get lost? Or if someone took you? You could die.” People turned to stare as he chastised his daughter.
Her face filled with fear at his anger. In his panic, he didn’t worry about whether he scared her or not. She couldn’t run off like that.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered, and tears fell into her hospital mask.
Shame welled in his gut and he dropped to one knee. She crawled into his arms like a kitten, sniffling. The people around them went back to their shopping but stole glances at them over the stuffed animals and T-shirts in their arms.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. You scared me, that’s all. Being out like this is new to both of us.”
“We don’t go to places with lots of people, huh?” Hannah asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
He untucked his T-shirt and wiped her face. “Not yet, but we will start now that you’re getting better. I promise.” Thomas hoped he could keep that promise. He stood up and glanced around. No one jumped out at him as being particularly goonlike, but he hated feeling exposed. When you were exposed in prison, bad things happened.
Hannah walked out of the gift shop with enough stuff to fill the other half of the wagon, and some of his guilt at yelling. Slowly, they moved on.
Thomas was tired now, more tired than Hannah, who showed no signs of slowing. The stress knotted his shoulder blades, and Aleks reached over to hold his hand. He didn’t say anything, he just held Thomas’s hand in one hand and Hannah’s wagon in the other. They saw monkeys and apes, lemurs and birds, even a lion and a yellow-backed duiker. Then they were at the reptile house.
“Hannah, you hold Aleks’s hand and don’t let go. Do you understand me?” Thomas’s voice was sharp, almost a bark.
“Yes, Daddy.” She held out her hand to Aleks. He saw in her eyes that she knew something was bothering him. She might not know what, but she could feel it.
Thomas followed with the wagon full of toys. When they got out of there, Thomas would have to make sure she drank something. He didn’t want her to get dehydrated.
He followed Aleks and Hannah into the building. Something poked into his back just as they rounded the corner out of sight. He didn’t turn to see who held it; he just stayed perfectly still.
“You’re going to be a good boy tomorrow, right? Mr. Cash says if you fuck this up all the drugs in the world won’t save that kid. You get me?” The voice was young but harsh in his ear. The gun dug harder into his back, and he nodded.
“You get me?” he asked again.
“Yes, I get you.” The words tore his throat up as they came out. Fear and adrenaline made his hand shake on the wagon handle. It was hard to breathe with a gun stuck into your back.
Then the pressure disappeared. Thomas whirled to catch sight of the man who had threatened him but saw only families and children marveling at frogs under glass.
He nearly knocked over a woman and her son as he rounded the corner to get back to Aleks and Hannah. It felt like an hour since he’d lost sight of them. He searched an alcove around the corner and then hurried past the dizzying array of snakes. Normally he would have joked with Hannah about making the glass disappear, but she wasn’t there.
“Thomas!”
He turned to see that he’d passed Hannah and Aleks where they sat in a nook, looking at the alligators underwater.
Thomas shook his head. “We just got separated, that’s all.”
“You’re shaking,” Aleks whispered, and Thomas shook his head again. Then he looked pointedly down at Hannah, who was showing Lizzy all of her brothers and sisters.
“There’s just one more section left, and then we can go. We’re not safe here, and we’re no safer out there. Maybe we should run,” Thomas whispered.
“What happened? Did you see someone?”
“He pushed a gun into my back, told me to be a good boy or Hannah wouldn’t need that fancy medicine anymore. How the fuck do they know this stuff, Aleks?” His voice, even in a whisper, had risen to the point of hysterics.
“Let’s just go,” Aleks said, and Thomas wasn’t sure if he meant the zoo or life. “We can bring her back another day.”
“No, I don’t want her to know anything is wrong. Let’s finish up.”
Aleks looked over his shoulder more than at the zebras and giraffes as they pulled Hannah through the African plains. She had Lizzy curled against her chest, and she might have been asleep if it weren’t for the pile of stuff littering half the wagon and holding her up. She perked as the elephants went by, but she managed to use the gorilla as a pillow and doze by the time they reached the entrance.
“At least we don’t have to go through another trip through the gift shop.” Thomas nodded toward the Disneyland-like displays of animals and toys in the windows.
“I like buying her stuff.” Aleks shrugged. “It makes me happy to see her happy.”
“It makes me happy to see you both happy.” Thomas headed through the gate first, and Aleks followed.
They had a quiet ride back to his mom’s hote
l, mostly because neither of them wanted to address the elephant. Not the elephant meandering around its paddock, or even the stuffed elephant clutched in Hannah’s arms, but the one who had held a gun to Thomas’s back in the reptile house. Neither of them wanted to admit how close the goons had gotten to them and to Hannah. Thomas didn’t want to think about those men watching Hannah as she played. He didn’t want to think about them hiding out forever.
Something had to give.
Aleks pulled into the parking lot, and Thomas was relieved to see the hotel lit up and quiet. They’d fucking do the job tomorrow. Hopefully the guy at the zoo had understood and relayed that message to whatever dipshit was in charge.
Thomas opened the trunk while Aleks lifted Hannah from her booster in the back seat. He liked how well they worked together. His biggest fear with this marriage had been that Aleks and Hannah wouldn’t mesh, or time together would be awkward. As Hannah snuggled up into Aleks’s chest and he kissed her hair, Thomas knew that he’d made the right decision, despite everything.
His mother met them at the door, and Aleks waved her off when she offered to take Hannah. He slipped past her and headed for the bedroom. Thomas smiled at her look of approval and followed. The pile of toys by the door caught his eye, so he jogged back and grabbed them. He was just about to enter the bedroom when he heard them talking.
“Thank you for taking me to the zoo,” Hannah’s sleepy voice muttered. Thomas heard the squeaking of her crawling into the hotel bed.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I’m glad you had a good time.”
“Aleks, did Daddy help you?” she asked.
“Did Daddy help me what?” Aleks sounded distracted, like maybe he’d grabbed the blanket and was covering her up.
“He said your dad died and he was going to help you.”
“Yeah, he did, honey.”
“Are you going to go away now? I don’t want you to go.” Fear laced her little voice, and Thomas wanted to reassure her, but Aleks did it for him.
“No, Hannah. I’m not going anywhere. I made a promise to your dad, and besides, who would play Wii with me if I left?”
“We don’t have a Wii,” Hannah noted.