by Tonia Brown
Satan glanced down at Jonah’s arm and shook his head. “Looks about right to me.”
“No. It’s wrong. You said it would cost me forty-eight hours.”
“Yup. And now you have forty-eight hours to spend any way you want. Or didn’t I explain that part?”
Jonah gritted his teeth, knowing there was no point in arguing. “No. You didn’t.”
Satan raised an eyebrow as he said, “Must’ve slipped my mind.”
“I see.”
“Yes. I would suppose you do. Now it’s high time you got back on the road. You got a whole lot of miles to cover and so little time left. It’s a long haul from here to there. I guess you won’t be stopping off at any little roadside attractions or motels or hotels anymore. Will ya?”
Every time Jonah was left holding Dale’s bag—after being caught for whatever stunt he had let the idiot talk him into as kids, and even as adults—he tried to see the bright side of his situation. There was always a bright side, whether it was time off from school due to an expulsion, or extra reading time while being grounded. There had to be a bright side to this, or Jonah supposed he might just lose his mind. “You know, I was actually glad to see you in that patrol car. Dale and I thought you were a real cop for a minute. The last thing we need is for them to catch up with us.”
“What would the cops want with you numbskulls?” Satan snapped his fingers in understanding. “Ah, that thing in Reno, huh? You don’t gotta sweat that, son. That’s old news.”
“Old news?”
“Yeah, don’t you listen to the radio? That poor woman came out of her coma yesterday and set the record straight. Attempted murder? You two? Like anyone would really believe that.”
“You’re kidding me?” Just as the weight of only having forty-eight hours left settled on him, the burden of being on the run from the police lifted. It was nice to hear good news for a change.
“I’m being perfectly serious. And you’ll be pleased to know they arrested that chunky clerk for embellishing his story a bit. Naw, the fuzz may still want you for a little light questioning, but I don’t think you’re wanted men anymore. Congrats on that.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Lucifer cringed at the prayer. “Spare me the piety.”
“Sorry. Thank you. And I mean it. I really, really, really needed to hear that.”
“My pleasure. Any other bits of good cheer I can slide your way?”
“Actually, yes.” Jonah rubbed his neck, almost embarrassed to ask the question, but eager to know the answer. “We—that is to say, Dale’s corpse and me—we were sort of wondering if you planned on fixing him if we win?”
“Give him a little physical tune-up if you cross the finish line on time? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yeah.”
“Like putting that thumb back on?”
“Yeah, among other things.” Jonah tried not to shudder at the memory of Dale’s intimate confessions. “I know I wasn’t specific before, but… well… he’s kind of worried about it.”
Lucifer tipped his head to one side, astonished by this. “Is he? I didn’t think the zombie would care about stuff like that.”
“Me either. But he asked, so I’m asking.”
“Then tell him not to worry. I’ll take care of everything. Provided you win, of course.”
“Of course. And, while we are on the subject of that thumb… Did… did we really need it? Or did I just waste a whole night digging up some poor woman’s back yard for nothing?”
“Do you really want to know?” Lucifer asked, making a show of trying to repress his growing grin and failing. “‘Cause the answer is liable to just piss you the fuck off.”
“I thought as much.” Jonah glanced at the watch again and, rather than try to argue the point more, he settled himself on facing the task. “Forty-eight hours, then.”
“Yup.”
“That’s going to be hard.” He turned to look off down the highway, a pensive mood stealing over him. “We’re still an awful long way away.”
“You’re closer than you think.”
When Jonah turned back to ask Satan what he meant by that, the Devil was back in his car and Jonah was on the side of the road alone. He watched as Lucifer pulled the patrol car around the Focus and waved just before driving off.
“What was that all about?” Dale asked, joining Jonah on the road’s shoulder.
“Great news,” Jonah said. “That woman came out of her coma and told the police what happened.” He gave Candy a thumbs-up and, from the car, she returned his positive signal with a timid smile, one that looked both relieved and confused that the police had left without so much as a struggle. “We’re off the hook.”
Dale stared off at the retreating dot that was the patrol car. “A cop stopped us just to tell us that? Wow, they do things a lot different here in Colorado. Must be all the new-age hippies that live around here.”
Jonah’s pleased grin turned into a scowl. So much for the high of partial freedom. Why did the zombie always have to ruin things? “No. It wasn’t just an officer. It was Satan.”
“Oh? I’m going to guess he stopped us for more than just an idle chat about our tangle with the law?”
“You let her use a GPS.”
“So?”
“Don’t you remember? Lucifer said we couldn’t use them.”
The zombie touched his chin in thought. “Oh yeah.”
“Yeah, well he took away some time to pay for it.”
“How much time?”
Jonah showed him the watch.
“Holy shit!” Dale shouted.
At the shout, Candy undid her buckle and opened the car door.
“Keep it cool,” Jonah said. “We don’t need to upset her, too.”
“Can we make it in that time?”
