by Naomi West
Vasilis has fallen to the ground. Clutching his knee and glaring at us. He’s scrabbling around his ankle for something that I would bet a million dollars is about to be a gun. Time to handle it.
Row is still sputtering on the ground but she scrambles up, out of the dirt and I can tell she’s alright. She looks more pissed than hurt. Actually, she looks fucking furious.
Stavros yells and I turn toward him. He’s barreling toward me like a bull at a matador, and I’ve pretty much never been less worried about an opponent. This guy is a joke. He lowers his head, obviously about to execute some kind of tackle, so I shift my body weight at the last second and bring my knee up into his soft parts.
He crumples to the ground like a sack of flour, but I grab him by the hair halfway down. His knees drag through the dust as I crank his head back and open my six inch switchblade over his neck. A line of blood sprouts up like a necklace but I haven’t damaged anything too valuable, yet.
He’s just insurance, in case Vasilis plans on bringing out that gun he’s been trying to get out of his sock.
But I shouldn’t have worried. Because no sooner do I have the knife to Stavros’s throat, Row is standing over Vasilis. And she’s winding up like she’s on home plate with some long pipe thing, some sort of archaeologist tool. She whips it through the air and lands a blow squarely on Vasilis’s face.
A spray of blood paints the dust below him as he falls back onto the ground. “Y’all are so fucking RUDE,” Row wheezes, her voice husky from the damage to her throat. “You come here day after day to threaten me to go on a date with that dumbass.” She carelessly gestures behind her to Stavros. She glances back, sees that I have a knife to his throat and her eyes go so wide, so surprised that I almost laugh. She’s going to get good and kissed right after we clear this whole mess up.
But she shakes it off and turns back to Vasilis as he gingerly tests his jaw with his fingers. He glares up at her but she just brandishes the pipe like she’s a teacher with a pointer.
“And then you send your idiot cousins to my room last night to what? Kill me? Because I politely said no, over and over, to Stavros?” She rounds on him, keeping Vasilis in her view. “Are you kidding me? I’m a world-renowned scientist. I was on the team that discovered the Lisbon Promenade.”
None of us react to that, because none of us know what the hell she’s talking about. But the point is well made. She’s a brilliant woman.
She shakes her head. “I’m above your pay grade, Stavros. Because you’re an asshole, misogynistic prick who thinks he can just snap his fingers and have any woman he wants.”
She’s facing away from Vasilis, but her aim is perfect as she kicks his already injured knee, he rears back from his gun to clutch at his injury again.
“Snap your fingers now, Stavros,” she bears her teeth at him. “I dare you.”
“Alright, alright,” he says, holding perfectly still against the steel I have pressed against his jugular. “We’ll go. We’ll go.”
I don’t believe him for a second, but I don’t have a ton of options here. Either I gut him like a pig, which I don’t much care to do in front of Row, or I let him free.
I push him forward into the dust, motioning for Row to come stand beside me. I need to see them walk away, out of the site. Now.
Stavros crawls to his brother and tries to help him stand, but Vasilis, cold fish that he is, pushes him into the dirt.
Vasilis struggles to stand, his knee is completely eviscerated at this point. I think the guy must be running on pure rage. His suit is covered in dirt, his greasy hair mussed. A sneer splits his face in two.
And then I’m pushing Row behind me in a flash, as Vasilis reaches into his back waistband and whips out a shiny silver pistol.
My gun is in my hand in a split second cocked and pointing at him. But before I can even aim, there’s a wet “thunk.” Vasilis goes rigid and he sways on his feet, falls to the ground as a third eye, red and weeping appears on his forehead. Stavros screams in rage and grief as he scrambles toward his brother and then his head kicks to one side, the bullet entering behind his ear.
Row is gasping behind me, one step away from screaming.
“What. What,” she stutters, her fingers gripping my back, my ribs. I don’t think twice. She’s over my shoulder and seconds later I’m tossing her into the brown truck, peeling away from the site.
“What the fuck?” she screams and I grab her head and force it down onto the seat.
“A sniper,” I growl between gritted teeth, we’re pushing 70 miles per hour on these crowded little back streets. “Esposito must have sent another of his men to make sure I was doing my job. He must have seen you being threatened by Stavros and Vasilis.”
“Because Esposito wants me alive and unharmed,” she says, spitting the words out of her mouth like they’re poison.
She tries to sit up but I force her head down again. The sniper isn’t going to shoot her, or risk Esposito’s considerable wrath, but if he tries to shoot me, I want her well out of range.
“Well,” she reasoned. “Then he’s not really a danger to us, right? We don’t need to run from him?”
“Of course we need to fucking run from him,” I say as I fling the car around a corner, nearly taking out some pedestrians in the process.
And then my phone is buzzing in my pocket. “Get my phone,” I tell her. “In my front right pocket.”
