by Teagan Kade
“I remember going with her to a restaurant, in Philadelphia. It was called Tony’s. We had cheesesteaks, these crazy cocktails they lit on fire… The place had like a moose’s head or something on the wall.”
I click on the profile pic of a young woman, her page popping up and the resemblance between her and the woman in the locket picture falling into place. Her hair’s shorter, she’s a little older maybe, but it’s her alright.
“Yes,” confirms Sofia, pointing, “that’s her. I’m sure of it. That’s Ally.”
I scroll down her profile page, but she’s got it locked down good. Apart from some scant education information and a quote from Monty Python, it’s otherwise bare.
“I think I lived there too,” recalls Sofia.
I turn around. “In Philly?”
She’s nodding, the cogs turning. “Yes.”
It doesn’t exactly explain how she ended up in a city almost three hours away, but it’s certainly possible. “Anything else?”
I can see her straining, the pressure she’s putting on herself to remember. She paces around the living room with her hands to her head. “Come on. Come on.”
“Do you remember anything about your life there, where you lived, maybe?”
She’s shaking her head. “No, damn it. Why can’t I remember?”
I stand and walk over, pulling her into my chest. “It’s alright.” I hold her at arm’s distance. “I can send a message through her Facebook page, see what she knows.”
“You think she’ll answer?”
Most hot-blooded women do.
I swallow, clearing my throat. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“We’ll drive to Philadelphia. What is it? Three, three-and-a-half hours from here? Maybe being there will help jog your memory.”
I just say this aloud, spit-balling, but once it’s out there a certain sense of unease enters my head. I can’t exactly explain why, only that it’s an itch, a small tick in the back of my brain telling me to be careful here.
“Okay,” replies Sofia, smiling, “if you think it’s a good idea.”
I don’t know what I’m thinking. That’s the trouble. “I think a good idea would be getting you into bed for some rest. I think that dancefloor’s going to be smoldering for quite a while after tonight.”
“Was that the floss I saw you pulling out earlier?”
I have to laugh at that. “So you can’t remember your name but you remember the floss? How old are you again?”
She wags her finger in front of me. “Nice try.” Her hand drops to my chest, fingers sliding downwards until the butt of her palm’s rubbing my groin. “What if I don’t want to rest?”
The chase has got us both worked up. I take hold of her hips, pulling her closer. “I could think of a nocturnal activity or two to soothe a restless mind.”
“If you’re about to pull Jenga out of the cupboard, that’s not what I had in mind.” Her fingers close around my balls, lightly stroking them downwards.
“I don’t know about Jenga, but I might know a game or two where dexterity counts.” I ease the hem of her dress up as I say it, amazed at the creamy softness of her skin there, the warmth of it against my fingertips.
Her hand slides past my belt buckle and into my pants, fishing for my cock. Her fingers close around my shaft. “It isn’t called Candy Land, is it? Because I think I just found it.”
I smile, taking hold of her ass and lifting her off her feet. “Come with me and find out.”
*
“Ethan?”
I snap awake. “Sofia?”
My name comes again, but it’s more distant now.
“Sofia!” I shout, reaching through the darkness, unable to find the switch for the bedside lamp.
I stumble out of bed, my foot collecting something hard. “Sofia!”
“Ethan!” but it’s quieter again.
Where the fuck is she?
“Where’s who?” comes a male voice, close enough I can feel their foul breath against the side of my face.
My eyes open and I instinctively reach to my right… where Sofia’s sleeping soundly, her bare back partially covered by the quilt, her hair pooling over the pillow like a toppled bottle of ink.
I breathe a sigh of relief and stare up at the ceiling with one hand behind my head.
Sweat’s cold on my skin. It’s been forever since I had a dream that vivid, forever since something genuinely scared the fucking daylights out of me.
What does it mean? I ask myself, but no answers are forthcoming.
It could be anything, a manifestation of my fears for Sofia, anxiety over our little road trip tomorrow.
The doubt is there again, something playing at the edges I still can’t see clearly.
Or it’s nothing.
Perhaps, but I can’t seem to shake out the impending sense of dread that’s clouding everything of late, the unease.
I manage to convince myself it’s simply fear of the unknown, of uncertainty. I’ve always liked to know where I’m going and what I’m getting into. The Army was great for that, provided that sense of structure and stability I’ve craved ever since I was a child. My father was a developer. He’d bounce us from city to city while he worked on the next project, always in and out of the house at odd hours, my scatter-brained nurse mother equally time poor. I was raised largely by my grandparents, though their idea of parenting was to set me up in front of the television—out of sight, out of mind.
Becoming a paramedic stripped some of that certainty away, because you never know what you’re walking into, but the shifts, the work itself, provided a greater framework of stability—contained chaos, as it were, the best of both words. I could live on the edge, in that moment, within the confines of my shift and area. Sofia was a curveball, sure, but one I was, am, happy to take on.
I get up and head out into the kitchen for a glass of water knowing I’m not going to get back to sleep. I’ve never been a heavy sleeper. A damn twig snaps outside and I’m wide awake.
