Road Tripping

by Noelle Adams

  She looked at Ethan questioningly, and he shook his head very slightly. Apparently, they were going to play along, at least for the time being.

  So they walked out with the two men—the Hostage Taker and the Blond Smirker—and Ashley was almost blinded by the bright sunlight as they exited the cool building. They were in some kind of back alley, and there was no one else around.

  Ashley felt dazed and confused, and she was still breathing heavily. Not to mention being absolutely terrified.

  So when they approached two cars in the alley, she had no idea what was going on. Even though it should have been obvious.

  “You’ll come with us to see Jones,” Blond Smirker said to Ethan. “If you don’t put up a fight, the girl will stay alive.”

  Ethan still seemed stunned and speechless, and he neither agreed nor disagreed. Just kept staring at Ashley like she was the only thing he could see in the world.

  Ashley released an outraged sound when she saw Cute Guy and Other Guy approaching as well. They both looked rather wet and rumpled, and neither of them looked very happy.

  “What’s the plan?” Cute Guy asked curtly, glaring at Ashley in icy wrath.

  “Moore comes with us,” Blond Smirker explained, “if he wants the girl to keep breathing.”

  If he didn’t stop calling her a girl, Ashley was going to kick him in the ass. And she didn’t care that she had a loaded gun poking into the middle of her back.

  “Even if I go with you peacefully,” Ethan said, his voice as hard and cool as steel, “you’ll never allow her to live. Jones has gone way past moonshining here, and he’s not going to leave loose ends. So why should I make things easy for you?” While he spoke, Ashley could see him sizing up the other men, as if he were trying to plan an escape strategy.

  It wouldn’t be easy. She was pretty sure they all had guns. And Ethan had nothing...except her being taken hostage.

  “You’re right,” Hostage Taker admitted, his voice right in her ear. “She’s a liability. She won’t survive the day. But you’ll be forced to come with us anyway.”

  Ethan attacked. Ashley actually saw it in his eyes before it happened. He had almost reached Hostage Taker when the other three men seized him and beat him to the ground.

  Ashley screamed, but no one seemed to care.

  They kept kicking and punching Ethan, even after his body went limp. They were evidently working out a couple of weeks' worth of frustration. But eventually, Hostage Taker said, “Enough. We need him alive to take to Jones.”

  So they dragged Ethan’s limp body up and hauled him to the back seat of one of the two black sedans. Ethan was still conscious—although his face was bloodied and battered—and he met Ashley’s gaze. Ashley began to cry when she saw what Ethan’s eyes were saying.

  He was saying I’m sorry. Saying it’s my fault. Saying I love you. Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye. Goodbye.

  Sobbing, she struggled against Hostage Taker’s ruthless grip, caring nothing about the loaded gun.

  She couldn’t get away from him, but she kept struggling.

  Eventually, Cute Guy came over and slammed his fist into her face.

  It almost knocked her out, but not quite. The waves of pain took a minute to register in her frantic brain. They hit suddenly. She slumped over and would have fallen had it not been for Hostage Taker’s arms.

  “Put her in the trunk,” Cute Guy said sharply. “Take her somewhere and eliminate her. I’m sick of this whole mess. We’ll take Moore to Jones. Meet us at the Valley Inn.”

  Ashley almost passed out yet again, from the combination of pain, grief, and fright. Hostage Taker picked her up and deposited her in the trunk of the second dark sedan.

  Before Ashley could even think about what to do, they had shut the trunk and turned the bright, sun-lit world into pitch-blackness.

  She heard voices from outside the trunk. “Idiot,” one of the men said—she couldn’t recognize the muffled voice. “Tie her hands first.”

  And so it got even worse. The trunk was opened, and they tied her hands behind her back with a large roll of silver duct tape. Then all the light vanished again when they slammed the trunk closed.

  Eventually, she felt the car start to move.

  “Don’t panic,” she told herself, out loud since no one else was around to think she was crazy. “Don’t panic. Don’t panic.”

  Trying to fight off the looming terror, she made herself think. She’d read zillions of books about people being trapped in the trunks of cars. Some of them had gotten out alive. How had they done it?

  Her mind was a complete blank, made up of nothing but darkness, fear, and Ethan’s bloody face. His mournful, loving eyes.

  She told herself not to cry and not to think about Ethan.

  There was supposed to be a glow-in-the-dark safety latch in car trunks now, but there didn’t appear to be one in this trunk.

  Instead on dwelling on that, she racked her brain and suddenly remembered some random bestseller she’d read several years ago. The female lead character had been locked in a trunk and had recalled a possible means of escape. The suggested strategy didn’t require the use of one’s hands.

  Ashley repositioned her body and started kicking out where she hoped the taillights were located. She kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked. And finally she heard something that sounded like the shattering of glass.

  Her erratic movements and the motion of the car were making her feel a little sick, but she made herself continue kicking her foot where she’d heard the lights breaking.

  Suddenly, her foot was free. She could feel the last bit of covering on the taillights give way, and one of her feet was sticking out the back of the car.

  This was supposed to draw attention to the fact that someone was in the trunk. Without the driver being able to see it.

