by Anne Baines
A mother holding a baby on her hip with a little boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack got in his way as he approached Delilah, forcing him to slow more than he liked. He stayed calm, as calm as he could anyway given that the woman who’d escaped him, who probably thought she could still escape him, was mere yards away now.
Then her head turned, as though she were a mouse sensing the shadow of the descending hawk. Her thin face was pale with exhaustion and her eyes were dark hollows of pain. So frail, so vulnerable.
Then a snap of recognition in those agonized eyes and she raised her hands a little as though to physically fend him off as fear drained the rest of the color from her cheeks.
For a moment they just stared at each other, then Ted was past. He slowed and looked behind him. Delilah had grabbed the brunette, shoving her into the car. Then, with surprising energy and agility, his prey slid over the hood of the Civic and yanked open the driver’s door.
Face twisting with anger at her audacity in trying to evade him once again, Ted yanked the wheel around and threw the car into reverse, ramming backward as the full force of his barely contained rage thrummed through his blood. The bitch wasn’t getting away. Not this time.
Thirty-nine
Delilah peeled out with the Civic, ignoring the intense pain in her belly and Nancy’s incoherent shrieking.
“Fuck, shut up,” Delilah said through gritted teeth as Esther started crying and saying “Mommy, mommy” over and over.
“Stop the car,” Nancy said, reaching for the steering wheel. Then her eyes widened and she let go as Ted’s car slammed into reverse and nearly hit them. “What the-?”
“That guy, he wants to kill Esther.” Delilah spit the words out, concentrating on not running over parents and small children as she gunned past Teddy and out of the turn-about.
“What do you—” Nancy started, but Delilah cut her off.
“Later, Nance. Gotta lose him.” She pulled a hard left, narrowly missing a car coming the other way.
Ted kept up, careening out onto the road behind her and then gaining ground.
Delilah floored the gas and hissed as the slow automatic transmission shifted gears with a whining protest. Why the fuck did Nancy have to drive this stupid econo-car? The engine in this thing was about as powerful as a lawnmower and about as responsive. Not Delilah’s idea of a get-away car. She needed at least six cylinders for this shit.
But the little car handled well enough. Time to improvise.
Nancy had her cell phone out again and was trying to dial a number while simultaneously calming Esther and putting on her seatbelt. Delilah spared a moment to slap the phone out of the frazzled woman’s hand.
“Don’t,” she said and whatever was on her face or in her tone stopped Nancy from reaching down for the phone.
Delilah knew the area, knew the roads. This was her home, her turf. She had that advantage on crazy Ted. The Civic couldn’t beat Ted’s vehicle in an all out race, but between her driving skills and knowledge of the roads, Delilah bet she could escape him.
She was willing to bet their lives on it.
A wild, manic glee seared through her as adrenaline wiped away the pain and fatigue. Ted crowded close, perhaps intending to try to nudge her car off the road. His mouth was pressed in a tight smile, his body leaning forward over the wheel, intent.
Delilah laughed, the sound mostly a hiccup and burble in her throat. She pulled a hard right, running a blinking red light and gunned the car forward again, eyes ahead, searching for the next turn she’d want to take.
“Not gonna happen, asshole,” she muttered as he made the turn and tried to catch up again.
“Who is that, Dee?” Nancy craned her head, looking behind them.
Delilah risked a moment to adjust the side mirror and slide the seat up a little. Fortunately she and Nancy were about the same height and she only had to tip her head a bit to see out the rear-view mirror.
“A murdering bastard. Jake and I will explain later.” Delilah knew she was being obtuse and bitter, but she wanted Nancy to be afraid, and maybe a little mad at Jake.
And right now, she really didn’t give a damn about family politics or what the hell Jake would think.
Another turn, but again Ted kept up. Delilah wove around slower cars, trying to put distance and obstacles between herself and Ted. She had to slam on the brakes as she ran a red light to avoid a truck. Damn. Her timing was off a little. Maybe from injury, maybe exhaustion, maybe the painkillers. Take your pick.
