Whiskey Flight

by Violet Howe

  “I’ll call Tristan. He’s more than a partner; he’s like a brother to me. I trust him to keep a low profile and not draw attention to himself.”

  “What will you tell him?”

  He didn’t answer me, and I looked down at the family photo in my lap as he made the call to tell Tristan he was in the middle of something he couldn’t explain yet and ask him to do a drive by with my parents and my sister.

  He had just ended the call when he suddenly slowed the car.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as he stopped and shut off the lights.

  He put the car in reverse and twisted in the seat so he could see behind us as he backed off the road into a narrow logging lane, unmarked and barely visible in the dark.

  “What are you doing?” I repeated. “Where are we going?”

  I looked left and right as we backed farther into the logging lane, unable to see anything but trees on either side.

  “We’re gonna sit still for a minute and see if anyone looks for us.”

  “What do you mean? Won’t we be trapped?”

  “Not any more so than we could be on the road.”

  My eyes began to adjust to the dark, but it didn’t make our surroundings any less spooky. I’d thought it was frightening to be moving and feel hunted, but it was nothing compared to sitting still with that same feeling.

  I reached for the bottle of whiskey between my feet and turned it up to chug a swig.

  “You want some?” I asked Seth before replacing the cap.

  “No. Thanks. You know you’re not supposed to have an open container of alcohol in the car, right?”

  Rolling my eyes with a groan, I set the bottle back on the floorboard. “What are you gonna do, arrest me?”

  He smiled and went back to scanning left and right for any sign of headlights.

  “So, it was your ex-husband who called you earlier?”

  “Yeah. Victor.”

  His brows scrunched together as he turned to face me. “He’s not in jail? Is he out on bond?”

  “He’s supposed to be in jail. In fact, he was supposed to be transferred to a federal prison earlier today. His initial charges were state crimes. It was only recently he got charged by the feds under the RICO organized crime umbrella.”

  “But, if he’s in a federal prison—”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t think he is. The more I think about it, the more certain I am he’s no longer in custody. They’re supposed to alert me every time he’s moved. They always have, whether it was for a hearing, for a meeting, whatever. I got an alert earlier today about the move to the federal prison, but nothing since then. If he was released for some reason, no one let me know. But then again, wouldn’t they let me know if he escaped?”

  “They’ll be looking for him if he escaped. That should be easy to find out.” He lifted his phone and moved his fingers across the screen, and then he swore and laid it on his leg. “I need to get out from under these trees and get closer to civilization to reach the internet. Tell me exactly what this guy said to you on the phone.”

  I struggled to recall a conversation I’d been trying hard to forget.

  “Victor said I was in danger, and that there were people in Cedar Creek who wanted to harm me to get back at him.”

  “Did he tell you there were explosives?”

  “No, not specifically. He said they’d been inside my house, and he didn’t know what they had put in place. I just, uh, I guess that’s how I took it.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That the situation had escalated tonight, and these people decided to make a move. He said he couldn’t get to me in time to stop them, and that I needed to drive north and wait for him to call in an hour.”

  Seth looked at his watch and frowned. “Does your phone have a strong signal?”

  “I don’t know. I turned it off.”

  “Turn it back on, and we’ll get you somewhere with a better signal.”

  “Why? I’m not taking his call. I don’t want to talk to him again.”

  “I understand that, but right now, he’s the only source of information we have. He’s likely to know if you’re still in danger. Why did he want you to drive north? Did he tell you where you were going?”

  “No. He said to drive north and not to stop for any reason and not to tell anyone. He said he’d explain everything when he saw me, so that’s another reason I think he’s out.”

  Seth swore quietly, and then he looked at me, his expression impossible to read in the darkness.

  “Is that what you want to do? Go and see him?”

  “No, absolutely not. I meant what I said to you and to him. I don’t ever want to talk to Victor again.”

  “Are you sure? You were adamant that I shouldn’t come with you. If I wasn’t here now, would you be headed to meet him?”

  “No! What the hell? The guy is a murderer, Seth. He killed people and just considered it part of his job. How can you even think I’d be willing to go to him after that?”

  “I don’t know. You married the guy. You must have loved him at some point for some reason. People do crazy things for love.”

  He shrugged and gestured with his hands as though to indicate his present situation was an example.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know he was a murderer when I married him. It wasn’t something he mentioned when we talked backgrounds and hobbies, okay?”

  “What did you think his job was?”

  “When I met him, he was at my house to give me an estimate for renovations. As far as I knew, he worked for his uncle’s construction company. I had no reason to doubt him.”

  “And nothing he did made you suspicious? The people he hung around? The weapons he carried?”

  “I never saw weapons. I didn’t hang out with his associates or whatever they’re called. Look, I’ve already answered all these questions for more attorneys than I can count and more law enforcement officers than I ever thought I’d talk to in my life, not to mention a thorough grilling from my parents and my sister. I didn’t know what Victor did, okay? I worked nights at the news station while he did God only knows what, and during the day, it wasn’t like I drove around to make sure he was at a construction site. I had no reason not to trust him, so I did.”

