I glanced at Eli and saw that his chest was heaving. He was taking deep breaths.
“You jump as far as you can, you hear?” he said. “Okay. Jump!”
I shoved off the window sill with all my might. Eli’s grip was so tight it hurt my hand. He leaped farther than I did, so he pulled me with him. The fall took longer than I was expecting, and I had several seconds to contemplate my own death surrounded by the beautiful green mountains edging the lake.
Then we hit the water with a whoosh! and we sank deeper and deeper into the icy abyss. My body hit the surface with such force it knocked the breath out of me, and I swallowed water. I don’t know how far down I sank, but it was enough to pop my ears and make me panic. I was losing oxygen fast. Finally my own buoyancy began to lift me toward the light, and I bobbed above the surface in time to gasp for air.
Eli held me as we floated in the freezing water. We looked up as the helicopter slowly circled back around. The police officers were apparently too far away to have heard our splash.
Eli’s teeth were chattering in the cold. “I couldn’t save her,” he said.
Not this again. I grabbed Eli by the shoulders and tried to shake him out of his stupor. “Eli!” I said. “Now is not the time! We have to swim or we’re going to get ourselves caught. Then we’ll both be in prison. I love you, Eli, but you have got to snap out of it. Grieve later.”
“I love you, too,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Just swim.”
7.
The sun had fallen behind the peaks of the mountains, which cast cragged shadows across the lake. The water was so cold as Eli and I swam away from the chateau. With any luck, the police had not yet found our car, and we might even be able to drive to safety. It was difficult and slow to swim because the lake water was moving swiftly only a few feet below the placid surface. I glanced at Eli and could barely make out his features amid the shadows. Even in the darkness I could tell he was incredibly focused on swimming, blocking out any other thoughts. By narrowing his thoughts to our immediate escape he was able to push down the sad memories this lake conjured for him.
We could see and hear the cops swarming the chateau on the lake’s edge. Occasionally the helicopter would swoop overhead, shining its spotlights on the lake, and we’d inhale deeply and duck underwater for a few seconds.
Eventually we put enough distance between us and them that I was able to relax a bit and let my mind wander. I couldn’t help but smile when I remembered the way Eli had ruthlessly fucked my mouth, and I couldn’t wait to experience what that cock could do when he turned his savage attention to other places. But one thing amazed me. I thought Eli would have been even more furious that I killed Mama. He hadn’t even asked me how I did it, or what I did with her body. If you were locked up for a crime you didn’t commit, wouldn’t you want to know how the crime actually happened?
Tired and lost in thought, I failed to notice that Eli had begun to pull away from me. He was several yards ahead and gaining distance. The undercurrent was strong here. I kept trying to go forward, but it kept pulling me back. Pulling me down. It wasn’t strong enough to really notice at first, but it was there nonetheless, a nearly imperceptible force. My body seemed to not want to float, and the current was slowly sucking me lower, making it increasingly wearisome to keep my head above water. Needing a break, I took a gulp of air and let my body rest. It was such sweet relief to not have to fight that current, to just drift with it for a moment. The way I figured, as soon as I needed a breath I would simply kick and swim back up.
I looked above my head, toward the surface. Beyond the water, the sky was a different shade of the same black night. My body was deeper than I had realized and I was out of breath. I swept my arms and kicked my feet, but I didn’t move. If anything, I had sunk a little lower. I thrashed and kicked then panicked and accidentally took in water. I coughed, emptying my lungs of oxygen and filling them with even more cold water. A helicopter spotlight briefly shone over me, illuminating the lake surface, and I saw just how swiftly I was sinking. I tried to scream but only gurgled.
Moments before losing consciousness, drifting down to my eternal grave, I felt his hand on my wrist. His grip hurt. It was too tight. Why was Eli bothering me?
And then everything went black.
8.
The next thing I knew, my chest was throbbing and I was spewing water and gasping for breath. I opened my eyes and saw Eli kneeling over me, a distraught look on his face. At first I thought we were lying in bed and I couldn’t understand why my bed consisted of wet pebbles. And then I realized I was lying on the edge of the lake. Eli had saved me.