“He’s still behind us, do something.” Nancy’s shrill voice grated, rising in pitch as she twisted around, watching the silver car with its maniac driver catch back up to them as Delilah was forced by the flow of traffic to take another quick right.
“No shit.” Nancy was right. This wasn’t going to work. In a better car, in a different area, maybe. If she was healthy and rested, maybe. But ifs and wishes wouldn’t sell horseshoes, as Colin had told her often enough.
“Everyone buckled in?” Delilah asked, a dangerous plan forming in her mind. She’d pulled off a move like it before, twice, and tried it another time that hadn’t ended well at all.
“Yes, what are you doing?”
Delilah spared a glance at Nancy. Her round face was pale and sweaty, her eyes full of fear and her mouth pressed into a quivering line. She didn’t look much like the man-stealing bitch Delilah preferred to consider her. She just looked kind of vulnerable, and scared as shit.
“Hopefully? Saving us.” Delilah tried a quick, reassuring smile. Nancy’s expression didn’t change, so she was pretty sure that had failed.
Ted gained ground and Delilah slowed just a little. There was an intersection ahead and she had to time this just right.
Ignoring the bright stab of pain, she dragged her seatbelt across her body and fumbled the tongue into the catch.
“Hang on,” she said, as much to herself as to the now-quiet child and terrified Nancy.
The roads were clear, only one car slowly turning left at the four-way stop ahead. Just before the intersection, as Ted sped toward them, she slammed the brakes while jerking the car hard to the right.
He’d almost reached her bumper at that point and had no choice as his speed carried his vehicle past her.
Whipping the car back to the left, Delilah punched the gas, flooring it again. The nose of the Civic hit Ted’s car along the passenger side. They were thrown against their seatbelts and Delilah heard, in an internal, sickening way, something tear in her belly. Liquid heat spilled across her stomach. Metal squealed, a headlight shattered, and the cars crunched together for an interminable moment.
She hit the brake again, letting Ted’s car spin away, out of control, across the intersection. There was no time to see if he’d crash or escape the spin. Delilah yanked the Civic left. The car responded with a whine and the smell of burning rubber filtered in through the air vents. She guessed something was scraping against the left front tire, but the car would be okay. For now.
She took a quick right, looping back almost toward the school and headed for the I-5 onramp.
“I don’t see him,” Nancy said, voice less shrieky now, but still breathless. “Essy, are you okay?”
Esther must have nodded, because Delilah heard no response but Nancy reached a reassuring hand back and relaxed a fraction.
Delilah looked in the rear-view and sagged in relief. The road behind was clear of any sign of Ted.
Forty
Ted’s rental car spun fast and he panicked for a moment as his head hit the driver’s side window, forgetting to twist the wheel in the direction of the spin. He jammed on the brakes, and the car finally stopped after spinning across the entire intersection and bumping up against the curb.
His head throbbed and a wet trickle of blood started to worm its way through his hair. Frantic, Ted looked around, the rage ants in his blood beating a murderous tattoo in time with the pulsing of his heart.
No Delilah. The little red car was gone, and
he had no idea which way she’d taken.
“Fuck,” he said, then repeated it several more times as he slammed his hands down on the steering wheel, over and over.
A car pulled over and a young couple climbed out, the woman getting on her cell phone, the man coming toward Ted’s side of the car.
His mind a blank, angry slate, Ted pulled out the murder kit and grabbed the hunting knife out of it. He was out of his car and on top of the blonde young man before the kid could do or say more than “Are you okay?”
Another car had pulled up to the intersection, so Ted made it quick. He grabbed the blonde’s hair and whipped him around, stepping in close as he stabbed the knife into his throat. The hot mist of blood barely touched Ted as he dropped the gurgling soon-to-be corpse and charged the shocked woman.
She wasn’t Delilah. Too tall, too much breast. But she had dark hair. And she was here, not running like a scared little bitch. She’d do, for now.