  Assuming, of course, that anyone was behind them to see her foot.

  It was the middle of the day, and they were in the middle of downtown. She thought her chances were pretty good.

  So she shook her foot around as much as she could, then tried to pull it back in so she could get closer to the hole in order to extend her foot out even farther.

  Her foot didn’t want to come back into the trunk. Ashley adjusted her leg and felt her wet tennis shoe start to pull off as she drew the foot in.

  She drew back, tried it again.

  Her shoe fell off entirely. Probably landed with a splat on the street.

  This was not the way it had worked in the book.

  But still, her foot was hanging out the back of the car. Surely someone would notice it and call the police or something.

  Then, out of nowhere, she miraculously heard a police siren behind her. Maybe the police hadn’t needed to be called. Maybe they had been in the car behind her.

  The sedan pulled to a stop, probably not knowing that there was a suspicious foot sticking out the back. Ashley heard a lot of noise. Some yelling. Something shook the car. And then finally, she was blinded again as the trunk swung open above her.

  Maybe the kind policemen who was peering down at her would help her retrieve her foot from the hole.

  ***

  Several hours later, Ashley sat glumly on a bed in a local hospital. The police, concerned by her bruised face, had insisted on taking her to the emergency room. There, they had used a rape kit on her, even though she insisted that she’d only been punched.

  She’d been asked hundreds of questions by dozens of different people. Two police officers, two police detectives, a doctor, a counselor, and several different nurses.

  Ashley had answered their questions truthfully, telling them everything she knew about the situation. It didn’t matter now that they had stolen a couple of cars. Ethan might be getting killed at any moment. If he wasn’t already dead.

  The police assured her that they would search for Ethan, the hired guns, Buster Jones, and the black sedan. But she wasn’t sure how much they actually believed of her story.

  If she
was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she could believe it herself. It was all so implausible that she would have laughed, had she not been close to crying.

  She had to find Ethan.

  She was waiting for someone to come and take her to the police station, so she could go through who knew how much more questioning and paperwork.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Ethan might need her. Now. At this very moment. So she got off of the bed, walked down the hall, and exited the hospital without anyone noticing her at all.

  It was starting to get dark, so she peered around in the evening light. She had no idea what to do. Where to go. What she really wanted to do was call her father.

  But she didn’t have a phone at the moment.

  She wandered across the street aimlessly—ignoring the fact that she was wearing only one shoe—and stared at the old motel in front of her. It didn’t look like the most luxurious accommodations in the world, but Ashley was so dazed, sick, and exhausted that she would have been happy to crash anywhere.

  Anywhere with a phone.

  Except she didn’t have any money.

  The motel was called the Valley Inn.

  That triggered a memory. One of the bad guys had something about it, when she’d been too dazed and terrified to remember a lot of details.

  She walked by the side of the motel. It consisted of two buildings, and there was a dark sedan parked in front of the second building.

  She wasn’t positive, but the hair on the back of her neck stood erect at the sight. It looked just like the bad guys’ car.

  Maybe the Valley Inn was where they’d taken Ethan.

  Without thinking, she headed for the door and caught it just as someone was exiting. She had no idea what to do or even where to begin looking. If she found Ethan or the bad guys, there wouldn’t be anything she could do on her own, so she’d go to the lobby and call the cops.

  She wasn’t going to wait to find Ethan, though. They might be torturing or killing him right now. So she started walking through the hallways.

  On the third floor, she saw a door propped open further down the hall, so she hurried over to it and peeked inside.

  Gasping at what she saw, she took a few steps into the room.

  She saw Ethan. Her Ethan. The dear, sweet, funny, intelligent man she was desperately in love with. The man she’d known all her life. The man who got so grouchy whenever she teased him. The man who had held her in his arms for so many nights in the last two weeks. Who had helped her, taken care of her, protected her, relied on her. Who had shown her vast, unexpected depths of tenderness.

  It was Ethan. Her Ethan. With bruises and dried blood on his face. With so much more blood—still wet and not his—all over his shirt. His pants. His arms. His hands. The hunting knife he was holding.

  And there was a body on the floor at his feet.

  It was Ethan. Her Ethan.

  And it was also just about the end of the twelfth day.

  Day Thirteen

  Sioux Falls, South Dakota

  Her first reaction was absolute shock, even before the shattering relief that washed over her at the knowledge that Ethan was still alive.

  And then it was kind of a stunned nausea. There was a lot of blood.

  “Ethan?” she said softly, when he’d done nothing but stand there like a statue, staring at her.

  She actually saw the sequence of emotions finally flicker over his face. Astonishment. Disbelief. Joy. Knowledge. Guilt. Retreat.

  He choked out a single word in awed relief. “Ashley.”

  But before she could reach out for him, he looked down at his bloody hands. The sticky weapon he was holding. The body on the floor.

  He made a strangled noise and turned his back to her.

  She knelt down next to the body and realized it was Buster Jones. He must have flown up to Sioux Falls to take care of both Ethan and the other guy at the same time.

  He’d been cut in the shoulder, which was where all the blood was coming from. And it looked like he’d also been punched in the face. He was knocked out cold.

