by T. S. Hill
As soon as the elevator door opened on six, she stepped forward and off, and I pushed the close door button. Just as the doors shut tight, I heard her scream and start beating on the landing doors. Her cries began to muffle, as the car moved down. Then the elevator car stopped again on four for a pick up.
A greasy, short, fat, balding man started on the elevator, and then looked at me all shocked and wide eyed. He froze in the doorway and yanked his coat open, where I saw an old snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster. As he began fumbling and trying to reach it, I pulled the Colt from behind me and pointed it at his head. For some stupid reason, I held the round, and just brought my foot up kicking the center of his chest. The kick sent him stumbling backward, and he was on his way to the floor when the door closed.
I put the Colt away again, and waited for the doors to open, which they thankfully did in the lobby. I stepped off and walked directly to Lori. The lobby was abuzz with excited people who obviously had heard the gunshots.
As I approached Lori, she stood and I took her hand, speaking loudly, but with a shaking voice, “I’ don’t know my dear, I heard it too, and thought it came from down here! Well, are you ready for dinner? Good! Then let’s go. I’m literally starving.” Lori’s eyes were big, and I bent to her ear and whispered, “Just come along.” We walked out the front door and around to the drive entrance to the parking garage.
After we turned the corner of the building, Lori asked me, “Was all that gun shots? Was it you?”
“Partially.”, I responded, easing into the garage, we saw no one else, but I pulled the Colt from my waist band, again in readiness. I looked and Lori already had hers in hand, but still concealed in her purse. On a second glance, I noticed that she also had the safely already off. Someone had trained this girl well. We kept cautiously moving toward the truck.
When we were only a dozen yards from the truck, the elevator to our right opened and it was none other than the little fat man from upstairs, this time with the revolver in his hand at his waist, and pointed in our general direction.
He immediately pulled the trigger without aiming. Once again, the Colt performed flawlessly, as I dumped three quick rounds into him center mass. My final two rounds were matched by Lori. The man fell back into the elevator with a crash, the door closed, and the indicator lights showed the elevator leaving.
We ran for the truck. I grabbed Lori and was running my hands all over her and asking if she was okay, if she was hit, did she feel anything, and then started over again. I will confess. That shot, that close to us, when it didn’t hit me? I figured it had hit Lori and that scared the hell out of me! Finally, she convinced me that she was unscathed and we got in the truck.
Fighting every instinct and emotion in my body, I drove the truck slowly out of the parking basement, into the street, and eased away.
When we were two blocks away, I sped up some, and Lori yelled at me, “I can’t hear a fucking thing! Why don’t these fucking pistols have ear plugs as standard equipment?”
“Good idea!”, I yelled back. Handing Lori my Colt, I asked her to switch out one of the spare magazines, for me. She did, and then switched out hers. Next, I saw her digging in the emergency road kit bag and I asked, “Whatcha need?”
“Ammo!”, she said, still shouting. “I’m gonna make sure all of our mags are fully packed. This shit is nothing to fuck around with!” I nodded affirmatively and pointed into the bag. She came up with a box and began packing cartridges into my near empty magazine. I had fired six of my eight rounds. The next time I got out of the truck I would also carry the spare magazine with me. Lori was right, this shit was nothing to fuck around with.
When we arrived at the bus station, I assumed someone had by now forwarded the news that things didn’t go well for them at the hotel. I took Lori with me and stationed her just inside of the door.
“Watch your back, watch my back, and stay out of the doorway.”, I instructed her. I dumped the key from the envelope, and read the tag, twenty-nine C. So far, we hadn’t seen anyone suspicious, at least no guys in cheap suits. I went to the locker labeled twenty-nine C, half expecting to hear the explosion of a gunshot. Nothing.
I inserted the key and turned it. My package was there. I carefully slid the file box out of the locker. My seal on the lid was still intact. That almost assured that at least my box didn’t carry a bomb, and hadn’t been tampered with. I wiped the key on my shirt tail and left it in the locker door. As I passed through the door, Lori fell in behind me with her back to me, facing inward, with her hand in her pocket book. I’m glad no one made any sudden moves.
