by C. L. Stone
“I would have bought one,” he said. “I don’t know how you feel about something like rings.”
He was in a jewelry store earlier… “You stole it?”
“The money for it and what we took will go back.” He gently squeezed my hand and then removed the ring from my grasp. He moved it to my finger. “It was a valid distraction for what I needed. I didn’t know your size.”
It fit. A little snug. Diamonds and their value were beyond me, something I never really thought about. This one appeared big, but simple. A single round stone on a gold band.
“With Alice after us…” I mumbled.
“I don’t want to wait,” he said. He sat up on one elbow, holding my hand with the ring on it. He lifted it to his lips, kissing my knuckle. “Not when, at any minute, something can happen and I’ll regret every second I didn’t spend near you.”
I’d been worried before his feelings would change after knowing at several points of time I’d been with the others. This relieved a lot of that bottled up worry I’d had. I bit my lower lip for a second. “I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. The ring…”
“I wasn’t sure, either. Which is why I didn’t give it to you earlier,” he said. “Not that you married to Raven would have stopped me from…” He trailed off and just looked at the ring on my finger. “I don’t imply ownership with this.”
“I know.”
He squeezed my hand gently again and pulled it to his chest, over his heart. “If something happened, I didn’t want you to think—”
Suddenly, the front door shook hard, cracking and splintering at the frame.
Axel was up in an instant. I scrambled, leaning with my back against the wall to pick myself up.
There was another slam. The door shook harder and a crack formed.
“Someone knows he left,” I whispered. “Those neighbors are after his recycling…”
Axel picked up my shovel and took it to the back wall of the apartment. There were some exposed boards here. He used the shovel to wedge between them and make a small opening. The back wall had been basic plyboard and was easy to move.
We scuttled through with our bags in tow just before the front door shattered apart.
As the apartments had been made up of offices connected to warehouses, we wedged ourselves into the wide-open space, the remains of the warehouse section. The ceiling was falling in on this one. Holes allowed beams of light to shine down on exposed, cracked concrete.
But where it was dark, it was horrifyingly dark. The brighter beams of light made it harder to see.
Axel ran right for these dark spaces, taking me with him. I held my breath, as if breathing too much of the darkness would contaminate me. We darted through the dark. I kept a hand on his back to be sure I didn’t lose him.
Once we were in shadow, he moved carefully and quietly in an S-pattern, aiming for the rear of the building.
Behind us, there were voices, but I couldn’t make them out. Footsteps. More cracking of wood, probably from the hole we made in the back.
There was the echoing sound of a gun’s safety being taken off and a hammer cocking…
After that sound, Axel moved faster with his weaving but remained quiet. If their eyes were trying to adjust like ours, they couldn’t see us.
When we got to the rear, a light shone behind us, a bright LED beam. There was a shout, and an echo followed. “Don’t move!”
Axel crashed through an exit door on the far side, and I followed.
More loud shouting. “Around back!”
Male. Authoritative.
Once in the alley, we ran.
♠♠♠♠♠♠
It was blocks of mad dashing and weaving between buildings before we finally broke into residential blocks.
I was out of breath and came to a stop in someone’s yard, but Axel pulled me until we were between two houses.
We kept our backs up against a wall. Axel scanned the neighborhood while I clutched at my chest, trying to breathe.
“I don’t think that was the neighbors,” I huffed out.
Axel muttered curses under his breath. “I thought it was police at first, until the gun. It couldn’t have been them, which means Alice is looking for us.”
“She did get someone killed in jail, right?”
“There might be a bad cop among them willing to look the other way, but the police are generally on our side. They’re not going to pull a gun in the dark and not alert people that they are the police.”
“Should we go to the police?”
“You might end up doing that once we find where they’ve got everyone, but it’s likely whoever is working with her in the precinct would tip her off if they’re on the way. She’s gone this long not getting caught. This might be our only chance.” He brushed his forehead and wiped away sweat at his temple. “We shouldn’t have stayed. Carl must have told them about where he’d been living.”
I wiped my brow. “He didn’t hand the note to Roger?”
“Maybe after he handed the note to Roger, someone stopped Carl and questioned him.” He huffed and leaned his head back, gazing up at the sky. “I should have told him to leave quickly. Gave him a timeline…”
“We can’t think of everything. Maybe he tried…”
“I can’t keep ahead of this.” He blew out a breath and then checked around the corner of the wall we were leaning against. “We need to keep going. They’ll be doing sweeps through this neighborhood.”
This time, we walked quickly and weaved between homes until we were on the edge of where North Charleston met downtown Charleston.
“Too close to the more upscale neighborhoods and we’ll get caught in street cameras,” he said, motioning further down the street. “We need to get to the location.”
“The police aren’t going to figure things out and be there waiting for us? What would you write down that gets the message to her without alerting the cops to where we’ll be?”
“It was in the note to Roger. If Carl did get the note to him, it’s something Roger relays to the right people. If it got picked up by someone other than Roger, then it won’t matter. Because I’m not picking the location. Roger is.”