There was no time to savor anything, to even smell her hair or get a good look at her face, though her eyes were greenish and her wet mouth wide open in a scream his knife cut short.
Someone else was yelling as the woman fell to her knees, her manicured hands coming up to try to stop the blood flowing from her belly. Ted had jammed the knife in quickly, once, twice. This stupid bitch wouldn’t survive that. Not like Delilah had.
His world narrowed to the sound of screaming, the smell of blood and car exhaust, the horrible death rattle of the woman’s punctured lungs as she threw up blood onto the pavement, narrowly missing his shoes.
But he had to go, get out of here. The last shreds of sense, of poor old Ted faking that he was one of the sheep, cried out to him to get away.
He tossed the knife into the car and pulled away from the curb. He didn’t know where he was going, just away, far away, before the police arrived.
Deep breaths brought his heart rate back down. He’d just killed two people. In broad daylight and no one had even tried to stop him. Ted licked his lips, arousal replacing the anger.
He turned onto a random street, then turned again, checking behind him for pursuit. Nothing so far. His right cuff was wet with blood, fingers slippery with it as well, and his head ached from his own injury.
When he was certain he’d driven far enough away, Ted pulled into a little parking lot behind a convenience store. There was a towel in his hunting kit and he used it and some water from a bottle he’d taken out of the hotel mini-fridge to clean himself off.
Then he unzipped his pants and stroked himself. The power of his actions consumed him. He’d lost Delilah, but he could find her again. He’d always find her again. So much death, so much fear.
That woman in the intersection, she’d been asking for it. She’d seen him stab her boyfriend, yet had stood there, a sacrificial lamb, an offering, no, an apology, from the universe for letting Delilah escape him a third time. Her fear was his balm, soothing him.
He sought release, leaning back into the seat as the dead woman’s face transformed into the fat waitress with the wet pink mouth in the bar, and then into the face of the hotel clerk with her thick, hard nipples. And finally, at the last moment before all thought dissipated into glorious sensation, there was Delilah with her vulnerable eyes and warm, soapy scent.
Ted cleaned himself up again and got out of the car. His sleeve wasn’t too bad, he folded the cuffs in half and the blood hardly showed against the dark material. He needed directions back to downtown and the bar.
Jake would run, especially after this fiasco. He’d take his little family and tuck his tail between his beta-male legs and trust in the police to do something about Ted. That’s what insufficient males did, let other people protect them, do their dirty work.
“News for you,” Ted muttered to the phantom Jake in his mind as he walked around the building, “The law can’t touch me.” Almost two decades and the law? They didn’t even know Ted existed, though he supposed that as soon as Emily got home later tonight all this would change.
But it would be far too late and they’d be searching for a man who didn’t exist anymore.
He’d keep an eye on the bar, and if he couldn’t follow Jake away from it, that was not really a problem, just a minor setback. Tonight, after the place closed, he’d break in. There had to be personal papers, something with Jake’s information on it. Ted would find him, and he knew now, without any doubt, that, as long as they were under threat, wherever Jake and the little girl went, Delilah would follow.
Plan reconstructed, Ted ran a hand through his hair, checking on the small cut. It had stopped bleeding and his fingers came away dry. He would salvage today, and every transgression Delilah committed would be filed away. Ted knew he’d collect on her debt, very soon.
Forty-one
Delilah drove north, almost on autopilot to the bar. Her vision kept blurring, focusing in and out as though her eyes were a broken camera lens. She ignored Nancy until the other woman leaned down and retrieved the cell phone from the floor mat.
“What are you doing?” Delilah said, surprised at the weakness of her own voice. She reached with one hand to try to slap the cell away again, but Nancy pulled it in against her body.
The car swerved partially into the middle lane and Delilah switched her ragged concentration back to the road.
“Calling Jake,” Nancy said, doing something with the phone in Delilah’s periphery. “Take us to the bar, now.”
“Already going there.”
