I beat my fists on his shoulders. My arms weren’t even under my control. He grinned and waited while I pounded on him. I hated how good it felt.
He just watched me, grinning, until I stopped, breathless.
The chuckle in his voice made me squirm. “You don’t need to be pissy about it.”
“So.” I tried my best to sound firm. I was just getting used to the scent of him. “Are you going to take me back?”
My body tensed. I knew there were parts of me that wanted him to say no. With a little shock, I realized that as I’d been saying it, my head was shaking. I’d heard a cop once on a TV show say that when witnesses lied, they often nodded or shook their heads to contradict what they were saying.
“Sure.” He shrugged like it couldn’t matter to him less. “Wherever you want to go.”
As we climbed out of the side of the van, I saw the small, dark gray SUV he must have driven back in.
“You’ve got a lot of cars,” I said. “Are any of them actually yours?” We climbed into the front of the van from opposite sides and shut the doors. As he started the engine, his hand made a sweeping gesture across all of the cars scattered around the floor of the garage.
“I’m a carjacker.” His eyes gleamed. “They’re all mine.”
“You think you’re so cute.” He smirked as he started the engine. “How can you be so careless around other people’s property?”
“Are you talking about the BMW,” he said as he put the van into gear, “or did you mean you?” My heart fluttered as his eyes held mine.
Then he sped down the three floors of ramps and blasted us out into the sunshine.
“The owners get the insurance. All the ones that I take.” He looked over at me with a mischievous grin, “I only take really nice vehicles.” He slung the van out across the traffic. “They’re always insured. They all belong to rich people.” My chest was tight as he looked over at me and said, “People like that slave driver you follow around.”
I wanted to say something to defend Aileen. But I couldn’t think of anything.
“I saw you,” he said. “She was waving her hands around, jabbing her fingers in the air. You having to follow her around with your arms full of bags and you with your pretty head down. I kind of wanted to come and rescue you then.”
“Oh.” I felt like I was going to explode. “So you’re really my knight in shining armor. You didn’t steal her car and carelessly, absentmindedly, accidentally kidnap me.” My pulse rushed in my ears. “You did it to rescue me.” I glowered at him for a moment. The way his eyes creased at their corners stirred something hot and urgent inside me. I folded my arms and looked away, out the window.
The van leaned as he accelerated onto the highway. His driving scared me. Not screaming, white-knuckled scared—more snatched-my-breath-away hard staring shock. Not even so much because it was fast, but because it was so skillful. So purposeful. In his hands the vehicle was like a weapon.
Every time he turned the wheel, it was a hard, precise movement. Exact. He drove the van almost as fast as he had driven Aileen’s BMW, and that was pretty fast driving.
I glanced down at the little tablet. It showed the same dozen developing news stories. My picture still came up every minute or two. The networks would talk about nothing else until the next fire or scandal or skateboarding pet, and then my picture would be lost with all the other forgotten stories. News was always urgent, until it wasn’t.
Soon I would be free. Free to return to following Aileen around like an overloaded donkey. Free to chase after Tarquin and Waynetta. Free to wipe and clean up after them and their mother until I was numb and exhausted.
Just until the weekend. Then, with a little money earned to pay some of my student loan debt, I could get back to the business of building the debt back up even higher. He cut across several lanes of angry, honking traffic and charged onto an exit ramp.
Not long now.
A number of times I thought of asking him his name. Each time, I realized what a stupid question it would be. That he almost certainly wouldn’t tell me the truth, anyway. He was a criminal, after all.
Holding onto the tablet, I kind of wanted to take it. Hold onto it as a keepsake. I even thought, You stole my boss’ car, so why can’t I steal your little computer? But it was ridiculous. And anyway, I’d never stolen anything. I was a good girl, and I was proud of it.
Well, I had been until now.
Thoughts of how it might feel to be a bad girl sparked and crackled in my mind. Sensations spun around my body, too, as I tried to suppress the thoughts.
~<>~
When we got to the strip mall and he swung the van into the parking lot, I had an odd sense of being somehow out of place. Coming back here with him, it all seemed kind of unreal. I snuck a glance at him. Like I was trying to memorize his arrogant, sarcastic half-smile. His hooded, mocking eyes. He looked over and caught me.
I got out and walked around to the driver’s side. He stepped down and stood in front of me.
