by Loki Renard
“Get that in your hair.”
“Black? Not really my color. Besides, it's pretty close to black already.”
“You want the dye, or the razor?” Anja held out a battery-operated shaver. Zora watched open mouthed as the soldier flicked the shaver on and put it to her head, removing a large swathe of long blonde hair in a single stroke.
Deciding she'd rather dye her hair than lose it, Zora set about mixing the purple tinged goop into the squeeze bottle provided and applying it liberally through her hair. The process took a long time and was undertaken in cramped quarters buzzing with the sound of Anja's razor.
There were no proper facilities, so Zora was obliged to stuff her head into the sink in order to get the dye off. She was left with a dark mop atop her head, barely tamed by application of towel and then hairbrush.
Half an hour or so later, both women emerged into the light of day looking quite different in appearance.
“Wow,” Zora said, laying eyes on Anja's buzz cut. “You look like... a villain in a cartoon.”
“Thanks. I think.” Anja's lips twisted in a smile. She really did look quite striking with very short hair. Zora was pretty sure she'd look like a potato if she cut all her hair off, but Anja somehow managed to look even more feminine than before, with delicate, beautiful features.
Before Zora could actually die with jealousy, Savage loomed out of the men's room. Zora clapped her hands over her mouth.
“So do you!”
“So do I what?” Savage raised a thick black brow at her. It was the only hair left on his head. He'd shaved himself. Bald.
Savage had always looked intimidating. He'd always looked as if he'd just stepped out of the nearest rock face, with his chiseled features and hard musculature. That had been with hair. Without hair, the planes of his cheeks, the sharp cheekbones, the eagle set of his eyes, they were all accentuated in stunning relief. He was masculinity personified, and though there was not a single weapon visible on his body, Zora somehow got the feeling he was bristling with danger.
“You look like you just stepped out of an action movie.”
“And you look like a teenager who just discovered her goth phase,” Savage replied, mussing her jet-black locks. “The important thing is that none of us look like our profiles.”
“I'm pretty sure they have the technology to work out what will happen if we dye our hair, or get rid of it.”
“Of course,” Savage said, “but on the ground, when they go into a gas station or a grocery store and they ask around to see if anybody has seen anyone matching our last known descriptions, that's when it comes in handy.”
“I feel like we look weird now though,” Zora said. “I mean, we look… outlandish.”
“Only because you're not used to seeing yourself and us this way. To everyone else, we're just some other people in the world. Background noise. Jeans and t-shirts are our new uniform.”
“I think if we want to blend in we should all just gain fifty pounds and move to the suburbs,” Zora said. “I could have fun with that.”
“We are not all gaining fifty pounds.”
Savaged nixed the idea the same way he nixed all of Zora's excellent ideas. The problem with the man was he didn't recognize genius when he heard it.
“There's a car yard not too far down the road from here,” Savage said. “We're going to buy something cheap and head for the border.”
“I don't know,” Zora said. “I have a bad feeling about the border.”
Savage and Anja shot her irritated looks and Zora got the feeling her input was, once again, not being appreciated.
“Everybody heads for the border,” she pointed out. “It's a cliché. They'll be watching the borders. I say we skip the car for now and get pancakes instead. Pancakes aren't a cliché. Nobody is watching the pancakes.”
Savage's jaw tightened. “Zora, enough. The jokes were cute, but it is time to move.”
“I'm hungry,” Zora said. “And I want to go to the bathroom somewhere I don't have to throw poop into a tree.”
“What?” Savage's expression was a perfect mixture of confusion and annoyance.
“I know you don't think much of any of my ideas,” Zora said. “But so far all of yours seem to be coming out of a spy novel where the hero ends up in a little room with a single bright light and some asshole with a pair of pliers, and I don't want that to be my future. I want freedom. I want normality. I want to worry about how much trans fat something has in it. I want to talk about the really good deal I got on some fucking ugly sneakers. I want to disappear into the machine. I want to be absorbed into ordinariness until you can't tell me from the fucking feature wall – which we will have in our house because they were pretty big in the late nineties. I want a white picket fence and a nosy neighbor and I want a home owner's association to fine me for letting the grass grow an inch too long.” She held out her arm to Savage. “Plug me back in, Agent Smith. I'm ready.”
Savage gave her a long-suffering, but ultimately patient look. “Anja,” he said, speaking to his off-sider without looking at her.
“Yes, sir?”
“We're getting pancakes.”
“Sir?” Anja's query came in the form of a single word and a look of near horror.
“She has a point,” Savage said. “Every move we make, they'll anticipate. They know how we think. But nobody knows how Zora thinks.”
“That is true,” Zora agreed. “I don't even know how I think.”
“With your stomach, usually,” Anja said rather sharply.
“Let's not be unkind, ladies,” Savage cautioned them both. “We're all in this together. Zora's input counts too.”
“Well thank you,” Zora said, simultaneously glad to be taken seriously and scared witless that her suggestion might get them hurt. They had all begun the walk into the little township, where a diner named 'Susan's Eats' was flashing neon red in the middle distance. The sign drew Zora like a pilgrim.
