Chapter 9 #2
I looked at the hideous thing in my hands, disoriented at how small it felt. My neck felt cold and naked without it. My raw skin burned in the open air.
I looked up at the huge mass of ice beside me. “What the fuck is this?”
“Ice sculpture,” she said. “A decoration, for one of his parties. I was all dressed up for it.” She plucked at the skirt of her ball gown. “It’s the Halliwell Enterprises corporate logo, carved into a ton of ice. What a perfect medium for it.”
“How did you get me out of there?”
“I stole the gurney with your body, after your fake execution. Right outside the incinerator room. You were already in a body bag. I brought a stimulant to throw off the effects of the sedative once we were away from the place. Sorry about that. The drugs, the shock. I know it must have felt awful. And probably still does.”
“Better than the alternative,” I mused. “Which I assume was death.”
“Yeah, that was my line of reasoning, too. This van belonged to the ice sculpture guys. I knocked them out. I really hope I didn’t hurt them.
There was a GPS trace stuck with a magnet under the van, which I pulled out.
I hope that was the only one. Not that it matters.
If I can’t help Reggie, it’s all for nothing. Who gives a fuck about any of it.”
I tried to picture it all, but it wouldn’t come together. This fragile looking creature had mounted a prison break for me, by herself, while I lay unconscious. In the thin hope that I would help save her sister when I woke up. That was true desperation.
I suddenly saw Holly in my head, in her pink sundress, laughing. Her blond hair wind-tossed. I felt it, right down to my core. What I’d do to protect her.
Which was to say, any fucking thing I could think of. I would do anything, try anything, risk anything. And this girl had given it her all. I saw it in her eyes.
I couldn’t throw that back in her face. That wasn’t me. That was Red’s unique, particular magic. She reminded me of who I was, even when I preferred to forget.
“Do you have a functioning phone?” I asked.
She pulled up her skirt giving me a tantalizing glimpse of her slender, shapely legs, digging into a bag she had rigged to hang beneath it. She pulled out a smartphone, and tossed it at me.
I caught it, and there I was, holding a live telephone in my hand. Smooth, heavy, full of power and potential. It was a heady feeling, after being locked out of time and space for so long. Red sagged against the door, looking tragic.
I pulled up the keypad, and for the first time in I had no idea how long, I deliberately tried to remember something. Ethan’s phone number.
My brain didn’t have a fucking clue, but fortunately, my fingers did. They plugged in the numbers. The phone rang... and rang… and rang.
Click. The line opened. “Who’s this?” Ethan’s voice was brusque, suspicious.
Tears sprang in my eyes. I tried to speak, but a dry croak was all that came out of my ruined throat. I coughed and tried again, “Ethan.”
Ethan was silent for a moment. “Who is this?”
“It’s me,” I said.
“Shane?”
“Yes.” My voice broke. My throat was shaking now. Too hard to speak.
“Really? Your voice sounds different.” His voice was low, tight. Suspicious.
“Yeah, it got pretty fucked up. From Vincent’s collar.”
“Yeah, I got a taste of that thing. Tell me, Shane. What’s Mom’s favorite poem?”
“Nature’s first green is gold,” I said.
“Okay. How about Dad’s?”
I hesitated, thinking about it. “Dad didn’t like poetry,” I said.
“He liked westerns and mysteries. And the blues. Old, classic stuff, from the twenties and thirties, like Mississippi John Hurt. He liked ‘The Candy Man Blues.’ ‘You and your Candy Man are getting mighty thick, you must be stuck on your Candy Man’s stick.’ Remember? ”
“Oh, fuck, Shane.” Ethan’s voice shook. “Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute but first, I need a favor,” I said.
“The fuck? What kind of favor?”
“There’s this girl,” I said. “She busted me out of that place just now, on the condition that I help save her little sister. The kid’s stuck in one of Halliwell’s clinics.”
“So it was Halliwell who had you all along? That fucking lying bastard.”
“Yeah, it was him. The kid is Holly’s age. And this girl risked a lot to get me out of there. But I don’t want to put you guys in danger.”
