The Thousand Dollar Escape

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘I used to be fun, you know?’ she said, tears starting anew. ‘Young, fun, carefree. Happy. And then Don came into my life and changed me. Changed me until I couldn’t even recognize myself anymore. He didn’t let me have friends, didn’t let me have a job, would barely let me out of the house. At first he’d hit me if he’d been drinking, or if he’d had a really bad day at work. But then it got so that he was drinking every night, and every day was a bad day at work. It wasn’t even if his dinner wasn’t on the table when he got home – it was if it wasn’t the correct temperature, or the meat wasn’t cooked just right. Anything that wasn’t perfect, then bang, he’d let me have it. And those slaps soon turned into punches, and within the first couple of years it had escalated into full-on beatings, he’d kick me, use a belt on me; you name it, he’d do it.

  ‘And what could I do about it?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Not a thing, not a damned thing. Don was the chief of police, who the hell was I gonna go to? My life was over, the life I’d dreamed of, the life I wanted, it was over; and I was left with being Don’s plaything, his punch bag, and it continued for year, after year, after year.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked after a few moments.

  ‘You mean, what changed? Why did I put up with it for so long, then suddenly change my mind and do something about it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said softly, ‘I guess that is what I mean.’

  She nodded her head in thought. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘it is weird, isn’t it? After all those years of taking it and taking it and taking it, why finally stand up for myself?’

  I waited expectantly for the answer as she caressed Kane under his wide, furry jaw.

  Eventually, the answer came.

  ‘A baby,’ she said, so softly that I could barely hear her. ‘Our baby.’ Just saying the words brought tears to her eyes, and she took a few moments to wipe them away, to compose herself.

  ‘I knew he’d always wanted to have children,’ she started, ‘a boy to carry on the family name, he said. Some days, that was all he’d talk about. And despite everything, I wanted to make him happy, give him what he wanted. Some nights I lay awake worrying what sort of father he’d be, if I even wanted to risk what he might do to a child. But I loved him, crazy as that sounds, and I wanted a baby as much as him. Maybe I felt that, you know, that was why he was so angry, because we still didn’t have kids, we’d been trying for years but nothing; and I thought maybe if I got pregnant, he’d be happy, and we could start again, he’d change, become the kind of man I’d always believed he could be. A nice man.’

  The tears started again, but this time she ignored them. ‘Anyway, we tried for years and there was nothing, not even a hint. I worried it was me, you know? But I got tested – Don never would, of course, he was a man, there could never be anything wrong with him, it couldn’t possibly be his fault – and it looked like I was okay. I assumed Don must have had some sort of problem, but – like I said – he would never have admitted it. As it turns out, there was nothing wrong with him – eventually I did fall pregnant.

  ‘I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to tell him, I was so happy, and I knew he would be too. I made a beautiful meal, got dressed up in my nicest clothes, and waited for him to come home so I could tell him the good news.

  ‘He was late, which wasn’t so unusual, and when he finally came home the meal was cold, and he was drunk, he’d obviously been for a few after finishing work. But I still knew he’d be happy. I poured him a glass of his favorite whisky, sat him down and said that I had something to tell him.

  ‘And then I did, I told him we were going to have a baby. I expected him to be so happy, I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, but instead he just sat there giving me this cold, hard look. I just couldn’t figure it out.

  ‘And then he leapt up and started shouting at me, accusing me of screwing around, how he didn’t believe – after all these years – that the baby could be his. He was paranoid, crazy; and then the shouting turned to hitting, and he beat me so hard I literally thought I was going to die.

  ‘Can you imagine how that felt? I was so happy one moment, dreams for a better future at last, filled with a hope I’d not felt in years – that we’d have someone in our lives, that I’d have someone, you know? Someone . . . someone I could hold close, who’d call me ‘Mommy’, who’d . . . who’d . . .’

  It became too much for her then, and her body was wracked with sobs as the memories washed over her, through her.

  I let them come, waited as they finally began to subside, until eventually she gathered the strength to continue.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said finally, ‘he beat me so hard I lost the baby. Knocked me down, kept on kicking me in the stomach, kicking me while he yelled at me, called me a whore, and he just wouldn’t stop hitting me.

  ‘I was a mess for days, but I just stayed in the house like always, nobody ever knew. But something in me broke that day. Despite what he’d already done to me, I’d never really hated him before that. You know? Can you believe that? I’d never hated him. But that changed that night, I started to hate him with every fiber of my being. I knew I had to get away from him, there was no way I could go on living with him anymore. I finally realized what he was, what he is – a monster, a real, true-life monster.’

  She looked up at me then, making eye contact for the first time in perhaps half an hour. ‘You know what the funny thing is? I’d always been faithful to him, there’d never been any other guys, no matter what he accused me of. But Don, he was off screwing half of Sand Springs. He didn’t even bother making excuses in the end, just rubbed my face in it and expected me to take it. And for a while, I did. But after I lost the baby, everything changed.

