Girl on the Run

by Abigail Johnson

  He snaps his eyes from my hand to my face, and in a low, calm voice, says, “Let go, or I’ll make you.” His expression alone would have had me recoiling if my mom’s life weren’t on the line. I tighten my grip. I don’t know why his fear relieves me of mine, but it does.

  I drop the knife on the ground and then wipe my clammy hand on my pants. “Your name is Malcolm Pike. You’re a sophomore at Penn State, you love your grandmother, you drive a navy Honda Accord, and judging from all the ticket stubs in your car, you really like some band named Laughing Gravy.” I watch my fingers curling around the ripped denim of my jeans, instead of watching him. “The only other thing I know about you is that you effectively ended my life with a single keystroke. Maybe you’re innocent, or maybe you’re just a really good liar and you knew exactly what was going to happen to my mom and me. Either way, it’s all the same.” I force my hand still and look at him. When Malcolm’s expression doesn’t even flicker, I push home.

  “The guy who hurt you and tied you up, what’s gonna happen when he opens your trunk and finds you gone?” Malcolm’s arm jerks in my hand. “Will he forget it and let you go back to your life? Will you be able to talk your way out of it once he kicks down your door? Will he believe it’s a coincidence that I escaped at the exact same time as you?” I let my eyes drift over his injured side. “Or will he have to crack a few more ribs until you explain that I took you hostage? Here.” I kick the knife toward him. “You can use this to sell your story. He might even split the money with you if you manage to find my mom again.”

  I feel the pressure building up behind my eyes. I hate the way I’m putting every ounce of strength into holding his wrist. I hate that I’m afraid it won’t be enough, that he’ll fling me off and leave me utterly alone. But I need him, and if being scared and angry is the way to keep him, then so be it.

  “Right now, we’re running from the same person. And if you want me to even consider that my mom was involved in Derek’s death, then I need you to take me to my grandfather. You need me to get to my mom and your reward money. You said it yourself that I’m the only reason you found her this time. If that’s true, you need me just as much as I need you. You can’t say you didn’t do this. If it helps you sleep better, you can say you didn’t mean to do this, but you’re still responsible. You’re involved. And you don’t get to run away from it. You can be a coward after I get to talk to my grandfather.”

  He whispers one derisive word under his breath, never taking his eyes off me.

  But he stops trying to walk away.

  Okay.

  I know what I need to do. Find my grandfather and find out why he’s so convinced that Mom is innocent.

  I have Malcolm, who not only knows exactly where my grandfather is but also knows how to get past a security setup.

  It’s a start. And right now a start, a direction, is all I need. I’m tired of running from what I don’t know.

  But the problems with my plan begin to mount almost as soon as Malcolm stops trying to walk away.

  Namely, he can’t walk. Not well, at any rate, and definitely not far. Plus walking to my grandfather—who lives in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania—is not an option. I don’t know where Mom drove us, but as far as she could get us in a night is a safe bet.

  “Columbus, Ohio,” Malcolm says when I ask.

  Okay.

  That’s not too bad. It may be two states away from our home in Bridgeton, New Jersey, but it’s only one from my grandfather.

  And if my mom could drive it in one night, so can I.

  I just need a car.

  * * *

  I don’t have a car. Malcolm doesn’t have a car. Or he does, but not currently. I also don’t have enough money. Mom left with whatever money she may have had. I’ve got maybe twenty bucks on me, and Malcolm doesn’t even have the fifty he tried to bluff the motel manager with, a fact he almost cheerfully informs me of when I ask.

  Aiden has a beat-up Dodge Ram that could probably plow straight through the woods behind us, along with anything else that got in its way. Right now, he thinks I stood him up, ghosted him, but he’d still answer if I called. And he’d come. Even if I told him it was dangerous, he’d try to help.

  Because he’s a good guy. And he cares about me. Or he did. Maybe he hates me a little bit right now, but he’d still come if I needed help.

  And I care about him too much to even consider letting him.

  Mom thought she’d stashed me somewhere safe, at the motel, and they found me. If these people found our home, then they can find our friends. Better they hate me than get hurt because of me.

  “We’ll just have to pawn something,” I say, seizing the faint memory of passing a pawnshop not too far down the road.

  “Yeah, and what’s that? My bloody hoodie or your torn jeans?”

  “You don’t have anything?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t find my diamonds when you frisked me before? I always keep some on me.” He starts patting his pockets, an exaggerated frown on his face.

  I don’t have the energy for this. Of course he doesn’t have anything of value on him. He was bound and gagged in a trunk for as many days as I was pacing my motel room.

  “What about that?” Malcolm nods at the chain around my neck, and the ring hidden beneath my shirt, which I’d been unknowingly clutching. I tighten my hold.

  “No.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the ring my dad proposed to my mom with, and it’s fake anyway, so…” It might be fake in the sense that it’s costume jewelry, but it’s worth more than any real diamond ever would be to me.

  “I didn’t have time to find out anything about him, but you said he’s dead? Any chance your mom lied about that too?”