“If we stop standing around and yapping about it, we will.”
“Is there a problem?” Candy asked as she reached them.
“No!” both Jonah and Dale shouted together.
“What did the officer want?”
“The back tires are a little slack,” Jonah said, the lie rolling off of his tongue as easily as it had ever done for Dale. That’s what he got for spending so much time around a liar.
“That was all? The tires are slack?”
“Yeah. He could have cited us for it, but he was nice enough to let us off the hook.”
“Okay,” she said in a slow drawl. “They must do things different here in Colorado.”
“I was just saying the same thing,” Dale said.
“Listen,” Jonah said. “I know you’re in a rush, and we’re sort of in a rush, too, so let’s stop fooling around and just drive straight to the east coast. If we share the driving, we can make it by this time tomorrow. Sound good?”
Candy nodded, her bewilderment giving way to relief. “Sounds great.”
“All right, then.”
“What’s for lunch?” Dale asked in a practiced tone. It was official; the dead man had the world’s worst timing. Jonah appreciated Dale’s efforts to appear alive, but he was beginning to wonder if bringing up the whole thing wasn’t a mistake. “I could eat a horse. I mean, not alive or anything. A dead horse. Dead and cooked.”
“Not now,” Jonah whispered.
“Shit,” Candy said just over his whisper.
“Shit?” Dale laughed. “But we had that last night.”
Candy didn’t laugh.
And neither did Jonah, because he was looking at the same thing Candy was.
A large black SUV had pulled in behind the Focus. The doors popped open, and three familiar men climbed out.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Candy repeated, over and over.
“What the hell do they want?” Dale asked. He poked Jonah in the ribs. “You said the cops were done with us.”
“That’s what Luc—” Jonah caught himself before he called the Devil by name. “—he said. The officer. That just stopped us.”
“It’s not the co
ps,” Candy said. Very quietly she added, “Sweet baby Jesus, I wish it were the cops.”
“Who are they?” Jonah asked.
She looked to him, concern standing in her bright eyes. “I didn’t want to get you mixed up in this.”
“Mixed up in what? You’re not making any sense.”
Candy turned away and headed toward the men.
“What are you doing?” Jonah asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder, but didn’t stop until she was face to face with the trio of muscular men.
The four fell into a heated argument, none of which made any sense under the noise of passing cars. Jonah caught snatches of sentences like, “out of this”, and “fucking money”, and “a long way”. He had no idea what the fuss was about, but it didn’t sound good.
Then one of the men hit Candy.
It was a sudden backhanded slap, delivered right to her kisser, and strong enough to knock her off her feet. At the sight of her falling to the ground, Jonah lost what little grip he had on his nerves. For so many days, he’d struggled to keep his wits about him. The zombie kept him constantly at the edge of his temper. The trip was trying at times, but he managed to remain collected for the most part. He even kept his cool when dealing with the Devil himself. But this… this was too much.
He would not stand idly by and watch someone strike the woman he loved—or at least lusted after.
“Candy!” he shouted, and ran forward to protect her like the idiot he was.
Thunder cracked, as if from very far away, and with it, pain blossomed in Jonah’s left knee. When his foot struck the ground, a blazing jolt shot along the length of his calf and thigh. He crumpled under the terrible sensation, dropping to the gravel and rolling along the shoulder of the road from the momentum of his short sprint. Jonah came to a stop just beside his own car, where he floundered a bit, unable to right himself again. A wide stream of crimson surged from his wound, blood crawling across the highway shoulder and onto the blacktop.
He thought he heard someone call his name.
Candy? No, it was too masculine.
Must’ve been Dale.
Another lightning strike sounded, followed by the thud of someone else hitting the ground. With tremendous effort, Jonah twisted about to find Dale only a few feet away, face down and not moving. A puddle of blackened blood stretched across the gravel between them.
Jonah tried to yell, tried to scream, but his consciousness slipped away from him as easily as his blood oozed across the eastbound lane of the Colorado highway.
Chapter Twenty-One
The back of a moving vehicle, Somewhere, USA
?? hours: ?? minutes: ?? seconds remaining
Time passed.
How much? Jonah wasn’t sure. He groaned and rolled over, or at least tried to, but quickly found that he couldn’t move much because his hands were bound behind him. His feet were tied just as tightly, and a rag was stuffed in his mouth. He tried to spit it out before he realized it was taped in place.
What was going on?
His knee was a beacon of pain; a mind-numbing ache laced with burning flames of torment. He had never hurt so much in his whole life. And Jonah thought he knew what pain was. Once, long ago, Dale accidentally kicked Jonah in the balls during on one of his drunken binges, leaving Jonah with aching testicles swollen to the size of his fists. That terrible memory of pain didn’t compare to the burning sensation of his knee right here, right now.
What happened?
