She blinked. And peered up at me. “Remember everything about it, Ryan, because you’ll never, ever feel it again. Never in your miserable, stupid, criminal life.”
She pressed her lips together and her chest shook as she took a breath. “You can’t break out of who you are, Ryan. I know that. You’ll always pick up the phone and jump for the next job, the next big score. You’re a junkie for it, or you’re an idiot for it. Or maybe you’re just an idiot, I really have no idea. What I know is, I’m not going to spend my life with a man, wondering every day if he’s going to come home dead or if I’ll live the next ten years of my life between visits to some hell-hole prison facility. Bringing up children who never see their father? It’s not for me, Ryan.”
She pulled back. “So remember. Remember it all. Because this was the real deal. And. You. Blew it.”
~~
As I drove away, even as I pulled the van out of the motel lot, I was torn up, ripped in two by the urge to call her. I wanted to try and explain. But I knew she was right. Not in what she said about me. I was going to Gregor because I knew that, whatever I did, until I found a way to get him out of the picture, she wouldn’t ever be safe. I wouldn’t, either, but I could deal with that. Tynie might not, and I would have to protect him, too. But Haley… I couldn’t let Gregor get to her. No way.
But she was right about me. I was not enough. Not enough, and not good enough for a woman as wonderful as her. She deserved someone more reliable, more sorted. A protector she could be sure would be there to protect her, when she needed him, whenever she needed him. She just deserved better. It was good that she made that break, and that she took charge. I never would have let her go. This way, it was for the best. For her. And that was what mattered.
She was all that I could ever want. But I knew that I didn’t deserve her, and she deserved way better than me.
I drove up the highway to the turn. As I drove back on the other side and the diner came into view, I figured that, one way or another, it would be the last time that I drove this way. The motel courtyard on the far side of the road, it felt like I was driving past home. But a home I’d dreamed of. Something I thought I had, but woke up and had to tell myself not to be so dumb.
Nice life, but only a dream. My life was something else, and I was driving back to it now. I was just passing a fantasy, that was all.
It looked distant now. Alien and strange, as it drifted by on the far side of the road. As I watched, a black Hummer slid into the motel parking lot. A black Hummer with Ratke at the wheel.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hayley
BEFORE I DRESSED AND got ready to say goodbye to this place for good, I took a look out of the window at the motel courtyard. Another of those wide, flat, black SUVs was pulling in. I’d thought I might catch sight of Ryan. I’d meant what I said to him, but it didn’t stop me from wishing that it could all have turned out differently.
Honestly, I was waiting for his call. It would come sooner or later, I was pretty sure. A part of me dreaded it. Another part of me was desperate for it. Whenever it did come, whatever he said, I knew that the sound of his voice alone would be enough to give me a hard time keeping to what I said.
I would do it. But still, I wished he would call and talk me out of it somehow.
I felt broken in two. We had come so close, so damned near, to being something really special. But he had to blow it. What if he can get a car to Gregor, get him gone? I thought. Maybe he could pick up the pieces. Maybe he could really make a start in LA. Yeah. Maybe. But would he take me along, and if he did, how long before he was after the next tailpipe?
The door to the black SUV opened. “Hummer,” I remembered Ryan had called it. Climbing down from the cab was a figure I recognized.
~~
There wasn’t enough space between the door and the window to really hide, and I hadn’t even had time to dress before he got up the steps. I had boiled the little teakettle. Squeezed against the wall and knowing that, if he didn’t see me from the window, he would definitely see me in my t-shirt and pants the second the door opened, I waited.
His boots clumped about halfway along the landing, then got real quiet. The sound of his feet as they scraped outside made me tense and I saw his shadow on the wall in front of me as he peered in the window.
There was no way to know whether he had seen me or not. All I could do was make myself as ready as possible. The instant the door opened, I emptied the teakettle in his face as fast and as hard as I could.
He screamed and recoiled, reeling. If I had just shoved him back, he would have gone straight over the balcony.
That wasn’t what I’d planned, and that was when I knew that I had set this up wrong. My reasoning was that he would have a gun, so I wanted to get behind him. My plan had been to grab him and pull him inside. I should have shoved him over the balcony. Too late, though.
He had a gun, I was right about that. As soon as I had him inside, I jumped on his back. With his arm over his face, he waved the gun with the other hand. As he staggered, he rose and shoved me back against the door, slamming it shut. I had nothing to use as a weapon but the plastic kettle.
The base of it had some sharp ridges, so I hit him around the head with it. Still blinded, he waved the gun around. The kettle fit over the gun and his hand. There must still have been some hot water left in it. He groaned loudly.