Back in the truck and ten blocks away, I took a deep breath and breathed a sigh of relief. About the same time as I released that breath, Lori spoke for the first time since leaving the bus station. She had the file box in the floor beneath her feet. “This isn’t too damn comfortable Cowboy.”, she said with her knees up in front of her.
“When we get a little further out from Waco, I’ll move it to the truck bed.”, I said. “Do you reckon we can spare a bushel of yams, Mam?”
“Cowboy.”, she said in a tired voice. “You pick some of the damnedest times to joke around.”
“I just don’t want you to be too upset and scared Sweetheart.”, I replied. “Being out of control in a dangerous situation upsets me.”, she said. “Here in Waco, I think we’ve been well in control, and came out on top. Now that shit this morning, back at the diner? That was fucking out of control!”
I thought a few seconds and then responded, “I hadn’t really looked at either scenario with that perspective, but you’re right.” “This was kind of a confidence booster, wasn’t it?”
She was silent for a few seconds and then said, “Cowboy, you’re crazy as hell. You know that?”
“My dear, you have to be crazy to be in this business.”, I replied.
A few more seconds of silence passed between us and Lori spoke again, “After a while, does it kind of grow on you, Cowboy”.
“What? This business?”, I asked.
“Yeah.”, she said. “Does it have an addictive quality?”
“Yeah. It does.”, I answered.
“Like a moth to a flame.”, she said, then repeated, “Like a moth to a flame.”
We rode in silence for a few minutes and then I spoke to her again, “You’re getting a hard on for this stuff, aren’t you?”
“Cowboy, girls don’t get hard ons.”, she replied.
“Yeah, but you’ve still got a lust for it, don’t you Lori?”, I pointed out.
We rode for thirty more minutes and she was silent the entire time. But I was determined that I wouldn’t be the one to break the silence or change the subject.
Finally, she broke the silence, “Where we headed Cowboy?”
“Crocket.”, I replied. “Crocket is like a wheel. It is encircled by a highway that goes three hundred and sixty degrees around the city, off of that great circle are seven major, and seven minor, arteries that go in every direction of the compass. If someone leaves there, and you don’t know which way they went, you have fourteen roads and highways to cover. When you get twenty miles out, there are fifty-six different directions that someone could be traveling, again covering all three hundred and sixty degrees.”
“I aim to attract attention to us in Crocket, and then vanish. It will take more resource to try to track us than anyone has. Thirty miles out from Crocket, and there are nearly five hundred directions that you could be traveling. I really don’t think that Little Poss has been identified as our mode of transportation as yet.”
“I’m not sure who knows or thinks that I’m alive, but obviously from my file box, getting used as bait for me, someone thinks I’m alive, and now they know it. So, we’re going to take our Little Poss, camo truck, and perform some evasive maneuvers.”
“Sounds like a plan Cowboy.”, she said. “How much further to Crocket?”
“Another hour and a half.”
Then when a few minutes
more had passed, she began again, “Cowboy, I don’t know whether this heat in my loins is for this business, or you, or both. But there’s a heat there alright, and we’ll figure it out with time.”
“Fair enough.”, I replied.
“Now, Cowboy, please get this fucking box out of my way, so I can stretch my legs out!”
“You got it sweetheart!”, I replied. I was ecstatic. I had finally won a round. I stopped the truck on Main Street in Mart, which is, a roll up the sidewalks at sundown, little town, about twenty-five miles east of Waco. We left a bushel basket of yams on the sidewalk in front of a dress shop, and put the file box in the truck bed. I also fired up the throwaway phone again and called Al.
When he answered, I spoke three sentences to him, “Charles William Hodges, who had my key, won’t be going home tonight. His associate won’t be either. “.
Al simply said, “I don’t know who that is.”