“Good.” And then, as the phone apparently connected her call, “Jake?” Nancy swallowed and glanced at Delilah before resuming her one-sided conversation. “We almost, I mean, someone just tried to run us down in his damn car. No, she’s okay, we’re fine. Why didn’t you tell me she was in town? No, don’t even start, someone just tried to… I don’t want, oh. Okay. Yes, she is. Yes. I understand. We’re coming right now. Passing Tigard. Yeah. In a few. Love you.” She hung up and let the phone drop into her lap.
From the back seat Esther finally found coherent words. “Are we going to see Daddy?”
“Uh-huh, Essy. This lady is going to drive us.”
“Why’d we hit that car, mommy? And why are you crying?”
“I’ll tell you later, before bed, okay? Why don’t we practice your Spanish alphabet?” Nancy glanced again at Delilah and then twisted around and started prompting Esther. The exercise seemed to calm them both and Nancy made no move to call the police or hinder Delilah’s driving.
Delilah drove in a haze, trying to ignore the spreading wetness in the bandaging on her stomach. She was pretty sure she’d torn her stitches, but she didn’t dare stop the car and ask Nancy to drive. That woman would leave her behind and bleeding in the street in a damn heartbeat.
She risked a longer look in the rear-view mirror, forcing herself to sit upright so she could catch a glimpse of her daughter. Esther looked healthy enough, though thin and a bit frail with her legs tucked up against her chest. The little girl had Jake’s eyes, more brandy brown and rich than flat black like her own. But she had Delilah’s straight, narrow nose and the same high cheekbones. Drying tears had left pale streaks on Esther’s face, like salt sprinkled on fresh churned earth.
She’s kind of beautiful. And so damn small.
Delilah shivered and then blinked rapidly to discourage her own tears. Anger and fear washed through her, shoving back the pain. That bastard had tried to kill this tiny, sick girl, this strange hybrid between Delilah and Jake that had become her own miniature being.
She focused on the road, sustained by visions of Jake and her getting more guns and hunting Ted down, plotting his horrible and dire murder. Jake would take her seriously now. Despite his sheep-wife’s desires, Jake wasn’t totally a straight little plebian man. He’d see the logic in protecting his family the professional way.
Ted was a problem, and together, she and Jake could fix it.
Forty-two
Jake met them at the back door as she pulled the car around
to the back of No Man’s Land. Delilah barely mustered the strength to push herself out of the car and walk the short distance across to him.
Esther ran right into Jake’s arms and he held her tight, glaring at Delilah. He kissed Nancy on the cheek and ushered them all inside.
Delilah read the tension in his body, the knives in his eyes. He seemed mad at her, but that wasn’t practical or useful right now. It was Teddy who was the problem. Delilah’s quick actions and driving had just saved everyone’s lives.
Bridget was in Jake’s office and offered them all a nervous smile as she held a hand out to Esther.
“Hey, Essy, want to go see Amos and get a soda?” Bridget said.
Esther looked at her daddy and, as he nodded, grabbed Bridget’s fingers and followed the cheery waitress out through the kitchen door.
For a long moment Nancy and Jake just held each other and, if she hadn’t been in so much damn pain already and using all her concentration to stay upright, Delilah would’ve felt even worse. She stood alone, one hand against the back of the second chair, feeling small and unwanted.
“We have to do something about Ted,” she said when it seemed like the others weren’t going to break apart anytime soon.
“Oh, you’re going to,” Jake said, glaring at her again over Nancy’s head. His eyes narrowed and the venom in them stabbed into Delilah as sharp as any knife.
She peeled her hand away from her sweatshirt and held it up as though to ward him off. It was damp and pink with blood.
“I will.” She wanted to tell him her plan, though the details formed on the drive eluded her as she stood before Jake. “We’ll talk about this, but maybe Nancy should go join Esther and Bridget. You know, in case. You can explain everything to her later,” she said to Jake.
“No, he won’t.” Nancy pulled away and turned on Delilah. “You’re going to explain. You’re going to tell them everything, every damn thing. None of your shit this time. You brought this on us.”
