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Many The Miles - Part Two
© Annie Holder 2019
With sincere apologies to all Americans for the liberties I have taken with your language…
(This text may contain swearing or sexual references which may not be suitable for readers under 18.)
What’s happened so far…
Drifter Gage has rescued the mysterious and seriously-injured Kennedy. She’s in hospital, gradually recovering, and her identity has finally been revealed in a newspaper article. Some intimidating hoodlums have paid her a visit, and while Gage attempts to frighten them off, the confused and still-mute Kennedy does a disappearing act out of a bathroom window.
Who sent the hoodlums, where is Kennedy going, and what on earth is going to happen to the shellshocked Gage next?
TAKEN
Stomach tight with terror, Gage lurched across the slippery floor to the open window, leaning out. Four feet beneath, in the sandy soil of the recently watered shrubbery, a set of small footprints were clearly visible in the damp mud, leading diagonally in the direction of the parking lot. Gage squinted into the sun glinting blindingly off the roofs of the parked cars, spotting the slight, blonde figure in her hospital smock staggering in circles, bumping between vehicles like a pinball. Without thinking, Gage clambered after her, landing clumsily in the flowerbed. Pelting across the parking lot to catch her up, he slid his hands under her elbows to support her toppling figure. She was panicking; breath shuddering and whistling through parted lips, tears tracking her drawn cheeks, newspaper still flapping in her little fist. She whirled around as she felt his touch, instantly falling, her injured brain unable to command her unstable body to react with any speed or agility. Gage caught her before she hit the tarmac, wrapping his arms around her, and hissing urgently, “Kennedy, it’s ok! It’s only Gage; remember me? I found you? I brought you to hospital? Do you remember?”
She didn’t reply, but her bruised left hand clutched a fistful of his t-shirt and clung on determinedly. The cannula was still in the vein, the drip tube dangling a few inches of useless, stretched, and severed plastic down her arm, making Gage feel mildly queasy at the sight of it.
“Did you rip that tube yourself? Kennedy, you need to be in bed. You’re very sick! You can’t be out here. Let me take you back inside – “
No, no, no! Frantic shaking of her injured head, lolling as if her neck couldn’t support its weight, desperate pushing at his chest to free herself from his embrace, limbs juddering uncontrollably.
“Kennedy, please relax! It’s ok. How about we just go sit in my truck for a minute? You need to rest, not get excited…”
Calming; clinging to him.
“It’s right over here,” Gage steered her slowly across the hot asphalt, warning, “It probably ain’t great in there. I’ve barely been back to it since the afternoon I found you.”
He unlocked it, and helped her carefully inside. The footwell was littered with rubbish. The interior smelled ripe and stale. Getting in the driver’s side, he used the camping pillow – still stained with her blood – to prop her head and neck so she could lean back and stretch her legs along the front bench seat.
“Comfy?” He tried an encouraging smile, took her burning bare feet into his lap, and rubbed off the mud of the flowerbed and grit of the sun-baked parking lot with his work-roughened fingers. She whimpered, slapped the paper across her lap, and smacked it with the back of her hand, as if punishing it for the disruption it had caused.
Gage patted her shin reassuringly, lifted the paper, and asked, “Can I read this again?”
A feeble nod.
“You ok? Need me to fetch somebody now?”
No.
“Those guys…know ‘em? Seen ‘em before? What made you run?”
Too weak to sit up, she instead pushed at the buckle of his belt with her reaching toes.
“Belt? The buckle? A belt buckle on one of them? The little guy? Seen it before?”
Yes.
“Where?”
Can’t remember.
“Was it distinctive? I didn’t notice. What did it look like?”
She hooked her thumbs together, and flapped her fingers.
“A bird? Like an eagle or something?”
Yes.
“But you don’t remember where you’ve seen it before? Don’t remember their faces?”
No.
“Those guys looked like hoodlums to me.”
He tapped his knuckles on the paper, “You read this, right?”
Yes.
“This political story your Editor refers to – is there any chance you’re onto something serious and you don’t even know it? I mean, with the text of this article, he’s implying pretty heavily that you are, isn’t he? ‘State significance’ – what does that mean? Is there a chance you told him what you knew before you hit your head and forgot it all?”
She was about to reply when he noticed her eyes focus on something behind him, and widen in alarm. She pointed anxiously, the broken drip tube swinging creepily back and forth. Gage turned his head, following the path of the trembling finger.
There they were at her bathroom window, Rocky and Bullwinkle. Short and slight, big and fat – just like the old cartoon – their unmistakeable silhouettes peered out at the mess of jumbled footprints in the dirt, gawking left and right for a glimpse of their quarry. They’d be comical if this whole situation wasn’t so disturbingly menacing. A few seconds of heated discussion at the open window before the two of them ducked back inside. Gage pushed the key into the ignition and started the truck’s engine, “I locked the hospital room door! Didn’t hold ‘em long, did it? They really want to meet you, huh? Something tells me we’re safer outta here for a couple of hours. I’ll straighten it out with the staff later. I just think, right now, it’s better to be where those two ain’t.”
****
The movement and stench of the dirty truck made her nauseous, so she rolled down the window to feel the breeze on her face, closed her eyes, and concentrated on holding her head still. The next thing she knew was waking to the scarred man scrabbling in the footwell beside her, retrieving the rubbish and shoving it into a bulging plastic bag. He grinned sheepishly, “Hi. Just cleaning up the apartment to impress you. I don’t have girls over a whole lot, as you can probably tell. We’re at the beach! You wanna get out, or do you feel unwell? Want me to just take you back to hospital?”
She tried to sit up, couldn’t, and a wave of hopelessness washed over her – can’t move; can’t talk; can’t even remember anything about this seemingly-gentle man, and why I’m here with him.
Her face crumpled, the tears welled…and a rough palm caressed her cheek, “Shhh, don’t cry, you’ll make me feel bad. I’m trying my best here. Classy date in a stylish limo, romantic afternoon on the beach…? You gotta humour my pathetic efforts, or I’ll cry too…”
She smiled despite her frustration, gave up trying to force her body to do something it wouldn’t, and flopped back onto the pillow again, eyes closed. She heard the click, thump, and rustle of him fishing for something in the glove box, and felt the warmth of his body very close to hers, “I’ll pick you up, and we’ll just go sit in the shade and watch the ocean for a while. How does that sound?”
He could be anyone! He could be dangerous! She looked at his smiling face, his kind eyes. She trusted him – was that foolish?
“Ready?”
Yes.
“Bring your newspaper.”
He carried her with confidence and care, placing her carefully on the sand beneath the gnarled bronze trunk of a Gumbo-Limbo tree. She sat between his bent knees, his body curving protectively around her back. He didn’t seem to mind her leaning against him, and resting the weight of her unbearably heavy head in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.
“Still ok?”
Yes.
“Good. I like the beach. I’m thirty, and I’d never seen the ocean ‘til a few weeks’ ago! Can’t get enough of it now. I’m from out West. We got prairies, forests, mountains, but no seaside.”