His smile had a twitch that I didn’t see before. “Well,” he said, looking up to the top of my head, then back into my eyes, “You’ve been a star hostage. Ten out of ten, would recommend.” He looked at me and my knees trembled. “Would definitely kidnap again.” His eyes looked sad then, but perhaps I’d only imagined it.
I smiled back. There was a thud in the pit of my stomach like a muffled ‘boom.’
I said, “You’ve been a great kidnapper. I’ll give you a five-star rating on whatever the equivalent of Yelp is for guys like you.”
I handed him back the tablet. As I turned I said, “I hope the guard’s okay.”
The color drained from the bones of his cheeks.
His voice snapped like the crack of a whip. “Wait up,” he said. “What guard?”
“In the robbery,” I told him. “The news said that a guard was shot.”
Chapter Seven
Ryan
AT THAT MOMENT, I hated standing out there in the lot with her. There are cameras everywhere. You never know what kind of a risk you’re exposing yourself to, just standing out in the open with another person.
I told her, “Get back in the van,” and she didn’t argue or kick up a fuss. She must have seen how serious my expression was.
We got back into the van and slammed the doors shut. The news story on Tynie’s gamepad only said that shots had been fired, that a guard had been hit, and he was in the hospital.
“This changes everything,” I told her. I wanted more information, but whatever way I looked at it, this was bad.
“We’re in a whole other territory now.” I told her. I had to think fast.
If shots were fired, other than shots in the air, something had gone very wrong. Gregor was a bad man, no doubt about that, but he wasn’t an idiot. I had heard him during the briefing. Everybody did. “The guns are big and they’re very frightening to the civilians,” he’d said. “That’s the point. They’re for scaring people. Not shooting them.”
Whatever went wrong, however it had happened, Gregor would be looking to clean up, to get rid of any loose ends or potential witnesses. The slave girl might not be so safe, after all. Tynie and me might not be, either, come to that. Gregor knew where both of us lived.
At least for the next day or so, I had to get the three of us somewhere we wouldn’t be found. Somewhere Gregor wouldn’t easily be able to show up and pick us off.
I took a hold of her hand. I felt her fingers squeeze back.
“Look,” I told her, “I won’t lie. This could be bad. It could be very bad.”
Her eyes searched mine. I think she was looking to see if she could trust me. And she really needed to trust me now. She could be in a lot of danger. Just sitting together in the front of the van, here in the parking lot, the lot where I took the BMW just a couple of hours ago, I felt like we were pretty exposed.
“Stay with me,” I said. “Just a little while longer. Let me make sure that you’re safe.”
/> She gulped. “What will we do?”
Her voice was soft. Touching. The scent of her tantalized and distracted me. Maybe there was still a way that I would get to fuck her.
“I’ll take us somewhere we won’t be found. Just for a little while. And there’s somebody else I need to collect, too. A friend of mine,” Her eyes clouded and darkened. I clarified. “He could be in danger, too.”
She seemed to relax a little, though she still looked uncertain. Then she seemed to make her mind up. She said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” And she moved to get out.
“Seriously,” I said. “Just let me make sure you’re safe.”
“It would be your fault if I wasn’t.”
“Really. I know. Please.” My lips pressed together as I gave her fingers another squeeze.
She drew a breath as her head tipped back. Then, with the smallest nod, she agreed. She sat back as I started the van and pulled out toward the exit.
I swerved us out onto the highway and I called Tynie. He would be in Gregor’s garage still, waiting for me to come by and pick him up.
“Tynie,” I said firmly. “Don’t talk, only listen. Whether there’s anybody there with you or not, do what I say.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Tynie, you have to get out of there. Right now. Don’t say a word, not to anyone.”
I had to think of somewhere that we could meet. It came to me. “Tynie, I know you remember the mall where we used to go when we skipped out of school. Meet me there. Get there as fast as you can.” Before he could reply, I added, “Just say yes, Tynie. Then hang up and do it.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Don’t talk to Gregor. Not if he calls, not if he texts. Not a word, not a sound. Okay? Don’t answer the phone. Not for anyone but me.”
Tynie only grunted. I had told him not to say anymore. So he didn’t. Tynie was very literal. He hung up.
Edging aggressively through the complaining traffic, I gave the slave girl a sideways glance.
She said, “He’s somebody you care about, isn’t he? I could tell from your voice.” Her eyes were soft and she looked at me now with a different kind of interest. Like she was seeing me afresh. All I could think at that moment was to keep her safe. Her and Tynie, too.
