by Faye, Amy
She took a deep breath. There was a lot to be done, yet. A lot of things that needed worrying about. Tonight, though, would go a long way towards helping all that stress and strain and worry melt away. She had better be careful, or she might just find herself starting to feel a little bit better.
Caroline risked a smile and eased back. Upon walking in she'd discovered to her great pleasure that the seats reclined just a bit, and when she let her weight fall back all the way it became that much easier to relax and just focus all of her attention on the movie, her mind far away and her body thinking, for the first time in what felt like days, about something that had nothing to do with the man beside her and the things he might be able to do with his own body.
When the movie ended, when the hero had finally gotten the girl and the last guns had finally been shot, she was surprised at how much she'd enjoyed it. Surprised how much she'd missed movies. It had never exactly been an overriding priority before. Yet, now she felt almost as if she were looking forward to another.
Given that the title of the movie was something like "Shoot-Bang 5," it hadn't been something that she was expecting to like. Sometimes, though, things catch you by surprise, and Caroline was more than ready to admit that this was one of the more pleasant surprises she'd dealt with in the past year.
She let him take the lead on the way out. He moved confidently, waiting when he thought he should wait; when he decided to move, he moved quickly, and as far as Caroline could tell he didn't look back or wait for her. She was presumed to keep up, and as far as she could tell she was doing a damn fine job of it, thank you very much.
The problem that arose, when it finally did arise, wasn't that she was too slow, or that the crowd closed up behind him before she could move in. Those things were easy to deal with, and by the time they were out in the lobby she was only a step behind him. He slowed his pace and held out a hand.
She took the offered hand in her own. It was strange, holding Shannen's hand. It felt too… mild. Almost surreal. As if he held fewer hands than he'd laid down with women. All completely backwards, and yet the more that she thought of it that way the more it seemed to fit him, contradictions and all.
His hands were big, compared to hers, and rough. A fighter didn't need to do a whole lot of manual labor as far as Caroline knew, but he had thick, meaty hands with callouses thick on his skin, so it felt more like leather than flesh.
His grip wasn't tight, but it wasn't loose, either. Firm enough that she knew he was there, but relaxed enough that she could pull free if she wanted to. It made her feel good. Better than she'd expected. When he stopped, she didn't really notice, as lost in her thoughts as she was, until he jerked her back by her arm.
She looked back at him, rather than forward, and missed what she might have seen for herself. His jaw worked itself loose, but she could see it tightening itself back up before more than a moment had passed.
"You ought to get out of here," he said, his voice low, his eyes not on her. "There's about to be trouble."
"Trouble?"
He let out a long breath before he nodded. "Trouble, yeah."
"What kind of trouble?"
He nodded at something behind her, though his eyes never moved from whatever it was that he was looking at. She suddenly realized that he wasn't just being his usual shades of distant. He really was looking at something, something specific.
She turned rather than asking again, and got her answer. A trio of men stood, wearing army-style jackets with slouched shoulders and a dangerous glint in their eye that they seemed to have all practiced as a group.
"You should get out of here, girlie," one said. He had a voice like sludge and a face to match. "This doesn't concern you."
"Like hell it doesn't." Her voice was hard. She didn't know where this was coming from, and she wasn't sure how she liked it. "Come on, let's get out of here."
She pulled on Shannen's arm. He didn't move from the spot. If he felt her pulling, he didn't make any sign of it.
"You go on ahead," he said. "I'm just going to have a little talk with our friends here."
"You men work for that gangster, don't you? Coogan."
One of them raised his eyebrows in something that might have approximated surprise. "Interesting. So you know the name."
"I know plenty of things," she answered. She hoped it made her sound more confident than she felt. "And I know that if I get hurt, it won't be long before the cops show up and start asking questions. Questions, I might add, that you and your boss won't want to answer."
One of them eyed her for a moment, weighing what she was saying against the odds that it was the truth or not.
"You think she's telling the truth?" If the three men were concerned about Shannen, or about her, they weren't showing it. She didn't like it. It gave the distinct air that whatever was going to happen, they were pretty sure that they'd come out better than she and Shannen would.
"Does it matter?"
The first one that had spoke shrugged. "Guess not," he said flatly. The expression that the men held in their eyes wasn't one that was worried about fighting three-on-two. They all had their eyes on Shannen.
Something in Caroline suddenly wished that she'd taken some sort of self-defense classes, studied Krav Maga or something, and she could whip out her moves to show them that they shouldn't be underestimating her.
The problem was, of course, that they weren't underestimating her, but if she ran, she knew Shannen wouldn't run with her. Her only hope was to defuse the situation before it got to that, and she knew with the sort of confidence that only situations turning bad could give that there was no way in hell she was going to do that.
They moved before she had the chance to give it a shot. The biggest man moved last; the two little guys moved and Shannen moved to meet them in the same instant. He slipped a punch and caught the guy hard with a big, blocky fist. His neck twisted until it popped back in the opposite direction like a twisted-up rubber band, and his knees buckled. He fell backwards onto his butt like he'd tripped on something.
