Rules of Survival (Entangled Embrace)

by Jus Accardo

  There was a snicker, followed by the sound of rustling material and a grunt as my left arm wrenched sideways. A moment later, he announced, “Done.”

  When I turned, he was fully clothed in normal-looking jeans—and I hated him for it. I hadn’t been that lucky. Everything in the pile was men’s clothing. When it was my turn, the best I could do was a pair of extra large black sweatpants with a small hole in the left thigh. I ended up knotting the string around my waist twice to keep them from falling off. But I couldn’t complain. At least they were clean, warm, and dry.

  Shaun settled in the corner near one of the dryers and was blotting fistfuls of his T-shirt with a towel. I grabbed an extra fluffy hoodie from the pile and did the same.

  We worked without talking for a while, but I couldn’t stand the quiet. The methodical hum from the running dryer in the corner wasn’t enough to stave off the silence, and even though he was annoying as hell, I decided to try to make small talk. Knowledge was power, Mom always said. If I got some dirt on the guy, who knew when it might come in handy.

  “So why the bounty hunter gig?”

  Shaun looked up from his towel. “As opposed to a brain surgeon?” he asked wryly.

  Oops. I turned away, trying to look completely absorbed in the act of blotting my shirt.

  “There are people out there who deserve to be behind bars. Monsters that prey on women and children… I’m interested in making sure that happens.” The tone of his voice made me look up. The expression on his face was dark and screamed of unspoken anger. There was definitely a story there. I would have kept digging, but he narrowed his eyes and asked, “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Why the criminal gig?”

  “I’m not a criminal,” I said through clenched teeth. It was the second time he’d called me that. Three strikes and he was out.

  At least he had the decency to look sorry. Sort of. “I mean, why not live on the straight and narrow? Take things on the up-and-up.”

  “What the hell do you think—I go around stealing credit cards and hot-wiring cars for the hell of it?” I threw the hoodie down. It sloshed against the tile, soaked. He was making assumptions about things he had no information about. It pissed me off. “You think I’m one of those people who deserve to be behind bars? All I’m guilty of is trying to live my life.”

  “Are you, or are you not, living the way your mom did? Pat says Mel raised you in the middle of a life of crime,” he challenged. “Taught you the ‘tricks of her trade’?”

  “Tricks of her trade? You have no clue what you’re even talking about.” I cried, trying hard to focus on anything besides the way his eyes changed when he got angry, taking on a brighter hue of green. “We did what was needed to survive.”

  “Survive? Survive what? Why not live an honest life? Why didn’t she do more to keep you safe?”

  “She did keep me safe.”

  His brows shot up. “You look real safe.”

  “Of course I’m safe.” I jingled the chains—much harder than I needed to. “I’m shackled to a big strong assho—”

  “Okay then. Message received,” he snarled, getting to his feet. He grabbed a large black hoodie and placed it over the chain to conceal the shackles, then threw his jacket at me. “Put it over your shoulders. I don’t feel like dragging your frozen corpse around.”

  I took a deep breath. I wanted to hit him, but more than that, I wanted out of this situation. Jacket slung across my shoulders, I said, “Now what?”

  “Phone. We need to call Pat.”

  “Fantastic,” I said, blowing another stray hair from my face. It thrilled me to put my life in the hands of the man who’d been trying to haul Mom’s ass in since the day I was born.

  Shaun mumbled under his breath as we headed for the door. I couldn’t quite catch it, but the word “bitch” played an important role.

  Our truce was off to an epic start…

  Chapter Six

  “He’s not picking up.”

  “What does that mean?” The sun was higher in the sky, and the temperature had warmed a little, but there was a definite bite to the air. With my shirt still damp, I was grateful for Shaun’s jacket draped around my shoulders.

  I adjusted the jacket and tried not to inhale. It smelled nice. Like peppermint with the slightest hint of leather. It reminded me of the time Mom and I squatted overnight in a leather store in New York. It was right around New Year’s, and we’d spent the entire night trying things on.