  ‘I thought about killing him, I really did. I imagined so many ways of doing it, came close once or twice. But I just didn’t have it in me, could never go through with it. But there was no way I could stay with him anymore, not after what he’d done. So I started researching things, finding out about other women like me. The local shelters, they all had links one way or another to the police, so they were out. I knew if anything was going to happen, I’d have to do it myself. So I started to find out how other people had done it, how women had managed to escape from men like that – false identities, safe houses, how to safely get away to a new life. But it took time. Don didn’t give me any freedom, I couldn’t just wander around town and sort things out like most women. I had to learn to be deceptive, to do things behind his back, behind everyone’s back, seeing as how everyone reported to him. So it took time.

  ‘But eventually I was ready, and moved to that apartment. It was only temporary, a safe place to hide out while I sorted a few other things out and moved out of Oklahoma altogether.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘I guess I should have known that trying to escape from Don was impossible. How are you going to get away from a guy who controls the police?’

  The tears started once more, and I waited in silence.

  But despite the silence, inside I was a seething mass of rage, an insane anger just waiting to erupt, to burst out on Don fucking Carson.

  I couldn’t believe what the coldhearted sonofabitch had done.

  What sort of man was he?

  The simple answer was that he wasn’t any kind of man at all.

  ‘Where did you want to go?’ I asked her when the worst of the tears had passed. ‘If it had all worked out, where would you have gone?’

  She wiped her eyes, and I could see that not all the hope had been drained from her – the barest glimmer still remained.

  ‘Australia,’ she said. ‘Eventually, I guess I wanted to end up in Australia. A long way away, but they speak English, you know? Warm there, too.’ She wiped another tear away, and my heart broke.

  ‘Maybe you can still make it,’ I said, leveling my gaze with hers. ‘Because I think I might just have a plan.’

  Chapter Four

  I had nightmares for most of the night; not unusual, but normally it was image
s from the operation back in Mosul that had gone so horrifically wrong. This time, however, my sleeping mind roamed back over other memories, things I hadn’t really thought about in years.

  Perhaps the dreams stemmed from sharing my past with Sam earlier that evening.

  The visions came thick and fast. One moment I was in my trailer back in Lumberton, North Carolina, walking through the broken screen door to be greeted by the sight of all my worldly possessions gone, vanished, stolen.

  I felt the rage burning through my belly like fire, even in my dream-sleep, and the next moment I was in the hallway of a three-bed, one-story house in Fayetteville, beating a man nearly half to death, the rage pouring out of me in convulsive, violent destruction.

  I lived in Lumberton because it was cheap – especially in the trailer park where the mobile home I rented was located – and the meat plant was only fifteen miles away, thirty minutes by the bus which swung through the city picking up workers in the early hours of the morning.

  My neighbors at the park left a little to be desired but – after a few altercations – they knew it was best to leave me alone. I minded my own business, and they minded theirs.

  The home itself was called the Dream 200, and while it was hardly the dream that its name made out, it certainly wasn’t the worst place I’d slept in over the years. It had three beds and two baths, which was more than I needed but all they had available; and at less than five hundred dollars a month, it was affordable. And more than that, it was a home.

  My home.

  But that all ended the day those lowlife scum broke inside and robbed me of everything I had.

  It took me some time to find out who’d done it, days and nights when I went through the Lumberton criminal scene like wildfire. But it wasn’t anyone from Lumberton, as it turned out; I finally got lucky after dragging a well-known dealer out of his favorite bar and beating the information out of him. He’d heard on the grapevine that a crew from Fayetteville had been doing the rounds, burglarizing trailer parks all over the state.

  I could see why they chose that target – security was poor, the police weren’t interested, and – due to the fact that most residents didn’t have bank accounts – there was always plenty of cash on the scene.

  But the fact that I understood, didn’t mean that I forgave; in fact, I was far from being in a forgiving mood, and I took my rage with me to Fayetteville.

  I knew the city pretty well, due to the fact that Fort Bragg – home of US Special Operations Command – was just north of there, and I’d spent plenty of time at that base when I’d been with the Ranger Regimental Recon Detachment. We’d had some fun R&R there, partying and shaking things up.

  There was going to be no partying this time, but I was definitely ready to shake things up again.

  I did just that, leaving a trail of broken bodies from one bar to another, and then – the more I learnt – from one crack den to another.

  Until at last I met them face to face, a family cohort of two brothers and two cousins who funded their drug habits through a variety of nasty criminal practices – mugging, car-jacking, petty theft, burglary, even some two-bit dealing of their own.

  After ‘questioning’ some of their associates, I located them at a rundown ranch house in a low-rent district not too far from the Cross Creek Mall.

  I tapped on the front door with my metal nightstick.

  A figure appeared in the doorway, half-cut on coke and booze. ‘The fuck you want?’ he drawled, bottle of whisky in one hand, Louisville slugger in the other.

  ‘Drake?’ I asked. ‘Drake Travers?’

  ‘The fuck wants to know?’ he said, but I could see the recognition in his eyes, knew that this was my man.

  I didn’t answer, just gave him the good news with the nightstick right across the forehead.