She digs in my pocket and pulls it out. I see Dare’s phone number flash across the scene.
“Put it on speaker.” I wait for her to do it. “Give me good news.”
“I’ve got them,” his voice, tinny with the distance and lack of a good connection, say. “I’m on my way to the agreed upon location with them, and we weren’t tracked. We’re not being followed. I’d say we’re home free.”
“Thank fuck,” I say. “Because we’re screwed here. Esposito must have sensed something because he sent another professional after us. We just witnessed a hit.”
“Fuck,” Dare says. “Well, I don’t have to tell you to get the fuck out of there, do I?”
“No.” The car goes up on two wheels as I take a final turn. I can see the hotel in the distance. “Look, stay with Mom and Mara until the big package arrives at the house.”
“Are you sure about this?”
I’m resigned. The plan that he and I came up with has a lot of room for error. But it’s the only way either of us could see this working. “Yes.”
“Alright, brother,” he says and hangs up. I snatch the phone out of Row’s hand and chuck it out the window as hard as I can. It shatters into the cement sidewalk. And then we’re swinging into the parking lot.
“We have less than two minutes to leave here,” I tell her. “Wake up your father. Leave everything.”
She’s out of the car like a shot. I am too, and sprinting to the other side of the parking lot. I smash a car window and slide into the front seat, tossing my backpack into the back seat. I rip out the wires behind the ignition and start the car. This is a lot faster and a lot sloppier than I’d planned but I haven’t stayed alive this long without learning how to improvise.
With the car up and running, I charge back to Row’s father’s room where she’s gotten him partially awake, slumped over her shoulder.
“Come on, Dad,” she says. “Stay with me.”
The sedative that I gave him works on everybody a bit differently, but he’s probably not really going to be awake for another ten or so hours. He might be able to open his eyes, look around, but he’s not gonna be walking anywhere anytime soon.
I easily flip him over my shoulder and start running back to the car. I look back and realize that Row isn’t behind me.
“Row!” I scream, turning a circle. And seconds later she’s sprinting out of her own room, something gold in her hand.
I dump her father in the backseat and pull out of the parking lot the second she’s slid into the car. “Now’s not the time, but you better believe I’m gon
na spank your ass red for that little side trip.”
She sends me a little grin, like she might be looking forward to me keeping that promise.
“I had to get one thing,” she says, clasping a gold necklace around her neck.
I don’t ask. There’s no time. There’s a black SUV in my rearview mirror and my stomach plummets.
“Motherfucker found us,” I growl, peeling off the main road and down a side alley that’s much too small for the big car that’s in pursuit.
Row grips the roll bar and winces as her father’s inert body thumps into one of the back doors. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my face. “What do you care if he catches us, Kennedy? Aren’t you and whoever that guy is on the same team?”
I feel something furious and fiery explode in my belly. “Of course we’re not on the same fucking team, Row!” I yell and screech out of the alley onto a larger road. I know he’s going to catch up to us at any moment, so I cock my gun at the ready.
“You mean,” she says slowly. “You mean you’re not taking me and my father to Esposito?”
“No,” I growl as I spot the car in my rear view again. I lean out the window and shoot out his front tire. “I’m not taking you to fucking Esposito.”
She’s silent, and I don’t have time or energy to figure out why. The SUV is swerving, but it’s still in hot pursuit. The rendezvous point that Dare and I came up with isn’t far, but this is all shot to shit if Esposito’s man see the whole thing.
My eyes scan the horizon, the ocean rolling out on one side. We pull on to a little overpass over a rivulet leading to the ocean. It’s just barely wide enough for two cars. I see the ferry in the distance. We only have a minute or so to get this douchebag the fuck off our tails.
Taking a chance, I whip the car around into a perfect 180 and the SUV slams on its brakes. This guy really, really wants to make sure Row doesn’t get hurt. Because he’s had about a hundred chances to kill or incapacitate us. My stomach curdles with absolute rage as I think about what Esposito wants her in such good shape for. Over my literal dead body.
I hit the gas at full speed and Row screams. But the SUV swerves to avoid us. It hits the side rail of the over pass, its tires spinning. I don’t hesitate. I creep our little car up to the SUV, not wanting to cause too much of a collision. And when I’m in the perfect place, just nudged up to the SUV, I hit the gas. The driver must have thrown it into reverse, because I can feel the SUV push back, for just a second. But we have better ground, and all four wheels on the road. And after another loud, revving ten seconds, the front end of the SUV tips forward and the car plummets the ten feet into the rivulet below.
“Yes!” Row screams, clapping her hands together. “YES.”
I don’t wait for anymore fanfare though. I hit the gas and gun it the hell out of there.
We squeal into another parking lot, this one mostly abandoned as most people are already on board one of the many ferries that leave from the port around the corner. I scan the lot.
