Hunter & Prey

by Kira Barker

  There was a small box next to the stairs that held the spare car keys. I randomly grabbed one, then kept stabbing the remote until a signal chirped and the lights of the Porsche at the other end of the car port lit up. Using the last of my strength, I heaved myself into the driver’s seat, then gunned the engine and soared out into the night as soon as the gate had rolled up enough to let me pass.

  Chapter 35

  Every fiber of my being screamed at me to just hit the highway and flee, but I forced my mind to slow down a few gears and start functioning again. GPS, tracker—those were things I had to take care of first. I was also dehydrated, starving, and while shock hadn’t yet fully slammed into me, it was only a matter of time until I would wreck the car if I kept going. So instead of leaving the city, I turned around and drove toward the center, praying that I wasn’t doing exactly the wrong thing.

  Three blocks from my apartment complex I ditched the car, leaving the keys in the ignition and the door open. With luck it would be gone within the hour, and with it the DNA evidence I must have left all over the wheel and seat. Adrenaline was quickly leaving my system, making every step forward twice as hard as the last, but somehow I managed to make my way toward my goal.

  From the corner, I saw a familiar SUV lurking at the curb, but my first bout of happiness was quickly squashed under an avalanche of paranoia. If not Darren himself, his firm had connections, and I had never found out just how far they reached. That I couldn’t go to the police was obvious, but what about the other agencies? It was entirely possible that one of Agent Smith’s people, if not she herself, was directly reporting to Darren. It would be just my luck that I got away from him but one of his paid flunkies picked me up not an hour later.

  Avoiding the main entrance, I dragged myself around to the back, then started the endless way upstairs using the fire escape. Even on a good day, I would have been huffing by the time I reached the top, but today wasn’t exactly one of those.

  I needed almost a minute to recover my breath, but at least then I wasn’t shivering from lack of proper clothes—and shoes—anymore. I hoped I didn’t trigger a million alarms as I pushed open the door that led into the back of the hallway, exiting behind the trashcans by the elevator.

  I’d expected to find the hallway dark and quiet; the clock on the dashboard of the car had read 3:28 when I’d abandoned it at the side of the road. But there was light spilling from the apartment on the left, and the familiar voices of Adam and Agent Smith arguing greeted me.

  “I’m not saying she has anything to do with this,” Agent Smith was saying. “I just don’t buy the bullshit that she just leaves right that very day when someone uses your face for a punching bag.”

  Adam murmured something that I didn’t understand, then his voice rose when the agent tried to interrupt him.

  “It’s no fucking coincidence, they’re likely hiding out on some tropical island, fucking like rabbits. The last time I talked to her, she was hell-bent on walking out of my life forever.”

  It only occurred to me then that they were speaking about me.

  “He’s been seen only hours ago, leaving his office. It’s her no one can find.”

  Was she actively hunting me down? But for what? At least she sounded genuinely pissed and not just about me, firming my conviction that she wasn’t involved with Darren.

  Unless, of course, the whole questioning was a farce and she knew exactly where he had been and currently was, and just kept telling Adam what he wanted to hear in the hopes that he would slip up somewhere.

  Was there anyone in this world that I could still trust?

  Their argument went back and forth for a little longer, but I stopped listening to it halfway through. My head was spinning, and the pain in my hand had reached a level where it made me dry-heave when I accidentally pulled my arm close to my body, trying to protect it. I needed painkillers, and strong ones at that, but only after I’d made sure I was safe. That didn’t exactly bode well for my comfort in the immediate future.

  Finally, Agent Smith gave up and stormed off, heading straight for the elevator, none the wiser of my position hiding around the corner. Adam slammed his door shut, casting me into darkness, but after spending several days with too much light around me, that felt actually comforting.

  My mind screamed at me to jump into action, but I forced myself to wait another five minutes—or what I thought were five minutes—to make sure that the agent was gone for good and not about to stomp back for an encore. Then I pushed myself away from the wall, ignoring the dark smears I left behind, and hobbled across the hallway to Adam’s door. Sagging against the frame, I raised my good hand and gave the door a good pound, the vibrations of that enough to make me wince with pain.

  Heavy steps drew nearer, then the door was yanked open, with Adam standing there like a pissed-off, overgrown honey badger.

  “I swear, if you don’t stop pestering me right fucking now—“ he started, clearly in anticipation of Agent Smith’s return, but then he cut off, his eyes going impossibly wide.

  “Adam, I need your help,” I started, then lost the battle against gravity and pitched forward. Immediately he was there to catch me, and I cried out when his arm pressed painfully against my hand. He was wise enough to pull me inside and close the door behind him, after making sure that there was no one else lurking in the corridor. Leaning against the wall, I caught my balance, keeping my hand pressed against my middle.

  “What happened to you?” he whispered, his eyes quickly scanning my body, snagging to my hand repeatedly as he discarded all other cuts and bruises for minor injuries.

  “You were right. With everything,” I pressed out, then winced when the pain in my hand became almost unbearable. “He didn’t just kill them, he keeps them in his basement. Dolled up, all in white. Stuffed like fucking animals!”