She slid her hand across the back of his, and tapped a finger onto his wedding ring.
“What?”
She tried to say ‘where’s your wife’; couldn’t, and cast helplessly about her for a way to make him understand.
Brow furrowed, he watched her for a moment, then asked, “You want to know about my wife?”
Yes!
“Right…what sort of thing do you want me to tell you?”
She flapped the front of her hospital smock, and pointed to the cannula and the squares of dressings.
“What does she think about me being in hospital with you instead of at home with her? Is she shredding all my shirts and boiling my pet rabbit as we speak?”
She grinned, rocking her hand. Something like that.
“She’s not, you’ll be relieved to know. If I had a rabbit, he’d be just fine.”
He glanced down at the sand, suddenly a lot less jocular and self-assured, “I’m…widowed. The fire…”
He gestured to the terrible scars, “I got all burned-up, but I made it.”
He clicked the two rings together absently as he whispered, “My wife wasn’t so lucky.”
His straining voice faded to nothing as his throat closed over with suppressed emotion. She couldn’t move her woozy head to look at him, but nevertheless felt his quickening breathing, tensing torso, and sudden rapid heartbeat at her back. She slid her fingers between his, and held on. It took several moments, but gradually his heart rate slowed, his breathing steadied, and she felt his body relax against hers once more.
Why here?
“What am I doing here?”
Yes.
“I’m on vacation, I guess – although it doesn’t feel like one. My baby son died in the fire too. He was only a few days old. I’ve found it very hard to get over losing them both. You got any kids?”
She shook her head, swaying woozily at the movement. She might not be able to remember much, but was confident she’d recall something as significant as marriage and motherhood.
He nodded, didn’t comment; continued, “To cut a very long story short, I’m so wrapped up in the past it’s screwing up my chance of a future. I’m taking some time away from home to put a lid on it and learn how to move on. Not to forget them…just to convince myself life’s still worth living without them in it; to see that there’s a world beyond the farm gate. Running into you’s done me a favour, really. It’s made me quit worrying about myself, because all I’ve done these last few days is fret over you. It sure has kept my mind occupied.”
She wondered what he’d done for her; what had dragged him to the hospital room of a stranger – that is, if they were strangers to one another. Oh, why couldn’t she remember!
Grateful to him simply for providing reassurance when everything seemed so enormous and mystifying, she pulled his fist firmly against her chest, wrapped both her hands around it, and squeezed as hard as she could; trying to articulate her gratitude through that single, inadequate gesture.
He pushed his face into her hair, and whispered, “I’m ok… Thank you for giving a shit.”
He rocked onto one hip and withdrew a pen and an unopened packet of postcards from the back pocket of his jeans, passing them to her, “I thought we could jot some notes about what’s going on here. Might help us make sense of it. You’re the journalist, so you can do the writing.”
Her usual dexterity completely absent, she eventually had to pass the sealed packet back to him in defeat. He peeled it open and slid out a couple of cards, “My Momma bought these. I’m supposed to be writing home. As you can see, the whole staying-in-touch thing ain’t going so well. If I don’t think about home and family, then I don’t think about them…Joelle, and Ryan. It’s the coward’s way to fix the problem, but at the moment it’s all I can manage. I’m hoping eventually I’ll deal with it somehow, and then I’ll be able to go back. Right now, just the idea of writing a postcard to my mother or my sister scares the crap outta me.”
She poked his chest. You.
“What?”
You. Forgot you.
“Me? My name? Again?”
Write it.
He wrote in spiky capitals – GAGE.
She nodded, and pushed the card into the sand beside her leg. She knew he’d already told her. She wondered how many times.
“And you’re called Kennedy. It’s unusual. You’re the first Kennedy I’ve ever met. Are you named after the President?”
No.
She was accustomed to writing frequently and extensively. Her usual handwriting was a breezy, looping swirl of confidently flowing prose, but what stuttered from the nib of the pen onto the white postcard took considerable effort, and shocked her deeply. It didn’t look like her writing at all. What it resembled was the shaky messages her long-deceased grandmother had used to put in birthday cards. Old-lady-writing.
Kennedy’s sense of self-worth was founded upon being an active, fit, strong, stubbornly unstoppable thirty-four-year-old woman capable of anything she set her mind to. Determined not to panic over what appeared to be a comprehensive deterioration of her faculties, she very firmly assured herself this latest distressing aberration was as temporary as the loss of speech and, tongue protruding with concentration, scrawled; Kennedy Space Center. Dad did Comms. Was a space nut. Frustrated astronaut.
“Did he work at the Space Center?”
Yes.
“Wow. Have you been there?”
Yes.
“Amazing! You have a cool name, Kennedy!”
She grinned, bashfully flattered by his enthusiasm.
“So, you can remember your family, your childhood?”
Yes.
“Is there anybody you want me to call – someone who’ll be worried about you? Mom? Dad? Boyfriend?”
It was a strange sensation to blush and well-up with tears at the same time. She wrote; No one to call. Dad’s dead. Mom’s not interested.
“I’m sorry to hear that. No other family? Brothers and sisters? No guy going crazy waiting for you to come home?”
There’s no one. I do get boyfriends sometimes, I’m not totally weird…but I can’t seem to keep them for long.
“What do you do?”
Tick ‘em off, I guess. Ask them, not me.
He chuckled, and teased, “How about me? Have I managed to make any impression on you yet? Got my name embedded up there now?”
Oh…no…already it was gone! It took her a beat too long to recall and grope for the card in the sand, reddening again.
“Short term memory shot, huh?”
She was too ashamed to respond.
“I’m not that offended,” he ribbed gently, indicating the newspaper and tactfully suggesting, “Just skim through that again to refresh your thoughts. Let’s see what we can figure out between the two of us. Make a list. You can’t remember those guys’ faces, but you do remember the little guy’s belt buckle?”
A belt buckle – now that was familiar. An eagle…yes, she remembered that.
“You can’t remember how you wound up hurt? You don’t remember me finding you, or getting to hospital?”
No.
“But you can remember your job as a reporter, your Editor on this paper, your parents, your personal life – all the long-term stuff?”
Yes.
“Well, that’s a start. So, think, Kennedy-Space-Center, what possible political story could you be investigating way down here? Corruption? Environmental damage? Something to do with fishing? What’s the perennial news story? What are you always writing articles about?”
She considered, then haltingly wrote; Tourism, Property Development, Traffic Problems, Ocean Pollution, Hurricanes…
“Ok…so might it be something to do with misappropriation of relief money after Irma? Some kind of public-funding scandal?”
Don’t know.
“Those hoodlums knew you were in that hospital! The longer I think about it, the more convinced I become that if they were cops, when I got in their way back there, they would’ve shown me their ID and demanded I comply. Instead, they acted real suspicious and pretty incompetent. A couple of bungling heavies doing a job for the big boss like something out of a bad gangster movie! The article suggests you got a tip-off. Can you remember where from?”
No.