“How do we find out?”
“Phone call. Maybe some other way. They’re smart. They’ll get it to us. We also need a car to get there.”
It was late afternoon, and being December, the shadows were already long and it was starting to cool off. After all the running, I was sweating through my T-shirt and I’d lost my hat back at Carl’s place. I raked my hair back behind my head, making a temporary ponytail to cool my neck. “If it’s around Charleston, won’t the police be looking and come pick us up?”
“He’ll pick a location that’s out of Charleston. Different jurisdiction,” he said. He turned to me and removed a ponytail holder out of his pocket, passing it to me. “Need this?”
I raised an eyebrow, taking it and using it to stuff my hair behind my head in a sloppy, half-done tail. It was enough to allow the colder air in the shadows to reach my neck. “Teach me how to steal a car.”
“You want to know?”
“It’s been useful.”
He breathed in slowly and then blew out a breath. In between the homes, it was pretty dark. The shadows made the lines of his face deepen so he looked depressed. “Funny how the more I try to pull you out of that life, the further we dive into it. And now it’s the only card to play when we can’t…”
He trailed off, but I knew what he meant. The Academy. Without them, without their network, we were resorting to crime to get by. The moment we stopped pretending to be good guys, we turned right into bad ones, justifying stealing and other things for survival.
I moved to him, putting a hand on his chest. “Maybe that group, they saw things happening they couldn’t touch. Things beyond them. They wanted to help, but didn’t know how. Maybe you were the experimental group, but being good isn’t always a straight line.” I smirked a little thinking of wha
t Corey said. “Sometimes there’s a gray area.”
He seemed to consider this. “Maybe there is a way to make this easier, more light gray than dark.”
He took my hand, turning me to the road. His head held a little higher, and his gaze steady. I only hoped we could finally be one step ahead of Alice.
BETTER THAN STEALING
The sun was setting when we descended on the back lot of Henshaw Customs. It took a few bus rides and then miles of walking, but we took a path around to the rear of the property once we got close.
We were huddled in a tree line about ten yards from the edge of the back lot. We waited until we were sure the last of the people had left, the garage doors closed, the office locked up and dark. There was no sign of movement for at least a half hour before we emerged from the woods.
“Keys are kept in the office,” he said. “But there’s cameras. And the feed is monitored.” He motioned to it. “Should be secure…It’d be our people watching.”
“Why couldn’t we approach them during the day when they were still there? They aren’t going to give us to Alice.”
“We don’t want any chance of Alice or someone else thinking we’re connected and that they helped us. This will make it appear they aren’t with us. I think. Might show we don’t trust them enough to approach. If she’s even watching.”
Breaking into the office wasn’t difficult. He knew the window that was left just a little unlocked so that if he shook it enough, it’d actually slide right open. I kept a lookout at the front of the building while he rummaged for keys.
He returned shortly with three sets.
“What are we borrowing?” I asked.
He scratched at his cheek for a moment. “We’ve got to think of the plan in reverse. When we pick them up, how do we get them out together, that sort of thing. Work our way backward.” He pointed to the RV in the back.
“So we have to take that?”
He nodded. “Biggest thing here. Ever driven something that big?”
“Nope.”
“If we take it with us, we’ll have to stash it somewhere. It’s conspicuous, and Alice might want to take it from us.” He dangled another set of keys. “We’ll tow a truck, and I’ll take a bike too. We’ll park the RV, wait until it’s time. Then we’ll drive to the meeting point. You tail me. Wherever she takes me, you follow. Then go back and get the RV. Park it nearby. I’ll start working on a way to get them out from the inside.”
“What do I do after I park the RV? Should I try to get in and help?”
“If we’re not out within a few hours, you’ll have to call the police in. Warn them there’s hostages.”
Axel walked out to the RV, used the keys to start it and pulled it close to the closed garage doors.
From there, he parked, got out, and found a small truck. He pulled that one up behind the RV, super close and then got out, showing me how to hitch the two together.
When he was done, he had me go with him to open one of the garage bay doors.
“We’re not worried about the cameras at all, are we?”
“They aren’t going to stop us,” he said.
It was a compromise. Why risk stealing from any more actual people we’d have to repay? Not when we could get away with borrowing what we needed from Academy people.
Besides, the bikes belonged to Brandon, right?
Inside the garage were a few ready to go ones.
At first, Axel moved to the moped, the one the kid was working on a couple of days ago.
“Not that one,” I said.
Axel looked at me. “It’s lightweight. Easier to fit into the back of the truck.”
“Just pick the next best one. Besides, last I was here, the electrical wasn’t working on that one.” Also, I felt bad taking the kid’s bike.
Axel had to go back in for different keys, but he came back to a bike that I didn’t recognize but was put aside. He didn’t turn the bike on, just took it off the breaks and started rolling it toward the truck. “Grab that ramp.”
