7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
N othing up to that point had been quite as disorienting for Elio as seeing Rissa, the woman who had been his anchor since he opened his eyes and had been unable to remember his own name, emotionally flying to pieces before him. As he held her, trembling and weeping against his chest, he lifted his eyes to glare at the man in the mirror, who was somehow still driving even though his attention was mainly on the back seat.
The dark eyes that glared back at him were somehow familiar. Elio had the deep, stirring feeling that he and this man had had standoffs like this many times before. In fact, he could almost hear his voice echoing in his ears.
Make yourself useful, Elio.
Elio was angry at him for the accusations he threw at Rissa, despite not understanding half of what was said. He was uneasy about the uncertainty that had taken hold of her since they stepped into the car. He could feel her tension even now as she lay in his arms sobbing her heart out.
She didn’t trust Vince. But somehow, Elio realized, he did. The big man was all bark and no bite, he thought. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew. Vince didn’t want to admit it, but he was there for them.
“If she hadn’t already done it better than I ever could,” Elio growled, “I would tell you off right now.”
“Do you even know who I am?” Vince taunted, and Elio felt his hackles rising.
“You’re an asshole,” he snapped. “That’s all I need to know.”
He watched as the man’s gaze flickered in the mirror, returning from the road with a new heaviness. There was a long moment of silence.
“Are you fucking with me right now?” Vince finally asked. “You seriously have amnesia, dude?”
“No, I’m just pretending. For fun. While running from the police and who knows what else,” Elio said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. Vince was silent again, his attention returning to the road as his heavy brows knit together.
In Elio’s arms, Rissa was regaining her composure. She sniffed and dabbed at her nose with the sleeve of her t-shirt.
“All right,” Vince said gruffly after a long, loaded pause. “Maybe we’d better start over and take this from the beginning. Elio, I don’t suppose you remember calling me at the gas station yesterday?”
As Elio shook his head, Rissa spoke up.
“That’s when it happened,” she said quietly. “Those guys in the black masks showed up again. They rammed into a wall next to us with their truck—by accident, I think—and part of the rubble fell on Elio. Then, they started shooting at us, so I pulled him out and we ran into the woods. That’s where I realized he’d lost his memory.”
“These were the same guys that came after you at the resort?” Vince asked, and his tone no longer sounded skeptical or angry. It sounded businesslike.
“Yes,” Rissa sighed. “At least, it was guys dressed exactly the same way.”
In black masks? That didn’t sound like cops. Elio felt confusion unspooling within him, along with a healthy gush of frustration. He had no idea what was going on, and he didn’t like it. His arms tightened around Rissa, as much for his comfort now as for hers.
“Did you have a tail when you left the resort?”
Perhaps by force of habit, Vince directed his question at Elio, drawing him back into the conversation. Elio shrugged, feeling completely useless. Anxiety clawed at him, filling the huge, empty space where his memories were supposed to be. He didn’t even realize Rissa had noticed his agitation until she grabbed his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
He looked down, meeting her calm blue eyes. A good cry was all she needed to restore her equilibrium. He found himself tucking that information away for future reference.
“From what I know of Elio,” she offered, apparently speaking to Vince even though her eyes remained locked on Elio’s, “and you can probably back me up on this ,but he’s always on the lookout for a tail. He never mentioned seeing one.” She returned her gaze to the rearview mirror.
Vince’s thick brows drew together over his eyes once more. “Then how did they find you at the gas station?”
“Maybe they were tracking us,” Elio said.
Then, as if Rissa’s observation awakened some latent instinct in him, he turned and glanced out the back window. A dark-colored SUV two cars back immediately caught his eye, but he told himself it was just because the vehicle was a quintessential bad guy car. Wasn’t it?
“How could they be tracking us?” Rissa said, her voice raw. She sounded shaken, and Elio couldn’t blame her. They were not only running from the cops but also from a gang dressed in black who had already attacked them at least twice.
What is my life? he wondered with grim humor.
“We switched the burner phones the minute we went on the run,” Rissa continued, “and we didn’t take anything with us except the clothes on our back. Then, when we ran from the resort, we left everything again.”
Vince shrugged. “Tech isn’t my expertise, but I suppose they could have found another way.”
Elio glanced back again. The vehicle had moved up a car and was now accelerating, catching up to them fast.
“Hey,” he said. “We might have a tail now.”
Vince’s dark eyes flashed in the rearview mirror as he checked, and Rissa gasped and joined Elio in twisting around to look behind them. The SUV’s engine roared as it passed the last car behind them. Elio’s eyes caught on the man in the driver’s seat and saw a black mask. His stomach dropped even as Rissa cried shrilly.
“Yes, it’s them! It’s them!”
Immediately, Vince pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, and the Charger roared in response, speeding up and once again widening the space between them and their pursuers. Another car honked as he swerved around it, threading his way along the highway as they hit eighty and then ninety miles per hour.
Elio’s vision blurred and his head began to swim. He grabbed the back of the seat in front of him. Flashes of memory seared through his brain: running down a dark beach; Rissa sitting across the table from him, her smile beatific; another woman, her back to him, long, red hair and the shudder of sequins.
Despite his brain’s baffled scurry through the past, his senses remained fully in the present. He could hear Rissa’s breathing in his ear, quick and panicked, and feel the vibration of the Charger’s engine in the seat beneath him as they reached max speed. But he couldn’t see anything, his vision clouded with darkness.
I cannot pass out again, Elio thought. This is not a good time.
“They’re catching up!” Rissa cried, and Vince said, “I’m going as fast as I can.”
There was a sudden hard jolt as the SUV rammed into them from behind. Pain exploded in Elio’s head paired with a blinding flash of light, and he cried out. His shout mingled with Rissa’s scream and Vince’s curses as the Charger fishtailed across the highway. Horns blared around them, but Elio could barely hear them over the ringing in his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut, grabbing his head with both hands and groaning.
“Elio?” Rissa’s trembling voice asked from a great distance. “What’s the matter?”
Elio clenched his teeth, fighting to stay conscious as another wave of pain crashed through his skull, followed by a wave of oblivion.