Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  A badge.

  “Oh fuck me,” Delilah said aloud and hit the door locks just in time to prevent Sam from opening the door.

  She hit the gas and sped out of the parking lot toward the freeway, almost hitting an oncoming truck. In the rearview she saw Sam sprinting down the road, his hand pressed to his ear. A cell phone, she guessed. Reporting her. This night just got better and better.

  Delilah took the onramp going south, knowing that Sam would report her actions and wanting to misdirect. Normally a stolen car wouldn’t get a huge amount of attention. Sure, the license plate would be put out and cops would look out for it, but no real pursuit would be mustered. This wasn’t normal. She’d stolen a cop’s car. Every stupid pig in the vicinity would be out looking for her within ten to twenty minutes.

  Sam hadn’t looked like a cop. Cops all had an air, a miasma of power-tripping and authority about them. Damnit, but she could tell. She thought she could anyway. He’d seemed so normal, without the edge or awareness that cops usually carried. The drugs. It had to be the stupid wound and the pain. She was so damned tired. Her instincts were frazzled. Not good.

  She replayed the events in the bar from her memory. That had definitely been a badge pressed to the window. He’d nearly made it into the car, and she’d seen the shield clearly. Shield. Detective. Crap. Worse and worse. Cops with ranks.

  Delilah stayed southbound until the next exit. Then she swung off the freeway and back around, heading toward the Jacksonville airport. She was in a car, she could out run them. Not in this car though. It was a cop’s car. No way in hell she was going to bet it didn’t have Lojack or some sort of tracking system. The GPS was switched off, but that didn’t mean shit.

  Not the way her luck had been going. She’d head to the airport, ditch the car and pick up a new one in long-term parking. The cops wouldn’t know if she’d caught a flight or what. She’d be away by then. She just had to stay ahead.

  Just get home, she told herself. Get home, sleep this stupidity off, and everything will be fine. Everything will go back to normal.

  Except it wouldn’t. Home couldn’t be home anymore.

  Donna Utley’s name was burned, but she’d already known that. Murder though? What murder? The news probably got her name and that picture from the hotel desk. The clerk had photocopied her license.

  She had a bigger problem though. Who got killed at the hotel? Teddy had found her there, he’d almost gotten inside. Had he been so angry when she was gone that he’d killed someone else? What did the asshole want with her, anyway? She hadn’t even stolen anything from him.

  She thought of his cold, psychotic eyes and shivered. Yeah, she could see him killing someone randomly. Easy. Crazy bastard. She hoped the weird doctor hadn’t come back to check on her. She forced away the image of Teddy laughing over Morales’s bleeding corpse.

  If that crazy bastard had murdered someone in her hotel room, that would create more issues. Make it more likely that someone would see the tampering with the vent and find her stash. The money and her Atlanta address.

  At the thought that she shouldn’t go to her safe house, Delilah’s tears finally broke through. She had nowhere else to go. She needed money; she needed to get her other IDs. Even if the law found her stuff in the vent, she had time. The cops were slow, especially across state lines. And her prints weren’t in the system.

  Hell, finding prints and such and identifying them in a cheap hotel room had to be about as hit and miss as printing a public restroom or a New York subway station. She had at least a week. The cop would get his car back, probably tonight, and that would be that. She stared down at her bare hands, pale and thin, gripping the wheel. They’d print the car. But those prints might not catch up to the Daytona Beach prints. Not for a long while.

  Still, she was leaving a hell of a trail behind her. Like a snot-faced square straight out of Juvie.

  “Damn you, Sam. You seemed so stupid and nice.” She sighed. Hopefully, Sam was at least kind of stupid. There were so many risks, no matter what she did.

  She took a deep breath and winced. The pain was returning, the drugged gauzy haze wearing thin with the adrenaline and emotion pouring through her. Tears dripped off her chin and she found it hard to breathe with her nosed clogged with snot. All she wanted to do was sleep. Sleep without fear. This whole day had been so fucked up.

  I’ll go. But I won’t stay. In and out. Get the money, get a new car, drive somewhere else and book a room. Start over.

