Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  Twenty-seven

  Delilah’s newfound anger and resolve dissipated as she rummaged through her neighbor’s home. She found Mr. Palmer’s wallet and learned his name was Walter. There was eighteen dollars in the wallet and a wad of coupons clipped from Sunday’s paper. She pocketed the money.

  She found an old revolver in the bedroom and a shotgun half-buried in dust under the couch. A Porky Pig cookie jar yielded another forty dollars and change in small bills and coins. As she half-heartedly searched, feeling time pressing in on her with a tangible pressure like water on her skin, Delilah realized that she’d have to fly.

  She tried to think of a way to avoid the deathtrap tin can option. But the drive across country would take thirty some hours in the most ideal circumstances. Injured, exhausted, and with a murderer gunning for her family was not her ideal. Forty hours, at least. How much damage could crazy Ted do in that time? She looked around poor Walter Palmer’s house.

  Enough. Too much.

  She’d have to fly. Which meant she needed more money. And she couldn’t take the guns with her. Delilah could live with that. She wasn’t fond of guns and part of her hoped she could grab Jake and Esther and get the hell out. Confronting a man who could do what Ted had done, well, thinking about it brought the tremors back to her hands and ran chills down her spine.

  With heavy steps she walked back to her own house. She needed to stay sharp, stay smart. Smarter, cause I’ve fucked this whole thing up. She stepped into the moist heat and tried to breathe through her mouth. Palmer’s body was growing riper as the day warmed up.

  She knew she had to pack a bag, look normal for the airport people. Just a woman going on a flight. Normal, safe, boring.

  Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she breathed in little gasps as she grabbed a duffle bag and started stuffing clothes into it. A plane. Thousands of feet in the air. No exit. Fuck.

  She sat down heavily on the bed and unzipped her hoodie. The bandage was stuck to the skin, but though a shower sounded like heaven, Delilah forced away those thoughts. She didn’t have the time. No time. Even now a killer could be watching her daughter or grabbing the only man in the world who had ever given a damn for Delilah.

  If she turned away now, if she let the fear make her run again, she’d be responsible for what happened to them. She guessed she wasn’t quite the hardened bitch that Jake had accused her of being, after all.

  Thinking about Jake, sending money and secret prayers for the baby they’d made together, it kept her more grounded than she’d realized. But if he, if they, died, if she lost her last human connection to the girl she’d been, then she wasn’t sure what she’d become.

  She left the hoodie on the bed and pulled on a tee-shirt. Getting a clean pair of pants on was more work and she felt something tear, almost heard it in a teeth-grinding, internal-sound way. Pain sent icicle spikes through her lower back and she slammed her fist against the bed frame, chewing her lip.

  Her stomach was in ropes and her throat unbearably dry. Nausea radiated through her. Delilah went into the kitchen, avoiding looking at the corpse in the living room, and pulled out the bottle of diet Coke. Her hands shook so hard as she poured that she sloshed it onto the counter and floor. She started to replace the bottle, then snorted in horrible amusement. It didn’t matter if the Coke got warm. Wasn’t like she was ever coming back here.

  The bubbles settled her stomach a little and she swished the final mouthful of cold sweetness around before swallowing. She set the empty glass down. No putting it off now. She had to go.

  Her first stop was Poppy’s pawn shop. It was just after eight in the morning when she reached the barren parking lot. Poppy’s truck was parked by the dumpster behind.

  Delilah pounded on the thick steel back door. After a minute she heard movement and a slit opened in the door. Poppy’s yellowed eyes squinted out at her.

  “You alone?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Come on, Pops.” She didn’t have time for his normal paranoid bullshit. She needed money and to get to the airport. There was no way to know when flights left, not without a computer to check times or other tech she didn’t have at the moment. No way to know if Ted had jumped a flight already or if Delilah could catch him beforehand.

  Not that she’d have a clue what to do in that case. Come up with something. Stop him. Somehow. She shivered as Poppy unlocked the million locks on the other side of his door.