There was a lightweight plastic ramp that I brought around to the back of the truck. Within minutes, we had the bike secured to the bed of the truck. We couldn’t lift the tail of the truck, so we had to rely on the straps to keep it from rolling out.
When we were done, we loaded into the RV. I got into the passenger seat, looking behind us into the space. There was a couch near where we were, a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom and beyond that, a single bedroom in the back. It’d be enough to fit a load of people.
He was about to start the RV when I touched his elbow. “I still want to learn how to hotwire a car.”
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll practice on the truck.”
“Do you know where we need to meet yet?”
He was about to say something when a vehicle appeared on the road, a black Jeep. It slowed down for just a minute to roll down the passenger window and toss out a plastic bottle right at the start of the drive for Henshaw’s.
“Looks like it just got here,” he said, turning to watch the Jeep head further up the road, disappearing behind one of the other warehouses down the block.
He started the RV. When he got close to the plastic bottle, he had me go out and get it.
I scooped it up out of the grass it had rolled into. It was just a sports drink. I’d thought at first it’d be a message in a bottle sort of thing, but there was no paper inside.
On the outside of it was a sticker price tag. Bert’s Market. Folly Beach.
Smart. If anyone else picked it up, they wouldn’t know there was a message. Looked like trash. I kept it anyway and brought it along. I showed the sticker to Axel.
He nodded. “I know the place.”
♠♠♠♠♠♠
There was a 24-hour grocery store on John’s Island, the island just before getting to Folly Beach’s island. The parking lot was huge, and there were a lot of customers when we arrived.
“There’s still probably cameras pointed out here,” I said when he pulled into the lot.
What I hadn’t noticed was the number of other RVs parked nearby, in the furthest outside lot. He tucked ours cleanly between two other very long RVs that made ours look puny.
“They’ll give us cover,” he said.
I stretched my arms over my head, flexing my body. It had been hours of moving around, on the brink of getting caught, and still there was so much to do. “I’m going to be nervous pulling out in this big thing. I just hope this plan works,” I said.
“It’ll work.” He unbuckled the seatbelt and sat back, brushing his palms across his face. “Are you doing okay?”
I wanted to say I was fine, and technically, I was. “I’m fine compared to the others. I’m trying not to assume they’re dead, but when we aren’t hearing from them…”
“It’s not like they can just call,” he said. He reached over, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently. “This way, we find Alice and make sure we catch her. If they are dead or alive, we’d want that at least. That’s why I’m here, making sure this ends and we don’t have to do this ever again.”
Not thinking about it was the only way I could move forward now. There was hope that what we were doing, trying to rescue them, would be successful. We’d no idea if she had anyone at all or if they’d been shot and killed and we were chasing ghosts. The only thing we could do was hope to figure this out quickly.
Axel checked under his seat and through pockets hidden around the RV interior. “Bert’s is open at all hours. Witnesses, but they’ll be minimal and limiting what Alice will be able to do. But I’m going willingly, so she shouldn’t cause too much trouble. Still, we’ll go after midnight. Less chance of anyone else getting hurt.”
The RV had basics already in place, including bottled water, some crackers, cans of tuna and soups. We managed to make tuna salad with crackers and heat up some soup and make a meal out of it. We split a box of cookies.
When we’d eaten and we still had hours to wait,
he showed me how to hotwire the truck, that the red wire was the battery and to twist it around the brown or yellow wire and how to unlock the steering wheel.
“Older vehicles are less likely to have security measures. Still, you might trigger an alarm,” he said.
“How do you turn it off?”
“Usually don’t bother. Just hurry up and finish and drive it out of there. On an older vehicle, people will wait to see. Is it their car? Is it someone else’s? Got about two minutes usually before someone will look. And when it silences after you’ve started driving it, they probably won’t bother to check.”
I looked at the parking lot beyond where we were, with people walking around. I missed being that oblivious. I’d been stealing to survive for a while, thinking people were ignorant of the world, and yet I was still so far from where I was now.
Suddenly, a figure appeared between the two large RVs we were parked between. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck, and Axel was standing next to me with the door open. I didn’t think anything of the person, because the parking lot was busy, and I assumed people were in the RVs next to us. I didn’t recognize him, either. Not at that distance.
But he approached us with some confidence and seemed to recognize Axel.
Axel pulled away from the truck, going to him. “Can I help you?”
He got closer, and I realized it was Liam. He had a woven beanie hat on, making him look different with it was hiding his ginger hair. He wore a brown jacket, jeans. He had an intense look, concerned. He kept his hands in the jacket pockets as he approached.
“Thought I could help you,” he said.
“How’d you find us?” Axel asked.
“GPS in the RV. You didn’t think we’d have one in our vehicles?”
“I figured,” Axel said. “I just thought none of you would follow. You know what’s going on. We’re trying our best to keep our distance.”
Liam tried to smile, despite his worried expression. “We’re very bad about letting things go. Better me than anyone else, and believe me, they wanted to send as many people as possible. But Alice knows my face. I was on the ship, too. It’s possible she’d come after us eventually anyway.”