I replied, “Take precautions.” Then, disconnected the call. Turning the phone off again I removed the battery and placed them separately in the glove box. “Just paranoia”, I explained to Lori. We then rode the next hour and a half, to Crocket, in relative silence. I think we were both trying to process everything that had happened.
About ten miles out of Crockett, Lori spoke up, “This has been the craziest day of my life. Not the best, not the worst by far, but sure as hell, the fucking craziest! Some of it was good, some of it was bad and some of it was nuts! Altogether, it has been one fucking crazy assed day!” She went on, “First thing this morning, I get washed from head to toe, and then fucked in the ass, then washed from head to toe again. That was all good.”
“I enjoyed it.”, I interjected.
“Then I was held hostage with a gun to my head, and had to run off and leave breakfast. That was bad.”
“Really bad!”, I blurted.
“Then I got to meet your sister, and get all gussied up, and have a five-star breakfast, at a five-star restaurant, with a five-star gentleman, where I got to meet a multi-millionaire. That was all good!”
“I agree!”, I quipped.
“Next, we did some couple grocery shopping, and went on a picnic in that beautiful park, where I gave you head, and we fucked, almost getting caught by a ranger, and those kids. That was really good, and exciting too!”, she gushed.
“It sure was!”, I commented.
“Then, we went mall shopping, because you didn’t want to get to Dallas until after dark, and found out about my great grand pa’s pistols, and I got a really nice present that I haven’t even got to open yet. That was weird, but pretty fucking nice too.”
“I found it pleasant and interesting.”, I said.
“Then we get detoured to Waco and you’re in a shootout, and then we’re in another shootout together. You got what we went there for, and holy fucking shit, the night isn’t even over yet! This has been one fucking, wild, crazy assed, day!”
“Yes, it has”, I agreed.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention, that we are close to solving how to work around on the SOB issue.”, she added.
“I wouldn’t say we’re close”, I replied. “I’m still not seeing a probable solid solution, that doesn’t put us at risk, and or, forfeit a fortune.”
“Cowboy, I’ve got a feeling that we just haven’t resolved everything that needs to be resolved in order for us to clearly see a solution, that we are incapable of seeing right now. My gut tells me we’ll get there. So, I think we’re close.”
“I like that optimistic attitude, Lori.”, I told her. But, I like a lot of things about you. The more I learn about you, the more I find that there is to like.”
“That’s all part of the process. Wouldn’t you say so?”, she commented.
“Part of what process?”, I asked. “The process of resolving how we feel about each other, Cowboy.”, she explained.
“I think I know how I feel about you Lori.”, I replied confidently. “Oh, you do Cowboy, just like I know how I feel about you, right now.”, she countered. “But, right now only. It takes time and circumstances, and I honestly don’t know what all else, but it takes being somewhere beyond where we are now. Then, you really know, and not for just right now, but you know how you’ve felt, how you feel, and how you will always feel. That’s when a relationship is resolved, when both people have a firm grasp on all of that.”
“Lori, that actually makes perfect sense. How do you know all of this? How did you learn it?” “I don’t know where it comes from, or how I know it. Maybe Mom and Dad? They showed me what it meant to love, and what it’s like when two people are forever in love. I don’t know. Maybe that was it. I just know. I also just know that together, Cowboy, we can solve any problem that belongs to both of us.”
“Maybe we’re a lot closer to resolving the SOB problem than I thought.”, I said, “It is a problem that belongs to both of us.” She nodded her head affirmatively, and smiled.
I had shown Lori how to check for local features on the GPS and asked her to pick us out a top-drawer hotel near the center of the city. She picked one called the Alamosa Hotel. It seemed to be a tacky name, styled after the Alamo, but it turned out to be a real first-class place, and right in the heart of Crockett. The Alamosa had their own off-street parking facility, two first class restaurants, and world class room service.