  He motioned her into the dim interior. The air conditioning was going strong, recycling the cigarette smoke and thin, acidic scent of instant coffee.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Dee.” Poppy led the way to his office and flopped down in the bright orange leather chair.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Cardiff called. Says you got trouble. Your face all over the news or something. You kill somebody?”

  “Fuck.” Delilah sighed. “No, I didn’t kill anyone.” Yet. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the necklace, earrings, and bracelet and dumped them on the desk in front of Poppy. The diamonds glittered in the fluorescent light.

  Poppy whistled through his dentures and scratched a weekend’s growth of salt and pepper stubble on his thick chin.

  “You can’t be here, Dee. Card—”

  “Fine, I was never here.” She cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I need cash, Pops. Now.”

  That had been a mistake she realized as his eyes locked on her face and narrowed to predatory slits. She had a playbook, rules, customs and personalities she adopted to deal with the people she had to deal with to do what she loved doing.

  But this whole thing with Ted, with Florida. God, she couldn’t stop fucking up. It was like the whole book had been thrown out the window. On fire.

  Poppy poked at the diamonds, sorting the pile out into individual pieces.

  “Because I’m a nice man,” he said, “I’ll give you two hundred.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “What? Fuck that, Pops. This shit is real, you can see that at a glance. It’s worth at least fifty grand. I want my usual ten percent.”

  “Usual? You’re in trouble, kid. I wonder if they got one of those information bounty things on you yet. Would that be worth fifty grand, you think?”

  She swallowed and shook her head. She was alone, inside a locked shop. She hadn’t even thought about it. She liked Poppy, more or less. He’d always dealt fair with her. Until now, apparently. Blood’s in the water and the sharks are circling, she thought.

  She ran a hand through her hair. The last couple days had seemed like a nightmare from which she just wanted to wake up, but now, slowly, she was starting to realize that maybe the rest of the time had been the dream. She’d been so busy running around, pretending to be whomever she wanted that she’d lost sight of the consequences.

  You’re never truly free, Colin had always told her. Shit has a way of falling out of the sky.

  Shit was sure falling now.

  She forced herself to breathe normally and took a different tact with Poppy.

  “Hey, Pops, come on.” She lifted her shirt a little, showing the blood-stained bandage. “There’s a guy, he stabbed me and now he’s gonna kill my little girl. I need at least enough for a ticket to get there first.” When in doubt, the truth couldn’t be the worst way. She hoped. It was all too easy to let the emotions roiling through her build up and large, heavy tears burst from her eyes, making cold streaks down her face.

  “Jesus,” he said, unconsciously mirroring her as he ran his own hand through his graying curls. “A thousand. Take it or leave it.”

  A thousand. He was screwing her over, but it would be enough. Probably. She had no idea how much a plane ticket cost.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll take it.” She barely waited for him to count out the bills before bolting from the shop.

  She slid into the car and rubbed the back of her hand against her wet eyes. “Suck it up, Dee. Move on, keep going.” There wasn’t time to sit aro
und feeling sorry for herself. She wasn’t the one who’d be sliced into a million bits of viscera and—she shoved away the image of Walter. It wouldn’t happen. Not to Jake. Not to the sick little girl who probably didn’t even know Delilah’s name.

  She twisted the key in the ignition and pulled away from the pawn shop, tears still streaking down her cheeks in glistening lines.

  Twenty-eight

  Angry thoughts swarmed through Delilah’s mind like wasps, bright and dangerous. Cardiff. That damn paranoid bastard. This whole thing was his fault, in many ways. He’d set her up with Alan and the dumb job in Florida in the first place. Why hadn’t he vetted those people better? He knew Delilah well enough to know she’d never sit in on amateur hour like that.

  And now, now that the whole thing was a giant mess and it was her face, if not her name, yet, plastered across screens all over the South. Cardiff had called Poppy. She wondered who else he’d think to call, probably anyone who he’d recommended her to over the last few years.

