Chapter Sixteen
Reaper
Dim, uncaring eyes greet us as we step back into the truck stop cafe. It’s as if the tantrum we threw earlier never happened. That, or it was so usual that every person in the cafe simply shrugged and resumed their mundane, unusual lives.
In the booth in the far corner, a man discreetly snorts a substance, and I realize that our earlier screaming match about murder and whiskey was probably not even the first one to happen today. Even the server looks at us with freshly dull eyes.
Adriana doesn’t wait for me before she strides ahead and takes a booth, sliding into it with utmost confidence.
She may look like her sister, but the similarities to Vanessa only go skin deep.
Vanessa was caring, nurturing, vulnerable, easily manipulated, an addict — someone I took advantage of so many times that, even though I hate to admit it, there’s no way I can deny it.
It was second nature to me, if I wanted something and she had it, it took almost no work at all to get her to give it to me; sex, money, love — I weaseled all of it from her with a few words, a few threats, and the prospect of an easy high.
Adriana is none of that. I couldn’t manipulate her if my life depended on it.
Or death, in this case.
And threaten her?
Fat fucking chance. She hits as hard and fights as dirty as any biker I’ve come up against.
Her eyes lock on me as I realize I’m still standing in the doorway, and my mind races as I walk toward her.
Doubt floods me, wrapping like a boa around my stomach, squeezing, and my tongue rebels in my mouth.
Every step toward her puts another weight on my back — I’m responsible for Vanessa’s death, even if I didn’t kill her, I’m responsible for this damn mess I’m in — it’s up to me to figure this shit out.
What kind of man am I if I can’t handle my business?
I have to be better than I was before. Better than the man who cost Vanessa her life. I can’t let her death be in vain. This second chance I have? I have to fucking earn it.
As I slide into the tattered, squeaky fake leather of the truck stop cafe booth and see Adriana’s eyes bore into mine, another thought rises through the confusion roiling my insides: I want to be better for her sake, too.
Adriana saw me at my worst and called me on my bullshit. She knows the truth now — or at least a big part of it — and she’s still sticking by my side. There’s something drawing her to stay with me, and I want to prove to her she’s made the right choice.
“Well?” she says.
“I have a plan,” I blurt out, even though I’ve got nothing close to it. Hell, I’m so fucking scrambled I don’t even know what I’d order from the menu; there’s a chance I’d even order that mysteriously cheap whiskey again.
She blinks. “You do?”
No, I don’t. But I can’t let her know that.
It takes every effort I have to keep surprise out of my voice. “I do. Wait here.”
“You want me to order you something?”
“The whiskey.”
Fuck.
Too late to take it back.
I start toward the trucker in the corner I saw snorting substances earlier.
Not because there’s a part of me — the always-there addict part — that wants to share in whatever he’s snorting, but because he’s the furthest away and I hope that the longer walk of an extra ten steps will give me enough time to figure out what the hell my plan is.
Then it hits me: Volkov’s in Sacramento.
We need to get back to Sacramento if we’re going to take care of him.
Well, fuck, that sounds like the beginning of a plan. Get us back to Sacramento.
Now, how to do that with a drug-snorting trucker?
That question tumbles through my skull while I slide into the booth opposite him, place both hands palm-down onto the table, and look straight into a pair of eyes so bloodshot it’s like looking at a sunset.
“The hell you want?” His voice is as thick and slow as frozen molasses, and his breath smells like a garbage dump at noon in the middle of July.
“Need a ride. You heading to Sacramento?”
“Maybe I am.”
“Are you willing to take us on? We can pay.”
He blinks. “I said ‘maybe’ I am. Don’t you know what that fucking word means?”
“I do, but — “
“It means maybe. Not quite yes, not quite no.”
“Do you know whether you’re going to Sacramento or not?”
“Maybe.”
“What the fuck? Where the fuck are you headed?”