  There would be other houses. Other jobs. She’d never screwed up so badly that she’d had to lay low before, but she could do that, too, if she had to. There was money enough, especially with the jewelry in her pocket. She’d stay ahead. Running. Delilah was good at running.

  Wiping the back of her hand angrily over her cheeks, Delilah sped off toward the lights of Jacksonville.

  Eighteen

  Ted sipped the atrocious, over-priced red wine from a plastic cup and stared out the airplane window into the darkness. Far beneath the plane, the skies rained down, drowning the world in cleansing dark water.

  He was above it all. Those tiny, pointless lives scurrying around like maggots somewhere thousands of miles below. Ted loved flying. He just wished the drinks they served in first class were higher quality. The stewardess was high quality, however, and Ted gave her a friendly grin as she walked by.

  Nice ass, legs in clean, light brown pantyhose. Her breasts were small, but looked perky inside the airline uniform. She had on too much makeup, but her face wasn’t haggard yet from the job and her eyes still had some life in them. Old enough to be a good fuck, young enough to still enjoy it.

  Ted knew he could have her. Even without his hunting kit, he could easily find a way to either convince her to join the “mile high” club with him, or force her into it. She wouldn’t protest too much. They never did.

  But it might create complications. Even delay him. He sighed. This wasn’t the time for play. His blood still raced. He felt so good, so alive. So free.

  But first, Delilah.

  He’d find her. Sit in wait for her, a hunter waiting in the blind for the prey to bed down. It would be too late at night to rebuild his kit, the hardware stores would all be closed. That was okay with him. Delilah wasn’t on this flight and the next one out wasn’t until the morning. Unless she drove, but even then he’d still arrive hours before her. Plenty of time to find a knife and some duct tape or rope.

  From there, he’d improvise. It occurred to Ted that she might not live alone and that thought brought on another rush of anger. She was his. The idea of another man touching her, putting his cock in her, running his hands through that soft hair and breathing in her clean, soapy smell, burned in Ted’s mind. Mine.

  The empty plastic cup crumpled and cracked in Ted’s hand, bringing him back to himself. He shook his head, reaching for his iron control. If there was another man, well, he’d fix that. He could kill a man, hadn’t he proven that with the whining idiot in the hotel? There would only be one man in Delilah’s life from now on.

  Her very, very short life.

  Ted set the damaged cup down and gave himself a mental shake. He needed to get control of his feelings, his urges. His head must stay clear, ready. Ted pushed the button for the stewardess and asked her for a blanket.

  When she returned he briefly entertained the idea of propositioning her, as first class was almost empty, but discarded that. No complications. Not tonight.

  Ted hit the overhead light and flicked it off. He slid one hand under the blanket draped over his lap and unzipped his pants. The pretty stewardess’ and Delilah’s faces blended together, their bodies merging in his mind as he stroked himself. She was there, somewhere in the darkness below him, struggling in the mud with the other lesser creatures. She had gotten away, but she was coming to him now.

  Ted looked out into the black void, and smiled.

  Nineteen

  Detective Sam Arbichaut stood under the awning of the Bold Bass
tavern and pulled out his cell phone to make a series of calls he really, truly didn’t want to make. He’d already waved off the two men who’d been in the garage across the way. Nothing they could do, they’d seen what he’d seen.

  Him getting left in the drizzle while a woman stole his car. He sighed and started making calls.

  The first was to his dispatch to report his car stolen so it could be entered into the database and the VIN checked against his LoJack number. It would take Emerelda about five to ten minutes to beat the system into submission and get his LoJack activated so he could track his car.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Emerelda said when he gave her the news and asked her to start the trace. He could hear the amusement in her voice, but she was nice enough to keep her trap shut.

  “It’s Rocco and Petty on tonight, isn’t it?” Sam asked with a sigh. He already knew the answer, he’d made the schedule.

  “Yeah. They’re out and about. You want me to call them?” He heard the click of her keyboard in the background.

  “Nah, I have the number. They’ll have to come pick me up anyway. Thanks, Em.” Sam hung up and then popped up a new number from his contacts list.