  Her stomach twisted, sharp pains digging into her lower back and down into her legs like cheap fingernails rending her skin from the inside out. Sweat beaded on her forehead and ran down her spine. She jammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road, flipping off an asshole in a Chevy Suburban who leaned on his horn before charging around her.

  Even if she stopped crazy Ted, got Jake and Esther out, what kind of life would be waiting for her? There was no way but time and prayers to clear up the shit in Florida. Her prints and DNA would always be tied to imaginary Donna Utley and whatever Ted had done in her hotel room. They might even tie her to that cop and the carjacking.

  And now Cardiff had essentially told her to fuck off, withdrawn his help. Favor repaid.

  She leaned forward, resting her forehead on the steering wheel. She ran her tongue over dry lips, forcing herself to breathe in shallow, slow breaths.

  My choices. My world. Jake had offered to leave Nancy, to try again with Delilah after she’d found out she was pregnant. Was all magnanimous and shit about it, like he hadn’t been the one cheating on Nancy in the first place, like he hadn’t walked out on Delilah after their high school graduation over a year before that. But he’d told her that for that to happen, she’d have to give up the crooked business. Offered her a waitress position at his dad’s bar. Seriously.

  The bitch of it was, even with the year of no contact, even with him coming back to Portland with another woman, all of it, Delilah would have forgiven it.

  But not that last request. She did what she did because she loved it. The thrill of a good con, the ease with which thousands of dollars could come and go in moments, based on skill and intelligence and power. So much power.

  And she hadn’t wanted the baby. Just Jake. Jake and the life of the heister. The way it was when they were skipping school and boosting cars and small electronics. The perfect team.

  And now. Nothing. None of that mattered. She was worse off than ever.

  Delilah bit down hard on her lower lip, forcing away the tears. She was fucking maudlin when this exhausted, apparently. Exhausted, alone, injured.

  “One thing at a time, Dee,” she muttered.

  She had two options, the way she saw it. Go, or run. Protect Jake and their daughter, or leave them to fend for themselves and get the hell out. She’d make it. The nice thing about crime was that she could pretty much work anywhere. That thought made her chuckle, which hurt. Hurt because of what crazy Ted had done.

  He was so fast, so strong, and apparently so fucking persistent. Mr. Palmer had been a soldier and while old, wasn’t exactly a weak slouch either. Ted clearly hadn’t had any issues subduing him.

  “Damn it.” She sat up slowly. She’d chosen this life over Jake and the baby before. And it had gotten her here. To this moment.

  She glanced out the window and then pulled the car out onto the road again. She had to get on the plane and protect them. She was the only one who had any idea what Ted was. Maybe Jake could take him, but probably he wouldn’t. Ted wasn’t the kind of guy who set off alarms and Delilah had never met someone with empty eyes who didn’t get that way through lots and lots of practice. Killing practice.

  She’d save them. Even if it meant getting into a tin can and hurtling thousands of miles into the air.

  Delilah turned off the freeway, toward the airport, with a tiny smile. She’d finally found something that scared her more than small, closed spaces.

  Ted.

  A white car came up on her quickly, and the blue flash of lights warned her just before the sirens started up.

  Delilah looked down at her dash and realized she’d been driving twenty miles an hour under the speed limit. Without her seatbelt on. With a muttered curse, she floored the gas.

  Twenty-nine

  The airport was so damn close that she could see the long-term parking lots and beyond that the shiny bodies of planes taking off in the morning light. But running toward the airport would just mean more security and quicker backup for the cops behind her.

  The exit ramp was a long one, up ahead Delilah saw where it merged with another road. She stayed on the gas until the last moment, slamming the brakes and hauling on the emergency brake as she jerked the wheel hard and took the car into a mostly controlled spin. Her car flipped around, the cop car sailing by. She jammed the gas again and hit her horn, heading down the one-way street away from the airport.

