by Zoey Parker
Besides, I thought, since when am I the kind of guy who asks women out on dates? I'm usually more the random hook-up type—those are a lot less complicated. There isn't much room for romance in an outlaw's life.
Still, now that the bullets had stopped flying, it was nice to think about.
I followed Jewel into the diner where the smells of bacon and coffee filled the air. Ham stood behind the counter like he always had, wearing his stained apron and his little paper hat. He used to love playing old doo-wop songs from the '50s on the shitty little radio he kept in the kitchen, and from the sound of it, that hadn't changed. Between crackling bursts of static, the Big Bopper was chortling about the wiggle in Chantilly Lace's walk and the giggle in her talk. There were no other customers.
Ham was a short man with greasy black hair and arms so hairy it looked like he was wearing a thick brown sweater under his shirt. When he saw me, he spread his arms and smiled, revealing every pearl-white tooth all the way back to the molars. “Rafe!” he exclaimed in his thick Greek accent. “You're free at last! It's been too long!” He stepped out from behind the counter, hugging me.
That was the funny thing about getting released from the joint. The days that followed started to seem like a never-ending parade of greetings from people who were thrilled to see me and claimed they'd missed me a lot, even though they'd never visited me while I was inside. I'd seen guys get pissed about that before, but not me. I just found it funny.
“Good to see you too, Ham,” I said.
“And who is this lovely lady?” Ham asked, eyeing Jewel. “You meet her in prison? Was she a guard who succumbed to your charms, eh?”
Jewel smiled uneasily, and I remembered that this was the second time she'd heard someone mention that I'd been in prison.
I tried to deflect the tension with a joke, raising my eyebrow at Ham. “You pegged her for a prison guard, Ham? You'd better get those eyes checked before you start mixing up the salt with the sugar.”
Ham laughed. “Same old Rafe, always with the jokes! Go on, have a seat. I'll be over in a minute to take your order.”
I led Jewel over to a booth next to the window and we sat down across from each other. Out of habit, I took the seat facing the door. The Big Bopper gave way to The Five Satins crooning about what happens in the still of the night.
Jewel's eyes were filled with curiosity as she looked at me. Now that the immediate danger was over, she seemed a bit bolder. I tried to pretend I didn't notice by studying the menu, even though I still had it pretty much memorized from seven years ago.
“So why did you go to prison?” she asked suddenly.
“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” I answered glibly. I hoped she'd laugh and that would be the end of it. Instead she just kept looking at me.
“What? You've heard that one already?” I asked, trying to be charming.
“Many times,” she replied. “I still might have found it funny if it weren't for the giant gun you've got in the duffel bag.”
Goddamn it, I thought. So that's what she was doing last night when she stubbed her toe. I should have guessed. “So you saw that, huh?” I said, trying to sound casual. “Must have freaked you out.”
“A little,” Jewel answered. “Not as much as being shot at and rescued by some random biker, though. Come on, tell me why you went to Potawatomi. I want to know.”
“Why?” I shot back. “So you can feel superior to me when you go back to your nice, safe office job?” I wasn't in the mood to discuss this, least of all with her. I knew she wouldn't understand anyway. She was a secretary, for Christ's sake.
Suddenly, I didn't feel like asking for her number anymore. All I wanted to do was forget about breakfast and take her back to Chicago so I could get on with what I had to do, but we'd already sat down and Ham was bringing us cups of coffee.
Jewel looked hurt for a moment, then smiled. “I almost asked if you really think I'm that kind of person,” she said, “but then I remembered that you know absolutely nothing about me. Which is kind of the point, because I want to know more about you. That's all. I'm curious about the person who saved my life. How long were you upstate?”
I sighed. It looked like I'd have to talk about this shit whether I wanted to or not. “Seven years,” I answered. “Got out yesterday.”
Her eyes widened. “Seven years? Jeez! What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said flatly. “I was innocent. End of story.”
I expected a look of disbelief from her, but instead she nodded encouragingly. “That's horrible. What did they say you'd done?”
Before I could answer, Ham walked up to our table. “Do you know what you want to order?” he asked. I could have kissed the bastard for interrupting at that moment.
“Yes, I'd like an omelet with Swiss cheese and green peppers, please,” Jewel said. “With hashbrowns on the side, and a glass of grapefruit juice.”
“Coming right up,” Ham said, taking her menu. “And for you, Rafe?”
“Flapjacks,” I said. “Heavy on the syrup.” In Potawatomi, we'd never gotten enough packets of syrup to put on the dry, powdery instant pancakes we got most mornings. I'd often had to trade with the other guys for extra. I'd once even agreed to break another inmate's jaw to keep him from snitching on someone else, just for four little packets of the fake maple crap.
Was that the kind of story Jewel wanted to hear? How much could she ever really want to get to know someone like me?