“Fuck danger,” Ethan said. “Tell me what you need.”
Red stared at me, mouth open, eyes wide and shining with terrified hope.
“I’ll put her on the phone,” I said. “She can tell you what she knows. It’s time-sensitive. He’ll punish her for breaking me out by hurting the little sister.”
“Like I needed another reason to hate that prick. Pass her over.”
I handed the phone to Red, who started talking a mile a minute to my brother, too fast for me to follow.
I’d been shaking before, from cold, stress, and whatever mix of drugs were in my system.
Now I felt the whole earth shaking. For so long, I had not permitted myself to feel those feelings, or remember my people.
I had closed the door on all of it. Hope, love, family, the future. I’d let it all go.
Red had blown all of that up. In just a few seconds, I was rubble.
She was still chattering. I tried to focus in on the words.
“… the Cascade Clinic, outside Issaquah. Regina Clarke is her name. She’s only ten.
I think she’s being held in a sub-basement room.
She told me she smelled humidity, mold. And she saw big, fiberglass wrapped pipes in the ceiling of the corridor outside when the doctors come in and out.
She’s never seen another patient there… yeah, I took her there.
She said they haven’t moved her, unless it was while she was unconscious.
.. I have no idea. I saw what I thought were doctors, nurses, orderlies, admin types.
The place looked totally legit, but when I tried hacking into their inpatient database, I couldn’t find one…
did the building blueprint come through?
Yeah, exactly. She’ll need a supply of whatever meds they’re using, too.
Okay. Yeah. I know. I understand. Thanks for giving it a shot.
I appreciate it immensely.” She leaned to pass the phone to me. “He wants you again.”
I took the phone. I craved the sound of Ethan’s voice, but the intensity of my feelings were literally painful. I cleared my throat. It was stiff, tight with emotions I had forgotten how to name, let alone negotiate. “I’m here,” I croaked.
“You aren’t under duress? She’s not holding a gun on you?”
I felt my chest shake with dry, rusty laugh. “Nah. She doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
“That girl is a piece of work,” Ethan said. “So. You want us to go save this kid?”
I hesitated. “She busted me out, Ethan,” I said. “He was going to put me down today. With poison gas. She got me out just in time, on her own. It’s quite a feat.”
“I want to get you first,” Ethan said. “Then we get the little girl.”
“It’ll be too late for the kid if you do,” I said. “It might already be too late.”
“Okay, we send a helicopter to Issaquah. We hit the clinic with some shock and awe, we get the little girl, and with the other chopper, we come get you. Where are you?”
“No fucking clue.” I turned to Red. “Where are we?”
“Washington coast,” she said. “About fifteen miles north of Cray’s Cove and ten miles inland. No place for a helicopter to land around here. Maybe up on the plateau, near the cabin. I’ll send coordinates once we’re up there.”
I relayed that to Ethan. “Can you do this for her?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“For you,” he said. “I’ll do it for you, Shane. If you want me to.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do it for me. I owe this girl.”
“Fine, but I can’t believe this. I keep thinking I’m being pranked.”
“Me too,” I said. “I gotta go. Tell us what happens with the kid.”
“Will do. Get me those coordinates. The first second that you can.”
“Yeah. Uh… thanks for picking up the phone.”
He let out a sharp laugh. “Thanks for still being alive,” he said. “Now stay that way, goddammit. Or else.”
“I’ll do my best. Later, Ethan.” I closed the call. My hand shook as I held the phone out to her. “There you go,” I said. “I kept my side of your imaginary bargain.”
Red’s eyes glittered with tears. “You called them,” she whispered brokenly. “You didn’t have to. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank them, after it’s done.
I’m not the one putting my life and my freedom on the line by attacking Halliwell’s people.
You had better not be fucking with me, Red.
Because if my brother or sister or any of my friends get hurt because of this, we are going to have a serious problem. ”
“I understand, but thank you anyway,” she said stubbornly.
“When it’s done,” I insisted grimly. “It’s bad luck before.”