Eli sighed with relief when my breathing steadied. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought I lost you. Are you okay?”
I did my best to nod my head.
“We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’re too exposed and we have to get back to the forest, back to the car. Can you walk?”
I could see the urgency in his eyes and hear it in his tone, but all I wanted to do was lie there and sleep. I was so tired. But I had to do this for Eli. I tried to push myself up onto my elbows, then collapsed on the pebbles as my heavy eyelids closed.
“I’m sorry, little girl,” Eli said. “This is no time for a nap.”
He scooped me up and held me like a baby, with my face on his shoulder and my body cradled in one arm, and he darted across the rocky beach, to a steeper bank leading up to the driveway. It was covered in tall reeds that brushed and tickled as he pushed through them, parting the weeds with our wet bodies. I scarcely noticed, I was so out of it.
Eli stopped at the edge of the reeds bordering the road, watching and listening for the presence of danger, then sprinted across the road and into the brush on the other side. Before long we were back to Maurice’s SUV, and Eli had placed me in the passenger seat. He was about to crank the engine and make a getaway when we saw headlights approaching in the distance. Two police cars were leaving. Maybe it was the end of their shift.
“We’ll have to wait here for a while until those cops clear out,” Eli said. “It’s okay for now. They won’t be able to see us through the brush.”
I put my hand in Eli’s. My hand seemed so tiny compared to his. He gently curled his fingers around mine and held me.
“You saved my life,” I said.
“Just paying you back for saving mine.” Eli smiled faintly.
“But you wouldn’t have even needed saving if I hadn’t … if you hadn’t been in prison,” I said.
“That’s not what I was talking about, kid,” Eli said. He squeezed my hand and peered into my eyes with those smoldering dark eyes of his. “You saved me from her. From Patricia. There are things I never told you about her, things a girl shouldn’t know about her own mother.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Eli sighed. “I wasn’t able to leave her because she had blackmailed me. Somehow she got her claws on some information that would have probably destroyed the Rutherford empire. Even so, I was willing to walk away from all my power, all my riches, just to be done with her.”
Eli shook his head and shuddered. I felt his hand tightening on mine.
“But then Patricia pointed out one thing I could never abide by. She said I would never see you again. That she would make up a bunch of outlandish stories to ensure I wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of you at any time. My only daughter, taken from me by a vengeful woman. I just couldn’t let her do that. So I made it work. I gave her one of the guest cottages and never went on that side of my property if I could help it.
“When my money disappeared and the guest house burned, I was sure that Patricia had set me up. I hated her so much, it blinded me to reason, and I couldn’t see what was so obvious. But of course you did it. It all makes so much more sense. But how? How did you kill her?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” I said, “if you tell me what was so bad that Mama used to blackmail you.”
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br /> Eli furrowed his brow. “You really want to know that?” he said. “Okay, but you first.”
Suddenly Eli’s face was illuminated by harsh white light. I turned and the light nearly blinded me. It was a flashlight beam shining from the road through the brush. The beam started shaking.
“Shit, they found us,” Eli muttered.
He cranked the ignition and threw the SUV into first gear and put the pedal to the metal, speeding through the brush and onto the road. The police officer jumped to the side, the hood of our vehicle missing him by inches, his flashlight rolling across the driveway.
I squealed as we burned down the drive, unable to contain my excitement.
“Don’t celebrate too soon,” Eli said. “Let’s just hope there’s no barricade.”
Of course there was. Two police cruisers were parked to block the narrow road. Eli cut into the ditch and barreled through the gap between the cop cars and the trees on the passenger side. Tree branches scraped the fender in such an awful sound it hurt my ears.
Eli slid us back onto the road. I heard a gunshot and then the back window of the SUV exploded, glass flying everywhere. Eli never slowed down, though, even as the police officers emptied their chambers while we sped away.