  This call, this was the one he was really dreading. As senior detective and a shift supervisor in Robbery for Jacksonville, having to call the two clowns of the Auto Theft division, his underlings, and ask for a ride was just insulting. But the worst would be when they found out he’d had his car stolen. By a girl.

  “Fuck,” Sam said and hit send.

  “Rocco here. Hit me, boss, we’re bored as hell.” Rocco’s voice buzzed through the phone and Sam heard the deep bass throb of the noise those two guys called music in the background.

  “I need you to come pick me up, out off I-95, at the Bold Bass.”

  “What? Why? Get a little too drunk?”

  Sam wished he were more drunk, but his buzz had worn off the moment he’d realized that the face up on the TV screen was the woman who had just left with his keys.

  “Just come get me. I’ll explain later.” He hung up. They’d do what he said. Both of them were still in the dog house since an incident involving a bait car and a pacemaker a couple weeks ago. He’d stuck them on graveyard patrol in an unmarked just to get them out of everyone’s hair until the inquiry finished.

  Sam leaned back against the building and watched the drizzle. He had more calls to make, but those could keep until he was back at his desk. He didn’t believe for a second they’d find his car with the woman still in it.

  Donna Utley, that’s what the news had said. Breaking Story. Someone murdered in a hotel room in Daytona Beach. News was speculating a drug-related thing or domestic disturbance. Not that the reporters ever knew anything real. But damn.

  He’d liked her. She’d been so tiny, so vulnerable looking. Evie had vouched for her, more or less. Ever since his divorce a few years ago, Sam had been wary of women. But he was still a sucker for a damsel in distress. Had a bad day, she’d said. He guessed that hadn’t been a lie.

  His brain was clearing out and Sam went back over the last half hour in his head. She’d looked tired. She hadn’t had a purse. That should have clued him in, but it was his weekend, he hadn’t been in cop-mode. Okay, and he’d had a few beers already. Sam shoved away the reproaches. Not useful now.

  Scared. She’d looked scared. Even before her face popped up on the screen. Tense, too. Well, if she’d killed somebody, he guessed she would be tense. But he didn’t want to think about her being a killer. Maybe she just knew something, saw something. Needed help.

  Sure and pigs were growing wings all over. She’d worked him over like a pro. The little smiles, the arm touches, the way she’d used a “bar game” to hoodwink him out of a twenty. She’d slid his keys off the bar easy and clean, too. If his instincts hadn’t given him that little shove, he might never have turned to see what was on the TV as she went to what he’d assumed was the bathroom.

  But she’d tensed up, gotten a hollow, scared look for a moment. Warning enough for Sam. He sighed again. He should have known that a pretty woman flirting with him was too good to be true. She was a looker though. A bit on the skinny side for him, but she’d had nice cleavage, and very smooth cinnamon-brown skin. Wide eyes, straight nose, thick lips. Maybe Cambodian or Chinese? With a bit of Caucasian mixed in, that he was sure of. A typical American mutt. Would make her harder to describe later.

  Sam slapped his palms flat on the wall and then went inside to talk to Evie. She’d seemed to know the girl, so maybe she could shed some light.

  “I met her in the bathroom, Sam, honest.” Evie bit her lip and wrung her hands in her apron. “She said she’d had a bad day and asked to borrow a little lipstick. She seemed nice, a bit lost. I figured a fight with a boyfriend or something.”

  “It’s all right, Evie. She sold us both a story. My car has a tracking system. We’ll find her.” Sam patted the waitress on the shoulder and went back out into the cool night air to wait for Rocco and Petty.

  He knew what the first thing they’d say would be. Sam had a bit of a weakness for damsels in distress. Even in his divorce he’d still let his ex-wife take whatever she’d wanted. Including his dog. Some days he regretted that. He missed Nitro, the Collie-Rottweiler mutt he’d raised from a puppy. But hell, he could always get another dog and Denise had made big eyes at him, sniffling about how lonely it would be without the dog.