  I shake my head. I was at the funeral. I was little, only four, but I remember the scratchy stockings I had to wear, and that Mom didn’t cry until we got back home, when I found her sobbing on the kitchen floor over the ring I now clutched. We cried together.

  Vivid memories crash over me, sapping what little energy I have left.

  “You think this part is hard? Wait till we have to sneak into a building that I can guarantee has papered its walls with your picture by now,” Malcolm says.

  Every part has been hard. Every. Part. I’m flirting with a complete mental and physical breakdown. Fear is the only thing driving my body, and my brain is ready to surrender control. I’m already thinking how easy it would be to slide to the ground and hug my knees and shut down.

  But I can’t do that. Not yet.

  I suck in a deep breath.

  Money.

  Car.

  Grandfather.

  Answers.

  I just need to think. I can do this. I have to do this. Malcolm pushes the hood off his head, and my eyes catch on the drawstring.

  That could work.

  I grab one end and pull the string free. It’s nearly as long as my outstretched arms. I loop it around two of my fingers and tie a slipknot in the middle.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting us a car.” It never ceased to amaze me how often Mom locked her keys in the car. After her third hour-long wait for a locksmith, and Mom watching carefully each time the car was unlocked, she figured out a few tricks and passed them along to me. Then Mom would randomly—though now I suspect not so randomly—lock her keys in the car and leave it to me to get us back in.

  I hadn’t tried this particular method with a hoodie string before, but the principle is the same. I just need to find an older car with a pop-up lock, work the string with the slipknot under the edge of the doorframe, and saw it back and forth until the loop hovers over the extended lock inside. Then I’ll pull both ends of the string, cinching the loop tight, and yank up.

  Easy.

  Except I still haven’t moved; I
can’t believe I’m considering stealing a car.

  “Seriously?”

  My gaze snaps away from the cars in the parking lot to lock on Malcolm. “I don’t have a better idea and I don’t have time to think of one, so yes.”

  Then Malcolm is muttering something to himself and abruptly toes off one of his sneakers.

  I see it immediately. A thick stack of folded bills.

  It’s close to three thousand dollars. And he had it in his shoe.

  My gaze drifts up from the bills to his face. “Seriously?”

  “What—you want to complain now?”

  No, I don’t. But who walks around on that much money? Like he’s literally walking around on it. “What if the bounty hunter had found it?”

  “Then that would have sucked for me slightly more than this.” He shoves the cash into his pocket and turns in the direction I indicated, since we’re both eager to leave the motel far, far behind us.

  I follow, and it takes an agonizingly long time to shuffle-walk with Malcolm to the little strip mall down the street. I keep throwing sidelong glances at him.

  “What?” he asks through gritted teeth, and I can’t tell if it’s more the pain from his side or what I’m forcing him to do that earned me that irritable response.

  “What do you have against banks?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  The pawnshop has long since closed, not that we need it anymore, but we do find a surprisingly kind man at the gas station nearby, who’s much more taken with our boxer story than the motel manager was, and lets me use his phone to hop on Craigslist, find the cheapest running car possible, and give the seller the address to meet us.

  The car is…a car, so I don’t care that it looks like something that barely survived a monster truck rally, or that the floor is rusted clear through in places so that I can see the road passing beneath us.

  Malcolm, on the other hand, cares slightly more, given that the owner had sensed our desperation even before he saw us in person and claimed multiple other offers to jack up the price. In the end, it takes nearly all of Malcolm’s cash to buy it. We have enough left for gas and the few other necessities that we need for the journey, but not a lot else. I don’t worry too much until a few hours later, when Malcolm takes a deserted side road and eases the car onto the shoulder.

  I jerk forward and clutch the dash. “What are you doing? I didn’t tell you to stop.”

  Malcolm shifts into park. “My ribs are on fire. I need to take a break.” He eyes the sharpened piece of window ledge I’m still holding. “You are still well within stabbing range, okay?” His eyes flutter closed as he unbuckles his seat belt and winces. “I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job of being threatening back at the motel, but enough. You need my help, and you’ve made sure I need yours.” He hisses in a breath and reclines his seat, then lifts his hoodie. I blanch.

  Even against his dark skin, I can see the deep bruising wrapping around his ribs and muscled torso. No wonder he had trouble moving; I’m amazed he’s been able to sit up and drive as long as he has. I stare at him a second longer, then reach into the backseat for the bottle of painkillers. I toss it at him, along with an extra water bottle. He knocks back way too many pills, and it’s strange that after being chased and abandoned and fleeing for my life through the woods, I can still feel sympathetic for someone who literally caused this mess.

  He hands the bottle back.

  “How much farther?” I say.

  “Four or five hours.”

  “Can you make that?”

  Malcolm doesn’t even open his eyes as he answers. “Yes, but I need to sleep. And so do you.”

  The weight of my eyelids is becoming unbearable, unconsciousness beckoning me like the sweetest lullaby. I do need to sleep. My brain feels like it’s full of cotton, and even the simplest decision is beyond me. I hurt all over too: my head, from smashing into both the window with Mom and the pavement at the motel; my hips, hands, and knees, from falling out the window; my ribs, from Malcolm kicking me. We need to lie down somewhere that won’t have us panicking at the slightest sound.