  “It means he’s not picking up the phone?” Shaun slammed the receiver down. We’d been lucky to find a pay phone outside a small rural post office. The parking lot seemed to be the liveliest place in town. Things had been tense since we left the apartment building. He hadn’t cracked a smile or made a snide comment about my obvious, undeniable lust for him.

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean, is that normal? Do you think he’s in trouble?”

  His eyebrows rose slightly. “Trouble? Why would he be in trouble?”

  I sighed. Like talking to a brick wall. “Never mind.”

  Shaun still didn’t buy that he and Patrick were being outsourced by the bad guys, and I wasn’t sure what else I could say to convince him at this point. The guy needed cold, hard proof. But other than a bullet to the brain—which we’d almost gotten—I wasn’t sure what else would do it.

  I had about twelve dollars in my back pocket—the bulk of my cash was sitting in my backpack at the hotel—and Shaun had a twenty. Even if we could keep the shackles hidden with the hoodie we’d “borrowed,” we didn’t have enough money for public transportation—and food. “Where are we, anyway?”

  He hesitated.

  “Oh, please. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re handcuffed together. It’s not like I can go anywhere without you!”

  “Connecticut. Just outside of Danbury.”

  “We’re not going to make it far on thirty-two dollars. But the good news is I know where we can score some more cash.”

  Shaun narrowed his eyes. “I’ve got friends not far from here. We’ll get to them and lie low until I can get a hold of Patrick. Then we can figure out what to do.”

  “No way,” I said, folding my arms. An elderly woman with an armful of mail eyed us suspiciously as she exited the post office. It was bad enough I was technically Shaun’s prisoner, but meet his friends? This was where I drew the line.

  He folded his arms and the chain pulled taut, jarring my arm. “I’m not giving you a choice.”

  “I don’t know who I can trust. Patrick drags me to a hotel and then leaves just in time for those guys to show? Pretty suspicious if you ask me.”

  Shaun’s eyes widened, and for a minute, he was speechless. It was a nice minute. When his mouth wasn’t messing things up, he was serious eye candy. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. “You think he… He didn’t plan that. Those guys could have killed me.”

  “So? Patrick is a bounty hunter. You guys are one for one and none for all. If you think your life means anything to him, you’re a bigger idiot than he is—and that’s saying something.”

  “You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he snapped. “Pat is like a father to me. He’d never knowingly put me in a situation where I might get hurt.”

  “No,” I repeated, and took a step to the left, pulling hard on the cuffs. The chain snapped and rattled and Shaun followed with an involuntary jerk. If he wanted to live in his little deluded fantasy world, that was fine, but I wasn’t interested in visiting. “We’re on our own.”

  He stared down in shock at the chain connecting us, then yanked hard on his end. I stumbled to the right and managed to catch myself just before plowing into him. “Do you recall the part about me not giving you a choice? I’ll drag you if I have to.”

  I pulled hard on the cuffs again, but he was ready for it. Fine. I couldn’t win in a brawn verses brawn fight—but brains against brawn? I had him beat. Slipping into my sweetest smile, I said, “Go ahead. I’m sure dragging me down
the road, kicking and screaming, won’t attract too much attention. And I’m sure, ya know, since I’m wanted for murder and all, that the cops would be more than happy to take me off your hands.”

  Our gazes locked, and for the longest moment, neither of us flinched. He was good. I was better.

  “Fine,” he snarled after another minute passed. “Then what do you propose?”

  “I told you, I know where we can score some fast cash. It’s not too far from here. We grab it, find an out-of-the-way dive, and wait this out. Once we’re tucked away, you can call Patrick.”

  “I’m not going to be an accessory to robbery if that’s what you have in mind.”

  I snorted. “Yeah. Because hunters have such high moral codes of conduct, right?”

  “Just tell me where we’re heading,” he growled.

  “The bank. Where else would someone keep their money?”

  …

  Shaun adjusted the hoodie over the chain, then absently moved the corner of his jacket so that it covered more of my shoulder. “I’m really surprised.”

