Damaged Goods

by Austin Camacho

  At the living room door they paused again to listen.

  “Wait here,” Hannibal said. “One little thing to do.” He crept across the floor to the sofa. The prize that had started all this was there, hidden in the material underneath. He knelt beside the couch, working his hand through the small hole he had made. Soon, the case would truly be over.

  And then the world exploded in a sonic burst that froze the blood in Hannibal’s veins. Missy held the doorknob as if it was all that supported her. Hannibal could see two inches of blackness between the edge of the door and the wall. Rod must have turned the alarm back on in the basement and then reset it while Hannibal was unconscious. By opening the door, Missy had changed them from escapees to prey.

  “Time to move,” Hannibal said, leaping through the door, dragging Missy by her wrist. Adrenalin drove him down the street toward his car faster than the girl was prepared to run. She stumbled behind him, only just remaining upright.

  The night air burned Hannibal’s lungs as his free hand dug into his pocket for his keys. The moon was a spotlight singling them out as the only things moving on the street that night. Missy’s white underclothes glowed like fluorescent targets for anyone who might want to sight in on her. Hannibal prayed that Rod, once awakened, would first call the alarm company to prevent a police visit.

  Ten feet from his car, Hannibal pushed the button on his key fob that unlocked the doors. He had not looked back but once in the driver’s seat he was pleased to see that no one followed them. He was staring a Rod’s house because he was parked facing it. The street was too narrow for a three-point turn around. Hannibal heard the throaty roar of his engine and glanced at Missy. She was staring in surprise at Mariah, still asleep in the back seat. His nose told him that she had vomited back there, probably without ever waking up.

  “She breathing?”

  “Yes,” Missy said. “But she’s a mess.”

  “We’ll deal with that later. Right now, crouch down. We’re driving past the house.”

  Hannibal slapped the Volvo into first gear and popped the clutch. After the briefest squeal of tires the car jumped forward. Rod’s front door opened as they approached. Hannibal looked over Missy’s ducked head and locked eyes with Rod as he raced past. Even in that brief contact he could see the naked hatred behind those dark eyes.

  Seconds later Hannibal was driving down a narrow street with only occasional streetlights. In the yards just behind the lights he could see vegetation growing wild. On each block he spotted a pile of trash near the curb. This was not, he thought, the best neighborhood in Virginia Beach. In fact, the area he was in reminded him of his own neighborhood in Washington. He turned to Missy again, but she was bent over the seat leaning into the back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Strapping her in.”

  “Good idea,” Hannibal said, stopping at an unmarked corner. “Any idea where we are?”

  Missy settled back into her seat. “Got a pretty good idea. Go left I think. That should take us to the beach again.”

  Hannibal nodded and made the turn. He thought he saw the lights of another vehicle in his rearview mirror, but it would be pure paranoia to think it could be Rod. He considered how he would explain his evening to the police, and which of these young women would back his story. Missy had already been unexpectedly helpful. His next day might have been very unpleasant if not for her having both the courage and the caring to free him.

  “You look so unhappy.”

  Missy’s comment caught Hannibal off guard. “I was thinking of what I woke up to back in the house. I’m really sorry I let that happen to you.”

  “Not your fault,” Missy said. Here eyes drifted right, away from Hannibal. “I asked for it, really. And it wouldn’t have been so rough except, that, well, Rod wanted to take me as a virgin.”

  Hannibal glanced right, swallowed, and then focused straight ahead. “You were a virgin?”

  “Well, in that hole anyway.”

  “Oh.”

  “The drugs made it easier. I’m still a little numb all over.”

  It seemed clear to Hannibal that she was a lot more comfortable with this conversation than he was. His rearview mirror was still clear, but he made a couple of aimless, spontaneous turns just to be safe. He could imagine someone seeing the White Tornado’s radiance in the moonlight. He tried to focus on driving but after a minute the silence seemed too heavy to carry.

  “So why’d you do it?” Hannibal asked.

