Shattered Highways

by Tara N Hathcock

  Quincy pulled to the right, jarring him from his thoughts and he jerked her back. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed at her.

  “Going to the bathroom, genius. That was the point of this whole trip.” She pointed toward the far right corner of the store. “It’s back there.”

  Brandon glanced around, hoping no one had noticed their little tug-of-war. “Fine. Let’s go.” He nodded at the cashier and gave him what he hoped was a friendly smile.

  “Oh yeah,” Quincy mocked. “That was believable.”

  He shoved her toward the bathroom, frog-marching her down the aisle between bags of chips and battery cables until they reached the door. Quincy stiffened, pushing back as he started to push her in, but he’d been expecting that. He smiled and slipped the K-bar he kept strapped to his back from beneath his jacket.

  “I didn’t really need the excuse but I’ll take it,” he said.

  He forced her through the door with one hand and slammed her back against the wall of the stall, effectively pinning her in place. He twirled the knife in his hand and grinned, enjoying his moment. He hadn’t had to be nearly as patient as he thought. He brought the knife towards her slowly enough for her to see her death coming and know there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  He had just enough time to notice the shift in her eyes before the control he’d worked so hard to reclaim was ripped out from under him once again.

  Chapter 49

  “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” Carl Sagan

  What is ‘normality’? And what has it to do with survival? Can it feed the girl? Can it rescue her, heal her? Can it save her? No.

  But I can.

  * * *

  Quincy

  She was playing this one totally by ear. She had survived to this point in her life by having a plan and plotting every move methodically. But that option was gone and she was operating on nothing but instinct now. And instinct told her she had to get away. Right now. The gas stop was merely fortuitous in its timing. So, with no plan, no escape routes marked out, no backup plan, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “I need to use the restroom.” The Colonel didn’t even look her way.

  Brandon laughed from the backseat. “You’d have to be crazy to think we’d actually let you out of this car. Deal with it.”

  She spun in her seat so she could look him in the eye. “It’s not just my problem, moron. If you want me to ‘deal with it’, it’s going to be all of our problems. Plus,” and here, she tossed her hair in that way he seemed to really hate which would have, admittedly, been more dramatic if it hadn’t been pulled up in a ponytail, “ladies have special bathroom needs. If you gentlemen,” she put special emphasis on the word, “need me to spell it out for you, I can. I’m…”

  “That won’t be necessary Miss O’Connell,” and here, finally, the Colonel broke in. “We quite understand.” Quincy hid her smile. It worked every time.

  He sighed. “Mr. Auberdeen, go with her.”

  “What?!” Brandon spluttered from the back. “You can’t be serious. Sir…”

  “Enough,” the Colonel said mildly. “She knows the cost of trying to run. My order stands. Go with her. Surely you can control her, now that we actually have her in hand.”

  Quincy couldn’t help but smirk, just a little, at the Colonel’s obvious slight. Brandon had more than picked up on it and was fuming. And the angrier he was, the more likely it was he’d make a mistake. She hopped out of the car but startled when Brandon grabbed her viciously by the elbow, jerking her against his body. He started to say something but the Colonel beat him to it.

  “If she makes a move, kill her. A body is better than nothing at all.”

  Quincy tensed. The Colonel had just given Brandon carte blanche to kill her in that gas station so maybe she had overestimated her worth to the man just a bit.

  “It would be my extreme pleasure,” he hissed into her ear.

  She had no doubt. She slipped her arm around his waist and leaned into him, ignoring the way her skin crawled at the contact.

  “What are you doing?” he growled, surprised and appropriately suspicious.

  “My life’s on the line, Mr. Auberdeen,” she said, pouring as much venom into her voice as possible, disappointed when it had no effect on the man. “Just trying to make it look real.”

  The gas station wasn’t very crowded, making them more visible than she would have liked. Brandon wasn’t playing his part all that well, making it fairly obvious that something was off about them. If she had been willing to make a scene, it would have been fine. But she wasn’t interested in putting innocent people at risk. She had no idea what her next move was. Brandon wasn’t going to let her out of his sight. There was absolutely no way she was going to actually use the bathroom in front of this creep, but she doubted she would even get the chance. Quincy was pretty sure he would kill her as soon as the door was locked. She surveyed the place, trying to come up with something. Anything. The restrooms were in the back corner of the store, single stall by the look of it. Great. Brandon could drag her in there, kill her, and smuggle her body out the back.

