She stood where she was while he got in and backed the van out of the space. She stood there while he pulled down the parking lane, turned, turned again, and stopped at the lot exit, waiting to turn into the lane before her.
Now he was facing her. The afternoon sun glinted sidelong off the windshield, but she could see that he had a full beard, wild and bushy like his hair. Jesse had never had a beard. He wore sunglasses, aviator style. The glasses and beard, and the reflected sunlight, obscured his face almost completely. She didn’t know if he was familiar or not.
He turned onto the lane and drove by her without giving her any notice.
Willa felt ridiculous standing there gaping at a stranger. He was a stranger, right?
He stopped at the end of the line waiting for the light to change. Shaking off her foreboding, Willa was ready to go back to her bike and go home. She’d walk her dog, make some dinner, open a bottle of wine, and take a hot bath. She’d get control of herself.
As she turned, she noticed the back of the brown van.
It had Texas plates.
~oOo~
She had to know.
She couldn’t let him come up on her unawares. Not again.
She couldn’t call Rad—he was hundreds of miles away. She could call the clubhouse, but most of them were on the road, too. She didn’t know the prospects well enough to trust them, not with this, not with her story.
She was alone. On her own.
She had to know.
At the light, she turned left, exiting the hospital campus in the opposite direction of her house. The brown van had turned this way—probably two light cycles ago, but she was on her bike, and she could catch up, if he’d stayed on this street.
No—she didn’t want to catch up. She didn’t want the driver of that van to know she was following him. Whether it was Jesse or a stranger, she didn’t want him to see her. Surveillance was new to her, but that much seemed obvious: don’t get seen.
For three lights, it didn’t seem like it was going to matter. Then a box truck moved over to a left-turn lane, and Willa saw the brown van half a mile or so—she wasn’t good estimating distances—up ahead. She moved out between the lanes and closed about half that distance, so that she was between the same lights as the van, but a few cars separated them.
They were coming up on a highway overpass, and if the van got onto the highway, Willa decided she’d give up this…whatever it was she was doing. The van was going in the opposite direction of her home. If it got onto the highway, in either direction, it would go even farther from her home. That should be a good indication that its driver had no interest in her.
But the van pulled in at the Osage Motor Inn, just before the turn for the westbound onramp. When she arrived at the same spot, she pulled her bike off and stopped in the bus lane, shielded from the motel lot by a chain-link fence wound with limp, skimpy vines.
Through the face shield of her helmet, she watched the guy get out of the van.
He pulled a leather coat from the van with him. Not a coat. A kutte. He didn’t put it on, and she couldn’t see the patch on the back, but she knew it for what it was.
Then Willa saw his right hand as he swung the door closed. A swastika inked on the back.
That was Jesse. He’d found her.
He went to a door, opened it, entered, and closed it. Willa tightened her vision and memorized the numerals on the dented door.
Room 105.
She didn’t think he’d seen her. He hadn’t looked around as if he’d felt watched. The hairs on the back of his neck must have been relaxed.
He’d seen her, he must have seen her see him when he turned out of the parking lot, but he hadn’t expected her to follow him.
Why would he? As far as Jesse knew, she was a weak, frightened girl. He probably thought she’d gone straight home to hide under her bed.
She knew this pattern, the way it started. He wanted her to see him. He would show up outside work, or standing by the shopping carts at the market. Near the box office at the movie theater. At a bus stop across the street on the route she took on her run. Just there. Standing and staring. Coming a bit closer every time.
Why wouldn’t he do the same things he’d done before? He’d gotten to her both times, in her own home both times, because she’d been too weak, and the law too ineffectual, to stop him.
Restraining orders were a fucking joke. If she called the police now, she knew what they’d say, what they’d do. They’d take a statement. They’d look up Jesse Smithers’ record. They’d send a squad car out to do a lap around her block for a few nights. And then they’d tell her to contact them if he turned up again.
Round and round like that, until he got to her.
But she wasn’t the same girl. Now she was strong, and she’d made herself ready.
She had Rad, too. But he was too far away to help now. If the pattern held, then Rad would be back in Tulsa before Jesse got much closer; he liked to play his games first. She could wait a few days and let Rad take care of it.
He would, she knew. He would take care of it forever.
As she found a clear stretch on the busy road and made a wide, illegal U-turn to head back toward her own home, Willa knew she wasn’t going to wait for Rad to come back.
Jesse was not Rad’s problem. Jesse was Willa’s problem. She had to handle her own shit and not be weak.
She wasn’t weak, not anymore. She was strong, and she’d made herself ready.
Room 105.
