18. Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES
Jordyn
The truck’s lifted suspension bounced over the center divider. Jamie’s vibrant energy in this moment boosted my confidence, a stark contrast to the doubt I felt when the police accused him of stealing his car.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked.
“Try to get somewhere safe before they get eyes in the sky. Then figure out how Chelomey had the connection to have my vehicle flagged as stolen. I promise we’ll sort out this mess.” He reached over and squeezed my hand, muttering, “Along with everything else.”
Two LAPD cruisers boxed us in tight, sirens whooping. The sun burned over Los Angeles, casting everything in molten gold.
Jamie ripped through the streets, cut through alleys, and blew through a stop sign. “There goes my impeccable driving record,” he growled .
I curled low and shielded my head, adrenaline pouring off me. “Jamie.”
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll shake them in a second.” The truck shuttered, eating potholes.
I lifted my head just enough to peek out the window. Jamie was navigating through an industrial zone. Abandoned warehouses and chain-linked fences whizzed by.
As I looked toward the back, poor Rebel shielded her eyes with her paws.
Jamie smashed through a chain-link fence, tires shrieking.
My wide eyes ate up the scene as the truck flew downward and into a concrete channel.
We weren’t on the streets of Los Angeles anymore.
A small current flowed within the concrete basin’s center: a man-made stream or a desert creek in the summer and a real river in the winter. “Is this the Los Angeles River?”
“Yeah,” Jamie replied as the Gladiator darted beneath a street bridge, graffiti everywhere. “How’d you know?”
“I watched a lot of action movies.” For some reason, I thought of how the LA River ran through a concrete channel for over fifty miles and how it served as the backdrop for the CGI movies that were the only constant in my life. “I should note that they were all cheesy and super Hollywood.”
Behind us, the large tires kicked up mists of water from the stream. While the cruisers backed out, the SUV smoothed down the path.
“That’s why you finally agreed to Die Hard instead of Pretty Woman .” Jamie flashed me a grin, then returned his focus to navigating a way out of the cement structure. “You love action movies. So, I didn’t have to set the table for dinner to get you to agree to watch Die Hard? ”
“Yep. Also, I didn’t want to sully your mind with a few scenes from Pretty Woman , Saint Jamie.” I grinned.
Jamie rolled his eyes .
The smile tumbled from my face when I heard a whirl above us. Helicopter blades.
“Aerial support, crap,” Jamie muttered. “I’m about ready to ditch Bluey.”
“Bluey?” Oh , yeah . The truck . “You know, that’s a cartoon character’s name.”
He lifted a brow as if unaware, then returned his attention to the road. Ah . Got it . More pressing matters than my love of television. “Where? How?”
He tipped his chin toward one of the runoff tunnels half concealed by a wrecked van—nearly a fossil with missing doors. Just when I thought he’d bypass it, Jamie cut a hard right and hit the brakes.
“Ahhh!” I screamed as the vehicle spun sideways, but the impact against the Gladiator and the embankment never came.
The truck stopped two feet away. Jamie came around my side of the vehicle as a police SUV stopped thirty feet away.
As someone yelled again for us to get out and get down, my trembling hand fell into his outstretched one.
Shaking the daze from my eyes, my vision came into focus. Rebel was in his arms. He wore his backpack and handed me the other. “Sorry. I can’t hold your backpack. I have to hold Reb.”
We ducked into the tunnel just as the LAPD SUV doors opened, and darkness swallowed us up. Jamie flicked on his phone light. To our right, putrid water flowed in a storm catch. To the left, a maintenance area. Jamie pounded the pavement, going left.
Behind us, officers shouted into radios, but no one followed us. Not yet.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed underground after hiding out. We emerged from an old overpass many hours later. The homeless encampment smelled better than the passageway we’d just run through. Almost. I blinked my eyes to the light, although the sun was nearly gone, and the sky bled orange .
“Well, now that Los Angeles has become a war zone,”—I sighed, glancing up at the multiple freeway overpasses above us—“where do we go?”
I trembled from the chill. Winter wasn’t here yet, but the icy coldness of evening nipped through my dirty sweatsuit.
“Gimme a second to figure out our next move.” The adrenaline faded from Jamie’s face and then came uncertainty before his handsome features faded into cold, tactical clarity. Gah . I had watched too many action flicks and read too many similar books. Maybe to prepare for this ?