“Never mind. We’ll come back to that. Add ‘tip-off’ to your list. Ok, according to the paper, you got a tip, you followed it up, found out somehow that the dirty dealings you’d uncovered – it unhelpfully doesn’t say what they are – had a political connection. You told your Editor…and vanished. It looks very much as if someone with some influence is trying to shut you up, Kennedy. They called in the heavies, who did goodness-knows-what to you, took you to the woods near the highway, dumped you, and expected you to die. You didn’t. Instead, I found you and took you to hospital, and now whoever-it-is knows you’re still alive and is trying to finish the job. How do they know?”
She shrugged, too shattered for nimble thinking.
“I’ve got a theory about it. The Nurse on duty saw this paper, joined the dots, and called the cops – but they never showed. Instead, our two suited and booted buddies rocked up. It might be a coincidence, but…?”
Dirty Cop?
“Exactly. So, is that your political story – police corruption?”
Don’t know. Can’t remember anything. Useless!
“Hey…don’t get upset. All we’re doing is bouncing ideas around. Nothing says any of them are correct. Stuck at the back of your head somewhere is the answer to all this. I wonder how we shake it to the front? What worries me is, if we’re right, whoever did all this to you doesn’t know you can’t talk, and doesn’t know you can’t remember, so they’re going to keep trying to silence you until they succeed…and if the cops are corrupt, they ain’t gonna protect you!”
No Hospital then! Don’t take me back!
“You are sick. I have to take you back.”
No. Sitting duck in Hospital! Safer with you.
“Kennedy, I’m a farmer, not an action-hero! I have to take you back. What about your medical care?”
You’re overreacting! I can lie low. Rest. Recover. Remember.
“You only properly woke up a few hours ago! You’ve been in and out of consciousness for days – confused, largely-unresponsive… It could take weeks for you to recover from what happened to you! What if you have a relapse or a seizure, something I have no idea how to deal with?”
Safer with you than in Hospital.
“Baby, I got a dirty truck and basic first aid! I know nothing about head injuries or serious trauma! We can’t even keep your cuts properly clean. No. We have to go back.”
What about the danger? What about those guys?
“I understand…but you’re in even greater danger out here. You could get a serious infection! In hospital they can care for your medical needs properly.”
I’m at risk in Hospital.
“We don’t know that for sure. Everything I’ve suggested is hypothetical…but I admit it does all look mighty suspicious. The good thing is we spotted those idiots a mile off – they weren’t exactly subtle – and that was before we were even aware you might be in danger. Now we’ll be ten times more vigilant. I got rid of ‘em once, I can do it again! I will do everything in my power to protect you…but in hospital, ok? I’m not arguing with you about this, Kennedy! We’re going back, and you’re going to complete your treatment.”
Resigned despite her perturbation, knowing what he said made sense, she let him lift her off the sand and carry her limp body back to the truck without further protest.
As they turned onto the road again, she tugged at his sleeve and rubbed her stomach.
Hungry.
“Really? Ok. If we see a good place, I’ll stop and get us something. I guess I’m peckish too. Take-out, right? You can’t exactly waltz into a restaurant dressed like that!”
He indicated the hospital smock, her dirty bare feet, the patchwork of tiny dressings.
She frowned, too drained to respond, rested her head back on the pillow, and fell asleep in seconds.
When she next awoke, Gage was manoeuvring the truck into a shady parking spot a long line of parked cars down from a roadside food shack.
“Awake?”
Yes.
“Lobster-tail? Fries?”
Yes.
“Still mad at me? Still think I’m overreacting?”
She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
He watched her keenly, then asked softly, “What’s my name?”
She hesitated, glanced around the truck for a clue, and spotted the card sitting on top of the newspaper. She knew the word written on it was his name, but it was too far away to read. She reached for it, and Gage’s strong hand closed firmly around her wrist, preventing her, “Without looking at your cheat card!”
She didn’t know. Tears of shame rushed into her eyes. She turned her flushed face away from him.
He brushed a stray lock of hair off her cheek, reasoning gently, “You have memory loss, confusion, problems with movement; you’re exhausted from what you’ve been through. That’s why we’re on our way back to hospital now. I’m not trying to be an asshole; I’m trying to look out for you!”
Touched, she reached up and cupped his scarred jaw in her hand. The skin felt papery and odd, dry and rippled under her fingertips. “Still mad?”
No.
“Buddies?”
Buddies.
“Lobster-tail and fries?”
Yes.
“I’m locking you in. For your own safety…and because I don’t trust you not to run away the moment my back is turned.”
Me?
“Yeah, you, Little Miss Helpless.”
Can’t run.
“Maybe not…but that won’t stop you trying, will it?”
She suddenly wanted to hug him, but he was too far away, and she couldn’t sit up quickly enough to catch him before he moved, “Back in a minute. Behave yourself.”
Gage fidgeted nervously in line at the popular stall, instinctively averting his unusual appearance from two cops demolishing a burger each and flirting with the long-suffering girl wiping tables. He tried not to notice how much the man behind the counter stared at his scars as he paid for the warm, deliciously-aromatic parcels of food, schlepping wearily back along the line of hot cars to the shade where he’d left his truck, unbearably boiling in his jeans. He’d put them on days ago, the air conditioning inside the hospital making him chilly as he’d sat for hours on end watching Kennedy’s immobile features and praying she’d stir. Directly in front of him, another truck was turning from its roadside parking space and trying to rejoin the unceasing flow of rush-hour traffic. Gage leant up against the door of the parked police car and waited for the truck to move out of his way. Suddenly, the squad car’s radio crackled into life and, through the open window, Gage heard the horrifying intelligence that during their two-hour absence from hospital, he had effortlessly metamorphosed from Good Samaritan into ruthless kidnapper!
FUGITIVES
Gage’s legs buckled and he sagged helplessly against the squad car, accidentally dropping both packets of food in the dust at his feet as the shock turned his limbs to spaghetti. As he bent shakily to retrieve them, he glanced surreptitiously back up the road towards the cops, wondering if their personal radios were on, and whether they were simultaneously hearing the details of his and Kennedy’s descriptions being comprehensively relayed by the relentless voice. The cops didn’t immediately leap up from the picnic table and chase him down the line of parked cars, so Gage rescued the food and hurried back to the truck, clambering in. Tossing the increasingly battered food wraps onto the seat between them, he slid his hands around the hips of the soundly sleeping Kennedy, and eased her down until her body was too low to be glimpsed through the window. He couldn’t perform an illegal U-turn in front of two cops, however intent they were on their snack break, so had no option but to drive right past them. Luckily, the unbroken stream of vehicles on the busy highway would mean his truck would soon be obscured by another, and another, and on, and on in the ceaseless homeward-bound flow…but it only took one of them to look up from the table and spot his easily-recognisable face, or notice his out-of-state licence plate. He just had to go for it – there was no alternative. As unobtrusively as he could, he inched out persistently until another driver yielded. Sedately, with barely a crunch of tyre on gravel, Gage accelerated smoothly onto the highway. The agonising creep towards the seated cops was the longest hundred yards of his life. The blood surged so loudly in his ears it even drowned out the rushing of the air past the wide-open windows. Thank God his burns were on the left-hand side of his body – if the cops glanced up, they’d just see an average-looking guy driving a boring blue truck. He simply had to hold his nerve and hope they enjoyed eating and flirting way more than fighting crime. Desperate not to attract any attention whatsoever by suspicious gawking or accidental eye-contact, Gage stared fixedly ahead through the windshield. To his utter dismay, as he drew level with the shack, the cars in front suddenly began to slow, “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no…”
Gage lifted reluctantly off the accelerator, whole body juddering with tension, heart hammering in fear as the truck crawled past the food stall at a maximum ten miles an hour, “Come on… Please… Come on…keep going, just keep going…please…”
Someone up there had his back. The cars inched along torturously for over five hundred yards, but never came to a complete halt – and the impatient guy in the Chevy behind was tailgating so close you’d have struggled to slide one of Momma’s postcards between the fenders of their two vehicles, fortuitously concealing Gage’s distinctive licence plate. He pictured Joelle interceding on his behalf; imagining her tossing her ponytail over her shoulder, parting the clouds, and demanding, ‘Hey, Big-Guy, you see what’s goin’ on down there? Cut my husband a little slack, willya? He may be a chump, but he ain’t no criminal!’