Ham took my menu and returned to the kitchen where on the radio, The Skyliners were whining that they didn't have anything if they didn't have me. Somehow, I doubted it.
“I guess the food in there was probably terrible, huh?” Jewel asked.
I thought about the sound the snitch's jaw had made when I smashed it against a concrete step. Half of his teeth had been busted out, and his mouth was wired shut for over two months.
“You've got no fucking idea,” I grunted.
Before she could ask anything else, the door jangled again. A man and a woman in their early thirties walked in, bleary-eyed, with their arms around each other. Even though they looked hung over, they were still laughing and joking. They paused for a kiss every few seconds. I figured these must be the hard-partying newlyweds Chucky had mentioned this morning, which made sense. Most people who stayed at The Hidey-Hole Motel ended up coming to Ham's for breakfast the next morning. It was one of the only restaurants off this exit.
Ham greeted them and pointed them to a table near ours. The woman looked at me and Jewel, then leaned over and whispered something to the man. He looked at us too and nodded, and they laughed again.
Great, I thought. They're probably giggling about asking us for a foursome or something. Getting hassled by a couple of horny married drunks is the last thing we need right now.
Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and looked out the window. Chucky was crouched in the bushes, trying to get my attention without being obvious about it. Jewel hadn't noticed yet, and neither had the man and woman.
I raised an eyebrow at him and shrugged. What could he want?
Chucky pointed at the married couple, looked into my eyes intensely, and mimed a gun with his hand.
I tried to glance at the man and woman without getting their attention, but it was no use. The man was grinning at us, and the woman was licking her lips seductively. I forced a smile and a wave, looking them over.
Jewel followed my eyes, then turned back to me with a confused smile. “What, do you know them?”
No, I didn't know them. But now that I knew what to look for, I could see that the man had a faint bulge under the arm of his suit where a shoulder holster would be, and the woman was sitting on the edge of her seat. I'd seen that posture before, usually with guys. It was the way they sat when they had guns tucked in the back of their waistbands and didn't want to lean against them.
Fuck. I hated to admit it, but Jester was smarter than I'd given him credit for, sending a couple of hit
ters who looked like regular civilians instead of the usual mobsters. I peered out the window again, but Chucky was gone.
I leaned across the table and whispered to Jewel, trying to keep the smile on my face. I wanted it to look like we were taking the bait and discussing how hot the couple was. “There's a bathroom next to the door to the kitchen. You need to go back there. Right now.”
Jewel's smile flickered. “Huh? No, I'm fine. I went before we left the motel, so I should be good until we get back to Chicago, unless I have too much coffee...”
I spoke through clenched teeth, still smiling. “Those people are here for us.” Her eyes widened and I took her hand in mine, stroking it gently. “No, keep smiling,” I continued. “Make them think we don't know. Take another sip of your coffee. Then get up, go to the bathroom, and wait there. I'll join you in a minute and we can slip out the back.”
Jewel nodded, keeping her smile in place. I could still see the fear in her eyes.
I hoped she could pull it off.
Chapter 15
Jewel
As I stood up from the table and walked over to the bathroom door, my mind begged me to panic.
I'd just gotten used to the idea that we were out of trouble, and the knowledge that we weren't safe after all made me want to bolt for the back door as fast as my legs could carry me, or even just throw myself on the floor and curl up into a ball and scream. My mind insisted that doing so would bring cops and EMTs who'd take me away from all this, and until they got here, I'd be safe because I was in a public place in broad daylight.
But even as my mind shrieked and thrashed and pleaded, the rest of me knew with grim certainty that Rafe understood the rules of this world I'd stumbled into far better than I did. And if he believed these people would kill us right here in the diner, I had no choice but to believe it too and do as he said.
I glanced over at the couple sitting at the table near ours. They appeared to be reading the menus, but I saw the woman's eyes flicker over to me, then away again immediately.
It took every bit of self-control I had to keep walking at a steady pace. I realized my posture was extremely stiff, so I reminded myself to swing my arms a little as I walked. It felt forced, but I hoped it looked casual. With my back to the couple, all I could think about was what it would be like to get shot in the back right there.
Stop it, I told myself. You don't have time to play the “I wonder what bullets feel like” game with yourself. You'll either get shot or you won't, but obsessing over it will only make you freeze up when that's the last thing you need to be doing right now. So get it together.
I wished I could take my own advice.
I pushed the swinging door next to the kitchen. It opened onto a short, dusty cement hallway cluttered with cleaning products and boxes of straws and napkins. I briefly wondered if I could find anything here that I could use to defend myself, then shook my head, abandoning that idea.
If these people were anything like the others we'd been chased by, they'd definitely have guns, and plenty of them. What was I supposed to do? Swing a mop handle at them? Try to stab them with a kitchen knife? I might as well blow paper straw-wrappers at them, for all the good it would do. I hated the idea of being completely defenseless, but at least Rafe had guns and knew how to use them. That would have to be enough.