  Missy stared out her window into the deep darkness. “A man like you could never understand. Giving up control of your own life is so liberating. That’s what being a subbie is all about, after all.”

  “No.” Hannibal shook his head. “I mean, why did you help me? It seemed pretty clear that you were under Rod’s spell.”

  “Oh that.” Missy looked at Hannibal and he saw a coquettish manner that had escaped him until then. “He only whipped up on you because you tried to help me. It was my fault you got stomped. I didn’t need that guilt.”

  It was cool enough in the car, but the air was still and stuffy, prompting Hannibal to turn on the air conditioner. “Okay, so you let Rod dominate you, but you decided to do this against his obvious wishes. That kind of tells me that you’re too strong a girl to be someone’s submissive slave.”

  “Oh no, I’m definitely a subbie by nature,” Missy said with a smile. “I like being told what to do by a strong man. I like being devoted to pleasing someone else. I like having rules I must obey.”

  “But you left.”

  She watched the moon for a moment. “You know how people take orders in the Army? It’s kind of like that. They choose to follow, but only if the leader can lead. For me to sub to a man, he’s got to be a Dom I can trust and respect. Rod is a strong man, but what he did to you just wasn’t right.”

  Hannibal nodded in the darkness as they rolled to a stop at another corner. “This goes into a dead end,” he said to himself.

  “Hang a left here,” Missy said. “You know, when I met you I thought you were in the life. Now that I know you’re not, I’m kind of confused about why you got involved with Rod.”

  “Long story,” he said, making the turn. The rambling beach houses had given way to smaller structures, each still with its deep front porch, but the houses themselves were shoved too close together for comfort. Older oaks and ashes arching over narrow sidewalks made the streets look even more claustrophobic.

  “I guess you were just destined to meet,” Missy said, as if it were a random thought.

  “Is that the kind of defeatist crap you pick up on the streets these days?”

  Missy’s laugh was light, like a southern belle in one of those old movies Hannibal’s mother used to watch. “Actually it’s straight out of philosophy class.”

  “Some community college bullshit?”

  “Actually I’m a sophomore at Wesleyan,” Missy said. “Physics, with a minor in chemistry.”

  “Sorry. I just never imagined you for a co-ed.”

  “It’s okay,” Missy said. “You’ve probably just never seen one in her underwear.” She laughed then, to Hannibal’s surprise, and he smiled along with her. He thought he saw the beach in the distance and sped up just a little.

  Hannibal didn’t know why, but for a second he could smell Rod on her. “Rod talked about having a destiny. You don’t believe all that destiny crap, do you?”

  “No, not really. I do believe in karma.”

  “Karma? You mean like, if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t think it happens by itself,” Hannibal said. The water glistened in the distance, but he didn’t see the taller buildings that crowded the shoreline. “In fact, Rod’s been a bad guy for a long time but he seems to be made of Teflon. Nothing sticks to him. He just goes along hurting people, but nothing bad has happened to him yet.”

  “Sure it has. You.”
>
  “Huh?” The road curved, and the water veered to his right. Hannibal turned the next corner to again face the silver he saw shining under the moon.

  “You are the bad thing that’s happened to him. I think maybe you are an agent of the cosmos, sent here to right the balance.”

  “Okay, you’re higher than I thought.” A loud cough from the back seat cut across his mind, shorting out any other ideas. Mariah coughed again, louder, and Hannibal pulled to the curb.

  “I think she’s choking,” Missy said, twisted around in her seat. Hannibal slipped the shifter out of gear and yanked the emergency brake, jumped out of his car, ran around to the passenger side and yanked the back door open. Mariah appeared to still be only half conscious, gagging on her own vomit. Hannibal grabbed her under her arms and slid her out onto the narrow strip of grass at the edge of the sidewalk. Her breathing deepened as he wiped her mouth. Sitting up seemed to be all she needed so he propped her against a tree. The cool, wet grass dampened his knees. Her pulse was a little slow, her breathing irregular, and her pupils dilated under the streetlight, but all that could be caused by any number of drugs. If he knew where a clinic was, he’d drive her to it.