  “It’s just hard to believe you never saw anything unusual. I mean, you were a reporter. You’re an inquisitive person by nature. Nothing set off your radar for bullshit, eh?”

  I laid my head back against the headrest. “Honestly, I wasn’t around him all that much. Like I said, we worked opposite shifts, and even on the weekends, one of us usually had work stuff to do. At the time, I thought it was part of what we had in common. We were both workaholics dedicated to our jobs. Little did I know.”

  “If they’re bringing him up on federal charges and he’s got people on the outside watching you to keep him in line, he must have been pretty deeply connected.”

  “Yeah, I guess. My assets have been frozen by the feds, and my attorney says it’s all part of a push to get Victor to turn on people higher up than him.”

  “You’re divorced, though, right?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. We were married at the time of his arrest, so that tangled up all our finances, even though his name was on nothing of mine and my name was on nothing of his. It’s all so surreal. We were only married for two months. So, two months of my life has overshadowed the last two years of my life.”

  “Two months? Really?”

  I groaned and picked up the whiskey again, wanting to escape the topic however possible. “Yeah. Technically, it was longer since the divorce got held up with the whole arrest and trial thing. But yeah. We lived in the same house for two months. Well, two months and two weeks.” I took a swallow and scrunched my face at the burn of the fiery liquid at room temperature. “Gah, I need ice.”

  “Yeah, well, you also need gasoline.”

  He dropped the shifter into drive and pulled forward, and my mind went bac
k to high alert.

  I’d been so consumed with dredging up the past that I’d forgotten the present and its inherent danger.

  “Where are we going? Is it safe?”

  “There’s been no traffic while we sat here. No one came back to look for us. They might be waiting for us, but either way, we have to get fuel.”

  “You’re not going back to Cedar Creek, are you?”

  “No. I’ll head toward Groveland. We should have enough gas to make it there. You really should keep at least a half a tank in your car at all times.”

  “Just in case I get a phone call to tell me I’m being chased by the Mafia?”

  “Yeah, among other reasons.”

  We rode in silence, both of us still tense and constantly on the lookout for any sign we weren’t alone.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Seth said after a while. “I know you must have loved the guy if you married him, and that’s a hell of a way to find out someone isn’t who you think they are.”

  “I thought it was love at the time, but looking back, I think maybe I was just lonely. Work was my life, and that was purposeful. It was what I’d intended, and I enjoyed it. But when Victor came into the picture, it was like suddenly there was a world outside the station that I wanted to be part of. I got caught up in the whirlwind, you know?”

  Strangely, it didn’t feel awkward to discuss my feelings for another man with Seth. He’d always been my best friend, even before he became my crush and my lover. He’d always understood me in ways my parents, my sister, and my closest female friends never had. It seemed natural to pour my heart out to him.

  “I should have taken things more slowly. I should have gotten to know Victor better. In hindsight, maybe there would have been warning signs if I’d taken the time to look for them instead of being in such a rush.”

  “How long did you guys date before you got married?”

  “You don’t wanna know,” I said, my cheeks growing hot in the dark. It was one thing to talk to him about falling in love. It was another to admit how foolish I’d been.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s not like you owe me any explanations. Or anyone, for that matter. It’s your life, your decisions.”

  I scoffed and turned to look out the window at the blur of trees. “Tell my parents that. You would think it was me who had murdered people based on their reaction. Of course, they were against it from the start, before we even knew what Victor had done.”

  “Your parents didn’t like him?”

  “My parents never met him,” I said, looking back to Seth.

  His eyes widened in surprise. “Wow. I knew I’d never heard from anyone about you bringing the guy home, but I assumed your mom and dad must have gone to Chicago to meet him instead.”

  “No.”

  “Not even for the wedding?”

  “The wedding” —I made air quotes with my fingers—"was Victor and me standing in front of a county clerk at the courthouse.”

  “Oh.” He looked up at the rear-view mirror and stole a glance at me. “What happened between you and your family after you left? You guys were always close, and then you went away and, like, never came back.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said, tracing my fingers across the family photo that lay in my lap.

  “What do you mean you couldn’t? You couldn’t come visit? Why?”

  How funny that I could discuss meeting and marrying another man without any awkwardness, but this topic? Much more uncomfortable.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and twisted it into a loose bun on my head, pulling a hair elastic from its usual spot around the gear shifter to hold it in place.

  “Those first couple of years, I was so damned homesick. I wanted to move back so bad, but I was determined to win. I was determined to show all of you that I could make it there. I worried that if I came back to Cedar Creek—if I saw you or saw them—then I’d give up and move back home. I couldn’t risk that. I didn’t want to fail at being an adult.”

  “It wouldn’t have been failing to come back and visit your family. Hell, it wouldn’t have been failing to move back, if that’s what you wanted. No one said you had to make it in Chicago to be a success except you.”