  She doubted there would be a window in the tiny bathroom. Not that a window would help if Brandon was inside with her. The back exit was only 10 feet past the restrooms, though. On the very limited chance she could distract him, that might work. She moved to the right toward the hallway, but Brandon jerked her back hard. Quincy noticed the cashier look over in concern. She gave him a weak smile.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

  “Going to the bathroom, genius. That was the point of this whole trip.” She pointed toward the far right corner of the store. “It’s back there.”

  “Fine. Let’s go,” he snapped. He nodded toward the cashier and shot him what she thought was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

  “Oh yeah,” Quincy mocked. “That was believable.” Push his buttons, push his buttons, push his buttons.

  He shoved her toward the bathroom and she started to panic. There was no way he was going to let go of her. Once they were in the bathroom, she was going to die. She couldn’t go in but she couldn’t stop it, either. Brandon opened the door and Quincy stiffened, pushing back as he started to push her in. He smiled and pulled a 6” knife from under the back of his jacket.

  “I didn’t really need the excuse but I’ll take it,” he said. He forced her through the door with one hand, slamming her back against the wall of the stall, effectively pinning her in place. He twirled the knife in his hand and grinned, bringing it toward her slowly enough that she had plenty of time to see her death coming and know there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Quincy squinted her eyes as the buzzing in her head stepped up a notch. The whole world narrowed down to nothing but that knife. As Brandon advanced on her, several things happened at once. The noise in her head increased to frantic levels, and she couldn’t help but wonder why it always seemed to get worse in moments of stress. Was this part of what the Colonel had been talking about? Was this violence raging in her head caused by some sort of unremembered trauma? Was she about to have an epiphany and remember some sort of lost knowledge that would let her escape certain death? It seemed unlikely and she shook off the crazy, coming back to the matter at hand. Namely, her imminent death. She may be about to die but she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her scared or powerless. Even if she didn’t have hidden jujitsu skills, which would have been extremely handy at the moment, she wouldn’t go down without a fight. She braced herself to do … something, despite not knowing what that something would be, when silence descended. Immediate and complete silence, replacing the noise inside of her head. And as the tornado in her head vanished and her body took over, multiple sirens erupted from outside.

  Brandon jerked at the sound and a second later, her knee connected with his groin. If he had been focused solely on her, she doubted she would have gotten in the hit or that it
would have been enough to phase him. But Brandon, startled by the sirens, flinched and Quincy’s low blow took him by surprise. He keeled over and she threw the elbow he wasn’t holding at his face, slamming into his nose. When his head jerked back, she grabbed his collar with one hand and the back of his head with the other and slammed him face-first into the concrete wall. So, maybe not a jiu jitsu master but she did apparently know something. What she didn’t know was that a man could make that particular sound. But she didn’t stick around to question it. Brandon didn’t go all the way down but he did stagger away from the wall, curling around his injured anatomy and trying to catch his breath, a feat made all the more impossible by his broken nose and the blood streaming from it. Quincy spun and threw herself out of the bathroom and glanced to the left. The cashier had moved out from behind the register and was looking out the front door to where the Colonel’s car was surrounded by police cruisers. Again, she didn’t question it. She could hear movement in the bathroom and spun toward the back exit. She hit the door at full speed and it gave easily, catapulting her toward the dirty sidewalk behind the store and straight into a pair of waiting arms.

  Chapter 50

  Logan

  Logan had been following the car as discreetly and distantly as he possibly could. There were a few times he’d been afraid he’d lost them but as the light began to grow, he grew more confident. He had no doubt Quincy was in that car. What he did doubt was who she was with. They’d pulled off onto a commuter parking lot shortly after she’d been picked up and he’d waited on the off-ramp, worried that whoever had her was just going to kill her and dump her in this remote place in the middle of the night. But he hadn’t moved. Quincy didn’t seem to be putting up a fight, so he’d waited. And as he’d waited, he’d fumed. Why? Why would she go for a run, by herself, in the middle of the night, when she knew she was being hunted? He had managed to convince her, hadn’t he? She trusted him now. He knew she did. So why would she do something so stupid? This condition Garrison claimed she had was supposed to make her super smart, or something like that. A super smart idiot, maybe. Oh, Logan knew good and well that he wasn’t really angry. He was worried. Panicked at the thought that these guys, whoever they were, had their hands on her. He had lost Jones. He had been too late to save any of the other victims of this agency. But he hadn’t been too late with Quincy. Not too late to get to know her. To let her get to know him. To get invested in her. She was more than a mission, had been since he’d first met her, and just because he didn’t know exactly what she was, didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified at the prospect of never getting the chance to figure it out. And then Brandon had shown up. Logan clenched his hands around the steering wheel. He’d known that guy was trouble from the get-go. Always watching her when she was at work, running into her randomly when she wasn’t. Not that he hadn’t done the same thing, but that was exactly why he should have figured it out sooner. One stalker to another, he was so looking forward to wiping the floor with that guy. Brandon had climbed into the backseat of the car and the car had pulled smoothly back onto the freeway. Logan slid back onto the road behind them, headlights still off, as invisible as possible.