Clinging onto his back, I kicked against the door to shove him forward. When I boiled the teakettle, I had opened the sandwich toaster and turned it on full. It seemed like it could be a weapon, if I could get it on him. Or, as I thought now, maybe I could get him onto it.
As he lurched toward the shelf, he turned and slung me to the floor. I pulled my knee up hard into his groin, but he twisted so I only caught his thigh. He shook the plastic teakettle off his hand. The knuckles and top joints of his fingers were red and raw. He brought the gun to the side of my head.
His hand was on my stomach. As he pinned me down, I felt his fingers begin to move.
“Before I blow your brains out…” I writhed in protest as his hand moved up to my breast. “…maybe first I’ll fuck them out.” He chuckled. “Could be like an anesthetic.” He grabbed me by the throat.
I flinched away from his hot breath. “Good old Doctor Ratke,” he said. “I’ll save you from suffering.”
He held my throat tight as he stood, leaning back against the shelf by the TV. He lifted me by my hair. The gun was still at the side of my head. My face was level with his crotch. He unzipped his pants. Then he hauled out his fat, half-hard prick.
“Open wide.” Hesitantly, I moved my face nearer. “Come on, you know you have to take your medicine.” The thing was right in front of my face. I struggled not to gag on the smell. I opened my mouth to blow on it and stretched my left hand out just a little farther.
He grabbed the top of my head to force my mouth onto him. Just as I got hold of the sandwich toaster.
The cord came out of the wall as I pulled it. It snapped shut on his hand. He yelled and dropped the gun, knocking over the TV as he flailed.
“You fucking bitch!” he howled. I was only able to get a passing swipe at his cock with the toaster. I had hoped to slam the fucker shut in it.
He toppled. As he pitched forward, his forehead smacked hard on the corner of the bed. In the instant he was still falling, the light dimmed in his eyes and his body crumpled from the inside.
The door to the room burst open.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryan
HALEY SHOOK, PRESSED UP against the wall by the TV. Ratke was sprawled in a heap by one corner of the bed, not moving. There was a Glock pistol on the floor by Haley’s feet.
My instinct was to go to Haley first, but I knew I had to check Ratke’s pulse first. See what kind of a threat he might pose. I picked up the gun and crouched by the side of him. His eyes were open and dull. With two fingers I tried to find a pulse in his neck, but I couldn’t. I held my phone by his n
ose and mouth for more than two minutes. The glass didn’t fog.
Ratke was not a danger. As soon as I stood and turned to see her, Haley jumped and wrapped her shaking body around me. She shivered like she was freezing. I spread my arms around her, covered her and pulled her to me. I wanted to keep her with me forever. Damnit.
Well, for me, forever might not be all that long. I dragged the comforter off the bed and pulled it around her.
A phone beeped and I didn’t recognize the tone. It was a theme from an old movie. Terminator or Alien, or something. I looked at Haley. She shook her head. The tone sounded again. It came from Ratke’s jacket. Haley shuddered violently.
I hugged her tight before I reached into Ratke’s pocket for the phone. On the screen it said,
Msg From: Gregor
Is loose end cut off now?
I hit ‘reply.’
Sent:
Yes it is
Haley watched. Her voice trembled. “Gregor will probably know that wasn’t Ratke.”
“How?”
“If they’re used to texting.” Her whole body still shook as she talked. I held her and she let me. “If you texted something to Tynie, and somebody else texted back, you’d probably know, right?”
I nodded. “Maybe.”
She murmured into my chest. “He was going to kill me, Ryan. He was going to rape me, and then kill me. He had a gun.”
I wanted to ask her questions, but for now, just getting her to feel better would be enough. I decided to get her out of there. “Shall I take you to the Dragon Lady’s house?”
She nodded. After I scooped up everything we’d left in the room, I gave the sink a wipe, for all the good that would do. If anyone looked, we’d have left hairs in the bed, traces on the cups. There was DNA everywhere. Still, a guy like Ratke turns up dead, it wouldn’t be a major investigation.
It was almost dark when I took her down the steps to the van. I kept her wrapped in the comforter. Even with the heat on blast in the van, it still took until we were halfway across town before her shaking started to wane. I said, “Look, I’m sure you won’t want to see me after this…” And she looked at me, so sad. I wanted to hold her. Hug her and love her. And I knew that wasn’t what she wanted.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t talk, Ryan.”