  That’s when my voice broke and I started sobbing, no longer able to hold it together. I told him everything, although not exactly in order.

  Adam was a lot better at reacting than I would ever have given him credit for. He hugged me close, albeit taking care to stay clear of my hand, then walked me over to the bathroom, dumping me in the shower. I was still babbling uncontrollably as he helped me peel off the négligée, then left me alone under the spray after opening the bottles of shampoo and body wash for me.

  While I washed up, frantically scrubbing at the blood, then trying to somehow get the last of his jizz out of me, I heard Adam crash through his apartment, pulling ceiling panels away and tearing up parts of the floor. When I rejoined him a little later, the perpetual chaos had turned into what I thought a bomb blast scene must look like, while Adam continued scurrying around, packing a large backpack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving, of course,” he replied, then stopped for a moment when he saw the blank look on my face. “With you. I’ve been waiting for a reason to bail on these fuckers for ages, and, quite frankly, I’m not going to play sitting duck here, waiting for your psycho killer ex to hunt me down. At least you said you weren’t sure whether he’s dead?”

  I shook my head, still stunned.

  “And even if he is, I don’t know if he has someone else to come after me,” I added.

  Adam just nodded. “Exactly. Here, do you need help with getting dressed? We really should get someone to look at your hand.”

  “That’s not important. I can easily live without the use of my fingers, but not if someone cuts me open and exchanges my blood for embalming fluid.”

  Accepting the bundle of clothes Adam pushed at me, I dropped them, then started putting them on. It was only when the jeans and bra fit that I realized that something strange was going on.

  “Adam? Why do you have a complete set of my clothes here?” Not matching, but close enough.

  His guilty expression made me want to grab for the next possible thing that I could use for a weapon, but before I could bolt, he quickly raised his hand placatingly.

  “Okay, I ad
mit, I might have not returned a few things that you left here, or snatched up the odd piece of underwear when we were in the shower, but I swear, this is a completely harmless kind of creepiness! Come on, you know me, Penelope. You know that I would never harm you!”

  I didn’t think that I would ever trust anyone again who said those words to me, but Adam still came pretty close to what I felt I could rely on.

  “I just—“

  “I know,” he interrupted, then gestured toward his kitchen table. There, my keepsakes box rested, still unopened. “What do you want to take?”

  Part of me wanted to say “everything,” but I knew that was a bad choice.

  “There’s money in there and a set of fake IDs. Brigitte had them made for me a couple years ago, some of them should still be solid. You can leave the rest.”

  Adam nodded, understanding. I needed to disappear, and every little thing that could be traced back to who I was put me at risk.

  “Can you be ready in five? I just need to finish wiping my computers, then we can be off.”

  I didn’t protest, and, honestly? The thought that he was coming with me was comforting beyond what I could express. I hated putting him at risk, too, but as he’d said, he was likely already walking around with a target painted on his back.

  I was surprised at exactly how much electronic equipment Adam needed to drag his huge magnets over, but when he wanted to reach for the backpack, I held him back.

  “What about your ankle monitor?”

  Grinning, he reached down and simply pulled it off, then threw it at the sofa. That reminded me of something else.

  “Do you have anything to scan for tracking chips? You know, kind of what you use for dogs?” I asked, feeling my stomach make another flip.

  He nodded, not even asking why. His complete cooperation made me feel even more like shit than I was already drowning in, but I couldn’t let myself care right then. Pulling away my sweater at my neck, I turned my back to him.

  “Can you check if you find something there?”

  I’d tried to check the entire area in the shower, but had come up blank.

  Sure enough, the moment Adam ran his little handheld device over the general area, it started to light up. My heart-rate spiked, and suddenly I couldn’t be rid of that tracker soon enough.

  “Just cut it out! I don’t care if you leave scars or I get an infection, just cut it out!”

  Two minutes later, he showed me something that was marginally larger than a little speck of lint before squashing it with his pocket knife.

  “Anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, let’s go,” I said, and off we went.

  Even after wolfing down a few energy bars, I was still feeling like crap so Adam had to help me down the fire escape. At street level, he assured me that it was just a couple of blocks, and we set out on foot.

  Fifteen minutes later he opened the door to a small storage facility box, both of us keenly aware that it was still in the middle of the night, and any kind of sound we’d make would immediately make us seem suspicious. Adam helped me strap on the backpack he’d been carrying so far, then walked deeper into the box that held just a single item—a motorcycle covered by a thick tarp.

  “You know how to ride that?” I asked skeptically as he handed me the spare helmet. I felt immediately better when my head disappeared behind the face-shield.

  Adam flashed me a grin as he hopped on, then backed the bike out of the storage space, the bike still shut off.

  “I’m a man of many secrets. And promise, none of those will kill you.”

  As soon as I’d slid on behind him, he started the engine and we took off into the early light of dawn.

  Chapter 36

  Six months later…

  “Two burgers with fries, one extra onions, the other no mayo,” I called over the counter, slapping the order slip onto the stack already piling up there. “And hurry up, Stu’s getting grumpy.”