Gage dared to sneak a look in the rearview mirror. There was the shack, the tables, the line getting longer as more people decided to grab a bite on their way home and wait for the heaviest jams to clear…and the cops, still eating, still yakking, not showing the slightest inclination to conduct a high-speed pursuit. Trembling, Gage slumped in the seat and drove on robotically, paying scant attention to the road ahead, t-shirt sticking uncomfortably to the sweat on his back.
The milometer racked up another six before the traffic thinned, and Gage found a place he considered safe to stop. Turning off the highway, the violent rocking of the truck across uneven ground woke Kennedy, who blinked in bewilderment. Once confident they were concealed from the road, Gage turned off the engine and sank his whirling head onto the hot steering wheel, groaning aloud. He couldn’t think straight. Complete panic paralysed his brain like a cramping muscle. He thought he might throw up.
A gentle touch to the back of his bowed head.
Kennedy.
He needed to explain.
He jolted up abruptly, making her recoil in alarm and slither away from him across the seat.
“I’m in deep shit! I got the food, walked back past a parked cop car, the window was open, and the radio started going crazy! Reports of the abduction of a female patient from the hospital – a local reporter called Kennedy McKendrick; heard of her? Some psycho’s kidnapped her, apparently, in his blue Dodge; last seen on hospital CCTV leaving the parking lot in a southerly direction. My licence plate, my fucking description – and I don’t exactly blend in, do I? I shoulda just taken you straight back inside the moment you got out that window! That’s what my instinct told me to do, and yet I ignored it – and look at the goddam trouble I’m in now! I didn’t kidnap you, Kennedy McKendrick. If anything, you kidnapped me!”
Rounding on her, red-faced with furious fright, Gage sighed and relented. She looked very small and vulnerable squashed up against the door of the truck, acres of bench seat between them, watching him with wary mistrust. Why was he bothering going nuts at her when she doubtless had absolutely no idea what he was talking about? Gently, he ventured, “Kennedy, do you know where you are?”
No.
“Ok. You definitely know my name. Can you remember it?”
He detected the flicker of recognition in her eyes. Her face scrunched with physical effort, panting, “Guh…?”
“Guh…? Ga…? Gay…? Gage?” he prompted, trying to be patient with her, knowing she wasn’t doing this on purpose.
“Yuh.”
“Do you know who I am; why you’re here with me?”
No.
“I’m a farmer from Wyoming. I’m on a sort of a vacation, driving around seeing a little of the country. I went for a pee in some woods just off the highway a few days ago and I found you in a ditch. You were in a wetsuit. You had some real bad injuries, and no ID. No one knew who you were or where you’d come from. Then, this afternoon, one of the nurses at the hospital I took you to showed me this newspaper. It says you’re a reporter. There’s an article written by your Editor – a guy called Malcolm Lawrence; do you remember him? – and it contains allegations about the reason for your disappearance. Seems you winding up in those woods with your head caved in wasn’t an accident.”
Gage lifted the paper from the seat between them, and pushed it into her lap. She started at the sight of her photograph on the front page, and Gage was overcome by futility. Why was he bothering to explain? In an hour, this conversation would be gone the way of every other they’d had today, invisible in the impenetrable fog of her confusion.
“Your short-term memory has been affected by your head injury. We’ve been through this a couple of times this afternoon already, and you’ve forgotten.”
He tried to keep the accusatory note from his voice because he knew he was being unreasonable, but couldn’t help how he felt inside. He was meant to be on vacation; fixing his life, instead of permanently screwing it up beyond all recognition! It was his own fault. He should simply have taken her to safety, entrusted her to medical care, and got back on the road – but that small, battered, motionless body in the centre of the large, white gurney had called to him without uttering a word. He’d been unable to leave. The couple of hours he’d intended to stay, just to reassure himself she was stable and out of immediate danger, had turned into a night by her bedside, the following day, and the one after. By then, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t contemplate abandoning her to wake alone, in a place where no one even knew her name. He’d remembered the moment his own eyes had first opened in a hospital room, a stretched rectangle of daylight reflecting the panes of the opposite window onto the white ceiling above his bed.
He’d gradually been able to focus on faces, and the relief in beholding them had been profound. His brother-in-law; jaw set, mouth a flat, thin line, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, standing silently at the foot of the bed. Sitting to one side, his sister; face puffy and blotched with crying, chewing at her bottom lip until it looked red and sore. To the other, his mother; ashen with anxiety and grief. He’d read the truth in her eyes. That was when he’d known for sure. He had survived. So had the beloved group of individuals ranged around his bed…but not his wife…and not his boy. His throat had hurt so much he couldn’t speak. He’d thought if he could cry that might relieve the swelling agony pressing on his heart, but try as he might to force the emotion out, all that had escaped was a tiny whimper like the whine of a dog. He didn’t know then that he’d never look, sound, or feel the same again; he only knew the sunlight streaming in through the window made his head ache. His eyes were quite dry, so he’d closed them, hoping they’d never reopen.
He shook his head violently, as if the motion would disrupt the vivid memory like erasing a drawing on an Etch-A-Sketch.
She was still reading feverishly, horror and amazement writ large across her features. Gage picked up the shakily-scribbled postcards and placed them in her lap, “These are the notes you made on the beach about an hour ago. Do you remember that?”
No.
Gage rubbed his temples in a circular motion with sweaty fingers, seeking to dispel the throbbing tension-headache.
“This is hard, Kennedy. You can’t remember. You can’t talk. We’re not getting anywhere…and now the cops are after me for something I haven’t done. You need to go back to hospital because you’re very sick, but right now I’m not sure I’m brave enough to take you. See those notes? There’s every chance this is about police corruption or something similar. We don’t know if the cops are legit, or whether all this ‘kidnap’ crap is a stunt to get me out of the way. If you know something you’re not supposed to, and I’m safely locked in a jail cell, they can do what they like to you and no one will be there to cause a rumpus.”