I heard their sirens and knew they were following us. Eli was driving the narrow mountain road like a man with a death wish, skidding around curves where flimsy guard rails were the only thing separating us from sheer drops of several hundred feet. As we rounded a bend, I accidentally looked down once and felt woozy, seeing nothing but black at the base of the gorge. It made me want to throw up.
He made a left turn too sharply and the SUV got away from him. We slid into the guard rail, and sparks flew from metal grinding against metal, but the rail held us and Eli was able to right the wheels and keep going.
The sirens were losing their immediacy as we put more and more distance between us and the police officers. Eli eased down to a slightly less suicidal speed.
I turned and looked over my shoulder. Shards of glass hung like stalactites around the edges where the back window should have been. The moon had come out, illuminating the road. We were hugging the steep mountain as we descended to the main highway. I was admiring the silvery sliver of moon when the helicopter rounded the mountain peak, its metal rotors sparkling in the moonlight.
“Eli,” I said. “Eli!”
Eli glanced in the rearview mirror and cursed. He sped up again, as fast as Maurice’s SUV would take us, but the helicopter was gaining fast. We came to the end of the narrow mountain pass and turned onto a slightly larger road. A few other cars and trucks were making the early commute to jobs in town, and Eli passed as many as he could, swerving past pickup trucks and a big rig, but the traffic kept him from driving as quickly as before. Which was not what we needed at all.
I kept looking through the back window. The helicopter was right on our tail.
Then we entered the tunnel and I could no longer see the helicopter, the view of the sky replaced by the low concave ceiling within the mountain. Suddenly Eli slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel. Maurice’s SUV skidded to the left and slid to a stop in the middle of the tunnel.
“What the hell!” I shouted.
“Get out,” Eli grumbled.
I stepped out of the SUV and saw the headlights of the big rig fast approaching from behind us. I heard the truck’s air brakes whoosh and the tires squeal as it lurched to a stop. The truck door swung open and a huge bearded man climbed down from the cab.
“The fuck, man?” the guy said.
“I need you to switch cars with us,” Eli told him.
“I don’t think so, asshole,” the truck driver said. “Get out of my way. I’ve gotta be in Raleigh by daybreak.”
“Get in the car,” Eli said. “I don’t care where you go, but the semi is ours now.”
“Fuck you, tough guy,” the truck driver said.
The driver lifted his shirt and I saw a revolver tucked in his pants. The butt of the gun was jammed against his hairy belly. The man reached to grab the gun and Eli punched him in the face and snatched the gun away from him.
Eli pointed the revolver at the man’s face. The driver’s eyes widened with fear, and he raised both his hands.
“Shit, man, sorry,” the driver mumbled. “Don’t shoot, man.”
Eli cocked the gun, and the driver trembled.
“You’ll be fine,” Eli said, “as long as you get in that car and get the hell out of this tunnel as fast as you can.”
The man stood there dumbly until Eli raised the pistol above his head and fired. Dust and fine particles of ceiling rained down on the man’s head. He jumped to attention and ran to follow Eli’s orders. In his haste to get away, he hopped the low concrete curb and ran the driver-side headlight into the tunnel wall, smashing it. Then took off, out of sight before Eli and I had even gotten into the cab of the big rig.
Eli helped me up the step and I climbed across the driver seat, into the passenger seat. The cab smelled like an ashtray. Some fuzzy dice and a blue rabbit’s foot dangled from a chain slung over the rearview mirror. Eli put the truck in drive. By the time we reached the end of the tunnel, we could no longer see the taillights of Maurice’s SUV in the distance.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“Just check the glove box and tell me who this truck belongs to,” Eli said.
“You’re running up quite the debt,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“When are you going to pay me back?” I asked.
“Pay you back?” Eli asked, puzzled for a moment. Then he grinned, a wolfish gleam in his eye. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ve got something special in mind for you.”
“Oh yeah? Please, enlighten me.”
“You trying to distract me, girl? Okay, fine. If we ever make it out of this alive,” Eli said, “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. First I’m gonna peel off those cute little panties of yours. Then I’m gonna smack your ass until it burns. You’re a naughty little brat, and you haven’t been punished near enough—not after all the bad things you’ve done.