He just laughs, then digs around in his pocket, pulls out a baggie, and spreads a small gritty mountain on the table in front of him. Bending over, he snorts, then laughs again. “You want some?”
Frowning, I look closer. “Is that fucking sand? Are you snorting sand?”
“Maybe.”
I stand and go to another table. This one is occupied by a burly trucker who looks like he was the inspiration for Grizzly Adams, if Grizzly Adams spent a year isolating himself in the gym and doing steroids.
“I need a ride to Sacramento,” I say, deciding that straightforward is the way to go. No questions, no hesitation, no room for anyone to bring up snorting sand while cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“And I need my dick sucked.”
“She won’t be down for that.”
“I ain’t asking her.”
“’No’ is a complete sentence, and it’s my fucking answer to your implied question.”
I stand, look around, and see the one remaining trucker in this miserable cafe wink at me as we make eye contact and decide I sure as hell don’t want to find out what’s behind door number three. I go back to the table with Adriana.
“That was your plan?” she says. “Get high with one trucker and flirt with another? How the fuck did Ruslan Volkov look at you and decide it was anything even fucking close to a good idea to lend you money?”
“Truckers sometimes take on hitchers, so what’s the harm in asking? And how the fuck was I to know one of them would be snorting sand and the other would want me to suck his cock?”
“And you didn’t even consider it?”
“Consider snorting sand? Fuck no.”
There’s a moment of silence before she speaks.
She takes a sip from the glass in front of her.
From the smell — vanilla, clove, and the still-warm ashes of an orphanage fire — it’s the whiskey again.
A similar glass sits in front of me, and I take a sip, too.
It tastes like burned hair and moss. So, like whiskey.
“We have to get back to Sacramento,” she says.
“We do. Unless you want to call Volkov, give him our location, and ask him to come out and meet us here so we can kill him.”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” she says. Then she takes a long gulp of her whiskey, winces, and blinks back a tear. “That was not a good idea. But I think I have one. Follow my lead.”
“Your lead?”
She doesn’t answer, except to stand. I watch her head to the exit, my eyes half watching out of curiosity, while the rest of my attention is focused on her ass.
By the time she gets into the parking lot and approaches a blue Chrysler Sebring that’s parked among the semi trucks and trailers, I’m rock hard, curious, and fully attentive to the full curves of her ass and legs.
“That’s Vanessa’s sister. I can’t,” I mutter, half to me, half to my cock. I rarely talk to my cock, but right now feels appropriate. I can’t be hard for my dead girlfriend’s sister.
Before I have a chance to argue any more with myself, because an ass of that magnitude deserves a supportive counterargument and my cock is ready to give one, Adriana kneels in the parking lot — which is a damn fine counterargument that stretches both her pants and my resistance — picks up a rock, and smashes the driver’s side window of the blue Sebring.
A car alarm blares.
Which makes me pause and gulp the rest of the shit whiskey in surprise, because who the fuck would put a car alarm on that piece of shit?
“That hot bitch is stealing someone’s ride,” one trucker says.
I leap from my seat, and I wince as my hard cock collides with the lip of the table. “Fucking shit,” I shout, and then, still hard, still wincing, I sprint toward the parking lot, just as Adriana smashes a big rock into the driver’s side window and the server screams.
“That’s my fucking car,” he shouts.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I scream at Adriana as she slips into the driver’s seat, smashes open a panel, and begins fiddling with wires.
“It’s called a plan.”
“Breaking a window and stealing a car is what you call a plan?”
“It’s working, isn’t it?” The car hums to life — well, wheezes with the last dying gasp of a dented, forlorn car that’s begging for release from this mortal coil — and Adriana shifts it into gear with a smile on her face. “Get in.”
A rock smacks into the back of my head, sending me stumbling forward several steps. Blood, hot and sticky, drips down the back of my neck. I turn. It’s the server, and he has a second chunk of asphalt held in his hands.