They also had a lot of other amenities that I really didn’t care about, such as, a game room, gym, pool, sauna, business center, lounge, gift shop, etc. Altogether, a really posh and nice place. In calmer times, I could take up residence in a place like that for a couple of weeks and really enjoy it. Even though it was late when we checked in, I learned that their room service remained open twenty-four hours a day, and seven days a week. I really liked this hotel.
I suggested to Lori, that as late as it was, and since we would probably sleep late, that perhaps we could go ahead and order room service, breakfast to eat that night.
“Sure!”, she agreed happily. “We began the day by getting breakfast robbed from us, then had a posh breakfast later, so it just seems proper to end the day with a middle of the road breakfast. Do they have waffles? If so, get me two, with any fruit spread they have. No coffee, because I want to sleep. Juice is too rough at night on my tummy, so bottled water to drink.”
“I’ll order it!”, I said picking up the phone.
“I’ll shower!”, she said, bounding to the shower with surprising energy.
We had both been up since three in the morning, and it was just a few minutes before midnight then, but we were both wide awake, and I felt energized myself. I couldn’t explain it, except that maybe the two shoot outs, and visiting the Waco bus station while expecting an attack, had produced an adrenalin high that still hadn’t worn off. I don’t know, but I was wide awake. Lori had seemed that way too when she went off to the shower.
When she returned, wrapped in one of the hotel’s thick, white, luxurious, bath robes, I went for my shower. Just as I returned from the shower, room service arrived. It was perfect timing. We sat at the small table, and ate hungrily. I had liked Lori’s idea of waffles, fruit spread, and water, and had ordered the same for myself. Neither of us had realized how hungry we were until we started eating. We devoured every crumb, but when we finished our appetites were sated.
In performing my ritual sweep of the room, I found that the mini refrigerator contained an already chilled, half-sized bottle of champagne. I told Lori, that I usually didn’t drink at all when on assignment, for obvious reasons, but since we both seemed to be still wired up, why not have a glass each and relax. She asked would that be a Tagg Hill rule violation, and I told her no, just a slight break from my habit of good judgment. She told me that as long as it wasn’t breaking a Tagg Hill rule, it would be ok.
“You know fucking well what happens every time we break a Tagg Hill rule, don’t you?”, she asked me in all seriousness.
“All too well, Sweetheart!”, I had responded. “I won’t dare ever break one of my own
rules, ever again!”
The bed was turned down. The lights were dimmed. A few sips of cold champagne were shared. After that, a little cuddling, a little snuggling, a kiss. The knots became a little loose on the warm, soft, bath robes, and one thing lead to another. We two, so close, warm and alive people, that cared deeply for each other, but hadn’t quiet, put it all together, following the natural flow of life as it has been for eons, lay together on the clean sheets.
Sheltered by four walls, a roof, and the night, we locked each other into that timeless embrace, that pours two souls into the same vessel, and when they are true lovers, pours them back again, into their original forms, but each now with a little of the soul of the other, to be permanently mingled with their own.
Our love making that night wasn’t to satisfy lust, reach highs of mad ecstasy, to be tender, or for physical needs. While it was partially to express love, our love making that night was for the greater part, to satisfy the yearning of two souls to commune, to join, to know, and become one with each other. When both souls have this same yearning, and need, to become one with, and for, each other, then in satisfying the yearnings of each, birth is given to the new, and united, one.
What we played out that night was physical, but what we achieved was spiritual. When we awoke the next morning, our whole relationship was a new, deeper, thing, and I viewed Lori in a new and broader light. Nothing would ever again be the same between us, and neither of us would ever want it to be. This was a miraculous night. Both we, and our lives, had changed forever.
Chapter Fifteen
Painlessly Facing the Truth
What we agreed, was mental, what we did, was physical, what we achieved, was spiritual.
I had thought that, given the events of the day, that we would have slept fitfully that night, if at all. But, both of us must have slept soundly, and for nearly nine hours, because when we awoke, we were still in the same positions as when we went to sleep. Both of us were still in our open bath robes, with our bodies molded to each other.