“Then I’m gonna hold you down so you can’t get away, and I’m gonna fuck your tight little pussy till it hurts. I’m gonna shoot you so full of cum, you’ll beg me for more.”
“That’s big talk,” I said, teasing Eli even as my clit tingled with anticipation. “Just don’t get so excited you drive us off the road. You have to stay alive to pop this cherry.”
“You’re a virgin?” Eli asked, the truck swerving slightly.
“Does that change things?” I asked.
“Yes, it does,” Eli replied. “I was planning to show you a little mercy. Not anymore. My dick is going to break you in half.”
Despite everything I had been through, I was still hungry for Eli’s cock. I was so unbelievably wet, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that.
“Well, aren’t you a brute?” I said. “Soon we’ll see how tough you really are, macho man. In the meantime, do try and stay on the road.”
9.
We ditched the big rig at a truck stop on the edge of town, then borrowed another car and drove the only place we knew to go. Back to Maurice’s. I was dreading the moment when we admitted we had lost the best vehicle he ever owned. He could hold a grudge, that one, and he wasn’t always as nice as he let on. But he was the only friend we had left.
The front door was ajar.
“Maurice?” Eli called.
No answer. A yellow taxi cab pulled up in front of the house and honked. Not wanting the driver to see our faces we hastily ducked through the open door.
“Maurice?” Eli called again as we made our way down the little hall toward the bedroom.
There was some kind of commotion coming from Maurice’s room. We ran down the hall and threw open the door. Luggage was scattered on the floor around Maurice’s bed. Maurice was kneeling on the bed, trying to close an overstuffed suitcase.
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�Where you going, Maurice?” Eli asked.
It was like he noticed us for the first time. “Oh!” Maurice gasped. “Mr. Rutherford? Avery? But how … the lake house …”
Maurice lost his grip on the overstuffed suitcase and it came unclasped. Green wads of money spilled out, falling on the bed. Eli opened the suitcase all the way and saw that it was completely filled with stacks of cash.
“Maurice, where did you get all this money?” Eli asked. “It’s mine, isn’t it?” Eli grabbed Maurice by the shirt collar, lifting him to the tips of his toes. “Tell me, Maurice. Tell me, goddamn it!”
“Put me down, sir,” Maurice said.
Eli lowered him so his feet were flat on the floor, but he didn’t loosen his grip on Maurice’s collar. The two men were standing nose to nose, though Eli was several inches taller.
“Sure, it’s your money,” Maurice said. “I took it. You murdered your wife and I figured you were going away for a long, long time. You wouldn’t be needing cash where you were headed.”
Eli looked crestfallen. “But I could have hired a lawyer,” he said. “I would have beaten the charges. How could you do that to me, Maurice? You practically raised me.”
“Yeah, I raised you,” he said. “And my mama raised your daddy. Hell, she spent more time with him than she did with me. My grandma? Let’s talk about my grandma. She raised your grandpa.
“Your grandpa was the second Eli Rutherford, right? Because you’re the fourth, and your daddy was the third. Well, old Eli the Second, he loved my grandma. He loved her a little too much. We called her Mama Lovie. He called her whatever he wanted. When he was fifteen years old, he put a baby inside her. She tried to report him and got a beating for her troubles.
“Well, nine months later, Mama Lovie had a little mixed baby. Half black, half white, one hundred percent Rutherford. I’m told he had your grandpa’s eyes. That baby was the rightful heir to the Rutherford fortune. All the lands, the homes and second homes and third homes, the fortune built on the backs of my ancestors who toiled in your tobacco fields—at least some of it should have gone to that little baby. My uncle. That would never do, of course. The Rutherfords are prim and proper folks. One night some white men took that baby from Mama Lovie, stuffed him in a tote sack with a big rock and tossed him in the river.
Alpha Billionaire Taboo Prison Break: A Contemporary Romance Page 5