  But he was breathing.

  “He’s alive,” she said, feeling suddenly better, like her world hadn’t turned into a macabre movie.

  “Yeah. I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t.” Ethan still hadn’t turned around.

  “We should call an ambulance, since he’s losing a lot of blood. The hospital is just across the street.”

  The room door, which hadn’t clicked shut, swung open all the way. Cute Guy and Other Guy came rushing in, dragging a middle-aged man she’d never seen with them.

  On their appearance, Ethan pulled himself together with impressive speed. “Too late,” he said. “Jones is out of commission, and he’s going to be turned over to the authorities. That means you’re not going to get paid by him. And there’s no reason to hold onto Smith either.” He nodded toward the middle-aged man, who had obviously not come in here willingly.

  Smith must be the guy from Sioux Falls. They must have found him and brought him to Jones too.

  She assumed that meant he hadn’t informed on them. The bad guys must have just followed Smith to their meeting place.

  Cute Guy stared at Jones’s unconscious body on the floor, his face more annoyed than anything else.

  “There’s nothing to be gained now from working against me,” Ethan continued. “And, in fact…”

  That must be some sort of covert message that only mercenaries, thugs, and Ethan understood. Because both men looked immediately alert. “We’re listening,” said Cute Guy.

  “I’ll cover the rest of what Jones was going to pay you for this job. I need Jones taken over to the hospital and this mess cleaned up.” Ethan gestured to the room. “Entirely cleaned up. No prints or other evidence left behind. And, as soon as Smith and I have time to talk, we’ll have some information that needs to be given to the ATF. They’ve been after Jones for a while but never had concrete evidence against him. We’ll have that, but you’ll need to get it to them without tying it in any way to me or Smith.”

  “Agreed,” Other Guy said immediately. They might occasionally act like doofuses, and they had indeed had a run of bad luck. But they clearly weren’t fools.

  Ashley saw the sense in Ethan's plan, but she couldn’t forget these two men beating him up. And Cute Guy had shot Ethan not so many days ago. “You’re just going to let them go?”

  Ethan met her eyes. “I can’t turn them into the police without turning myself in too. And there are things they can do that would be very difficult for me to do. This way, we can turn in Jones without being dragged into the case ourselves.”

  “Can you trust them?” she asked quietly, giving Cute Guy a bitter, slanting look.

  “If I pay them. They’re hired guns, after all. No loyalties. They work for who pays them. This is what they do.”

  Turning away from her at last, Ethan said to the waiting men, “All right. Do you have another room here? I need to clean up.”

  “No problem,” Other Guy said again, reaching into his pocket and handing Ethan a key. “Across the hall.”

  “Thank God it’s over,” Cute Guy groaned. “This has been a fucking disaster from the very beginning. Chasing you two halfway across the country. Those are two weeks of my life that I’ll never get back. It’s like a damned slapstick comedy. If I never—”

  He wasn’t able to finish his litany of complaints. Ethan had taken the four steps over to him and slugged him in the face.

  Cute Guy fell backwards, making pained exclamations of surprise and anger.

  Ethan stood over him and said in his most frigid voice, “That’s for punching Ashley. Be thankful you’re still of some use to me.”

  Ashley felt the most ridiculous thrill run through her body at this bit of byplay. It seemed strange that the guys that had been chasing them all this time were now working for Ethan, but maybe that was what happened when you hired out your services. She was glad that she and Ethan would have he
lp to clean this whole mess up.

  She was also glad that Buster Jones was still alive and would be handed over to the authorities.

  There was an hour or so of hassle, as the guys took Jones to the hospital and Ethan and Smith went over the information they had as evidence. Ashley was shaky and impatient, but she waited quietly until they’d gotten the details of their plan sorted out.

  Finally, the most urgent stuff was taken care of, and Ethan and Ashley could go clean up across the hall.

  Ethan had been business-like and efficient when they were taking care of the crisis, but she knew something was off with him. This was proven when he went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Practically in her face.

  She followed him, of course.

  Ethan was washing his hands in the sink, the water mingling with the blood and running swiftly down the drain.

  She grabbed a hand towel and then sort of pushed Ethan out of the way so she could check the temperature of the water. It was too cold, so she turned it warmer. “Let me help you with your face. It looks terrible.”

  “I’m fine,” he muttered, standing awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure what to do. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” she replied lightly. “But I want to help.” When the water had warmed up, she stuck the towel under the faucet until it was wet. Squeezing it out a little, she lifted it up to the dried blood on Ethan’s face.

  He flinched as she touched him, but she knew it wasn’t from pain. She remembered that night when he’d been shot, when it had been so hard for him to let her help him. To admit that he was weak. Even though some things had changed, even though they were together now, his nature was still so alone.

  He let her wipe the warm, wet towel over his face, and once the dried blood was removed, she discovered that most of it had come from one gash over his left eyebrow. He had some bruises, but the one cut must have bled profusely. “Not as bad as it looked,” she said casually, putting the reddened towel in the sink. She moved past him and turned on the shower. “Let’s get rid of those disgusting clothes.”