~oOo~
At home, she spent the evening as she’d planned. She took Ollie for a walk, and they made their route uneventfully. She played with him in the back yard for a while, then fed him and made her dinner—just leftovers and wine—and then she took a long, hot bath.
But all the while, her brain cranked at full speed, sorting through her thoughts, working out what she wanted, what the consequences might be, and developing a plan.
When Rad called that night, she didn’t tell him that Jesse was in town, and he didn’t sense that there was anything wrong or different. He could pick up the slightest clues in her voice and aspect, but there weren’t any clues for him to pick up. She felt perfectly calm. She felt strong. Ready.
He told her they were starting back home in the morning and were planning to be back around noon the day after.
To Willa, that seemed like a deadline.
~oOo~
The next day, rather than her initial idea to spend the whole day at home, maybe working on her guest room, or weeding the flower beds, or just being a lazy lump all day, she ran errands. She went to the market for food she didn’t need. She went to the post office for stamps. She wandered around Utica Square, browsing through the shops, and bought a couple of things.
She saw him at Utica Square, standing near a red phone booth, about thirty feet from the shop she’d just stepped out of. He looked like the crazy homeless version of the Jesse she’d known, but now, despite the wild hair and bushy beard, despite the aviators and the soft belly, she knew for sure it was him.
He stood as still one of the sculptures placed around the square, staring right at her. She stood equally still and stared back. People moved between them in both directions, but they stood there for as long as a full minute, maybe longer, staring at each other.
When Willa took a step toward him, he turned and walked away.
The exact same game.
But Willa was a player this time, not just the ball.
~oOo~
Willa had two guns, and she knew how to use them—and not just at a shooting range or hunting with her father and grandfather when she was a kid. She’d taken special training so she would know how to use them under pressure. But guns were loud. And impersonal. What Jesse had done to her was personal.
She considered bringing Ollie with her, but Ollie was her baby first and her bodyguard second. Having him with her to protect her from an unexpected threat was one thing. Taking him with her when she knew there would be
violence, possibly sending him to do the violence, putting him in a position where she knew he could get hurt—she couldn’t do that.
She brought a knife. A hunting knife that had been her grandfather’s. It had an arm sheath, because he hadn’t liked the feeling of a knife on his thigh. Her arm was shorter and thinner than her grandfather’s had been, and the sheath didn’t fit quite right on her arm, but she pulled on a sweatshirt over her jeans and decided it would work.
The knife and her aikido training. That was what she had.
And the powerful will to see this done once and for all.
~oOo~
When Willa pulled her truck onto the Osage Motor Inn lot, the brown van with the Texas plates was parked outside Room 105. Only a few other cars were on this side of the lot, but it was dusk, and she knew that people would start pulling in off the highway to rest for the night fairly soon. This was the kind of place that got most of its business in that way—one-night stops for interstate travelers on a budget.
She parked right next to the van and went to the door for Room 105. The sound of the television, playing something with a laugh track, seeped through the dented metal.
She knocked, then stared at the peephole.
The television went quiet, the door opened, and there was Jesse. Now that she could see his eyes, she wondered how she’d ever doubted that it was him.
He was bare-chested, and he had gone soft. His belly swelled out like he was five months pregnant. Across his chest, he had his club ink: a snarling rat, inked by an artist with adequate but not impressive talent.
He smiled with surprise—not shock, surprise. As if the thought in his head were actually My, what a pleasant surprise.
Willa saw that he had two metal teeth in his lower jaw, a canine and a premolar. Nothing flashy, like gold, just dull, dark metal. She wondered if that was what prison dentistry looked like.
“Hey, beautiful. Long time no see.” He spoke like he thought she’d just dropped by for a visit.
She felt completely calm, facing her own personal bogeyman. “We saw each other this afternoon, Jesse.”
“You know what I mean.” He took a drink from the can of Busch in his hand. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s way past time we work our problems out and get back where we belong. Come on in.” He stepped back, and Willa crossed the threshold into the lair of the beast.
“Have a seat. I’ll getcha a beer. Got ‘em on ice.”
The room was tidy, which didn’t surprise her. Jesse had never been a slob. He was too interested in control to let his space be chaotic. Willa sat on a chair at a table near the window. His Dirty Rats kutte hung on the back. While she didn’t like that kutte touching her, she did like the thought that she was obstructing him from getting to it easily.
“No, thanks. Not thirsty.” She flexed her wrist, feeling the muscles of her forearm move against the sheathed knife. The butt of its handle bumped the edge of her palm.
She’d fought her first impulse, which had been to simply shove the knife in his gut the second he’d opened the door.