Kennedy was flicking clumsily through the postcards, consuming their content voraciously.
She tried to speak again, her lips forming shapes, but her throat failing to push out the sound. She gave up on talking, and reached for the cards and pen once more; A trap?
“The article implies you have some pretty serious evidence about something major…but you can’t remember what it is, can you?”
No.
“No. So, neither of us can make an informed judgement about whether we’re in genuine danger or not. All we have to go on is this article, the state of you when I found you, and those hoodlums who arrived at the hospital two hours ago, and scared you so bad you ripped off your own drip-tube and climbed out a window to escape them. Do you remember doing that?”
She turned to him, wide-eyed, hooking her thumbs together and miming a bird.
“Yeah, a bird on the belt buckle of the smaller guy. You knew you’d seen them before…and the mere sight of them terrified you enough to jump out a window when you’d barely regained consciousness! My problem with all this is how to assess the danger we’re potentially in, if we have no idea what we’re playing with. I need information, Kennedy, and you can’t provide it right now. I’m not blaming you for that, it’s just a fact…and we have no idea how long you’ll take to get your memory back, if you ever do! All we have to go on is this article – and it could be made up to sell newspapers, right?”
No. Mal doesn’t make things up. That’s not how he rolls.
“So, you’ve fed him a story?”
There’s a good chance of it, yes.
“How do we find out if he knows more than he’s letting on?”
Ask him.
“Kennedy, get real! If he’s printing salacious allegations, he’s as likely to be under observation as you are! He might be next on the list for a visit from our gangster buddies, we just don’t know. The cops are circulating the licence plate of my truck as a wanted man – your kidnapper! I can’t exactly chauffeur you down the freeway to your Editor’s place so we can cosy up and swap notes – we’ll be pulled over in five seconds! Since you woke up a matter of two hours ago, life’s got real serious, real fast. That can’t be coincidence! We’ve got to keep a low profile!”
She flapped the paper insistently; Mal clearly has information. I’ve obviously told him something. I might have told him a lot more than he’s printed, but he’s had to hold it back because you need to prove stuff to safely put it out there. Allegations, speculation, opinion – that’s News. Defamatory declaration without proof – that’s Libel.
“How can we find out one way or another?”
I told you – talk to him.
“And I told you, that’s not easy to achieve. Got a cellphone on you?”
Naked but for the hospital smock and paper panties, she scowled reproachfully at him.
Gage grinned sheepishly, “Sorry, I was being facetious. I have one in the glove box there, but it’s flat as a pancake…and we daren’t go out in public any place to plug it in and charge it up. Like I said, we gotta stay under the radar, here. Checking into a Motel just to charge a cellphone isn’t the most intelligent thing we can do right now. Your buddy’s article implies this is huge and scandalous…there’s every chance his calls are being monitored in case you get in touch. I know it sounds like something out of a spy movie, but everything’s going so wrong, so fast, it can’t just be bad luck. You’ve clearly made a dangerous enemy. I’m talking the kind of person who silences a journalist by beating her senseless and dumping her body. The sort of nutjob who dispatches two dangerous thugs to a hospital room to finish what they started. Do you see why I’m afraid?”
I’m afraid too.
“You seem so calm.”
I’m exhausted and I feel like crap. I haven’t the energy to panic.
“I know you want to contact your buddy, but it’s not wise. What we need to do is get the hell out of the Keys. We need to put some serious distance between us and this shitstorm.”
What will that do?
“Huh? It’ll stop us getting arrested, killed – “
No, it won’t. It won’t fix anything.
“Kennedy, honey, you’re not thinking straight – “
She slapped her palm flat on the seat between them, the ripped cannula tube flicking like a horsewhip. Scrawling frenziedly, the barely legible text meandering across the postcard like a trekking trail up a mountain, she admonished; Don’t you ‘honey’ me, you patronising idiot! The way to find the answers you want is to go to the man we know has some information…Mal! I’ve evidently told him something. It’s a start. It’s all we’ve got.
“We can’t – “
Slap! We CAN! I agree we should be cautious. I agree we’re up against forces we don’t understand…so we have to deal with what we know, right? We know those bad guys were at the hospital, so we should stay away from there. We also know the cops are looking for you, and for me…so we need to be secret, and vigilant. Beyond that, all I know is that if you run from things, they have a habit of following. My Dad did that. Instead of accepting his half of the blame for their marriage going wrong, he pinned it on my Mom. All that did was drive her into the arms of another guy. Within a year of her leaving, he’d lost his professional job, and his previous good reputation. Instead of admitting he’d screwed up and trying to rebuild things, he ran away. We ended up down here in the Keys in a crappy trailer, while he drank himself to death in the sunshine, hid from real life, and blamed everybody else for the mess we were in. I learned you can run, but you can’t hide. Eventually, you have to turn and face down whatever’s after you – regardless of whether the demon’s in your head, or at your back. If you don’t, it never leaves you.
Unnerved, Gage didn’t let on how closely this mirrored his own situation, instead whining, “Kennedy, I’m a farmer. I grow crops, breed livestock…I’m not some superhero special agent! I can’t fly by the seat of my pants like this! And I’m also not a doctor. I can’t take care of you.”
Her shrewd blue eyes fixed upon his; And yet that’s exactly what you are doing. By what you’ve said, you saved my life. I’m only sorry I can’t remember.
“I don’t think you’d want to remember. It wasn’t nice. I…I just happened to find you…” Gage was blushing increasingly beetroot under the intensity of her disarming gaze. He felt like a coward, and a fool.
Kennedy was still writing, concentrating intently like a second grader practising the newly acquired skill of penmanship; I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into whatever’s going on here. I know it’s a lot to ask after all you’ve done already, but please can you get me to Mal? Then, if you want to leave the Keys; fine, that’s up to you. Please just help me contact him; help me get there so I can solve this mystery and fix this mess – and I’ll never ask anything else of you ever again. Despite my stupid memory, I promise I will never forget it. The faster we can get to Mal, the sooner you’ll be free of me forever. Please, Gage-the-farmer. I can’t do this without you. Please.
THE WANTED MAN
The derelict cabin in which they chose to hide had perhaps once been someone’s vacation home. Nestled on a large, private plot, damaged by hurricane and flood, it was now abandoned to the elements. The garden was choked with overgrown planting and debris swept in on the highest storm-surges – broken spars of wooden decking, snapped tree branches, sections of torn fencing, plastic patio furniture, oil drums spotted with saltwater corrosion, and numerous lengths of ripped rope still connected to round polystyrene sailing floats, sun-baked and crumbling like wheels of maturing cheese nibbled by armies of rodents. The most striking addition to the yard was an upended speedboat balanced between the trees like a Neolithic monolith, bow pointing skyward, a huge hole smashed in its fibreglass hull through which the regenerating vegetation already sprouted.