  But I force my eyes open wide. I’d let them close once while Malcolm was driving and almost immediately had a vision of Mom with bruises like his. I can’t sleep if it means seeing that again. “Then I’ll drive. I don’t think I can sleep.”

  He stops my hand when I reach for the keys and shakes his head.

  “We can’t go in until afternoon anyway, so we either kill time now while it’s dark and no one’s around or we hole up somewhere during the day, when someone is much more likely to notice us.”

  “Why afternoon?”

  Malcolm’s eyes have drifted shut again. “Can’t you just trust that I know what I’m doing here? I’ve got a hundred thousand reasons to want this to work.”

  If I had the energy, I’d laugh. “It doesn’t seem like you need the money, based on what you were keeping in your shoe.”

  “That was every dime I had to my name. This”—he gestures at the rusted-out car—“is not what I was going to spend it on.”

  A fresh wave of weariness washes over me. “Enough okay? I’m not going to feel sorry for you. You got into this with both eyes open, and I’m the last person you want to be complaining to. So stop.”

  I’m actually surprised when he does.

  After a few minutes of silence, I glance over to find his eyes still open and his frowning gaze trained out the window. When I hear his stomach growl, I pass him some of the protein bars before grabbing two for myself. I watch as he inhales three of them before I’ve finished my first.

  Right. He’s been in a trunk. I offer him another bar, and he takes it.

  “We have to wait because there’s a shift change at five. Employees in, employees out. Plus visiting hours end at six, so there will be a lot of unknown people to keep track of.”

  An actual answer. And it makes sense. I nod and look back at the things we bought and still need to use: hair dye, scissors, a razor, clothes. And makeup—most of which is for him so we can try and hide the damage done to his face. “We’ll just slip in?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So tell me. I need to know exactly—”

  “No, you don’t. You want to know. There’s a difference.”

  Irritation tightens my lips. “Just because I’m not holding a knife on you anymore doesn’t mean I’m not in charge.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what it means.” Malcolm crumples up the wrappers and tosses the empty water bottles into the backseat before pushing his door open.

  Panic courses through me, and I’m ready to lunge for him when he announces that he’s just going to pee.

  I went at the gas station, but Malcolm was done with walking by then and opted out. Still, I find myself counting the seconds until he returns.

  Malcolm studies me warily when he settles against his seat and reclines it as far as it’ll go. After a minute of watching me jump at the slightest noise, he hits the recline lever of my seat, and the back drops out behind me. I’m reaching for the blade in an instant.

  “You’re making my ribs hurt just from watching you. Worry tomorrow. Relax tonight.”

  “I can’t relax.” The muscles in my neck tense as I speak. I don’t want to list all the reasons why, but that doesn’t stop them from zipping through my mind again and again and again.

  “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” Malcolm says, eyeing the blade that I have to force myself to set down again. “The girl in the picture looked less homicidal.”

  “The girl in the picture wasn’t being hunted. But you took care of that.”

  He doesn’t seem offended by the accusation. “If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.”

  “So why was it you?”

  Malcolm smiles, one corner of
his mouth pulling to the side. “You ever hear of the Porch Pirate Punisher?”

  “Should I have?”

  He shrugs. “I guess it’s mostly a Pennsylvania story.” I’m beginning to think that Malcolm has a flair for the dramatic, because he makes me prompt him before he’ll continue. “My dad was a hacker too. He’s the one who taught me…a lot of things. Like not to trust banks, once he showed me how vulnerable they were. When I was younger, I thought he was kind of like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, you know? Except the rich were mostly regular people and the poor was always him—even once he had plenty of money.” Malcolm shifts in his seat. “He went to prison for the first time for creating a software program that stole thousands of credit card numbers. He served two years, then was arrested again a few years later. See, he improved his program, made a few friends, and went from stealing and selling thousands of numbers to millions. He died from pancreatic cancer before being released, and I’ve been with my gran ever since.”

  “I’m sorry.” It’s an instinctual response to hearing about someone’s loss, but I’m surprised to find I actually mean it.

  “After he died, I decided I wanted to go the other way, use what I knew to help other people, not just myself. I rounded up a bunch of security footage from people who’d been robbed by porch pirates throughout the state of Pennsylvania, then I created a modified algorithm specifically to find their faces and ran it through every social media platform I could to identify them.”

  I can’t help but smile. “That’s cool.”

  “The FBI didn’t think so. Though that was probably because I also coded a program based off the one my dad originally wrote to steal credit card numbers and then I posted the pirates’ numbers online.”

  I gape at him. “You’re lying. You’d be in jail.”

  A big self-satisfied grin stretches across his face. “Can’t send a fifteen-year-old to jail. You can, however, scare the crap out of him by sending a bunch of feds to his school and yanking him out of homeroom.”

  “Wait, wait. That’s not even possible. You said you identified porch pirates just from images you lifted off security cameras? At fifteen years old? I don’t think so.”