  He went down like a pile of shit, and I could already see movement behind him and jumped over the prone body, doubling up the next guy with a thrusting front kick to the gut, the nightstick banging off his temple right after.

  I stalked further inside the house, narrowly avoiding the blade of the kitchen knife as it swiped through the thick, noxious air toward me. The hallway was only dimly lit by a weak bulb hanging unshaded from the grimy ceiling, but I could see enough, and moved more quickly for the second swipe of the knife, smashing the nightstick down onto the third man’s forearm, shattering the bones and making him scream in pain. He dropped the knife, and I reversed the baton and slammed it up underneath his nose; it broke instantly, along with many of his teeth, and he dropped to the floor with closed eyes and a savage, bloody, toothless grin.

  Another figure appeared from the kitchen then, and I raced toward it and front kicked the man back through the doorway, sending him flying several feet back into the kitchen.

  In pain but trying to react, he groped around the kitchen countertops in a desperate attempt to find a weapon; but I was there before he managed, stamping down on his kneecap and breaking it with a loud crack. He screamed in pain, and I put an end to it with a heavy right hand to his jaw that sent him straight to Sleepsville.

  The guy by the front door was starting to come round, and I pulled him deeper into the house and swung the door shut behind us. He tried to resist, but I slowed him down with a head-butt that plastered his nose across his face; then I pushed him up against the hallway wall and slapped him awake.

  ‘Where’s my money?’ I whispered into his ear.

  ‘What . . . what the fuck?’ the man slurred back at me.

  ‘My money,’ I said, before reeling off my address. ‘Remember it?’

  But the man only laughed, and spat blood into my face, and that’s when I lost control and slammed his head back into the wall, followed him down to the ground and started to pound on him, raining punch after punch onto his upturned, unprotected face.

  ‘Where’s . . . my . . . fucking . . . money?’ I asked him, punctuating each word with another blow to the guy’s head –

  And that’s what I dreamt about, the pounding I gave that guy, the rage in the pit of my stomach, the sight of his swollen face, and the blood . . .

  But in the dream it was even worse, the guy’s head swollen to twice its normal size, bodies littering the corridor around us, blood spraying over the walls, over the floor, over me, and my punches – with fists as big as hams – slamming down time and time again without stopping.

  Without mercy.

  I woke up sweating, the horror of that scene still with me, my hand wrapped around the grip of the pistol that I’d kept under my pillow.

  I relaxed, put the gun on the table next to me.

  In real life, it hadn’t been as bad as the dream, but it had been close – I’d let the rage control me, had almost killed the guy with my bare hands. I’d got my money back, plus plenty more besides, but – although I never really thought about it – I guess I must have still felt guilty about the whole thing.

  Why? Because I’d lost control.

  And why was I dreaming about it now? Was it because of what I’d heard about Don Carson? About how he couldn’t control his anger?

  Was I afraid that I was more like Don Carson than I would like to think?

  But that was more thinking than I was prepared to do at four o’clock in the morning.

  So I turned over, closed my eyes, and forced myself back to sleep.

  Because what good did thinking ever do anyone?

  When I finally woke up for good, I found that Sam was already up. The TV was back on, and we watched the local news as we tucked into some of the food I’d bought back at the store.

  They’d found the car we’d left in the parking garage, which was sooner than I’d expected. It just went to show how widespread the news story was about us – a couple had returned to their own car a few hours after we’d ditched the stolen Toyota, and had recognized the car parked nearby from a television news report they’d seen that evening.

  It didn’t mean anything, really – the police would alre
ady have all the fingerprints they needed from the cell I was in, or the interview room, or the steering wheel of the fire truck I’d stolen. They would be well on their way to identifying me by now.

  The only thing was that it could narrow the search to the downtown area, and indeed probably would. And if we were in a hotel room, that could make things awkward, as everything in the area would undoubtedly be checked over the course of the next day or two. But here in this random apartment, we were unlikely to be disturbed.

  The police could try checking CCTV feeds, either from civic cameras, or from private units such as those in stores and garages, but that would take time – and without facial recognition software, it would take a lot of time.

  My plan involved an element of time – essentially it entailed us staying low for a few days, until the initial excitement died down. There was only so long they were going to monitor the train and bus depots, the airports and highways; they simply didn’t have the manpower for a prolonged operation.

  And when things were a bit easier, we’d make our way out of the city – probably in a stolen car – and make our way north to Detroit, where I had a guy who could produce false documents. And not the sort of amateurish, homemade type that Sam had learned to do on the internet; this guy was a pro, doing work for government departments as well as plenty of private security companies and ex-intelligence types.

  I knew he was good, because he was the man who sorted me out with all of my own fake docs, and they’d always done the business.

  The only thing was, we needed to visit him in person; he had to take his own pictures, check biometric data and so on, and refused to do business over the internet. That was fair enough, but it did mean we were going to have to travel nearly a thousand miles across the country to get there, which might well present its own set of problems.

  But if – when – we got there, Sam would get sorted with an entirely new and verifiable identity, and we could then move north across the border into Canada; and from there, she could then get on a plane and go wherever the hell she wanted.