On the radio in the kitchen, a smooth voice was crooning about one girl, one boy, some grief, some joy. I stifled a hysterical giggle. Well, they got the grief part right, at least.
I walked down the hallway to the door marked “Washroom” and stepped inside. The bathroom was cramped, with gray water seeping between the cracked floor tiles. There was a small sink with a cloudy crank-operated window above it. I gingerly stepped around the puddles and stood next to the sink, working the lever. The window stuck at first, then slowly opened with a rusty squeal, sending down a cloud of dust and dead bugs right into my face.
I heard the door open behind me and jumped, expecting it to be the young couple with guns drawn. But it was just Rafe.
“All right. Let’s get the fuck out of here fast,” he grunted.
I got up on the sink, balancing myself carefully as I slipped through the window. Rafe emerged seconds later. The bushes behind the diner rustled and I let out a yelp of fear, somehow convinced that they had gotten here before us.
Chucky stood up from the bushes, brushing leaves and twigs from his overalls. “I am so fuckin' sorry, Rafe,” he whispered. “I didn't see no guns on 'em 'til they left this mornin', just a couple minutes after you did. Can't believe I fell fer their bullshit drunk routine, I'm getting' fuckin' stupid in my old age...”
“It's okay, Chucky,” Rafe assured him. “You still saved our asses by coming to warn us.” I could see that he was gauging the distance to his motorcycle, wondering if we'd make it before the couple came after us. From here, it looked like it was a million miles away, and I knew the man and woman must already be getting suspicious since Rafe had followed me.
“You got yer pistol on ya?” Chucky asked him.
“Yeah,” Rafe said, pulling it from the back of his waistband.
“Good,” Chucky said. “I'll try to distract 'em. You two make a run for it.”
Chucky walked around the side of the diner to the front. A few moments later, I heard his voice booming. “Hey! Glad I caught up with you two. There was a problem with yer credit card. I gotta swipe it again.”
Rafe turned to me. “Don't run unless they come after us,” he said. “Otherwise the sudden movement could attract their attention.”
I nodded and followed him as he walked across the gravel parking lot. I could still hear Chucky hassling the couple. I silently begged for just another minute to get to the bike before they noticed us.
But a second later, my heart dropped into my shoes as I heard a woman's voice yell, “Fuck! They’re getting away. Let's go!”
Rafe grabbed my hand and broke into a run, dragging me with him. I looked back just in time to see Chucky pull a huge revolver with a long barrel from his overalls, firing it at the man three times. Two of the bullets hit the man's chest and one blasted his face, coming out the back of his skull with a thick red spray. Ham screamed, ducking behind the counter.
The woman drew a gun from the back of her skirt and shot Chucky in the eye. He staggered backward, squeezing off one last shot before falling to the floor. The bullet grazed the woman's shoulder and she howled with rage and pain, kicking Chucky's limp body spitefully as she ran for the door.
Rafe and I had reached the bike and I hopped on behind him as he revved the engine. I heard the jingle of the bell over the door and watched as the woman stepped out, raising her gun at us.
“Always wanted to try this,” Rafe muttered, aiming his own gun.
He fired, and at first, I thought he'd missed disastrously. The bullets went far above the woman's head, hitting the huge fake fist above the door. But then I heard a grinding sound as the fist came loose. The woman fired at us once, then looked up with an expression of almost comical surprise as the fist dropped down on her, pinning her to the ground. Her gun skidded away from her outstretched fingers.
Rafe laughed loudly as the bike roared away from the diner, heading for the highway. I held onto him as tightly as possible.
“Why did you aim for the fist instead of her?” I asked.
“Bigger target,” Rafe said. “Didn't want to waste time or ammo trading shots with her instead of getting us out of there.”
“I'm sorry about Chucky,” I offered. “I could tell you were close.”
“He was a good guy,” Rafe said. He was trying to sound casual, but I could hear the hurt under his voice. “But he was an outlaw himself, once upon a time. He knew the score. I feel a lot worse for Ham. If that bitch was able to get out from under the fist, she probably went back and plugged him so he wouldn't talk to the cops.”
I shuddered. I hadn't thought of that. “So now what?”
Rafe shrugged. “Don't know for su
re,” he answered. “I had a plan, but that fucked it up. I'm gonna have to make a few calls before I can come up with a new one.”
“But what about me?” I demanded. “When do I get to go home?”
“Sweetheart, I swear to God I have no idea right now,” he said. “I'll do what I can to make that happen for you, but until then, it looks like you're along for the ride.”
Chapter 16
Rafe
I was looking for highway signs for department stores, and when I found one, I pulled us off the road and into the parking lot.