  He followed the car for hours. They were heading away from Colorado, away from the limited safety Dr. Garrison’s clinic would offer. But other than direction, Logan had no idea where they were going. Brandon was clearly just the flunky. The guy that got sent out to collect the target. He’d failed multiple times so the boss had finally stepped in. But who was the boss? Who was calling the shots? And how much rope did he give them before he stepped in? He couldn’t let this go on much longer. The danger to Quincy increased with every mile they traveled. He didn’t know how long he had until they got to where they were going. And once they got Quincy inside the system, it would be impossible to get her out. Not that he wouldn’t try. But he wouldn’t succeed and he couldn’t live with that.

  When he’d seen the car pulling off the interstate, he realized this might be the only chance he’d have to act. The town was some no-name pit stop on the side of the road so he doubted it was their final destination. They would just be stopping for gas or food. If it was food, he was screwed. If it was gas, at least one of them would have to get out of the car. And he needed them to get out of the car. If Quincy were smart, and he knew she was very, very smart despite his recent realization that she was also an idiot, she would figure out some way to get out of the car. If she could just convince them to let her go inside, maybe he’d have a chance. But if she did her part, he would have to do his. Logan breathed a sigh of relief when the car pulled into a busy gas station, the only one in town by the look of it. He turned off at the restaurant before the gas station and pulled around back. Most of these businesses had adjoining lots. If he could just get lucky...there. He cut down the back alley and slid the car neatly behind a dumpster. There was a private exit at the top of the loading ramp. He could easily enter the store without being seen but then what? Even if Quincy could convince them to let her go into the store, she sure wouldn’t be allowed to go alone. Brandon would recognize him from being around Quincy at the college, at the very least. He might react badly and there were civilians in the line of fire. He needed a distraction.

  He snuck to the edge of the building and peered around. The pumps were fairly busy and they were a few cars back in line. From where he was standing, it looked like Quincy was talking to the man in the driver’s seat, a large, well-built older man. Brandon was in the backseat, looking like he was about to have a stroke. Logan smiled. At least he wasn’t the only one she had that effect on. He slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He luckily had some experience in spur-of-the-moment distractions. He dialed 911 and put the phone to his ear.

  “911. What is your emergency?”

  He lightened his voice, adding a little hard-working southern honesty to it. “Yes ma’am. I’m at the filling station on Broadway and Chestnut and I think there’s something wrong with the car in front of me. There’s something smeared all over the back of it, looks all wet and rusty. And, well, I think I can hear something coming from the inside of the trunk. Hollering, maybe. I’m worried there might be someone in there.”

  He threw as much concern into his voice as he could and topped it off with wholesome southern twang. He’d learned a long time ago that people tend to trust a southern accent.

  “Sir,” the operator said, “I need you to take a breath.” She waited while he exhaled noisily through his mouth. “Okay now. Can you tell me what this car looks like?”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. It’s a black Mercury Marquis, license plate NW9-7B1.”

  “I have a police car en route. Please stay where you are and do not try to approach the car.”

  “You might better send several cars ma’am,” he drawled. “There’s two guys in the car, both big, burly types. It looks like the guy driving has a gun in his belt.”

  He dropped the call, leaving it at that. Cliffhangers tended to enhance the sense of emergency and the sooner backup arrived, the better.

  The passenger door flew open, Quincy stepped out, and Logan took his first full breath since she had disappeared. He hadn’t realized just how worried he was but seeing her here, alive and unhurt, caused something in his chest to relax for the first time in hours. But it clenched back when Brandon grabbed Quincy by the elbow, hard, and jerked her back against him. She flinched and Logan could see the pain on her face, brief though it was. He gritted his teeth. Yep. He was going to enjoy wiping that smug, leering look right off the man’s face. Soon. But Brandon and Quincy were walking quickly towards the store and Logan needed to get into position. He still didn’t know what his play was but he was fairly certain he’d only get one chance.

  Logan was just loping up the ramp of the loading dock when the sound of sirens burst from the front of the store. He smiled. Perfect timing. He grabbed the door handle, intending to ease it open and slip quietly inside, but the door exploded outward before he had the chance.
He stepped back in surprise as Quincy slammed into his outstretched arms.

  Chapter 51

  Logan