  “I know that now. But back then, I felt like I had something to prove. That I didn’t need you or them. Or Cedar Creek. I didn’t want to need anyone because needing them gives them power over you. I refused to let anyone else have the ability to affect what I did or how I did it. I threw myself into work, and eventually, it just became my life, and coming back home wasn’t even a consideration because I was too busy and there was no time. I didn’t date. I didn’t even think about dating really. My life was my work, and I was happy being unattached and on my own.”

  “Until you met Victor.”

  I closed my eyes against all the pain that had come with meeting Victor.

  “Yep. I made one stupid choice, and now here I am. Back home in Cedar Creek. Broke. No career to speak of as I try to get this theater off the ground with all its barriers and obstacles. I see the disappointment in my parents’ eyes every time I’m with them. And I don’t blame them.”

  “I’ve heard you say a couple of times now that it was stupidity, or a stupid choice. You’re not a stupid woman. You made a decision with your heart, and that’s not stupid. Our hearts can be foolish, yes, but any time you make a choice to love, you’re taking a risk. So, you might have made a risky choice, but I don’t think you should say you made a stupid one.”

  I turned to stare at him, wanting to agree but unable to.

  “Seth, Victor moved in the day after I met him, and we got married two weeks to the day later. He turned out to be a Mafia hitman who had murdered people, among his various other crimes. I’d say that was a pretty stupid decision on my part.”

  Seth’s eyebrows shot up, and he covered his mouth with his hand and then made like he was rubbing his chin to hide his reaction.

  “Yeah, see?” I crossed my arms and slammed my head back against the seat rest. “Stupidity. I told you.”

  “You thought you loved the guy, right? It must have seemed like the right decision at the time.”

  “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but there’s no getting around how dumb I was, and you don’t have to pretend you’re not shocked that I would do such a thing. It’s shocking, I know.”

  “Actually, it’s not that shocking.”

  I lifted my head and tilted it to look at him. “What?”

  “For someone else, yeah, maybe, but knowing what I do about you, I don’t find it shocking at all. You were the first person to jump off the swinging bridge when our church youth group did that mission trip in Panama. When my brother Noah got that dirt bike, you jumped on and took off driving even though you’d never been on one.”

  “Yeah, and I crashed in your mother’s rose bed because I didn’t know where the brakes were. Stupidity.”

  “No, you’re looking at it all wrong. You take risks no one else would take. I can think of so many stories of you doing that when we were growing up. When it’s something you want or something that intrigues you, you dive right in. You don’t take time to weigh all the consequences or think about everything that could go wrong. You just do it. Like you moving to Chicago. Hell, you didn’t know a soul there. You just wanted to be there, so you went, and you made it happen. I bet that quality proved helpful as a reporter. I bet you were willing to do whatever it took to get your story. You probably jumped right in and took risks that other journalists might not have been willing to take.”

  It was true. I’d been promoted through the ranks at the station at a younger age than anyone ever had been, mostly due to my willingness to take risks and my tenacity to make things happen.

  “How do you do that?” I asked Seth. “How do you always seem to see the best in me? Even after everything I put you through?”

  “Headlights,” he
said, staring in the rearview mirror. “Best to get down, just in case.”

  I crouched low in the seat again, but my eyes never left Seth’s face. How had I been dumb enough to walk away from him? How had I ever thought my life was better without him?

  “They don’t seem to be getting any closer, but I’m not taking any chances. Hold on. I’m making a right turn.”

  He turned, and then he watched the rearview mirror, his jaw tight and his face tense.

  “Okay, they went past and didn’t turn.”

  The lights of a gas station became visible in the distance, and Seth slowed the car as we approached it.

  “At the risk of sounding like the dumb female sidekick who gets everyone killed in the movie, I have to pee,” I said. “I hadn’t wanted to mention it before, but since we’re stopping anyway…”

  “It’s all that damn whiskey you drank,” he said with a grin. “Let me pump the gas, and then I’ll take you to the restroom.”

  “Um, there’s no one here other than the cashier. I think I could go by myself.”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t want us separated, just in case someone shows up.”

  “Right.”

  As it turned out, the restroom was on the back of the building, and the light back there buzzed loudly but gave off little illumination. It was spooky as hell, and even if we hadn’t been hunted at the moment, I would have been relieved to have Seth walk back there with me.

  “I’ll be right out here,” he said once he’d opened the door to the restroom and turned on the light to ensure no one was inside. “I’m gonna walk back to the corner so I can see if anyone pulls up or goes near the car, but I’ll be able to see this door at all times.”

  “Thanks, Seth. I appreciate all you’re doing to keep me safe. I’m so sorry I dragged you into all this.” On impulse, I stepped toward him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “I might have been a fool to marry Victor, but I was a bigger fool to let you go.”

  I moved to kiss him, and he stepped back, gently freeing himself from my embrace.