Chapter 9 #2
As the waitress came back to take their orders after a quick discussion about what the options were, everybody quickly ordered burgers and fries, which seemed to be the only constant in these small places, plus the simplest and fastest to order.
When they were alone again, Tricia asked the two men, “Now that we’re here, where are we going next?”
Rubin lowered his voice and shared, “We have a place somewhere relatively close by where we can go hide away for a couple days.”
She looked at him in delight. “As much as I want to believe you, I really don’t think it’s happening at all. But a gal can always wish.”
He smiled. “I know. Doesn’t seem possible, does it?”
“No, it really doesn’t. And when you say a couple days, I expect a but to follow.” She frowned at him, but he just shrugged. Then she sighed and added, “It doesn’t really matter. I presume at some point all of this will be a done deal, and I can get back to a normal life.”
“That’s the plan,” he noted cheerfully.
It might be the plan, and he might be cheerful about it, but she definitely had an underlying sense that not everything was going according to plan, as neither one of the men had eased up during the entire meal.
They both ate so fast that she knew it was an eat and get out of here situation, as if they had a million places to be, or they wouldn’t get a chance to finish their meals.
“We can get the rest to-go,” she suggested.
“Maybe we should,” Hayden offered. As he stood up, he looked back at Rubin, who was already asking a nearby waitress for take-out bags for their leftovers.
As she stood up, she swore under her breath.
“What?” Hayden asked.
“Don’t look now, but we have company.”
He froze and deliberately did not look, then asked, barely audible, “You want to give me a rundown?”
“Yeah, Arlene and some of her friends,” she whispered, checking out the group. “I don’t think she’s seen me yet.”
“And we don’t want her to see you at all,” he whispered back. “So, let’s go in the direction that I’m facing now, and we’ll go quietly. With any luck, we can get out of here.”
He led her right out through the back of the restaurant, through the kitchen itself, as the chef eyed them in wonder.
“Do you think it’ll be obvious when we don’t come back for the leftovers?” Tricia asked Rubin.
“It won’t matter,” he whispered, “because we’ll be long gone. But it also means that they understand what we were doing.” He glanced at her and frowned. “There’s a good chance that they have more than enough people to cover both routes out of here.”
“Right, not a ton of options for roads here,” she noted in a practical tone. “Going the backroads would be smarter, yet they would expect that, right?”
He smiled. “We’re not done yet.”
And, sure enough, as she turned around, he motioned at a vehicle in front of them. “Let’s go.”
She quickly hopped into their now-stolen vehicle, Hayden driving as usual. She asked, “We’ll just leave a whole run of abandoned vehicles behind us, won’t we?”
“Maybe,” Rubin conceded, “and I know that upsets you, but the alternative—”
“I know. I know,” she interrupted. “The alternative is much worse.” And, with that, Hayden took off again, speeding away. She added, “I really would love to find a place to hole up and to get off the road.”
“That’s what we were just discussing, whether to continue with our plans or to make new ones.”
“How about make new ones?” she replied, trying hard to contain her bitterness, without succeeding.
They glanced at her. She shrugged. “I get it. I’m at everybody’s mercy, and I don’t have a say in any of it, but can we not find a plane somehow, something that would help put a bigger distance between them and us? ”
“We are waiting for that at the new location,” Rubin shared. “A small airport is not very far from here.”
“And you’re afraid that we won’t get there now?” she asked, and when neither of them said anything, she knew what that meant. “That sucks. That’s where I was hoping we were going.”
“We’ll still try to make it,” Rubin stated.
“We just have to get there,” Hayden supplied. She glared at him. He smiled. “Yes, that was meant to be a joke.”
“Not funny,” she snapped.
“I know,” he said cheerfully. “Nothing about this is funny.”
Suddenly Hayden took a very hard right turn and then a hard left and pulled in behind some trees.
A vehicle whipped past with a suddenness that surprised her, and she gasped. “Was that them?”
“Yes,” he declared, his voice hard. He turned, and instead of following behind them, he headed back the way they had come.
She watched in disbelief as they passed by the restaurant, and, for a crazy moment, wondered if he would go in and get their leftovers, but he drove right on by. “What are we doing? What’s the plan?”
“We’ll try and get out of here using a different route.”
