Chapter Twelve #2
Danny’s car is a black, expensive-looking Audi sedan that shines as if it was just driven off the lot and given a masturbatory amount of polish. With the press of his key fob, he opens it for us.
“Shotgun,” I say as I slip into the front passenger seat. A leather heated seat holds my skinny jeans-wearing ass. “Nice ride.”
It isn’t, really. Overpriced, four wheels, too large, sitting in this coddling seat makes me wish I was on my bike.
“Thank you. Where am I taking you?” He says as he backs the car out of the alley and onto the road.
“Somewhere isolated. Far out of town,” I say.
Adriana nods. “Yes.”
“Why?” Danny says. “I’m not going to just take you somewhere where you can rob me or steal my car.”
“I don’t want your shiny car, and your grandmother is scary as hell. So no one’s going to rob you. No one’s going to touch you. ”
Danny smiles. “She is scary. Her face haunts my nightmares. I love my grandmother dearly. But I will not take you where you’re asking unless you tell me the truth about why you want to go there.”
“We need to get out of town so we can get far away from these assholes who are trying to hurt us, and then figure out what we need to do so they don’t bother us or anyone else — like your grandmother’s club — any more,” Adriana says.
“That’s a good goal. I will take you,” Danny says, stepping on the gas and taking us down the road.
There’s a smug look on his face, like beneath the facade of being a dutiful grandson to a terrifying grandmother who Satan probably worried would be lurking under his bed when he was just a little fucking imp, he’s enjoying this bit of power he has over us.
Smug bastard probably gets a hard-on from all the lives he saves and jacks off while looking at patient files.
He just fucking loves we owe him.
“Why are you staring at me so much?” He says as we slow down and approach a turnoff for a truck stop about twenty miles outside of Sacramento.
“What? Something bothering you?” I say, not taking my eyes off him. I know every wrinkle and crease and fucking pore of his perverted, life-saving face.
“You just keep looking at me. Intensely. I don’t like it.”
“Stop fucking with him, Ricky,” Adriana chimes in.
“I’m not fucking with him. I’m debating.”
“Debating what?” He says, slowing the car.
My gaze leaves his face for a moment and takes in the truck stop.
A handful of semis sit parked in the lot.
It’s a drab building, with lights illuminating a small cafe in a dreary, lifeless fluorescence.
I’ll bet the only thing that cafe serves is lukewarm coffee, moldy pastries from a vending machine, and watery scrambled eggs that taste like salt, stale pepper, and emotional abuse.
“To tell you the other reason we need your help.” Adriana drives her knee into the seat behind me. I push on. “Do you want to know?”
Curiosity covers his face. His mouth opens slightly, and he takes a long in-breath. He leans forward a little. “Yes. Why else do you need my help?”
The son of a bitch wants whatever we can give him to feed his hero complex. I force a look of doubt and hesitation onto my face, and I waver. Pause. I give the motherfucker everything he wants, and I don’t need to look down to see that he’s hard — I just fucking know it.
Adriana needs the seat again, pressing right against my spine. “Don’t you fucking do it…”
“Dr. Lin, there’s something more you should know about what your help is going to let us do. See, she’s going to kill me. All this work you’re doing — driving us out here, helping us — it’s going to end up with her murdering me.”
The car comes to an abrupt stop next to a red semi-truck with an attached trailer bearing advertisements for a diaper company.
“What the fuck did you just say?” He says, his voice rising in pitch with every syllable until it could scrape the sky. “I swore an oath to do no harm. I take it seriously. I can’t facilitate a murder.”
The look of existential horror on his face is more delicious than anything Tank or I have ever baked.
But before I can finish savoring it and say something to drive the knife deeper into his heart, Adriana smacks the back of my head.
Bright pain explodes behind my eyelids, filling my vision with a starburst of colors, and I lean forward in the seat, trying to get out of the reach of her vicious slaps.
Sure, she can fucking kill me as soon as it’s time, but does she have to be a fucking dick in the meantime?
Especially when all I’m doing is trying to teach a lesson to Dr. Smugly Hardcock.
“Ow,” I say, rubbing my head. Somehow, she hits harder than any of those Russians. Even the one who knifed me. “What the hell was that for?”
“He’s lying, Dr. Lin,” she says. “I’m not going to kill him. He’s not going to kill me. All we want to do is get away from those Russian assholes and figure out a way to stop them from harming us or anyone else. That’s it. Your helping us makes you a hero or whatever. You’re saving lives.”
“You swear?” He says. “Both of you?”
“I swear,” Adriana replies. Then she smacks me again.
My eyes go from Adriana, to Lin and then down — yes, he’s definitely fucking hard thinking about saving all these lives.
“Swear,” I say. “I was just fucking with you.”
“Good. Now get out of my car.”
We exit, and he peels away fast enough that he leaves the scent of burned rubber and arrogance wafting in the air.
It mixes with the aroma of terrible food, old coffee, and shattered dreams that drifts from the rest stop.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a lot lizard warily scouting us. I shake my head, and they scurry away.
“You’re no fun,” I say.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
“And you’re a liar. Unless you really meant what you said back there about not killing me when this is through. In which case, you and I need to have a serious fucking conversation,” I say.
“I said what I had to.”
“And?”
She crosses her arms, accentuating her tits beneath her V-neck shirt featuring the many faces of some Korean boy band.
I’ve never been so turned on by the sight of a bunch of young Asian men.
She snaps her fingers in front of her face and then skewers me with a look.
“My eyes are up here. And I wasn’t lying, you dick.
When this is over, I’m still going to kill you.
I hate your fucking guts, and I can’t wait for you to die. ”
Adriana turns and stalks toward the truck stop’s building, leaving her words hanging in the air.
Even distracted as I am by the lingering image of the Korean boy band decorating her sumptuous tits, and her curvy ass as it sways toward that little truck stop cafe from which emanates smells not meant for human noses, I can still detect the doubt that shakes her declaration of murder and hatred.
I follow.