She’d been through Hell and back. All that she did and all that she had to deal with, all of it was because of me. I couldn’t blame her if all that she wanted was to say adios and get me well and truly out of her life for good. She looked so uncomfortable. I didn’t want to say anything more to make it any worse for her. There was no way to imagine how this lovely girl would get over experiences like she’d had.
But I understood that she wanted to start. To get away from all of it, including me. Me most of all, probably. Start to forget and to get her life back.
We were in another of the nice parts of town. Given the circumstances of my life, I tend to forget there even are quiet, clean, well-kept streets like these. Homes with well-maintained brickwork, freshly painted doors and windows—clean, shiny cars in the driveways. The Dragon Lady’s house was wide and low with lots of glass. Behind the thick hedges, it looked like there was a pool out back by the high lamps.
As we pulled in, Haley said, “Ryan, it really could have worked…” Her eyebrows pointed, like she was waiting for something. For me to go, I guessed. I wanted to say, We could still be friends, but that would be bullshit. I needed to say, You won’t see me again, because after today, if I’m not dead, I’ll be in jail.
But I didn’t want to make it any harder for her than it already was. There was no reason she should care anyway. I gave her the little Beretta.
“I can’t.” She tried to push it back to me.
“I can’t keep you safe, Haley. But this can help.”
When she got out, I didn’t look back. I knew if I hesitated for just one second, I wouldn’t leave. And there were things I had to do. None of them good. It was hard to swallow as I drove away.
~~~~
It was late by the time I parked the RAV4 in the lot of the old mall. The broken, deserted hulk was cold at night. Colder somehow on the inside than out in the lot. There were no lights. Nothing but the weak moonlight that poured through the cracks and holes in the remains of the glass dome.
The inside was all a flat, blue-gray in the gloom, and it was hard to judge distance and space. Everything echoed, but the source of the sounds was impossible to locate. A strong smell of stagnant water came up from the flooded food court a level below.
The collapsed storefronts and concession stands looked bigger and were harder to see and identify. Moving slowly and as quietly as I could, I kept to the walls at the edges. Only the walls were all jagged hollows. A clatter sounded like stones. Something breaking or falling. Then there were splashes.
By reflex I was reaching for the gun, but I guessed the miniature rock fall was Gregor, trying to spook me out, get me to show my weapon.
His text had said to meet him here. Even though I made as little sound as possible when I dragged the boards away from the doorway, he must have heard me breaking in. So why didn’t he call out, show himself? This felt wrong. I backed into a storefront, over a pile of clothes and rubble.
Gregor was behind me before I knew it. His arm was around my throat. A ring of steel pressed hard into the side of my head. He felt down the side of my jacket. Found the Glock and lifted it out.
Now I wished I’d kept the little Beretta in my sock.
In the distance I heard a siren sound, just for an instant. Looking sideways at Gregor, watching his face, I knew. He called them. That was his plan, his getaway. He planned to feed me to the cops. Alive or dead? I wondered absently how he saw this playing out.
His hand on my shoulder, at last I knew why it felt so familiar, why it affected me so much. His grip was just like my father’s. He squeezed the top of my shoulder in the exact same way and in the same place as my father had. The fucker. Whenever he wanted to make me do something, he’d give my shoulder a warning pinch.
Right into my ear, Gregor whispered, “Okay Jacker, here it is. You have choice to make. You tell me where is the little loose end you’ve been trying to keep hidden all through this sorry, godforsaken mess, and I give you to the cops.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a choice, Gregor.”
“It is if you consider the alternative.” He shoved the gun harder against my head. It felt like he drew blood.
“Just leave her out of it. She won’t do you any harm. She’s not a ‘loose end.’ Let it go.”
“She was a loose end the moment you first picked her up, Jacker. You should probably have silenced her straight away. Would have saved everyone a lot of pain and grief. Including her. It will go bad at the end.”
“So, how do you want this to work? I tell you where she is and you leave me here for the cops to find, is that it?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I told him the address of the motel. Said she was there, waiting.
“Oh, thank you,” he snarled. “So I know that isn’t true. And now I know something else.”
I waited. He pushed the gun harder at my head. I definitely felt a warm trickle run onto the back of my neck. His voice lowered. “I don’t have to worry about Ratke anymore, do I?”
There were vehicles moving outside. A few strips of light broke in through the doorway. “All right,” he said, “where’s the fucking key for the car?” I handed it to him. “You’re not going to give the girl up, and I’ve got to get gone.”
“What’s your hurry?” I asked him. “Sounds like all your friends just showed up.”
Dirty Driver: Dark Crime Romance Page 21