“How about a train? Would they consider that? At least then we wouldn’t be leaving vehicles all over the place.”
Rubin smiled at that. “We considered trains, but they’re hard to get off of, if you have an urgent need to,” he explained. She knew he was toning it down for her. He added, “And we would likely come up against a heavy need in a short amount of time.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “Fine. … Whenever you guys get around to telling me, I guess I’ll just keep moving. You say left, and I go left,” she muttered, staring off in the distance.
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah, go after them. Take them out and drop them in a ditch somewhere,” she snapped, not able to control her words. “Then we can go on our merry way without being afraid of being chased down some rabbit hole.”
Hayden frowned at her. “If you weren’t with us, we already would have.”
“Crap,” she muttered. “Seriously?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “We can’t put you in danger.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You do realize that your version of danger and mine are different, right?”
He smiled. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t exactly what you wanted.”
“No, hell no, it’s not,” she muttered, “but it’s not as if I have any options here.”
When Hayden returned to where they had originally gotten off the highway, he turned around and headed onto the main highway, bustling with traffic.
“So much for staying hidden,” she noted.
“It’s not so much about trying to stay hidden,” he explained, “but we’ll make better time on this road. Plus, we will do our best to switch vehicles again.”
She closed her eyes, and all too soon they were parked at a truck stop. When she realized what their plan was, she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. “A semi? You stole a semitruck?” she asked in shock, as they herded her aboard and got back on the road. “Won’t this be obvious?”
“Not necessarily.”
“You got it off of a person who was literally sitting in it.”
“The guy’s drunk though, so he has no business driving this thing anyway,” Hayden pointed out, with a smile, “and I paid this time.”
“That’s something. Don’t you think it’ll be obvious when he comes out of his drunken stupor to find that you hijacked his truck?”
“Nope, he’ll just come up with an excuse for his boss as to why his delivery is late and will just carry on.”
“I can’t believe this will work for us,” she muttered. “You know it won’t go according to plan, not unlike all the previous plans.”
He smiled and nodded. “Nothing ever does.”
But it wasn’t all that long, and they were at another coffee shop and had switched vehicles yet again.
She groaned as she hopped into a very small car.
“I didn’t think they came in this size.” And, sure enough, she felt every bump of the road through the back seat.
“I never understood how much difference there was in the comfort of vehicles.”
“Why? You like this one?”
“Hell no,” she muttered. “This one is brutal.” Hayden didn’t say anything and just smiled. And she realized that, for them, it really didn’t matter.
For them it was just a means to an end, and personal comfort wasn’t an issue. So, she needed to come to terms with that and to get on the same program. When night finally fell, she had to dig in her heels. “Are we stopping, or am I stretching out here and trying to sleep?”
“You’ll stretch out there and sleep,” Rubin replied.
And what seemed to be only a few minutes later, just as she went to lie down, everything changed.
Rubin was now driving and hit the brakes incredibly hard, sending her flying forward.
Just as she was about to shout, the back door was flung open, and she was pulled out and told to run.
She ran, but she was tripping over herself as she tried to get her footing.
She couldn’t see anything in the darkness.
Rubin held onto her, staying close beside her. She glanced around, only to see no sign of Hayden.
“Where’s Hayden?” she screamed.
“Hush,” he muttered, and his tone allowed for no argument.
“Is he hurt?”
“No, he’s on the run.”
She didn’t understand, and she looked around maddeningly.
“Hey, you need to focus on you. Hayden will be fine. He’s creating a diversion so we can get you away.”
And it struck her, once again, just how much effort these people were going to, just to keep her safe.
“You do realize that it doesn’t matter,” she grumbled, when they finally stopped. “My father will not let whatever happens to me be a deciding factor in his vote.”
“That may be true,” Rubin noted, “but these people do not know that. And, for them, you seem to be their last hope for getting the senator to do what they want. And that is something we can’t let happen.”
There were tears in her eyes from the running. Her chest hurt, along with her back and her feet. She was desperately hoping that Rubin was okay when he slumped down on the ground beside her, barely winded. “Let’s just take five and reassess.”
“Reassess,” she repeated, her chest heaving, hurting all over the place. “My God, I’m already done for.”
“I thought you were a track and field runner.”