No—she had a plan. She wanted her nightmare to end, not simply shift into some new way for this man to ruin her life. All those hours of thinking and planning had led her here, and her goal was simple: to kill him, to dispose of his body, and to move forward in her life. Not end up in prison for killing the man who would not stop tormenting her, despite the years in prison he’d done for tormenting her.
Whatever happened, it would happen behind this closed door, and only one of them would ever open it again.
He went to the cooler. Willa heard him open the tabs of two cans. After a moment with his back to her, he came over and put one in front of her, then sat on the other chair at the table, opposite her.
“Drink,” he said, nodding at the beer she’d told him she didn’t want.
Ignoring him and the can before her, she asked, “How did you find me?”
His grin was broad and smug. Triumphant. “The news. You cut your hair, so short I didn’t recognize you the first couple times I seen the tape, but they played it over and over those first days, and I seen it. You pulled a fast one on me, though. I thought you were in Oklahoma City. It took me a long time to get through all the hospitals and doctors’ offices and find out you wasn’t there. But some doctor remembered working with you. He felt sorry for your long-lost brother who had this one chance to find his sister again. He sent me to Tulsa. And here you are.”
He took a long drink from his can, tipping his head back, his Adam’s apple moving up and down under his beard as he swallowed.
“You should drink, Willy.”
Again she ignored him. “What do you want?”
He laughed. “You know what I want. The only thing I ever wanted. For things to be the way they’re meant to be. We are meant to be. You know it. You can’t never run far enough from me, you can’t never put me away long enough. I’m your destiny. You’re mine.”
“After everything you did to me, you are insane if you think I would ever want to be with you again.”
His complexion darkened when she said the word ‘insane,’ but he answered calmly. “I wouldn’t’ve had to do none of that if you’d kept your faith with me. Since we was thirteen, we been together, Willy. Seventeen years. There’s never been no one else for me but you. There shouldn’t’ve been no one else for you but me. There won’t be again. You got your dog and your Bull now, I know. I seen ‘em. You think they can keep me from you. But you can’t keep destiny away. Only way you’re safe is when you’re where you belong.”
He’d been watching her long enough to have seen her with Rad. If he knew about Ollie, he’d been to her house, too. Of course he had; he’d been following her from there. How else would he have known she was at Utica Square? These things did not surprise her, but they hardened her resolve to end this here.
“And you think that’s with you.”
He leaned forward and put his hands out, meaning to take hers. She pulled away, but he stayed where he was, setting his hands on the table before her.
“I know it’s with me. So do you. That’s why you’re here. You can’t stay away.” He pushed the can of beer an inch closer. “Drink your beer, Willy.”
Why was she arguing with him? He was close enough that she could pull her knife and shove it in his eye before he realized that she was here to fight. But that wasn’t her plan.
Moreover, as firm as her resolve was that all this needed to end, the thought of actually killing him, now that the moment was before her, seemed bigger than she could manage. It was beginning to feel like it would be easier, safer, to let him kill her instead. It would be over that way, too.
As angry at herself and those disgusting, weak thoughts as she was angry at him, she lashed out and shoved the can at him. “I don’t want your fucking beer! I don’t fucking want you!”
The can tipped over, and Jesse reared back and caught it, setting it upright before much had spilled.
Then he stood up. Willa stood, too. She turned her wrist, feeling the grip of the sheath around her arm, but she didn’t pull the knife. Wouldn’t do to let him know too early that she had it. She wanted him unawares, the way he’d had her so many times.
She expected him to swing at her—that was what she was prepared for. In her head, she’d visualized the move she’d make to block his swing and, if she were lucky, though there wasn’t much room in this dinky motel room, she’d put him on the floor.
But he didn’t swing at her. He picked up the Busch can she’d refused. With his palm, he wiped the droplets of beer from its side.
Then he charged at her, coming in low, tackling her around her waist, and brought her down hard. Her head bounced off the carpeting—thin and threadbare, laid over concrete—and fireworks went off inside her skull.
She hadn’t been expecting that move. And now he was on top of her, his body between her arms, separating her knife from the hand that could unsheathe it, and he shocked her again, shoving his fing
ers into her mouth, wrenching her jaw open and pouring the damn beer down her throat.
“DRINK THE FUCKING BEER, HONEY!”
Jesus. He must have drugged the beer.
She tried to spit it out, but he was pouring it so fast, his hand was wedged so hard between her teeth, that she was drowning and choking, and her body defied her brain and made her swallow. And keep swallowing.
She had not been strong. She had not been ready. Jesse was going to win again. He was going to take her from herself again. Make her into what he wanted.
When the can was empty, he let her go and sat back against the bed, panting. “It’ll be okay now, Willy. I love you, and it’s gonna be fine now.”
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 21