Rotten, roofless, with broken windows and collapsing superstructure, other desperate humans had nevertheless taken refuge in the cabin as they were doing. Empty liquor bottles and food packets littered the leaf-strewn floors. Some furniture remained – rattan chairs and wooden bookshelves black with mildew, and one room sporting a rusting iron bedstead in its centre. Gage yanked a fallen palm frond from the jungle of undergrowth nearest the door. Its dry foliage rustling stiffly, he wielded it vigorously like a besom brush, pushing the vile detritus of food waste, beer cans, and wrinkled condoms to the edges of the room, a grimace on his face, “Gross.”
He glanced across at Kennedy, who was subsiding wearily against a wall, on the verge of physical collapse.
He shot outside, frantically tugging and freeing further interwoven fronds, dragging them through the narrow doorway and flattening them as best he could across the cleared floor to create improvised rush-matting.
Kennedy pointed weakly at her feet. Need to sit down or I’ll fall down.
“Hold on. Two more seconds.” Gage pelted to the truck and returned promptly with two thick blankets, laying them on top of his rudimentary palm-leaf mat, “These stink some, but I’d still rather sit on them than that.” He indicated the swept pile of vileness in the corner with disgust, and supported Kennedy’s unsteady passage across the room to their makeshift camp, gently lowering her onto the blanket and sliding the grimy pillow under her spinning head.
“Once it gets dark, I’ll make a fire. The smoke won’t be so noticeable then.”
Her eyes were already closing. Gage shook her awake, pushing the food parcel under her nose, “Eat this before you fall asleep. We’ve had nothing all day. If we’re on the run, we need to keep our strength up.”
She ate lying on her back, staring glassily at the Florida sky where the ceiling should have been, watching it turn from bright blue to deep pink, milky rose, and dusty grey as the evening light faded. She was glad of the food, and the lukewarm lobster and soggy fries tasted better than she’d expected them to. Staying awake to eat consumed all her remaining strength. Eyes closed, she heard Gage bustling back and forth bringing in fuel and setting the fire, nostrils detecting the sharp scent of the first burning twigs as the flames caught and blossomed. She was aware of his body next to hers on the mat, and the rustling of the foil packet as he unwrapped and consumed his own meal. She supposed she must have drifted, as she remembered nothing for a while until she sensed the weight of the second rug being laid over her, “Sorry about the smell. I never noticed until I got away from home how much everything I own reeks of horse.”
She managed a dreamy half-smile in response, and he laid a warm hand on her forehead, as if administering a blessing, “Just rest now. We’ll figure out how deep in the shit we are tomorrow.”
Gage boiled his camping kettle, made himself a coffee, envied her seemingly-serene sleep, then tamped down the glowing fire, curled his body to hers and, despite his disquiet, succumbed speedily to uneasy slumber of his own, strong fingers gripping the cool metal of the loaded shotgun resting across his hip.
****
Violent branch-cracking in the tree canopy directly above woke Gage with a start, and had him scrabbling to his knees and jamming the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder, whipping around to face the door, convinced a ring of gun-toting cops had just busted through it!
When he realised what it was – a bird, only a bird – he wilted with relief, trembling hands applying the safety before placing the gun on the floor beside him with exaggerated care. He needed to calm down or he was going to wind up shooting something out of unhinged panic.
He turned to Kennedy. She breathed deeply, still sound asleep, exhausted by the toll this ordeal was taking on her damaged body. He lifted her nearest skinny wrist and checked her pulse – steady and strong despite all she’d endured. She was a survivor, no question; an indomitable character with unquenchable spirit.
Gage re-covered her solicitously with the dislodged blanket, and stepped softly to the barricaded door, sliding aside the rotting armchair he’d placed across it, and peering cautiously out. Coast clear, beach and sea deserted, he stumbled outside and peed lengthily against the side of the house. He turned to face the rising sun as it peeked over the horizon, shooting its first fingers of glittering light across the millpond-calm dawn water.
The world looked the same. The flitting birds still called. Gentle waves still lapped the sandy shore. The eternal Florida sun still shone. Had yesterday even happened?
Dawn advanced, and Gage simply stared, slack-jawed and stultified, suddenly picturing his long-dead father appearing before him on the empty beach, playfully slapping his fingers down on the brim of Gage’s hat so it dropped over his teenage eyes and startled him from his troubled reverie, chuckling and counselling, “The way to fix a worry, son, is to give your hands a head start, and let your head catch up once it’s good and ready.”
Dad had been a straightforward, pragmatic man who invariably knew what to do for the best. Shelve the problem, get working, and suddenly the answer you’d been seeking would appear, like clearing a rock fall on a blocked mountain pass. It never failed. Gage took the advice, got busy, and hoped his unquiet mind would settle.
Tiptoeing back inside with an armful of fuel, he reinvigorated the campfire, put on a kettle for coffee, another pan for washing, and concentrated on Kennedy’s peaceful expression as he waited for both to boil. How much of yesterday would she remember? Might it be liberating to awaken every day with next to no memory of what had gone before; so unfettered by the past that every fight, every failure, every rejection, every mistake was just…forgotten…? But with nothing to root you, define your identity, explain your purpose, or give you context for your existence, maybe ‘liberating’ was the wrong word? Perhaps ‘terrifying’ would be better?
If she had no memory of her desperate plea for his help, should he seize the opportunity to bluff her, and just get them both out of Florida as fast as he could? Even contemplating it made him feel dirty and underhand. The idea of betraying her trust left a worse taste in his mouth than the stale saliva of yesterday’s lobster-tail. He must do right by her, because that’s what he’d promised last night. Despite her injuries and fuddled confusion, Kennedy’s spirit was staunch, and her reasoning sound. He didn’t agree with what she wanted to do, but he respected her bravery. He even grudgingly admired her obduracy too. His pride wouldn’t allow him to betray the extremity of his own foreboding in front of her…and so their decision had been made. He would remain for as long as it took to reach Malcolm Lawrence, the man who might have all the answers…even though it meant they had to stick around here a lot longer than he was comfortable with – wanted by the cops, hunted by the bad guys – until they could get close enough to make undetected contact. Following the publication of his article, it was naïve not to assume Mal was now a person of interest to all sides, and doubtless under close observation. Gage groaned inwardly. He was ignoring his own remedy for mental distress!
The water was already boiling merrily. Gage quickly made himself a coffee, gingerly lifted the second pan off the heat, and carried it carefully. Jobs first, and thinking later – when Kennedy awoke.
Outside, he uncovered the truck he’d camouflaged with broken branches and fallen palm leaves, riffled through his stuff for clean clothes, stood in the sand by the open truck doors, and strip-washed his sweaty, grime-caked body in the welcome hot water. Feeling fresher and more comfortable in shorts and a clean t-shirt, he chomped a couple of cereal bars from his food stash, chugged down his cooling coffee, brushed his teeth, and devoted effort to cleaning out the vile interior of the truck, returning his belongings to some semblance of order instead of simply tossing everything from dirty underwear to spent beer cans over his shoulder into the back seat to add to the tumbled chaos. Personal grooming, cleanliness, and pride in himself hadn’t really mattered much since the fire, but he didn’t want Kennedy thinking he was a slob. It was rather nice to suddenly feel embarrassed again; it meant he cared.