The second guy sent a kick his way. Shannen dropped his elbow and caught the kick on his arm, then tried to twist and take a hold of the leg. The third guy finally moved as he reached, though the thug's leg was already out of Shannen's grasp.
It wasn't until the blow connected with a strange, dull sound that she realized what had happened, Shannen caught the blow on the ear and he made a decent imitation of a puppet's strings being cut.
She stared down at the ground, looking at his body. What were they going to do to him? Was he going to be alright?
The big guy transferred a paper roll of coins from his right hand to his left and shook out pained knuckles. Caroline only barely registered the movement at the edge of her vision.
He wasn't moving. Was he going to be alright? She hoped to hell that he was.
As they started to move towards her, slow and confident, it took Caroline several seconds too long to realize that she had forgotten that there was someone else who might not be okay, and she was several seconds too late to try to save herself.
26
Caroline Rice was as brave as anyone she knew. At least, she'd never been unnaturally afraid or cowardly. Not as far as she knew. There was her feelings on violence, of course, but that was hardly the same thing. Nobody would begrudge a nurse for wanting to avoid violence, even at higher costs than might seem appropriate.
So she thought that when things started to go wrong, when things turned bad, she could at least rely on herself to get away, to not panic, to… whatever she needed to do. In this case, it was a short run. Not even very far.
If she took a few long, powerful, fast strides she'd be back into the public sphere. There were dozens of people leaving the theater, and someone would no doubt help her in this time of need. Preferably sooner than later.
But instead she backed up and pressed herself against a car and covered her head, which seemed like exactly the wrong thing and was the on
ly option that her body seemed to take seriously in spite of that.
A shrill shriek came out of her throat, the sound of it surprising even her. A moment later a hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her upright.
Caroline pulled away, but her arm didn't come with the rest of her. Then another hand grabbed her other arm, and her arms were pulled apart. Someone slapped her. The world became a blur of things happening, things she wasn't ready to even start thinking about. Whatever happened outside of her narrow field of view wasn't real, and whatever happened inside of it was a jumbled, confusing mess.
Her eyes shut tight and she tried to yank free again, as if surprising them would make the fingers in her arm, tight enough to hurt, loosen up and she would pull away. Then she'd be able to run, she hoped. Because the alternative seemed obvious, and more than that, it was obvious what would happen if she failed. She wasn't ready to accept that.
Her eyes went wide, wildly searching for something, anything that would answer her. But they didn't. Instead the third guy circled around behind her and wrapped an arm around her neck, holding her still and covering her mouth.
Caroline could feel her breath coming in hard spurts. She was dangerously close to hyperventilating, and as she felt his hand clap over her mouth she felt herself inch closer to it, even as the breath started to come harder. Her chest burned as it heaved in and out.
Then the big guy's hands moved a little bit, down her body. His fingers slipped under her shirt and the panic that had been building up in her started to come to a head. She found reserves of strength she didn't know she had and ripped at her arms. It accomplished little more than to hurt her shoulders.
A voice behind her said something, but all that Caroline could feel, all she could hear, her entire world was the searing hot panic that tore through her as his fingers traced a line across her stomach and upward.
Then the line stopped. She fell to the ground, no longer supported by the hands around her. Two voices spoke. A man, she heard, and a woman. Caroline's eyes rolled around in her head, refusing to focus as she tried to look at them. The woman said something, but Caroline could only barely hear it, and she couldn't make out the words.
The woman repeated herself. Caroline tried to focus her attention but all she could seem to do was laugh. The laughter came out like a slap in her own face. She didn't want to laugh. She wanted to do a thousand things, to cry, to scream, to curl up in a little ball.
Instead, as the woman helped her up, looking between Caroline and the man who had arrived along with her, she just laughed and laughed, even as tears started to streak down her face.
Somewhere at the edge of her vision, the man's eyes darted over into the darkness. He roused another man's body, one that had fallen onto the ground. Shannen, she thought. Shannen started moving, and Caroline laughed at that, too. She tried to stifle it, but it bubbled out through pursed lips and she laid her head back on the car beside her.
When she finally stopped, Caroline felt as if something had been lost inside her, something that wasn't going to come back, no matter what she tried or what she did in the days to come. That little piece of her was gone forever, whatever it was.
The other man reached down for her. She didn't know his name but he looked nice. His coat looked awfully warm, as well. But she didn't take the gloved hand he offered. Nor did she take the hand of the girl. His girlfriend, Caroline thought, though there was no proof of anything like that.
Something moved at the edge of her vision, and she moved to react before she knew what she was doing. She grabbed out and squeezed. Shannen wobbled at the weight now hanging off of his leg, a leg that had evidently been moving before there was the weight of an adult woman hanging off of it.
A hand dug into her hair and ruffled it. A voice called out to her. Familiar. She had finally calmed down enough to make out the words. That, or something about that specific voice cut through the veil of her panic.