Through the doorway I see the laptop on the living room table, a single LED flickering on the side. It’s beckoning me.
I head over and open it up, moving my finger across the touch pad to wake up the screen. I hold my face in my hands, thinking.
What now, Colombo?
I punch Ally’s name into Google. There are a couple of Instagram profiles, but they don’t match. There’s something about ‘handling a teenager’s outburst,’ but it’s nothing. Twitter’s a dead end.
“Come on,” I tell the screen, “you’re the World Wide Web and you’re giving me squat? I could find a local bukkake convention easier than this.”
I half-expect a voice to speak back, a Siri-like string of syllables telling me to get the hell back to bed.
Instead, a notification pings up in the bottom of the screen.
I remember the message I sent Ally when Sofia was in the shower following her first orgasm of the night.
I’d kept it brief and professional, told her I was the local paramedic who found Sofia, what Sofia had remembered, the locket…
I open it, Facebook filling the screen and a single message showing.
I go to click on it knowing full well who it’s going to be from.
But then I hesitate.
The unease settles once more. It’s physical now, a weight sitting there on my shoulders.
Maybe I’ve gone about this wrong. Was it the right move getting the press involved? Someone shot her for a reason, I remind myself. It can’t have been random, not if she’s from Philadelphia, and that’s looking a lot more likely.
What if this person, or persons, what if they realize she is alive? What if they come back to finish the job?
Didn’t think of that, did you, Einstein?
I was caught up in the rush, the need for information, but at what risk?
Fuck it.
I click on the message.
Information is pow
er, and Sofia and I are in short fucking supply.
The message isn’t long, but it’s certainly clear.
It reads: Get out of the city, as soon as you can. Call me when you do.
There’s a phone number.
I’m tempted to call it, but it’s the first part of the message that has me thinking twice. There’s no ‘Hi, nice to hear from you!’, no ‘Wow, where have you been?’ It’s a simple ‘get the fuck out of the Dodge.’
For a split second I consider whether to take it seriously at all, but that unease, that weight on my shoulders, is telling me I should. We were planning on leaving anyway, weren’t we? This is just ramping up the schedule a bit.
I close the browser tab and shut down the laptop, drawing in a breath.
I stand.
Here we go.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SOFIA
Either I’m stuck in a dryer or someone’s trying to wake me up.
I claw sleep from my eyes, trying to find my way out of this state of grogginess. “Ethan?”
My eyes focus loosely as I roll over, surprised to find Ethan standing there beside the bed fully clothed, jacket and all.
He crouches beside the bed. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I yawn, reaching for his jacket. “What’s with the threads? Is it morning already?”
But I can tell by the light it’s definitely not morning.
“No,” he says, “but you’re going to have to get up, sorry.”
“Why?”
He picks up his laptop from the floor, opening the screen.
God, it’s bright. I squint to read it.
It’s a reply from Ally, from that Facebook thing. I have to read it twice to make sense of it. “Why would she want us to get out of the city?”
Ethan shakes his head, closing the laptop. “I don’t know, but something tells me we should listen to her.”
I nod. I have to trust Ethan. “Okay. What should I do?”
“I put some clothes out on the chair there. “Dress quickly and I’ll pack a couple of things.”
I’m awake now, sliding my legs out of bed and forcing myself to stand, my head slightly woozy before it finds equilibrium. I don’t think the multiple orgasms last night helped.
“Where are we going?” I ask, finding my way to the chair and taking a pair of underwear off the top, doing my best to get them on in this uncoordinated state. A memory of a car-wash inflatable man pushes into my head.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s safe here if your friend’s message is anything to go by.”
I sling my top on and reach for my pants. “You think we can trust her?”
“The girl in the locket you kept next to your actual heart? Yeah, I think we can.”
I sit down to put on my sneakers, Ethan tossing me a jacket before busying himself packing clothes into a brown duffel. He zips it up. “That’ll do. Let’s go.”
I’ve barely gotten my jacket on before he’s leading us out of the bedroom. We’re about to come through the bedroom doorway when there’s a distinct thunk from the front door to the apartment. I realize it’s the door handle falling to the floor.
Weird, I think.
We’re both frozen in place. The front door suddenly bursts open, smashing against the interior wall. Two dark figures are standing in the space in leather jackets, guns raised.
“Down!” shouts Ethan, holding me by the neck and forcing me flat to the ground.
I always expected the sound of gunfire to be loud, but in the small confines of the apartment it’s deafening.
I scream, breathing across the carpet as dry wall flies around us, splinters of wood and brick falling to the floor beside my face, the gunshots endless.
Ethan yanks me up and forces me back through the bedroom doorway, throwing me beside the dresser on the immediate left and slamming the bedroom door closed, bullet holes opening up right where his hand was only seconds ago.
Panic has consumed me. I don’t know what’s going on.
I watch as, crouching, Ethan takes a chair from the corner of the room and jams it under the door handle at an angle.
The shots stop, but it’s not long before there’s a thud on the door I can only assume is someone’s shoulder or foot.