He sat in the front seat and tried to tune the radio to a local station. Eventually, he found an early-breakfast show and waited for the 5.30am news broadcast. There was one mention, almost in passing – perhaps ten seconds of airtime at most – regarding the possible abduction of a newspaper reporter from a local hospital…and no detail on his physical description, vehicle, or licence plate like there’d been on the police transmission. Not too bad. That meant he only had to watch out for cops; no one else would be looking for him or his truck. Kennedy, however, was a more complicated problem. Dotted with dressings; that revolting, flapping cannula tube still in the back of her hand, and clothed only in a filthy hospital smock – for once, he wasn’t the noticeable one! He searched his clean belongings and found a t-shirt he hardly wore because it was too small, and a pair of shorts that were a little snug in the waistband for comfort. He had no underwear suitable for a woman, of course, but at least they could ditch the horrible smock. Gage flicked off the radio, re-camouflaged the truck, gathered up his carefully selected bundle, the half-empty pail of warm water, and went to wake Kennedy with renewed purpose in his long-legged stride.
****
The delighted beam of recognition when she opened her eyes and beheld him was as encouraging as it was enchanting. Of course, she immediately tried to speak; a faint Guh noise emanated from her throat.
“You talking?”
Gage agitated the fire, and put the kettle back on the heat. She smiled, and strained to push more sound out, pointing at him, “Guh. Guh.”
“You remembered! Zero prompting!”
Unexpectedly overcome by a surge of emotion, Gage glanced away, coughing and sniffing self-consciously, fussing unnecessarily over the fire until the incomprehensible moment passed. Why should he care whether she recalled his name or not? It made little difference to their predicament. He poured her a coffee, helped her sit up, and gave her two of the cereal bars from his dwindling food supply.
“Can you remember yesterday?”
She waggled her hand. Some.
“The problem with the cops and everything?”
Yes…?
“I’ll go over it all again – what happened, what we’ve decided – but first we need to get you a little more sorted. Number one – that’s coming out.”
He pointed at the cannula. She frowned, grimaced, and shook her head firmly.
No.
“Kennedy, it’s a highway for bacterial infection! Besides, flapping around, it makes my stomach turn. It's coming out."
No.
“Leave that in there, live like this for much longer, and you’ll have septicaemia within the week. It won’t matter who’s after us, and why, and whether you’ve got a big, exciting story to tell the world – because you’ll be dead from blood poisoning!”
She glared venomously at him, but Gage feigned indifference, all the while preparing a dressing from his rudimentary first-aid kit. He gave her time to mull it over, topping up the washing pail with fresh hot water from the kettle.
“What we doing, Kennedy? You growing a pair?”
She was about to react angrily, before beholding the twinkle in his eye, and throwing her food-wrapper at him instead.
He eased her gently back onto the rug, “Lie down in case this makes you feel funny…and don’t watch me do it. I’m sure gonna keep my eyes shut the whole time!”
She thumped him good-naturedly on the shoulder, and Gage took immense heart from the surprising strength behind the swipe. Rigid with tension, very deliberately averting her eyes and bunching the blanket in her other fist, she surrendered to the unavoidable.
Stomach-churningly squeamish himself, Gage extracted the tube from her hand with one sharp and highly-unprofessional yank, and pressed the prepared dressing onto the wound as hard as he was able, ignoring her whimpers of discomfort, wrapping the bandage as tight as possible to maintain pressure and staunch any blood flow. He tossed the vile tube onto the fire, where it swiftly began to melt and drip blue plastic onto the red-hot embers.
“It’s done. You ok?”
A wan smile. Yes.
“You did good. Smarts, huh?”
“Yuh.”
“Sorry. Like I said yesterday, I’m no doctor.”
She patted his knee, smiled again, and asked for help to sit up, “Pih.”
“Say again?”
“Pih. Pih!”
“Pih? P-something? Pee!”
“Yuh.”
“Need to go now?”
“Yuh.”
“I peed outside in the sand, but I guess you won’t want to do that. How about the other room? We ain’t exactly going to hang out in there. You could hold onto that bed frame.”
“Yuh.”
“Ok. Come on.”
Gage helped her to what must once have been a pleasant bedroom with a sea view, and chivalrously turned his back so she could urinate, then returned her to their mat and spread out the items from his bundle.
“Priority is that you stay clean and infection-free, because we have no medicine and no knowledge of what to do. So, we have to do our best to keep your cuts covered, clean, and dry until they’re healed. Here’s warm water. Use anything in my washbag. There’s a clean-ish flannel in there, and a new toothbrush in its packaging – you have that. There’s shower gel, deodorant…I guess they’ll all be guy’s fragrance, but better than nothing. They’re now giving out the report of your abduction on the local news, so we need to make you look as little like an escaped patient as possible. That means losing that smock. These are my smallest t-shirt and tightest pair of shorts. They’re clean. You need to get out of the smock, have a really thorough wash, and put this stuff on, ok?”
“Nnnoww?”
Gage grinned, “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna supervise! I’ll go outside. You bang the spoon on the kettle when you’re done, and then we need to figure out how we’re going to contact this Editor of yours without getting nabbed by the cops or the baddies. Sit and read that paper again, and all those notes. You’ll realise we can’t just rock up at his front door and expect no one to be watching and waiting for us. We need a proper plan of action.”
Ok.
“Good. See you in a minute.”
When he was summoned back inside, he found her leaning against one wall trying to wash her filthy feet in the pail. She’d tied the t-shirt in a knot around her waist, but it was still enormous, the sleeves flapping halfway down her forearms like a Japanese kimono. The shorts barely clung on at her hips, an expanse of hospital-issue paper panty puffing out above the waistband. On Kennedy, the legs of the shorts resembled culottes, finishing mid-calf. Gage couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight, “Uh-oh, it’s all way too big! One false move and those are around your ankles! That outfit’s almost as obvious as leaving you in the smock. Before we do anything else, we need to get you some clothes.”
“Yuh.”
“Here, these are my thickest socks. Double them over and wear them like shoes. They’ll protect your feet a bit. Feel fresher?”
Yes.
She pushed a hand into matted locks that had been cursorily washed by the nurses, but were far from clean. Gage took another bandage from the kit, cut off a section with his penknife, and Kennedy looped it around her hair, pulling to make a ponytail.
“Do for now?”
“Yuh.”
“Right. We need to move on, Kennedy. We shouldn’t stay in one place too long.”
Gage squatted before the fire, rolled up the discarded smock, pushed it onto the hottest embers, and pressed it down. The synthetic material caught instantly, flaring quickly, then melting and singeing subtly with a blueish flame, edges blackening and crisping like burning toast. Once confident the energy of the blaze was spent, Gage gathered up their belongings and repacked the truck, returning to scoop Kennedy up with ease as she wobbled towards the door, carrying her outside and turning her towards the risen sun, “A lovely day to be on the run!”
She lifted her face to the increasing warmth of the powerful rays, and waggled his damaged earlobe affectionately, a teasing admonition for his flippancy.