  “All in sweet time, darlin’,” Adam drawled, using that terrible fake accent he’d started adopting of late. I rolled my eyes at him, then quickly crossed the room to take the orders from the next table.

  “Hi, I’m Anita, I’ll be your waitress today. What can I get you guys?”

  How things change. A year ago I was making more than five hundred bucks an hour. Now I was happy when I could work for minimum wage at a run-down diner.

  But things were shaping up, little by little. Some nights I even managed to catch an hour or two of undisturbed sleep. Maybe one day I wouldn’t wake up screaming, my entire body shaking. One day, maybe, in the far, far future.

  Our flight from Chicago had been swift, and, in hindsight flawlessly executed. We’d ditched the bike about half a day later, then spent several weeks hopping around the country wherever the next truck driver ready to give us a ride was going. We’d changed clothes, dyed our hair, went through IDs like a small kid through candy. Somewhere along the way Adam had managed to persuade a disgruntled old veterinarian to take a look at my hand and splint what could be rescued of it. He had to re-break three of my fingers, and I doubted I’d ever get the feeling back in my pinkie.

  I couldn’t have cared less, not about that, or the scars, or that my left shoulder never stopped aching after the continual strain of having been tied to that chair for what I estimated had been four days.

  After that, we’d started taking on jobs where we could find them, moving whenever either of us got too paranoid about a new town. The irony was that we both had a substantial amount of money squirreled away somewhere, but didn’t dare go near it lest anyone might trace it back to us. So we made do with what we could scrounge up and were always ready to move within the next five minutes.

  We’d come to this town about three weeks ago, and it was the first time I felt secure enough to stay for more than a couple of days. Maybe it was because it reminded me of where I’d grown up, or the fact that with less than two hundred souls, everyone knew everyone and was naturally curious about strangers. No tourists, far away from the truck roads, I wasn’t even sure if it could be found on most maps.

  Now I was Anita, and Adam was Bill, although I sometimes still slipped up and called him Steve. No idea why that had stuck, but no one seemed to care. We were only here to stay until the end of the season, then we would move on, maybe seek employment on a ranch or something.

  During the day, I was functioning well enough, but the nights were bad. Not just because of the dreams. I knew that they would go away. They usually lessened when Adam pulled me close, the warmth of his body lending me enough comfort to fall asleep again. But sometimes he would try touching me in a different way, and that’s when I felt myself grow cold and my body started shutting down.

  Oh, the irony. The ex whore who couldn’t stand to have sex even with the guy who she owed her life to.

  Adam was patient and kept telling me that he wouldn’t abandon me, that he could wait. Months ago I had given up explaining to him that things weren’t going to change, ever.

  “Can I have that with extra sauce?”

  I quickly tore my mind out of my funk and focused on the woman in front of me again.

  “Sure, Mary, I’ll tell Bill to add some.”

  “Aw, you’re such a sweetie!” she cooed, then let me bustle off back to the counter.

  Just when I was about to hand the new order over to Adam, someone turned up the volume of the crappy old TV set suspended behind the bar, making me shrink back immediately. Loud sounds, still a problem sometimes.

  “The Jetoni case has taken a few turns after the defense has regained their number one shooting star after his rafting accident—“

  I tuned out the noise and handed Adam the slip, but he didn’t even notice. Instead, his eyes were peeled on the screen, a frown appearing between his brows. Following his gaze, I felt myself grow cold as I saw a familiar figure cross the screen before the report cut back to the news anchor.

  It had been four months
into our trip across the country when I found out that Darren was still alive. We’d taken great pains not to leave any electronic trail after ditching our last set of IDs, and not even trying to find out anything had seemed like the safest route. But even like that, the news had caught up with me bit by bit.

  I had been dreading that day for weeks, and still it was that night that I felt like I could finally breathe again for the first time in forever.

  Adam knew, of course, but against all common sense he still held out hope that, one day, I would finally return his feelings for me. The problem was not the wanting; the problem was that I simply could not see him like that. Not him, not Stu who liked to make a grab for my ass when I wasn’t quick enough, not anybody.

  Anybody except one.

  I looked away from the screen again, feeling my heart skip a beat. Some days suicide didn’t sound so bad anymore because it would put an end to my madness. But, no, that would have been too easy. And, frankly, after what I’d been through, I was still hell-bent on enjoying every single second of my life.

  “Now to our studio guest,” the anchor rambled on, turning to some society hag who put on way too much makeup to disguise the botched plastic surgery on her face. “What do you say about the recent turn of events? Wouldn’t every nursing student dream that on her first day on the job she meets the man of her dreams?”

  “And what a man that is! You don’t meet a lawyer every day who looks like that and comes with just enough of an attitude to count as your classical bad boy. Who’d think that it was actually a near-fatal rafting accident that would let him meet the love of his life?”

  The hair at the back of my neck stood on end at those words, and my right hand gave a painful twinge. I glanced up at the screen again, but they were still showing just the two nags. But before I could look away, the view changed, now showing a paparazzi shot from some gala or other.