“Red car,” I mutter. “I told him it would be a red car.”
Row doesn’t question. She doesn’t whimper. She doesn’t even stumble as she slides out of the car to join me. “There,” she says, pointing ten cars down to a red Mazda.
I sprint toward the car and wrench the door open. Unlocked. On a hunch and an incredible amount of good luck, I flip open the visor and the keys come tumbling down. I turn the car on and sprint back to our hot-wired car. Hauling her father out and grabbing my backpack, I head back to the Mazda.
Again, I dump him in the back seat. There’s a towel folded over the console, so I lay it over him, in case anyone looks before Dare can find him.
Then, Row and I are sliding into the car and I’m pulling away, toward the ferry. I keep a weather eye out for anyone who could possibly be Esposito’s man. I’m not sure if he’d have been able to get out of the crashed SUV and track us down, but I don’t want to get cocky. The ferry isn’t set to leave for another hour, but most of the cars that are making their way to the island along with us are already parked. The kid taking tickets looks surprised and suspicious when we pull up. I pray to God that this isn’t his car.
I open my mouth, about to bumble my way through this interaction, with a healthy wad of Euros in my hand, but Row is leaning over me. A steady stream of Greek ribbons out of her mouth and soon the kid is grinning, blushing.
“Maybe a few Euros for his trouble, sweetheart?” she smiles at me, laying a hand over mine and I realize she’s playing up the marriage angle again. I slide up my hips and take out the money, pass it over.
“Ask him to park us as close to the middle as possible, so it doesn’t look like we just got here.”
She’s speaking to him some more and the kid is leading us in, parking us in the underbelly of the ferry. And then, I’m sliding out with Row’s hand in mine. I open up the back seat and grab my bag. I slip the car keys in the old man’s pocket along with a note I’d written last night. Next, I dig in my back for a bottle of water and an apple for him. He’s gonna need it when he wakes up.
Here comes the hard part.
I close the door on Row’s father and turn to her. Her eyes are narrowing, she’s already suspicious.
“Do you trust me?” I ask her, taking my shoulders.
She’s quiet, her eyes are studying me. “For some things.”
“Which things?” That’s something at least. She could have just said ‘no’.
“I trust you with my body.” She blushes. But she’s honest. I love that about her. She’s not gonna lie to me. “The way we were last night. I trust that.”
“Do you trust me to take care of you? To do what’s best?”
She hesitates. “I don’t know you very well, Kennedy. I don’t even know your last name.”
“Squire,” I tell her without missing a beat. She’s right. She can’t see what’s in my mind. She can’t possibly know how hard I’m working to keep her safe. And why would she? 24 hours ago, I didn’t even know that about myself. I need to manufacture some trust here, quickly.
“Kennedy Squire,” she repeats, something soft coming into her eyes that I can’t interpret.
“Row,” I say, squeezing her shoulders. “I’m going to keep you safe from Esposito. Your father too. Do you hear me? Your father too.”
“Ok,” she whispers.
“But in order to do that, we’re gonna have to do something you’re not gonna like.”
Her eyes drop to her father in the backseat, covered by the towel. To the backpack on my back. “You want to leave him here. You want us to get off the ferry and leave him here.”
She’s right on the nose. “I’ve got a man on the other side. He’s going to get your father from there. Take him to a safe house.”
She struggles away from me. Tries to step back. She’s looking at me wild, like an animal trapped in a snare.
“Row, the three of us traveling together is way too suspicious. Esposito is going to have his entire team looking for us, some tourist is going to identify us right away to the fifty or sixty trained, hardened men that he’ll dispatch to find us. He doesn’t take kindly to being betrayed. He’ll see this as the ultimate betrayal, Row. I’ve taken the woman he wanted.”
I take a deep breath. I allow my certainty, my command, my understanding of the situation to come into my eye. “If the three of us stay together, we’re sitting ducks. If we split up, we have a better chance at living.”
“What if you stayed with my father, and I went alone on the other plan?”
“Not a chance,” I dismiss the idea immediately.
“I can protect myself,” she says, her chin up in the air and a resolute look in her eye.
“You certainly think you can,” I say. “Listen to me, Row. I’m not separating from you. Not until I know for sure that you’ll be safe. Your father, he’s an afterthought to Esposito. He was the way to get to you. If he thinks we’ve split up, then he won’t waste resources on finding him wh
en he could be finding you.”
The words sink in one by one. Her eyes search mine, back and forth. “You mean that he’ll be safer away from me?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately. “And you’ll be safer too. If I only have to concentrate on protecting one person rather than two.”
She reaches up and brushes some dust off the brim of my cap. “You don’t count yourself in that number.”
I shrug. She’s right. I don’t count. Only she counts right now.
She looks back at her sleeping father, hidden almost entirely by the towel. “The man that will find him when this ferry lands, you trust him?”