He beamed. His ear tingled deliciously where she’d tickled it. He thought he might never wash that bit of himself again.
He stood her carefully on the sand by the passenger door of the truck. She climbed inside with more agility than he’d expected. Encouraged by this morning’s apparent progress, he swiftly got into the driver’s side, started the engine, and turned to her, “Right; clothes! We’ll stop at the first decent place we see; I’ll go in and get you whatever I can, and then we’ll find somewhere new to hunker down and plan our covert approach to your buddy.”
I’ll go.
“You…shopping?”
Yes.
“No, be serious, Kennedy! Look at you!”
What?
“You look like a person who climbed out a hospital window, and spent the night in a pile of trash! You cannot go in a store, particularly not dressed like that. You need to tell me your size and I’ll go in. Right now, I look the less freaky of the two of us. You’ll just have to wear whatever I get and not complain if it doesn’t match.”
Suppose…
“I’m sorry. I know you’d probably much rather pick, but it’s too risky. You can barely talk. You’re still real unsteady on your feet. You’ve got bandages all over…and your outfit is hideous!”
She signed resignedly, grinned weakly, and rubbed her forehead with her bandaged hand.
“Headache?”
Yes.
“Lie down.” Gage shoved the blood-stained camping pillow inside another of his clean t-shirts, “Pillowcase! Here, lie flat – put your feet in my lap if you want. Rest your head on this. Just relax. Sleep some more if you need to. I’ll wake you up when I find a safe place to camp. You should probably stay out of sight when I’m in the clothes store anyway. You’re so much more alert than yesterday, but you shouldn’t overdo it.”
“Guh.”
“What?”
“Thunk.”
“Don’t rush to ‘thunk’ me. We’re still in as much trouble as we were last night.”
She sniggered, the air whistling out of her nose as it wrinkled with the soundless laughter. It made Gage grin despite his apprehension.
“Go to sleep now.”
Too early for shoppers but past the commuter rush-hour, his eyes roamed constantly from mirrors to windshield and back again, scanning the quiet road for anything that looked remotely like a cop car. He stopped at the first roadside clothing store they came to, encouraged because one window contained mannequins in lingerie, and the other models in various ladies’ summer outfits – he could do it all in one stop. Parking parallel with the road so the truck was less noticeable, he reversed tight up to a trash can, hiding the licence plate. He cut the engine, and shook Kennedy awake, shoving a postcard at her.
“I’m at a store that looks like it’s got everything. Write down your sizes for underwear, clothes, and shoes. I’ll get whatever I can.”
She passed back the card. Gage squinted at the haywire scribble, “Does that say four?”
A weak nod.
“You were writing more clearly yesterday.”
She held the bandaged hand over her eyes as if the sun was too bright. Gage thought of the darkened hospital room, reached for a towel from the back, and put it across her face.
“Headache bad, right?”
Nodding under the towel.
“Just sleep. I won’t be long.”
He got out of the truck, locked her in, and strolled into the store with the deceptive nonchalance of the wanted man.
****
As the deserted parking lot suggested, the small store was empty but for the assistant, who was busy undoing boxes in the stockroom and hooking new garments onto hangers ready for display. As he opened the door, it hit and pinged a small bell, making her look around, “Well, hello there! Do you need any help, or are you happy to browse?”
Gage calculated speedily. It would be preferable to help himself, take his selections to the counter, pay his cash, and spend as little time as possible interacting with this woman, but he’d never bought ladies’ clothes in his life. If Joelle had ever wanted anything, she’d asked him for the money and got it herself. As for lingerie; he had no idea where to start! The more time the truck spent parked at the side of the highway, the greater the chance of a cop cruising past and spotting it. He’d be quicker if he asked the woman to help him. Gage steeled himself for the usual involuntary reaction when a stranger caught sight of his scars, smiled as sweetly as he was able, and growled huskily, “If you wouldn’t mind helping me, Ma’am, I’d be so grateful. A friend of mine is very ill, she’s staying at our place while she recuperates, and my wife’s sent me out to get some basics to tide her over. She lost everything in Irma, you see. She’s not well enough to go shopping for herself yet, but I’ve no idea what to get. I was hoping you could choose for me. She needs underwear, shoes, clothes. If I tell you her sizes, can you…um…rescue me, Ma’am?”
Gage gave it his all – puppy-dog eyes, boyish grin, trying to flex every muscle he had at the same time until he feared he’d either fart or faint with the effort. It had used to work – before he was married, before the fire took everything from his looks to his confidence. The intervening years rolled effortlessly away as the middle-aged woman melted, simpering; fiddling with her hair and fumbling with the hangers as she selected suitable items. When he had several sets of clothes and lingerie, sneakers, flip-flops, a hairbrush, and two of the large, elastic loops Joelle had favoured to tie up her hair, Gage beamed his satisfaction, profusely thanked his new best friend Lorelei for her patient assistance, and suggested he’d better get home before his wife thought he’d left her for another woman. He winked, and Lorelei giggled and blushed. Ringing up the sale, she kept sneaking shy glances at him from beneath lashes over-clogged with dark mascara. Gage made sure to lean on the counter with his right elbow to display only the undamaged side of his face, smile as suggestively as he could, and look her up and down openly as if she was the best thing he’d seen all week, while inside, his head screamed, ‘Come on! How long does it take, goddamit?!’
A retro-style radio sat on a high shelf behind the counter, tuned to the same station Gage had heard this morning. There were a few inane commercials, the odd banal interjection from the idiot DJ, and a combination of old favourites and new hits to while away the working day. Gage had been dimly aware of it throughout his time in the shop, but hadn’t paid much attention – just more white noise encroaching upon his world of worry. As his new conquest painstakingly removed each item from its hanger, typed its price into her old-fashioned cash-register pretending she didn’t need the glasses resting in her dyed hair, then folded them with overly-considerate care and slid them individually into a large paper bag with twine handles, Gage was resisting the urge to look over his shoulder and check the truck. He didn’t want to draw attention to it. As the woman bustled in back to find the boxed sneakers rather than the display pair, Gage’s wandering attention was recaptured by horrifyingly familiar words emanating from the radio.
‘…removed her from hospital without the consent of the medical team caring for her extensive injuries. It is unclear whether Ms McKendrick left willingly, or under duress. Police would urgently like to trace this man. CCTV footage and statements from hospital staff describe him as over six feet tall, of lean build, with fair hair. He was last seen driving a light blue Dodge Ram with Wyoming licence plates. The left-hand side of his face, his neck, and left arm are described as ‘extensively-scarred’. Members of the public with any information are asked to call the Monroe County Sherriff on 305-664…”
Lorelei, on her knees in the stockroom edging out the correct shoe box, heard this too, and was unable to suppress an unintentional squeak of alarm. Mind racing, she turned to see if the man had noticed, and screamed aloud as she found him filling the stockroom doorway.
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© Annie Holder 2019
Annie Holder has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Annie Holder in 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Place and public names are sometimes used for the purposes of fiction. Resemblance to any person, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.