  Denise. She’d had big brown eyes, too, just like that waif who’d stolen his car. Donna Utley. What is it with me and D-names? Sam sighed again and leaned into the wall of the bar. The rain looked to be letting up. He wondered where this latest damsel in distress had headed and felt a pang of embarrassment about the state of his car.

  That’s how much of a sucker you are, Sammy, he thought. Woman steals my car and I’m embarrassed about the mess.

  Lighting up another cigarette, he shook his head and stared out into the night.

  Twenty

  Delilah drove up to the ticket machine and pulled the long-term ticket. This was going to bite into her twenty bucks, but twenty was worth nothing if the cops caught up to her. At least the rain had stopped.

  She parked Sam’s car in between two huge SUVs where it would be a little tougher to spot. Then she dug around, looking for spare change or anything useful. She found a better screwdriver and then hit pay-dirt with a car break-in kit like the professional lock guys used. That left her wondering what kind of detective Sam really was. The kit would be handy.

  “Guess you turned out to be useful after all, Sam.” Delilah smiled, then hissed as she straightened up too fast and pulled on the stitches. She pressed her fingers into her abdomen around the bandaging and found the skin warm and swollen. The bandage was damp and her fingers came away faintly pink when she checked on the gauze. Probably a bad sign, but she had no time to worry about it.

  She hesitated and leaned against the car for a long moment. There was no way she could tell the cops what she knew, they’d never let her out even though she’d done nothing wrong that they could pin on her. They’d lock her in a room without exits and she’d be in hell.

  But maybe she could toss a bone Sam’s way, and put a roadblock in the path of the psycho who had tried to take her out.

  She reached into the car and grabbed a pen from the glove box. Rummaging around, she found a receipt with a blank back. It hurt to bend down so she sat in the passenger seat of the car and penned Sam a note.

  As a final afterthought, she signed it “sorry”. He had seemed like a nice guy, and probably one of those people with a weak spot for pretty girls in distress. It couldn’t hurt to play that angle. Right now, she definitely counted as a damsel in distress. She left the note on the front seat and closed up the car.

  Minutes ticked past in her head as Delilah combed the parking lot for a good candidate. She checked for hide-a-keys behind license plates and under wheel wells, lips pressed together against the pain of bending down. But she hated hot-wiring cars and really
didn’t want to deal with any alarms right now. Finally she came up with a key on a dark green Subaru. She tossed the lock kit into the car with her anyway, knowing she might need to change vehicles before the long drive to Atlanta was over.

  The Subaru Legacy had nearly a full tank of gas and Delilah prayed that the gauge was telling the truth this time. She hardly had to adjust the seat for her five-foot-six-inch height and the mirrors were almost perfect. The car smelled a bit like Cheerios, but was pretty clean. There was a pink kiddie car-seat in the back with a colorful Giraffe toy sitting in it. A little pang gripped Delilah’s heart for a moment and she sighed.

  Esther wouldn’t be in a car-seat anymore, probably. The last picture that Jake had sent showed a smiling little girl with black pigtails on her way to her first day in Kindergarten. Delilah shoved away thoughts of Jake and her daughter and started the car.

  The man in the parking booth didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the tiny amount of time on her ticket. He just took her money, made change, and waved her through. Must be a good book.

  She headed away from the airport, toward the US-1 north. She was finally going home. She could get money, get new IDs, and get the hell out. Maybe she’d call Jake, just to check in, let him know she might be laying low for a while. The money she could get from the stolen jewelry would help pay for some of Esther’s testing. Jake would deal with it.

  Meanwhile she’d get a hotel room, sleep off the injury, and then maybe head to Canada, do a few driving runs for Mikey up there. He always had something going with either booze or cigarettes and dodging the taxes and tariffs. Everything was going to work out just fine. Florida had been a hiccup. She’d survived. She could run away, move on. Like always.

  Delilah flipped on the radio, scanning for a moment and finally settling on a bluesy station. She glanced in the rearview, adjusted it, and sighed. It was time to leave Florida—the violence, the pain, the bad luck, all of it—far, far behind. She drove off into the darkness, free and safe.