  We were a block away from Mayburn National Bank. At least, I hoped we were. I hadn’t been here since I was five. Maybe six. Years weren’t something we Morgan girls really kept track of. When you never put down roots, the days kind of blended together. After an hour of wandering around, lost, we’d stopped to ask directions. Mayburn was a small town, about twenty miles outside Danbury. Everyone seemed insanely friendly. The man at the gas station even offered to show us personally.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, watching a woman lift her small child onto her shoulders in front of the café. A pang of jealousy hit hard. They all looked so happy. So content. This was the kind of place I’d settle in if I were free. A small town, the kind where everyone knew one another and yard sales were a community event.

  “Pat has a long list of aliases for you guys,” Shaun said, dragging me from my fantasy world. “Seems like opening a bank account would be a rookie move. Easily traceable.”

  “I never said the money was in a bank account. I only said it was in the bank.”

  He looked confused, but simply shrugged. “I’m not even going to ask.”

  We walked without speaking for a while. We’d both cooled off since the apartment building, so it wasn’t a heavy silence. In fact, it was oddly comfortable—which was just weird, given my loathing of all things quiet.

  Despite that though, something Shaun mentioned earlier made me curious. Patrick had chased Mom and me my entire life and I knew nothing more about him than his name and face. “Earlier you said Patrick was like a father to you?”

  “Yeah. When I was thirteen, I bailed from a bad situation. Pat found me living in the empty lot behind his apartment building. For three years, he passed up over-the-road jobs to stay home with me. Made sure I went to school. Ate my veggies. All that shit.”

  He turned to me, and after hesitating a minute, tugged his jacket, still around my shoulders, just a bit tighter. Our eyes met. In that moment, I was highly aware of him. The way his hair fluttered in the light breeze and the dramatic curve of his bottom lip. The way only a few inches separated us… My pulse kicked up. I knew I should look away, but his gaze was mesmeric.

  “When I was sixteen, he started taking on the longer-term jobs again. Then, during the summers. When I turned eighteen, I worked with him full-time. I’m twenty now, and I owe him everything.”

  I swallowed hard and managed to look away. “So you trust him.”

  “With my life,” he answered, solemn. There was no doubt in his voice. I had a feeling Patrick could have told him the sky was really purple instead of blue, and Shaun would have believed it without question. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  I shrugged. There was no way we were getting into another “debate” like we had at the apartment building. I didn’t have the energy for it. “Go for it. No promises, though.”

  “How did you do it? You’re seventeen and have hunters and police dogging you. How have you stayed off the radar?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m eighteen, not seventeen.”

  Shaun scrunched his nose up. “Are you sure?”

  Under a different situation, in another lifetime, I wonder what things would have been like between us. Intense eyes. Wild, dark hair. Strong arms… He was smart, and seemed to have some anger issues, but he also had a sweet streak. Would he be my type?

  Focus! No ogling the enemy. It was bad form.

  “I think I know how old I am. Why?”

  “Pat knows everything about you guys. From blood type to shoe size. He said you were seventeen.”

  “So? He got his facts wrong.” I refused to admit that it was more than a little creepy. I mean, I’d felt like I was living in a fishbowl my entire life, but the guy knew my shoe size? How would information like that help you track someone down? Did he know my bra size, too? “Not the end of the world.”

  He shrugged, but I could tell he was bothered by it. The idea that Patrick wasn’t quite as infallible as he thought must have shaken the foundation in his world.

  “As for my off-the-radar status, it was just life as usual for me. New developments with unsold houses make great temporary places to sleep. Some even have electricity. I also bounced around to some of Mom’s lesser-known friends, but never for more than a day or so.”

  His expression fell somewhere between pity and surprise. “I can’t imagine living like that.”

  I shrugged, refusing to let it bother me. “That’s how I grew up. Staying off the grid meant sometimes finding unconventional living arrangements. And when we did settle down for more than a few days, it was always the same. We were nameless. Faceless. Wherever we went, we made sure to blend into the crowd. Never stand out. We were moved around constantly. I’ve lived in fifty states at least once, plus Canada, Mexico, and even France. But that was only for, like, a week.”