Scratching my head, which felt like a nest of cobwebs, I asked, “Um, I noticed someone has been blowing up your phone. Do we need to ditch it? And the laptop?” Yep . My life was actors and the heroes in books that took me away from the sin I lived in.
Jamie chuckled. “You’re a regular auld spy.”
Embarrassment clawed up my throat, so I snapped, “You mean old .”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said auld . Okay. Gerard Butler?”
“Who?”
Actor . “Oh, never mind.”
He offered a perfectly laid eye roll, then pulled me into his arms. “Admit it, you like my accent. One I didn’t know I had until you said so. Maybe all this alpha male rage brings the Scots outta me?”
“Hah. I’m inclined to agree with that. The angrier you get, the thicker it gets.” I winked, letting him know that he always sounded Scottish.
Jamie rolled his eyes again, like he still didn’t believe it, but humored me anyway. “Alright, alright. Don’t say it out loud, though a nod will do.”
I snorted. “As if. ”
He chuckled, squeezing my hips. “I love how you insist on having the last word.”
And I loved how he’d incorporated the L-word in this conversation. I pulled away from him. “Look at you, tryna make a Black girl blush.”
“Trying?” He scoffed. “Mission accomplished. Or shall I say, this mission wasn’t impossible?”
“ Mm-hmm , a Mission Impossible reference?” I chuckled.
As he held me in his arms, I glanced over at a couple starting a fire in a trashcan to warm the night. Jamie caught my attention with the rough padding of his thumb along my jaw. “When we marry, I’ll make you blush all the way to your toes.”
My heart rate raced to a crescendo. “After all my attempts to torture you—nothing. And here you are returning the favor. Talk of marriage has me weak in the knees. And why here? Ugh .” This entire scenario, with us standing here, brought those reckless teenage summer romances I used to read to the forefront of my mind.
Covered in dirt, we were a mess, yet my desire for him was at the highest point. “If we were somewhere else …”
“On that note,” he chuckled. “This is why I’m so honest with affection for you. Right here. So that we don’t ruin our abstinence quest.”
What abstin — “Can we just go?” Before one of these tents starts to look appealing with me and you and the audience of insects that are no doubt in it.
“Actually, not until it’s fully dark.” Jamie stopped near overturned wooden crates by the steel trash bin, now transformed into a fire pit.
We sat down. I stilled myself from trembling from the chilly air.
The sweat from all our running wasn’t doing me any favors now.
He swung his backpack off, crouched down to Rebel.
As he unraveled her bandages, I removed the items to cleanse her wound. “Oh, dear girl,” he sighed.
I’d fallen asleep before the veterinarian finished surgery, but even I could tell she’d bled too much.
I handed him an alcohol prep pad. My eyes scanned the homeless couple who sat opposite the trash can, whispering and flicking glances across the flames at us .
Why so suspicious ? I didn’t have a phobia per se, but we had enough money in Jamie’s backpack that I wouldn’t be mad if they and all their homies fought us for it.
Couldn’t be mad. I’d given the In-N-Out lady a couple of bills that I’d forgotten to make IOUs for.
Yeah . Quite irrelevant under the circumstances. I focused on what mattered. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, Jamie … Can we call your parents? I still don’t know if we need to ditch your electronics.”
“Oh, yeah. You looked genuinely concerned. I didn’t answer you. Sorry.” Jamie’s hands moved with compassion and precision as he re-bandaged Rebel. “Phones track location even when powered off, but I’ve disabled mine. We’re good. Did the same with my laptop.”
“So, we can call your parents? Or your brother.” My eyes narrowed as I captured the memory of me and the other handsome MacKenzie’s brief argument. What was his name ? “Call Leith.”
“No. I don’t trust them, JorJor.”
“Why?”
“Before I was interrupted by the cops”—he glanced over his shoulder, as if ready to fight—“I’d told you that for some reason you slipped my mind while growing up.
I remembered so much of it. There were so many times that I wished to God I couldn’t recall a single thing while wrestling with the darkness that drowned me.
After I found that little girl, I took back every time I begged God to make it all go away.
I’d remember every moment as long as I could remember you. ”
My heart lobbed in my throat. I didn’t wish what I’d been through on my worst enemy—well, except for Rocket. There was a time I hoped to forget every moment of it too .
I glanced at the couple across from us, now pulling out food. Reaching over, the man gave Rebel a hotdog.
“Thank you,” Jamie said.
“If we had more …” The woman with him glanced at me, mouth forming a grimace of apology.
“No, it’s alright,” I replied. “Our girl has lost lots of blood.”