“What the fuck are you doing? Throwing rocks? Are you fucking twelve?” I shout.
“Are you fucking hard right now? What the fuck?” He screams, then throws the rock, and I narrowly dodge it. “Is it your idea of fun to drink antifreeze, get hard, and steal cars from poor guys who are just trying to get by working one of the shittiest jobs on the fucking planet?”
“Did you say antifreeze?”
“Shit.”
“Are you serving people antifreeze?” Adriana shouts out the car’s window. “Who the fuck does that?”
The server shifts, drops the rock, throws a cautious glance over his shoulder at the door to the cafe. “Look, I should go. You just take the car, OK?”
He runs.
I get in the car, slipping into the passenger’s seat and giving Adriana a confused look. “Can you believe that guy?”
“Are you hard again?”
“It’s the antifreeze.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. It’s happened to me before.”
“You’ve drunk antifreeze before?”
“Do you even know my life? Yes, I have drunk antifreeze,” I say, lying.
At least, I think I’m lying. It wouldn’t totally surprise me to find out I’ve drunk some of the stuff while high off my ass.
On more than one occasion, I’ve come out of it with a strange taste in my mouth that I couldn’t figure out.
Adriana goes quiet for a moment as she steers us out of the parking lot and onto the main road. As she makes the right turn, her eyes meet mine, then drift downward to my lap.
“You’re still hard. Is that the antifreeze?”
“Yes.”
“Other than giving monster erections, are there any other negative side effects I should be aware of? I can deal with a hard cock, but I don’t want to die.”
“You can deal with a hard cock? How are you going to deal with it?”
Her eyes leave the road again to flicker to my crotch. I catch her staring, and she blushes. “Shut up and tell me if the antifreeze is going to kill me.”
“It’s not going to kill you. And seeing how you aren’t packing,” I pointedly look down her body to between her legs. “There’s only one way you’ll have a hard cock to deal with.”
“Don’t make me rethink deciding not to kill you.”
“Don’t threaten me with what I want.”
A sign flies past on the road. Sacramento, fifty miles.
“So the only thing we have to worry about killing us isn’t the whiskey-flavored antifreeze, but the Russian bratva boss waiting for us in Sacramento.”
“That’s about right.”
“Any idea of how we’re going to get close enough to kill him?”
“Aren’t you the one with the plan? I thought you had this shit figured out. What happened to the super-smart supercop who brought down gangs with a snap of her fingers?”
“Maybe I don’t have everything figured out.”
“Then maybe I was wrong about you.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. I never took you to be that smart.
” Her words hang in the air for a moment, and I let them stay there, while I watch the world through the windshield.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a small smile creep across her face, and beneath her breath, I hear her whisper.
“But maybe I can see what Vanessa saw in you…”
I turn back toward the road, trying to focus on anything other than the heat pooling in my gut and the goddamn ache in my jeans.
“You ever think,” I say, “maybe this whole thing’s fucked, but we’re the only two people crazy enough to see it through?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just keeps driving, eyes sharp on the horizon. Then, so quiet I almost miss it, she clears her throat and speaks. “I’d say that’s a pretty accurate situational assessment. Shit’s fucked and we’re deep in it. And the only way out is to go deeper.”
My gaze shifts to her — the way her jaw clenches, the curve of her mouth, the faint smear of blood drying on her cheek like war paint. God help me, I want her. I want to grab the wheel, pull over, and bury myself so deep in her she forgets her own name. But I don’t. I can’t. Not yet, at least.
Instead, I lean back, adjust myself, and grin at her.
“Next time I drink antifreeze, remind me to bring protection.”
“There’s no way I’m touching that.”
“The comment, or…?”
“Both.”
“Not even the tip?”
“Shut up. I hate you. I can’t believe I’m saving your life.”
And just like that, we’re a team.
Kind of.
Maybe.
Fuck it — we drank antifreeze together, and that’s close enough.