  I remembered our one and only “mini-vacation.” A day trip to see the Eiffel Tower. Mom used the tourist location to lift wallets in order to pay for a trip back to the States, most notably one from a French woman with twenty-three photographs of her poodle and no cash. Mom saved one with the dog wearing a fancy hat and huge sunglasses. For the longest time, she kept it taped to the inside of her suitcase. A souvenir, she liked to joke. But, like everything else in our lives, we hadn’t been able to hold on to it. The picture was lost when we fled an apartment complex in Maine in the middle of a thunderstorm one night.

  “One week? Who moves to Paris for one week?”

  “It was a good thing, trust me. France smelled like pastry. I would have gained, like, a million pounds if we’d stayed.”

  He gently tugged me aside to allow two men in construction hats to pass. One nodded a silent thanks as they hurried past. “Seriously though… You say you haven’t done anything wrong—”

  “I haven’t,” I cut him off.

  “But if that’s true, why not turn yourself in? They’d find you innocent and then you could quit running.”

  It was something I’d thought about so many times. When Patrick got too close, or just after the incident in Texas… Mom would have never accepted defeat, though. To give up would have been to dishonor her memory. I just couldn’t do it. I was tired of running and, more than anything, wanted a normal life. But she’d worked so hard to keep us free—to keep me free—giving up would make all our sacrifices in vain.

  I stopped walking and pointed to a small brick building. We’d arrived. The timing was perfect, too, because I had no idea how to answer his question. “This is it.”

  We pushed through the revolving door and navigated the thinning late-morning crowd. The teller windows were mostly empty, so I made my way to the one on the end, plastering on what I hoped looked like a happy smile.

  “Hi,” I said, leaning close to the glass. “I’m here to get something out of my safe-deposit box?”

  The plump man behind the counter smiled and nodded.
There was a small grease stain on his tie and another, larger stain peeking out from the shirt beneath his jacket. I wondered what he’d been eating for lunch. Chicken Parm hero? Maybe a cheesesteak sandwich. Damn. It reminded me that I was still hungry. “Of course. Do you have your key?”

  I fished into my pocket and pulled out the small silk pouch. Rummaging through, I finally found the one I was looking for and held it up for him to see. “Right here.”

  He stood and wobbled around to the side of his desk with a slight limp. “Wonderful. If you’ll both follow me, I’ll take you inside.”

  “What are they all for?” Shaun whispered as we followed the man down a narrow hall. He was staring at the silk pouch in my hand.

  “The keys?” I asked. “Safe-deposit boxes. Mom has them in rural banks all across the United States.”

  He took the small bag from me and turned it over in his left hand several times. Tossing it into the air and catching it, he asked, “How can you tell them apart?”

  I rescued the keys and stuffed the pouch back into my front pocket. “I just can. I guess maybe because I was with her when she got most of them.” I tapped my head. “Plus, I’ve got a killer memory.”

  The bank teller pushed through a large metal door and stepped to the side, gesturing us inside. “Take your time, and be sure to yell if you need anything.”

  I waited for him to leave before making a beeline for box number 342. The town might not have seemed familiar, but this I remembered. I ran my fingers along the outside of the box and swallowed the lump threatening to cut off my air. I’d been six the last time Mom and I were here—right before Christmas.

  In the right-hand corner of the door was the tattered remains of a small sticker. Someone had peeled off the top layer, leaving only a generic outline, but I remembered exactly what it’d looked like. A smiling giraffe in a Santa hat. Bob, I’d named him.

  “Don’t you need identification to open a safe-deposit box?” Shaun asked, bringing me back to the here and now.

  “Anything can be faked if you have the right skills.” I slipped the key into the lock and turned it until it clicked. “And trust me. Someone, somewhere, always has the right skills. For enough money, you can get pretty much anything.”