“Well I don't think we should be using our cash reserves to buy cholesterol laden heart attacks on a plate,” Anja said as they walked.
“So have a coffee,” Zora replied. “I'm getting chocolate chip pancakes.”
They went into the little diner and were greeted both by the heavenly scent of bacon grease and a buxom woman with a broad smile and runs in her tights. She ushered them into a booth with matronly fuss and made sure that they were all topped up with coffee at the outset.
Zora ordered pancakes. Savage ordered a big breakfast with plenty of sausages and eggs and bacon. Anja ordered some toast, and was chided for being too thin by the waitress, whose nametag declared her to be Susan. It was not clear if the name was a coincidence, or if she was in fact the Susan of Susan's fame. At any rate, Anja gave Susan a dirty look, which made Susan laugh and declare that Anja must not have had her morning coffee yet. Then she bustled off to shout the orders back to the fry cook in a booming alto.
There was a brief attempt at light chitchat whilst the three fugitives waited for the food, but it faded away as soon as Susan returned bearing three plates in her capable arms. Zora fell upon her pancakes with a hearty vengeance, earning a comment of approval from Susan, who clearly approved of people who enjoyed their food. Zora made a muffled noise to acknowledge the woman, who seemed intent on hanging out with them for the duration of the meal. The rest of the diner was empty, so perhaps she was lonely.
“My my,” Susan said, squinting at Savage as she re-filled their coffee cups. “You look a little like that fellow on the news.”
“The news?”
The waitress turned and pointed a thick finger at the television playing on the counter.
“Disgraced captain Brett Savage ended a distinguished career in military intelligence by going rogue,” a reporter with frosty blonde hair that arced around her head in a motionless curve announced. “He is accused of having murdered his lover, Zora Matthews in cold blood.”
Chapter Three
Zora, Anja and Savage stared
at the television screen quite aghast, but trying not to appear so. Seeing Savage's face beamed into the diner gave Zora a feeling of cold horror in her stomach, making her pancakes turn to lead inside her.
Savage managed what sounded like a hearty laugh. “I don't imagine I'm anywhere near as tall or handsome as him.”
Susan laughed along with Savage and went about her day, apparently without any ongoing suspicions.
“What the hell are they playing at?” Zora hissed the question when she was sure nobody was in earshot. “I'm not dead.”
“It could mean they plan to get rid of you and take him in,” Anja mused. “Hey. He already killed you, right? So it's not going to be suspicious when you disappear, or show up in a landfill somewhere.”
A shiver ran down Zora's spine. Her breakfast was ruined. She'd only managed to down one of her pancakes, and the other four looked soon to be abandoned.
“Let's get to the border,” she said. “Yesterday.”
Savage shook his head. “No,” he said. “We stay and we have our breakfast. And we drink our coffee. They've tipped their hand. No need to tip ours.”
“But they've got the whole world to look for us.”
“Not really,” Savage shrugged. A smile was spreading over his face. Zora no longer had to wonder if he was enjoying himself. He was definitely enjoying himself. He was all but rubbing his hands together. “For one, people will be looking for one man on the run. Not a man with two women. For two, that news blast means they're desperate. And they want to make us desperate.”
“Aren't we? Desperate, I mean?”
“Not in the same way they are,” Savage said. “At least we now know who wants us. The military.”
“I thought you said you got a discharge?” Zora frowned. “Back with the whole Tex shambles. You definitely said you were discharged. I thought we were running from Tex's people. Mercenaries and whatever.”
“A deal was done,” Savage agreed. “But I suppose, having discovered that you are alive, they have decided to alter the deal. Now eat your breakfast.”
Zora tried to eat another one of her pancakes. As she chewed, the wheels in her head turned. What the heck was going on? The deal with Tex was supposed to get Savage out of trouble with the military, but he was clearly in pretty deep shit with his ex-bosses. They all were.
“What about Anja?”
“I was medically discharged,” Anja said. “They don't care where I am. I'm not on anyone's radar.”
“Well, we're fucked,” Zora said morosely. “We have a chance against mercenaries. We're not going to have any chance at all against the actual military. There's nothing they don't know. And they want me dead.”
“Language,” Savage chided her.
“Maybe they'll change their minds,” Anja suggested in a rare moment of optimism. “I did.”
“Fuck,” Zora swore into her pancakes. “Oh my god, we're fucked. We're fucked like a hooker...”
“Zora, come outside with me, please.”
Savage spoke firmly and sternly. Zora obeyed, following him sheepishly. No matter how bad things were in the world, Savage could always take her mind off it by being his stern and unyielding self.
“What are you going to do?” She asked as they traipsed outside and went behind the diner. “Are you going to wash my mouth out?”
He glowered down at her. “I should, but you and I need to get to the bottom of some things. Zora, you've escaped from a secure facility more than once. Why are you so afraid now?”
“Escape is easy,” she said. “Because it's something you do when you're alive. I can't escape if I'm dead.”
“They won't kill you,” Savage reassured her.
“Why?”
“Because they know precisely what you mean to me. Because they know that if they harm a hair on your head, all hell will break loose. If they kill you, they lose leverage.” He beamed broadly. “This is the best news we've had in a long time.”