I set my jaw as I drove.
Handing Tynie’s gamepad back to her, I said, “Can you see if anything new came up on the newsfeed about the score?”
She looked puzzled. “Are you talking about sports?”
“The robbery.”
“Oh.” She worked the screen on the gamepad. “The ‘score.’ That’s criminal talk, right?”
From her voice, I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She sounded nervous. Understandable, under the circumstances. Why had this all gone so horribly wrong? I wanted the slave girl from the get go, I knew it. But not like this. Not with her life in danger. Not in this fucking shitstorm.
I hadn’t thought it through much more than how her fantastic body would feel, trembling, with her thighs over my shoulders and clenching around my ears. How she might taste as her heat rose. All I wanted was to hear her moan as her fingers gripped my hair. Was that so bad?
As I accelerated, cut in front of cars and trucks, she hunched in concentration over Tynie’s gamepad. I snuck glances at her. Her face shone. She was so innocent of all that was going on around her. Of the danger she was in. It made a knot in my stomach.
After a moment, she shook her head and said, “It only says shots were fired today and a guard was injured in a ‘shocking and audacious’ armed raid on the Farmers and Allied Bank downtown. That’s all.” She looked over at me and her moist eyes plucked at a chord in my stomach.
The old mall was a good choice for a place to meet Tynie because he knew it well. Familiarity was important. It had been disused quite a while now. If I hadn’t driven by a couple of days ago, I wouldn’t have known that it was still standing. What I had noticed, though, was that the fence around the outside had been pulled down and the parking lot was being used. When I’d been by, it was dotted with cars, trucks, and vans.
All of the routes across town were thick with traffic and I was pushing to get there as fast as I could. If Gregor caught a hint of Tynie trying to slip away, he might stop him, he might follow him, or he might just make Tynie tell him where he was going.
Big as Tynie was, Gregor could scare him senseless with just a look. Tynie could hold his own well enough with some people. I’d seen him stare men down. Not Gregor, though. Not many people could do that. He had a stare that could make you think of dark deeds in Eastern European forests.
The old mall appeared on the horizon long before I could get there. The nearer I got to it, the more broken down, shabby, and deserted it looked. Cracks in the concrete and smears of dirt down the huge, curved outside walls all made it look like some medieval construction that had been abandoned long ago.
Like before, there were some rusting pickups, a few old cars, and some trucks in the lot. The trucks were mostly parked together and they were the only vehicles that looked like they were in regular use. As I passed by a couple of the entrances, I realized that they were boarded. Of course they would be. I hadn’t even thought of that.
The third street-level entrance that I passed, some of the boarding had been pulled aside. It looked like it could have been recently, so I guessed this was where Tynie had gone in.
As I parked, I told the slave girl what I was going to tell her before, when we were about to part.
“While I had your iPhone, I put my number in there.”
She frowned, like she wasn’t sure what I meant.
“Nothing is going to happen,” I said, “but if it did, I could call you, and you’d see my number come up.”
“Does it say your name?”
“No. I hadn’t told you my name. I wasn’t going to. But then I wanted to.” There was no time, but we looked at each other for a moment. “It says, ‘Jacker,’ for my number.”
“Is that some criminal talk, too?”
“Kind of. A carjacker.”
She touched the back of my hand. “It’s okay,” she said quietly, “I get it. But I think you need to be quick.”
That was when I wanted to stay with her.
“Turn the phone on,” I said. “Just for now.” I wanted to tell her my name. Strange. I didn’t always bother to do that. Did I tell my name to the girl last night? I couldn’t remember. Probably not. She was only a fuck, after all.
The cool touch of Haley’s fingers as I gave her the van keys made me suck in a breath. “Ryan,” I told her as I ducked out of the van. I heard her repeat it as I closed the door and looked around before I jogged over to the entrance. Where the boards over the door had been pulled apart, the exposed nails were clean. If Tynie hadn’t come in this way, someone sure as hell had.
Inside, the mall was dark and full of dusty echoes. All of the glass storefronts were gaping, broken, wrecked and looted long ago. The wide slope that had been a sweeping escalator in the center was piled with boxes and rubble.
As I stepped into the big atrium, birds flapped above me and something fell. The lower ground floor, which had once been the food court, was flooded with rank green and brown water. Rusting escalators disappeared into the algae.
Dirty Driver: Dark Crime Romance Page 6
