Chapter 11 #3
He was in studly-hero mode. What he had accomplished was incredible.
On the fly, with every possible disadvantage.
Nothing but his wits and what he scrounged up from a cheap vacation rental kitchen.
Barefoot, bleeding, toxic from being jerked around by drugs and put on ice in a body bag.
And all that after suffering months of imprisonment, interrogation and torture.
Images of the bodies scattered on the hillside kept flashing through my mind. Strange details, the blood spray across the angle of the E of the ice sculpture. A symbol of Halliwell’s influence, carved into a ton of ice. How fucking appropriate was that.
Well, suck it, Halliwell. Suck it like a big old blood-spattered popsicle.
That silly thought made me almost laugh, but I quelled the impulse. Just like crying, it could push me over the edge, and I would end up gibbering and useless.
Shane was looking at me, with a worried frown. “You good?”
That almost made me laugh, too. What about any of this could be called good?
Come to think of it, being pinned against the bedroom wall by a big, hot, sexy guy while he furiously fucked me into mindless oblivion… that had been very good.“I’m fine,” I said shakily. “What’s your brother have to say?”
“They’re on their way to Burnt Prairie with a helicopter. Let’s hope Halliwell doesn’t send a helicopter after us. He’s closer than my brother.”
This thing kept getting bigger in scale. Like a world war. “God,” I muttered.
“Sorry. Never mind what I just said. Just drive. Chances are, he won’t want that kind of exposure. Someone could see.”
We jolted and bounced over the rough track in the grass.
The trees had thinned out, and we were finally at the top of the plateau.
I could see the ocean from up here, beyond the clefts of the lower hills.
The sun was low. The sky was turning a bloody color, like that blood-splotched rolling pin.
I kept hearing the blow as it connected with the man’s skull. The contact, vibrating through my body.
The guy with the knife sticking out of his eye. The spatter of blood from the slashed throat. The huge crash of the van hitting the SUV, all the crumpled, fragmented bodies. The ice sculpture, flying, turning… landing. Crunch.
“Whoa! Slow down” Shane touched my arm. “You’ll break the axel!”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Want me to drive?”
I looked down at his bare, bloodied feet. “I can do it.”
“Okay, but simmer down, okay?”
“Fine,” I said, and very suddenly thought of the perfect way to distract myself. “Um. I have a quick question for you. If we’re going to see your family soon.”
“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”
“Do you have a wife? Girlfriend? Your daughter’s mom? Is she in the picture?”
He shot me an incredulous look. “Really? We’re having that conversation now?”
“Well, you just fucked me now, so yeah. I’d like a chance to brace myself for… whatever. It’s not too much to ask. To avoid, you know. Weirdness.”
He was silent for a moment. “Holly’s mother is dead.”
I negotiated swiftly around a series of Jeep-swallowing-sized holes in the road. “I’m, ah, sorry to hear it.”
“It was a car accident,” he said. “Holly was two. We’d had a huge fight, and Trish took the car to pick up Holly at the baby-sitter.
At ninety miles an hour. She was a rage-driver.
Very hot-headed kind of woman. She ran a light, and a truck plowed into her.
Spun her around, flipped her car. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. ”
“God,” I whispered.
“Holly wasn’t in the car. But she very easily could have been.”
“That’s so awful,” I said. “I’m glad your daughter was okay.”
“My parents died that same way, oddly enough,” he said. “It really laid me out for a while. Lucky for Holly, my brother and sister were both there to help.”
“Ah. I see. Yeah. That was… lucky.”
“I was a mess. For a long time after. We were already in trouble as a couple when it happened. At that point, I was sick to death of her tantrums and about ready to throw in the towel. But after the accident, I was so angry at her for depriving Holly of a mother. And at myself for handling things badly. Getting her all wound up. The whole thing was a total shitshow.”
“I can imagine,” I said carefully.
“It put me off relationships for years. I haven’t had what you would call a serious girlfriend since then. Sex, yeah. Plenty of sex. But no strings.”