  In the rearview mirror she saw the cruiser scrambling to turn and come after her. She shot down the tree-lined road and they fell out of sight.

  She was in the sweet spot now, the small space of time anyone running from the police had once they’d lost immediate sight. Backup would be called in and the cruiser would come down this road behind her. She had only moments to get away.

  The road dead-ended at a busy four-lane highway. Right turn only. Delilah slowed for the briefest of seconds and then gunned through a gap in the traffic, turning the car to the left hard as she shot through the traffic. She merged into the right lane and slowed down, watching her mirrors for a sign of the police.

  She heard sirens but didn’t see the car. She was still in that window, perhaps away safely, perhaps not. And she couldn’t risk coming back around and getting to the airport this way. She needed a new plan.

  The adrenaline faded, leaving shakes behind it. Nausea burned in her stomach and Delilah pressed a fist to her abdomen. Too many close calls.

  A blue information sign with a bunch of hotel decals on it caught her eye. Of course. The airport would have many hotels around it. While the cops had a description of the car, they couldn’t have seen more than that it was a dark-haired woman driving.

  Telling herself to stay cool and think, Delilah turned off toward the hotels. She drove down the road, looking at the hotels as they rose, bleak and utilitarian above acres of asphalt. No parking garages. That would make it harder to hide the car, but she’d deal.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 and tucked her car into a line of parked cars. Taking her bag with her, she left the vehicle, throwing the keys into a drainage grate as she walked, hunched with pain, to the motel.

  It was warm, but Delilah worried that her wound might start to bleed through. She stopped in the shade of a couple scraggly trees near the lobby entrance and checked her shirt. No blood yet, but the tearing pain stabbing little icicles through her lower back and stomach weren’t comforting. She pulled a sweatshirt out of her bag and zipped it partially up. The pill bottles made a sound like a rattle in her sweatshirt pocket, reminding her she had them.

  Delilah debated taking a painkiller, but shoved the pills into her bag instead. She needed to stay sharp, awake. Once she was on that tin can of death she could take drugs and hopefully sleep the flight through.

  Unless he’s there too. Still unable to decide what she’d do about Ted if he were on the same flight, Delilah forced away those thoughts.

  “Excuse me, miss?” A man’s voice startled her and she alm
ost swung her bag up to hit the elderly guy who stood just off the curb next to a taxi.

  Delilah gave herself a mental shake and held her bag close. “Yes?”

  “Are you the one waiting for the taxi?”

  “Yes,” she said with a small smile. “I guess I was.”

  He held the door open for her and Delilah climbed inside. The driver had his air conditioning running and the chill was a welcome relief to the growing heat outside.

  The driver got in and Delilah said, “The airport, please.”

  “Sure thing, miss.”

  She leaned back into the tan pleather seat. She had to go. Whatever happened, she would have tried to help them.

  She sat silently the short trip to the airport, staring out the window, looking for cops or, if she was honest with herself, some divine miracle that would make this whole mess just go away.

  Delilah found neither.

  She realized the cabby was talking to her after a moment as they pulled into the departures line.

  “What airline, miss?”

  “Oh, um.” She looked out the windshield at the signs and chose one. “Delta is fine, thank you.”

  He pulled up beneath the Delta sign and told her the fare was eight dollars.

  Delilah handed him a ten, the first bill she peeled off the roll in her pocket, and told him to keep the change.

  The airport was a swirl of people even on a weekday morning. She walked to a giant screen that had all the flights listed and searched for something, anything, going to Portland in the next few hours.

  There was one from US Airways leaving in just about an hour. Praying there were seats left, Delilah walked slowly to the check-in desk.

  She stood patiently behind two girls about her age but with too much metal in their faces as a family of five, two parents and three toddlers, tried to check in a large pile of bags. Time ticked by, minutes that Delilah didn’t have to waste. She hoped the security line wouldn’t be too long, she’d heard nightmare stories from others about airport security.