  A feeling of relief washed over him when he heard an engine approaching. It was one of those four-wheel drive monsters from the sound of it. It was probably a local resident on his way home from a late party. Who else would be out on the streets at this hour? Surely the driver would know where the nearest hospital was.

  “Hey Missy! Flag that guy down.”

  Missy rolled her window down. “What, in my underwear?”

  Hannibal stood. “Good point.” He walked to the middle of the street. Bathed in the headlight beams he waved his arms overhead. The vehicle stopped just past the corner and turned to the right so that it blocked the street. Without the lights shining into his eyes he could see the vehicle more clearly. It was a Jeep.

  A red Jeep.

  Derek’s Jeep.

  “Damn.” Hannibal yanked his car door open. He had one leg in the car when a gunshot split the night silence and he felt the slug punch into his car door. Missy’s scream drowned out the slam of him pulling the door shut. He yanked the shifter into first gear, cranked the wheel and spun his tires whipping the Volvo in the opposite direction from the Jeep. He heard another shot, but couldn’t tell if it had hit his car or not.

  Now the welcoming narrow residential streets were far less hospitable. Instead they were too small for maneuver. The Jeep’s lights burned his eyes in the rearview mirror. At the second corner he pulled his car into a sharp right turn. The Jeep followed.

  “Are we in trouble?” Missy asked.

  “Not if we can find a cop car.”

  Missy jumped at the sound of another gunshot. “Don’t you have a gun?”

  “Sure,” Hannibal said. “My Sig Sauer is strapped under the glove compartment. You want it?”

  “I can’t shoot a gun.”

  “Well I try not to either, when I’m driving.”

  As Hannibal approached the next corner another car was racing toward them. The other driver slammed to a halt at the intersection. Maybe the driver was waiting for Hannibal’s car to pass. His elbow stuck out the window. The engine thrummed so confidently Hannibal could hear it over his own humming engine’s sound. It was a big car. The top was down and its white interior glowed ghost-like inside a fiery red shell.

  “Jesus,” Hannibal mumbled through clenched teeth. It was half curse, half prayer. Rod leaned forward behind the steering wheel as Hannibal cranked hard to get around the corner to his right. A high-pitched crack slammed his ears followed by the dull thud of a bullet punching through his rear quarter panel. Missy screamed again and fumbled with her seat belt, trying to crouch lower.

  Hannibal drove as quickly as he dared through the residential streets with Rod’s hybrid muscle car on his tail. In his mind’s eye he imagined Derek in the Jeep coming around from his right at the next intersection. They would be herding him away from the beach, toward ever more isolated streets until they could corner him or run him off the road and Rod could exact his revenge on Hannibal for deceiving him and taking his women. He might never know what this was all about and that, to Hannibal, was unacceptable.

  The corner yard on his right was wide enough for Hannibal to see the approaching Jeep halfway up the block. They moved closer and closer to one another, apparently on a ninety-degree collision course. Missy sat frozen, staring out her window at the incoming open vehicle. She knew these men better than Hannibal did, but he suspected that this was not a situation that fell within her understanding. She knew violence as play but he wondered if she had missed the rage underlying it.

  In the second before Hannibal cranked his wheel hard to the left he was not quite close enough to see Derek’s eyes, but he could clearly see the oversized revolver in his right hand. Rod had given the boy a .44 and probably carried one himself. Listening to his tires squealing as he whipped around the corner, Hannibal wanted to ask Missy if the boys were compensating for something, but didn’t think she’d find this line of conversation humorous right then.

  Another gunshot sounded, this one a wild shot that never came close to his car. Those boys were more dangerous to the locals than to him. If this kept up much longer some innocent would be hurt or killed. Where the hell were the police? Hannibal had heard that Virginia Beach had more cops per capita than any community in the nation except Las Vegas. Surely someone had reported these maniacs shooting up a quiet suburban neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. How could they get away with it so close to the beach? And that was when he realized that the water he was working toward had no beach in front of it.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s one of the lakes,” Missy said, sounding short of breath. “I think. Maybe Lake Holly. It’s spread all over this area with little inlets and stuff where vacationers can keep their boats.”