“Is that what we just had? No-strings sex?”
“I don’t know what we just had. It just happened. Just drive, okay?”
I did so, as the light started to fade. The clouds faded to a darker pink, then a sullen purplish gray like a bruise, and then, it was fading twilight, with fog gathering all around. A cloud was sitting on the top of this mountain, and we were about to plunge into it.
He put his hand on my arm. “Slow down. Let’s wait for Ethan here. If we go any further, we’ll get lost in that fog. I don’t think you could even see the road.”
My instinct was to keep moving at all costs, but Shane was on the phone with his brother again, so clearly, they had a plan, along with my baby sister.
I jerked to an abrupt stop, and the long grass stopped swishing loudly against the undercarriage.
“They’re coming,” he assured me. “Any time now.”
Sure enough, in barely over a minute, a helicopter took form out of the darkness, like a wraith in the clouds. It got bigger, louder. It hovered over the Jeep, insanely loud, then moved over to the open ground. It hovered there until we got out of the Jeep.
I grabbed my bag, and we started making our careful way over the rocky ground. Slow going for Shane, with those tormented feet. The helicopter touched down.
The door opened, and two men jumped out and ran toward us.
Shane stopped as they came closer. The look on his face took my breath.
I recognized the man running toward him.
The paparazzi followed him everywhere. Ethan Masters, tech-bro billionaire, ladies’ man, too handsome for his own good.
He used to be America’s favorite dreamy bachelor, until he fell for a mysterious blonde who didn’t give interviews.
He subsequently retreated mostly out of sight with his beautiful lady friend, breaking all the ladies’ hearts in one fell blow.
But even if I hadn’t seen him in magazines and online, I could have guessed that they were brothers. Ethan was also incredibly handsome. The amazing cheekbones, the piercing eyes. It was a family trait, evidently.
Ethan grabbed his brother’s arms. “We have to hurry,” he said roughly. “We saw them from the air. Four more SUVs on their way. Probably armored. They’ll be here in minutes. Can you guys run?”
“Sure,” Shane said.
“His feet are all bloody and messed up,” I called out. “You should help him.”
Without another word, they flanked Shane, their shoulders sliding under his armpits. They lifted him up off his feet and ran toward the helicopter.
I followed as fast as I could. For a while, I could hear Shane bitching about how they could put him down, he was fine to walk, etc., the stubborn bonehead, but thank God, they ignored him. Soon the helicopter’s roar got too loud to hear him at all.
My hair whipped and snapped in the rotor’s wind. They passed Shane up to someone. Arms reached down, pulling me up into the helicopter.
We rose up before they even closed the door. Someone I couldn’t see in the darkness strapped me into a seat, and wrapped a shiny thermal blanket around me. That person turned, and wrapped one around Shane.
Ethan poured something from a thermal carafe into the cup, offering it to Shane and then pouring another one for me.
It proved to be tea, hot, with lots of sugar and lemon.
It warmed and steadied me. In the darkness, images kept flashing through my mind in gruesome detail.
The slashed throat, the blood-stained glass from the crushed SUV, the knife sticking out of that guy’s eye socket.
When my eyes closed that was what I saw.
Not the wishful, improbable vision of a helicopter taking form in the fog, sweeping us away from all the badness… toward Reggie. My happy dream.
Shane’s brother touched my arm, and pointed toward the window.
For just a moment, before the helicopter entered the raggedy mist, I saw the line of black off-road vehicles, speeding up the road.
They were traveling much faster than my aged, struggling Jeep ever could have.
Four SUVs, probably packed to the gills with armed operatives.
They would have been on us in minutes. They would have flattened us.
I grabbed Ethan’s arm, and leaned toward him, mouthing the words. My sister?
He gave me a thumbs-up. Home, he mouthed, patting my knee. Safe.
That was heartening. But things had been so shitty for so long, I wasn’t sure it could be real. Reggie. Home. Safe. A grouping of words I hadn’t dared to hope for.
I would believe it when I saw it.