Jonah tried to take in his surroundings, but his position kept him from turning his head. It was dark, so he couldn’t see much, anyway. He reckoned he was moving; the sway and bump of travel jolted him from time to time. Rolling his eyes upward, he looked at the cloth-covered roof above him. That put him in a car. Maybe. Maybe not. If not a car, then what? For heaven’s sake, he hoped he wasn’t in a plane. Would Satan call the bet if he were kidnapped and forced onto a plane? Probably. The Devil wouldn’t care how Jonah got onboard, just that he was flying. God, he hoped he wasn’t flying. He groaned again as of the momentum of the traveling vehicle slammed his injured knee against a hard surface.
“Hey, Chuck,” someone to his left said. “This one’s awake.”
“Then put him out,” another man said. “And be careful about it. The boss wants all of ‘em alive.”
Jonah watched as an incoming fist landed square between his eyes. Newfound pain bloomed across the bridge of his nose. Stars exploded in sparkles of colorful light. Then unconsciousness reclaimed him again as all returned to black.
Time passed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Someplace new, Somewhere else
?? hours: ?? minutes: ?? seconds remaining
“Jonah?” Candy asked.
Jonah moaned as his eyelids fluttered open. Where was he now? He stared up at a ceiling fan, watching it spin in lazy circles as he ran his tongue along the dried blood lingering under his puffy nose. Lifting his hand to his face brought another moan.
“Jonah?” Candy repeated.
Her silhouette came into view as she leaned over him, her head backlit by a chandelier. At least, he hoped it was Candy. He tried to smile up at the shadowy figure, but it hurt too much, leaving him grimacing with pain. Moving around a lot wasn’t an option, either. Every inch of him ached. He was thirsty, and he was hungry, and yet again, he was tired to the bone. Rolling to one side, he did his best to sit up, without much success.
“Let me help you,” she said, offering her hand for support.
Jonah struggled for a moment, but eventually he was able to right himself and lean against the headboard. His knee was bandaged, sloppily, but enough to stanch the bleeding. The pink, swollen flesh of the bridge of his nose bulged into his field of vision. A quick pat down suggested that he was otherwise unmolested, but the Devil’s timer was gone, and his regular watch was smashed and broken. The clock on the nightstand declared the time to be eight o’clock. He had been out for almost seven hours.
The room itself was well kept. Neat and tidy. In fact, it was too neat, lacking any manner of personal décor. No family photos. No clothes lying about. Not even a pair of slippers or shoes on the floor. There was a familiar smell, a lingering funk of stale air, antiseptic, and cigarettes. A single open door across from him led to a darkened hallway.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Getting a good look at her this time, Jonah was taken aback. Candy sported a bruise across her jaw line: a black and blue affair that was going to take ages to fade. Both of her eyes were swollen and red, but not from further violence; they were puffy from crying, a fact that Jonah only guessed because her eyes were still damp with tears. He wanted to answer her question, wanted to ask the same of her, but his mouth was full of cotton. Not literally. The rag was long gone, but his tongue was arid, his mouth a desert. He settled instead for a nod.
“I’m so sorry,” she said between sobs. “I didn’t know he would go this far.”
Who? Jonah wanted to ask. But his sandpaper tongue wouldn’t allow him the gift of speech, so he grunted. That would have to do.
“Please,” she said. “You have to believe me. I didn’t know he would hurt you. I would never have stuck around if I’d known he would follow me so far. I didn’t even know I would meet you.” A brief smile crept over her as she added, “Even though it’s ended up like this, I’m glad I did. Meet you, I mean.”
There was a lot to be said to that. A lot of questions and a lot of explaining to do. But the best Jonah could manage was another grunt.
“Hey!” Candy shouted at the doorway.
“What?” a man yelled at her, from the darkness beyond the open door.
“We need some water.”
“Then get some.”
This was followed by the snickering of more than one man.
Candy winked at Jonah, then said, “Your boss is gonna be awful pissed off if you let this guy die from dehydration.”
Jonah didn’t know what a
ll the winking was about, but he would rather not die of anything. A light mumbling rose from beyond the doorway, joined by the noise of a chair sliding across a tiled floor. There came the brief sound of running water. Heavy footsteps moved across the tile, but were then muffled by carpeting. A tall, broad-shouldered blond man in a neat black suit entered the room. Jonah recognized him as the driver of the SUV, and most likely the leader of this band of criminals. He stopped in front of Jonah, held a glass of water complete with straw beneath Jonah’s nose, and waited.
Jonah considered this situation for a moment, and decided there was little chance of the water being poisoned. Why would someone go through the trouble of bandaging his knee if they were just going to poison him as soon as he woke up? As he sipped at the lukewarm tap water and shivered with delight at the luscious sensation of wetness slithering down his dry gullet, he began to wonder just what they were going to do with him.
“Thanks,” he croaked, when he’d had his fill. Which turned out to be the whole glass.
“You’re welcome,” the man said, in a pleasant tone. “Now that you’ve filled your bladder, try not to piss your pants when I cut your toes off.”