"You're okay," the voice said. Shannen rubbed her hair some more. It felt good. Too good, she thought. She was showing herself to be weak. It was going to reflect badly on her, in the end, she knew, but she couldn't stop herself, and she certainly couldn't change it. They were already past that.
Her eyes closed and she forced her mind to empty out of all her thoughts. That pleasant feeling, his hand on her head, took her entire concentration and a minute later she forced herself up, putting her weight on his leg.
A voice spoke, one that Caroline didn't recognize. She realized as she opened her eyes that it was the man speaking, his thick eyebrows knitted up in worry. "Are you okay? I've got the cops on the way already."
Shannen's sharp inhalation of breath pulled her out of her brief wonder.
"What's wrong?"
He looked down at her and had a strange expression on his face. She couldn't place it right away, except that she knew that there was something strange about it. Something unexpected.
And then he looked off into the distance and pulled her head onto his chest. Caroline let him, let herself stay there as long as he'd let her. She would have stayed for all of eternity if a reason to leave didn't present itself. She just had to hope that it did, or that they figured out a way to sustain themselves on nothing more than a hug.
His body felt good against hers. Strong. She needed that, needed it more than she could express. As long as he was there, she could be safe, at least for a little while. Some things could touch her, that much she knew. Things that were dangerous and unpleasant and coming, it seemed, for her.
Shannen had a lot of trouble in his pocket, but he'd tried to get her out of there. He'd told her to move, and it had been her turn to stubbornly dig in her heels. Like he had so many times before.
When he ignored her, it didn't seem to amount to much. When she'd ignored him, though…
Her body shook and tears started pouring down her face again, burning hot streaks down her cheeks that she didn't want to understand. That she couldn't understand. She looked up at him and the big fighter pressed his lips against her forehead.
He surprised her with that. It was the third surprise of the night, the second good one, and it went a long way to reminding her, at least in some small way, that there was something that wasn't all completely fucked up.
As long as she could hold onto that knowledge, she could keep going. At least, that was what she had to tell herself, because the alternative was to think very hard about what she'd gotten herself into.
It seemed as if very similar thoughts were going through Shannen's head, she saw. Because lights were starting to appear on the horizon, blinking blue and red, and the way that he watched them told Caroline that he had something to worry about.
She pulled away and butted his chest with her head. She gave him a look that she hoped said 'pay attention to me, instead,' and the way that his arms wrapped around her, pulled her in tight again and held her, warming her, said that he got the message.
27
The police asked questions that she didn't know the answers to. What did they look like? She'd seen their faces very clearly, but the memory of those faces was fantastically unclear. They had two eyes, a nose, a mouth. That seemed pretty likely, but the truth was that she was working more off of the fact that she felt as if, were there any one-eyed men among them, or men without mouths, or two noses, she would have noticed and recalled that.
At least, that was what she hoped, because otherwise she was less than useless to the police. They were big. One seemed impossibly tall, almost seven feet, and probably two hundred and eighty pounds.
Shannen's descriptions didn't seem to fit with hers. In every case, she knew, she thought they had been bigger than they were. He gave a fairly somber reporting of what he'd seen. Hers, on the other hand, felt as if it were full of holes and every one of those holes was about to send her spiraling into a fit again. She promised herself that no matter what happened, no matter what was said, she wasn't going to let that happen.
Not in front of so many
people, at least. Finally she just stopped talking, and when the police asked her questions she just shrugged. The questions were hard. Remembering was hard. More than anything she wanted not to think about it, and once she stopped talking and started the shrugging, it didn't take more than once or twice before they stopped asking her to try.
She let out a breath and watched everything around her. It was all a movie, she knew. Like the one she'd just finished watching. In that movie, they'd gotten into trouble, just like they had in the parking lot. The girl was in danger. It looked like her man was powerless to help her, when the danger came.
In the end he'd come up with some sort of clever plot to get back at the bad guys. In the end, the girl was saved and they lived happily ever after. At least, there was no reason to believe that they didn't live happily ever after, and sometimes you read into it.
She was fine with the ending. It was happy, it was pleasant, and she wouldn't mind one bit if her own story ended that way. If it ended right here with the strangers having run off the men who had attacked her. Coogan's men. The words flashed into her mind and the pain came welling up in spite of her.
She frowned. She wasn't supposed to get hurt if she didn't talk. If she just let everyone else do all the talking then she'd be fine. That was what she kept telling herself, at least, and she had no reason to doubt that.
There was a movement off to the left. She let her eyes track over, slowly. A woman cop came up to her and knelt down, looking slightly up at her. Everything was wrong.
"Are you okay?"
Caroline shrugged. She was supposed to know not to talk to her by now. She'd been very clear about that, in her own way. Why was this woman ignoring it?
The woman's face strained and frowned, and then she grimaced and turned away, heading back where she'd come from. That was exactly what Caroline wanted. Walk away, please, and leave her in peace.