  “Great.” Hannibal’s hand slipped on the gearshift lever, wet with perspiration. Now he had no idea where the ocean was. Breathing was getting harder. He pretended it was the humidity and powered down his window. A swampy odor wafted in. Lakes always smelled nasty to him.

  A narrow bridge loomed ahead. He would have to slow down a little to cross it. Rod’s Corvorado filled Hannibal’s mirror, its engine so loud it drowned out his pounding heartbeat. On the grid in his head Hannibal could see Derek circling around in the Jeep to get to the first corner on the other side of the bridge. Hannibal couldn’t afford to slow down very much.

  “Come on, old friend,” he muttered under his breath. “Get me over this one obstacle fast enough and I think we’ll be home free.”

  The bridge was wooden, arched high like a medieval monastery gateway. The water on either side of it was thick with reeds, lily pads and flotsam he couldn’t identify in the colorless moonlight. It must be lovely to stroll past on a warm summer day. Then it would be picturesque, charming, maybe even calming. This night, the bridge was simply an obstacle.

  Hannibal slammed the accelerator to the floor just as his front tires touched the first slats of the bridge. He figured that Rod’s rear-wheel drive car couldn’t possibly hit the bridge this hard. Rod would lose ground and he would gain just enough to race past the Jeep at the intersection, dodging them both. All he had to do was to keep a tight grip on the wheel and allow the Volvo to go airborne past the crest of the bridge.

  No! Hannibal’s eyes stretched wide as he reached the midpoint and saw the headlights of the little Toyota. What kind of idiot was driving around at this time of night? And hadn’t he heard the Volvo racing toward him? Why was he driving toward the bridge? In truth, they might have been able to pass each other if Hannibal was driving at a reasonable speed. But his speed was nowhere near normal and he would crush the other car in a second unless he did something radical.

  In this case, radical meant yanking the steering wheel hard to the right just before the front tires left the ground. As the car pushed th
rough the flimsy guardrail and began to spiral right, Hannibal mentally apologized to his old metal friend and asked it to protect him and his charge.

  -22-

  The steady tone in his head was the noise a telephone makes when it has been left off the hook. The pressure across his chest, he reasoned, came from the shoulder harness. His left arm was numb, but that was probably from his own weight being on it. Despite the darkness, he knew that pain and noise meant he was alive.

  Hannibal touched his face, expecting wetness. Instead he felt a very raw abrasion on his right cheek. He opened his eyes a crack and saw the source. His airbag, now deflated, had popped out to hold him in place at the moment of impact. It had also scraped across his face at high speed like a cheese grater, and left him covered with a fine powder.

  Turning his head he saw Missy, suspended above him like the woman in some magician’s stunt gone wrong. Her arms hung limp, and her breathing was labored. A merciful fate had allowed her to lapse into unconsciousness while Hannibal experienced the entire horrible crash: the jarring impact as the Volvo hit the ground just past the waterline and rolled, and rolled again. The vicious blow from the air bag was followed by the sound of twisting metal. His stomach had flipped with the movement, and when he finally came to rest, the clanging sound in his ears overrode everything else.

  But even though Missy had been spared the worst of the experience, he could not leave her hanging from her seat belt and shoulder harness for long. The gasoline smell that was making him nauseous was also a warning signal of possible danger. He knew what to do, but also knew that it would not be easy.

  “Oh, well,” Hannibal said aloud. “There’s nothing for it.”

  After releasing his seat belt, Hannibal slowly and carefully pulled himself upright. In a moment he was standing with the steering wheel against his shins, his feet on the ground through the driver’s side window. A shower of windshield safety glass cascaded out of his hair and off his shoulders. The full moon cast him in a spotlight in the narrow confines of the car resting on its side.