Ethan goes to the bedside table and reaches his hand past the second drawer, returning with a gun of his own. He draws the slide back and checks the magazine, moving quickly to draw up the bedroom window and look down into the fire escape.
He waves me over, gun trained on the bedroom door.
Another thud against the door, harder now.
I don’t know how I do it, but I manage to stand and take the four or five steps to the window, Ethan jumping to the side to let me past, his attention bouncing between the bedroom doorway and down into the alley below the fire escape.
Once I’m in the fire escape, he motions for me to start heading down, two hands on the gun, his steely eyes constantly sweeping the scene.
A final thud and I know whoever is after us, me, has broken through into the bedroom.
The time for stealth is lost.
“Go!” shouts Ethan.
I move as fast as I can, my legs shaky and my fingers reaching for anything they can. He’s right behind me.
I look back and see the first guy poke his head out the window.
Ethan fires a single shot. It ricochets off the window frame, a gun and hand returning to fire two shots back, which go pinging metallically somewhere to my left.
I move faster, terrified beyond comprehension, adrenaline doing all the work.
We reach the ladder and Ethan kicks it out, the two leather-clad figures emerging from the bedroom window and hunkering down at the top of the fire escape. They fire in tandem, but there’s too much metal between us.
They start to move, making quick progress.
“Jump!” yells Ethan, and I do as he says, letting go of the ladder and falling to the alley below, one of my ankles giving way and crumpling me flat to the ground.
Ethan lands beside me and hooks me under the arm, guiding us both up against the wall. He points up the alley, fishing for his keys with one hand while the one with the gun remains tight to his chest, trained on the bottom of the fire escape.
The two guys following us yell something at each other. They’re not speaking English, but for some reason I know what they’re saying: “Don’t let her fucking leave!”
Ethan fires twice and tells me to run.
I don’t need to be told twice, running with my hands around my head towards his truck, cowering beside it when I reach the door.
The two goons have started to descend the ladder, one firing from above and the other starting to sprint towards us close to the wall.
Ethan fires twice.
Like he’s run into a clothesline, the first goon’s body snaps back and he falters.
More shouting in that strange language. “Fredek! Get up.”
Ethan arrives and opens the passenger door, helping me up before slamming the door and moving around the back of the truck, firing again and again, the rear window shattering and forcing me into the footwell.
Ethan slides in with his head down, starting the truck and hitting the gas before he’s even managed to close his door, taking off at full speed down the alleyway and swinging out onto the open road, the driver’s side door slamming closed.
He straightens up and checks the rear-view, the engine revving high. He shifts up and keeps the gas on.
“Stay down,” he says.
“I wasn’t planning on coming up,” I get out.
My whole body is shaking. I notice Ethan’s gun is missing. “Where’s your gun?”
He holds up his right hand, a deep cut where his thumb meets his palm. “Gone.”
It looks terrible. “Are you okay?”
“Flesh wound,” he replies, “nothing serious. An inch or two more, though…” He trails off.
He hits the brakes hard and takes a corner, the mo
mentum forcing me against the transmission tunnel. “Who were they?” I ask.
He breathes out, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“We’re going to get out of the city, right? Just like Ally said.”
He looks down to me. “Soon, but first we need help. First, we need to find out what the fuck we’re dealing with here.”
*
It’s not long before we’ve pulled up in another suburban street, Ethan parking the car down a side street and making us walk two blocks to a sprawling Queen Anne complete with turret and Hogwarts-like fixings.
He helps me up the stairs, ringing the doorbell and looking back to the street, constantly looking and searching for anything out of the ordinary.
The door opens and a woman stands there in a dressing gown. She sees Ethan and then me, crossing her arms and leaning on one leg, addressing Ethan, “I told you, I don’t do threesomes, and I sure as fuck don’t do marriage counselling, so what’s with the four AM wake-up call?”” She spots his hand. “What the h—”
“We need to get inside, Vanessa, and I need somewhere to put the truck,” he tells her.
She nods. “Alright,” looking me up and down, “but you sure you want to bring Miss Europa here? Seems like a magnet for trouble.”
I can’t say I’m liking this first impression of Ethan’s paramedic friend. She’s certainly making her dislike of me very clear.
She ushers us inside and closes the door, refusing to acknowledge me and taking Ethan’s hand. “Do I even want to know why someone’s shooting at you?”
She might not have time for amnesia patients, but this Vanessa definitely cares for Ethan, her face crinkled with concern as she looks over the wound.
Ethan takes her hand away. “Your cousin, the one in the gang, club, whatever… You said he owes you, right, for the Xmas thing?”
She rolls her eyes. “Jesus, Senya? Yeah, he does. What are you getting at here?”
“We need to see him, if we can. It’s important. I’ll need a piece, too.”
Vanessa shakes her head. “Serious fucking shit you two are in, huh?”
“What happened to your piece?” she asks, the one you keep behind your drawer?”
I don’t want to know why she knows her way around Ethan’s bedroom.