Zora frowned. “What are you so happy about?”
“They want me to come back in, Zora. So I'll go back in.”
“If it was that simple, why didn't they just write you an email? Knock on the door?”
“They may have tried, but we've been on the run, Zora. From everyone. When we saw the soldiers, we didn't ask questions. We just ran. Let me make contact with them. Let me talk to them. Maybe this can all be sorted by lunch time.”
“So you'll go back,” Zora said. “And what about me? Do I go live in Iron Horse again? Alone?”
“You might have to live somewhere for a while,” Savage said. “Until I work something out again.”
“No.” Zora snarled the word. “I'm not going to go and hide in the middle of fucking nowhere. You and I are supposed to be together, remember? This is supposed to be about you and me having a life together.”
“What sort of life? A life on the run?”
And then Zora knew precisely why he was so happy. He was happy because he thought he was going to get his life back. The life he really wanted. The only life he was really suited for. The military life.
“What happened to Mexico? What happened to Ecuador and Bolivia?”
“Be realistic, Zora,” Savage lectured. “How long do you really think we would last? There are drones capable of finding anyone anywhere in the world. You can't beat the government.”
“Don't fucking tell me to be realistic.”
“Don't swear at me.”
“Fuck you,” Zora swore. “You're selling us out. After everything!”
She expected the hard slap before it came, but it didn't make the sudden zapping pain in her backside any easier to handle. It hurt. Savage's hand was huge and hard and he was plenty practiced at swinging it.
Zora yowled in pain and outrage as Savage smacked her bottom. It wasn't even the spanking that made her yell, she was so damn angry. After all they'd been through, he was ready to just throw in the towel. Just like that, they were going back.
“Fine,” she screamed. “Call them. Go crawling back to your masters.”
The smacking stopped abruptly. She knew why. She'd made him mad. Savage never spanked when he was mad. He got all silent and he got all grumpy and he wouldn't look at her. Later there would be more smacking for sure, but for the moment she was being deemed too bad to spank. It was something of an achievement, though it didn't feel like one.
“I'm going to make a call,” he said. “You go finish your breakfast.”
She rubbed the sting out of her backside, hardly believing what she was hearing. After everything, he was going to go back.
Savage went inside and asked Susan if he could use the phone. Susan readily obliged. Zora returned to the table where Anja was sitting and told her what was happening.
“Smart,” Anja said. “He's playing the hand he's been dealt.”
“And what are you and I going to do?”
“Play the hands we've been dealt,” Anja said simply. “We've all got choices to make.”
“Some choices aren't choices at all,” Zora frowned. “I can't leave him.”
“No,” Anja said. “You wouldn't last very long on your own. You'd need to stay with me.”
Zora tried not to look horrified at that prospect, but she was. Anja wasn't precisely fun to be around. And the idea of being separated from Savage again was too painful to even contemplate.
“Good news,” Savage said, returning to the table. “I've made contact and I have assurances for my safety and yours, Zora. They don't know about your involvement, Anja. I think it best we keep it that way.”
Anja nodded, mutely accepting his decision. “I'll make myself scarce, sir.”
“Take the cash, get yourself a car and get as far away from here as possible,” Savage said. “I'll be in touch through the usual channel.”
Zora slumped down in the booth seat, shaking her head at him. “Well, don't you just have it all figured out,” she said bitterly. “We'll just go back. Back to the people who stole my life.”
It was a good question. A horrible question.
“Zora, you want a life, right? You want a home? You want a white picket fence?”
She nodded glumly.
“You do realize that if you behave yourself and do as you're told, we can have that life. No more living in hovels.”
“By their leave.”
“Everyone lives by someone's leave.”
“We're not living by anyone's leave but ours right now,” Zora pointed out. “And we have everything we need. We have freedom. We have pancakes.”
“If you want to go with Anja, I'll understand,” Savage said.
“So that's it?” Zora narrowed her eyes at him. “You're going in either way. The only choice I get is whether I follow you into the belly of the beast or wait for its claws on the outside?”
“You're being dramatic, Matthews.”
“This is a dramatic fucking situation,” she swore.
“Zora.” Savage lowered his voice and gave her a dark look that meant he'd reached the limit of his willingness to deal with her nonsense. “If you curse one more time, I will take your pants down right here and tan your bare ass.”
“Fuck. You.”
What followed was quite a bit of screeching and a lot of scrabbling as Zora tried to hide under the diner table and was hauled out by Savage, who wasted no time in pulling her jeans and panties down over her hips. Zora found herself face down on the booth seat, her bare bottom over Savage's thick thigh and his palm falling in a fast, hard series of strikes that left her squalling.
It was embarrassing and it was painful and her backside felt like it was on fire as his hard hand did its best to smack some respect into her. It had been a while since Zora was properly spanked for any real infractions and she sure as hell didn't like how it felt. More than once, his fingers caught the sensitive skin of her inner cheeks and she knew that meant everything she had was on display for Anja and Susan and whoever else might chance by.
“Let me go!” Zora squalled. “You're embarrassing me!”