Silence fell. Birds sang outside, and the sound that pierced my ears was high and thin and pure, and intensely sweet warble. I focused on her outrageous dress. The big skirt. It was heavily spattered with blood, I realized.
“Are you hurt?” I demanded. “There’s blood on your dress.”
“Not mine,” she said. “It’s yours. Your throat, when you were flailing around. After I injected you with the stimulant.”
I looked down. Sure enough, my chest was covered with sticky blood. So what else was new. “Bummer about the dress,” I told her. “I liked that dress.”
She let out a soggy little laugh. “Yeah, this is my life now. On the run in a strapless ball gown.” She plucked at the skirt. “This thing was Halliwell’s choice.”
“He has good taste in ball gowns,” I said. “And that is the first, last, and only good thing I will ever say about that perverted, conniving piece of shit.”
“No arguments from me,” she said swiftly.
“So are you winging this? Or have you got a plan?”
“I don’t know if you could call it a plan, but I have a mouse-hole,” she said.
I squinted at her, bemused. “A what?”
She looked embarrassed. “Sorry. That’s what my mom and I called them.
A safe house. She had good reasons to be paranoid, and she liked organizing off-the-grid places we could retreat to.
Kind of like mice skittering into a hole in the wall.
She went to great lengths so that the paperwork never had her name on it. ”
“Did you ever use them?”
“No, but they made her sleep better. After she died, I kept them stocked and ready. When Halliwell blackmailed me into this, I organized one nearby. Just in case.”
“How far?”
“About ten more miles on the highway, then eight more on a rough mountain road. It’s way up in the hills.”
“What’s there?” I demanded.
“Well, fresh clothes.” She looked up and down my bloodied, half-naked body. “At least for me. Cash. An alternate ID, with credit cards and a driver’s license. A vehicle with a full tank of gas. And a gun.”
That made me sit up and take notice. “A gun? Just one? With ammo?”
“Of course there’s ammo. Yes, just one. A Glock 19. Better than nothing.”
“Could we get trapped up there? Is there more than one way out?”
“There is a back way. I picked the place out on purpose for that. We could follow a rough dirt road across the plateau, and hook up with a road that goes down into the next valley over.”
Huh. It did sound like she’d thought it through, and the prospect of a loaded gun was fucking irresistible to me. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Easier said than done. She tried to help me out of the back, but my legs gave out when I tried to stand, and I almost knocked her down.
We steadied each other, leaning against the van.
She felt strong, lithe, vibrant. Those long, tangled red curls blowing across her face.
So pretty. Those incredible bright green eyes.
“You’re freezing, from lying next to that stupid ice sculpture.
Hold on.” She shrugged off the blue windbreaker that hung around her slim shoulders, and started wrestling it onto me.
I tried not to stare at her freckled little tits, dangerously close to popping out of the corset top.
“What’s the story with this jacket?” I asked. “Where did you get it?”
“Swiped it off one of the ice sculpture guys. Come on, let’s get it onto you.”
I felt so thick, clumsy. I hadn’t worn anything on my upper body since the Vincent and Nicole days, and even then it had been a bloody, sweat-stained tee-shirt. The thing was too small. It twisted and pulled.
“Get into the van,” she urged. “Hurry.”
She nudged me toward the passenger side door. I was having trouble breathing. The sky was fucking huge. Too much light, too much oxygen. The colors, the smells, the moving air. It was going to my head. Making me dizzy, queasy.
She pulled open the passenger side door, pushed me until I climbed in. Even just sitting in a car seat felt... fuck. So normal. Like a real, regular person.
Red got into the driver’s seat, put the van in gear, and we bounced and jounced on the dirt road, climbing until we met a narrow highway. Picking up speed.
I might have signed my own death warrant, believing this girl. Falling for her pleading wiles. But I’d be dead without her for sure. So fuck it.
Watching a gorgeous redhead in a strapless ball gown speeding down the highway like a post-apocalyptic road warrior… damn.
If these moments were to be my final moments, at least they’d be badass.