Dead or Alive (3 page)

"Oh that's rich.  That is
rich
coming from you.  Remington Archibald is giving me shit over my bad fucking mouth?  Fuck you."

He covered his forehead with his free hand. "Can you please just... not talk?"

"Why the hell shouldn't I?”

"Because I have the gun and you don't!"

Violet jolted. His eyes were like blue fire.  She willed herself to bite her tongue, but couldn’t.  “You know that this is kidnapping, right?  You just made the stupidest decision of your life.  Even if you
are
innocent like you say it won’t even matter, anymore. You’re going back to jail no matter what.”

"Is this normal? Or am I just doing something terribly wrong here? I'm pretty sure the person with the gun is the one who's supposed to be running off at the mouth, and the person who the gun is pointed at--that's
you,
by the way--should be quiet, scared, maybe even crying, but you can't seem to shut
that
gigantic
mouth of yours for anything. Is it too much for me to expect you to do what I say? I mean, really, am I
this
terrible of a kidnapper that you're not even remotely
afraid?  Is the joke on me? Throw me a lifeline here, because I'm lost."  He took a heaving breath after his rant, eyes wide.

"Kay. Are you done?"

He gave her one last long, infuriated look, before turning away from her and staring out the window.  His energy was spent, his head was spinning, and he recognized the feeling of being near unconsciousness.  He felt faint, kind of like the way he felt after being jumped back in prison.  He threw Violet a look, thinking that being behind bars seemed almost desirable in comparison to being stuck in an aircraft with this woman.

She was looking right back at him, right in his eyes.  She wasn't afraid, not in the least.  Violet was a reporter, and it was her job to have good instincts.  The fact that she wasn't terribly frightened by Archibald, even if he did have a gun in his hand, spoke volumes to her.  She didn't know him well at all, no, but she knew her body.  She knew her instincts.

Her silence made him nervous. "What?" he demanded, unable to handle the power of her unwavering gaze.

"I'm just..." She wondered if she should tell him how she was finding herself curious about him.  Wondering whether or not he really did commit this crime.  As far as she was concerned, he actually was a pretty awful
kidnapper.  She'd read every casebook in existence about abductions, kidnappings and robberies.  The criminal was never as uncertain as Remy clearly was.  No, the criminal was almost always anxious, irrational, brash,
violent
.  Remy had yet to strike her, and she'd certainly given him every reason to.   She was convinced he never would.

"I was just thinking about my sisters. I have two older sisters.  One of them is a crime scene investigator and the other is a detective.   They are ferociously protective of me.  I just thought you should know that because, if my sisters find you--and they will find you..." She shook her head. "They'll kill you.  They'll kill you like a dog in the street, and I assure you, Archibald, the police will never
find your body because they
are
the police."

Remy was bored by her outburst, and it showed in his eyes.   He actually smiled at her, but she recognized it as the way one would smile at a small child.  He didn't seem eager to deliver a proper response.

She cringed at him. "I
hate
the way you’re looking at me right now."

Remy leaned into her. "For seven months I’ve lived in a prison with one of the highest death rates in the country.  I’ve been beaten until I passed out, harassed at every turn, bled until I was sure I didn't have another drop to bleed.  My cellmate's name was Rudy, he was six foot seven, three hundred pounds.  Every time a piece of my hair fell in my eyes Rudy broke a new finger."  Remy threw up his left hand, where four out of five fingers were bruised, twisted, or abnormally bent. "Seven. Months.  I think--I
think...
I can handle your two big sisters."

Violet considered his words, and smiled when a lock of his hair tumbled down across his forehead. "Your hair falls into your eyes a
lot. 
How are you still breathing?" she sputtered.  At the expression on his face, she pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing.  He had a thick head of dirty blonde hair that had quickly escaped from the carefully gelled style he’d put it into for court.  He made an effort to keep it off of his face, but every once in a while a few pieces would fall across his forehead, shadowing his soft blue eyes.

“If your hair was getting you beat up in prison, why didn’t you just chop it off?”

“Because fuck that son of a bitch.” His steely eyes hit hers.  “Fuck him.”

“Now who’s the potty mouth?” she mumbled, a Cheshire grin pulling at her lips.

She couldn’t stop smiling, and he couldn’t handle how little the sight bothered him. Quite the contrary, it made him ache for more.  "Is my misery this amusing for you?"

She finally let herself laugh. "No, I was just..." She covered her mouth, eyed him, and then shrugged, letting her hand fall into her lap.  "No wonder you're always pushing it out of your eyes, or combing it behind your ear.  For a while I was sure you were more concerned with your hair than most women.  That, or gay."

"I wish I was.  Might’ve made the last seven months in that hellhole a lot more tolerable."

"Were you assaulted sexually?"

"Absolutely not."

"I remember seeing footage of you when you were first arrested.  You were 28, but you looked so much younger.  Baby face, long, trim body.  You were… A prisoner's dream, really."  Looking at him now, Violet noted that he was anything but delicate.  He was still long, he seemed about a foot too long for that aircraft, but something about him was manlier... stronger.  His arms had doubled in size.  They were now large and more muscular. Violet shifted in her seat as she recalled the feeling of that big arm wrapped around her, dragging her out of the courthouse.  His strength was not to be questioned.  A light brown shadow dusted his sharp jaw, giving him a rugged look.

Remy knew how skinny he'd been when he'd gone to prison, and he wasn't thrilled that she was recounting it.  "They tried... they
all
tried.  For the first three months, it was like a game to them. Eventually they realized that I would die before I ever let them r..."  He couldn't even say the word.

Violet bit her lip softly.

"I started lifting weights... bulking up.  I wasn't afraid to fight.  Most of them started to leave me alone."

"But not all of them?"

"Not all of them."  His eyes grew vacant as he stared out of the chopper’s windshield.

What she wouldn’t give to climb into his head.  “You've been in a lot of fights."  It was more of a comment than a question.

"It became my life, kind of like eating, or using the bathroom.  It's just something you do because you have to." He was now mumbling to himself, in his own world.

She could only imagine what was on his mind. "Why are you wearing your uniform?  Why didn't you put a suit on for your trial?"

He threw her a look. "Are you interviewing me now?  You are definitely a reporter. Always on, even when you're in danger."

"I don't feel like I'm in danger.”

"You should."

"Well, I don't."

He cleared his throat. “What’s the point of getting all dolled up? My lawyer was state appointed. He didn't give a shit. The prosecution had solid evidence, the public wanted my head on a stick, and the D.A. wanted a conviction.  A lovely young girl, my coworker, was... poisoned... and I was the face they slapped on it.  It didn't matter whether or not I did it.  No one wanted to listen when I insisted I was being framed.  No one wanted to hear it.  They just wanted... they
needed
someone to blame.  I never stood a chance.  I knew I was going to be found guilty."

"So you planned this escape all along?"

His head snapped to her. "No. I planned to hear a guilty conviction. But the second I heard the juror say the actual words, the second it became real, I just...  The guard was coming at me, and his keys..." He stared out ahead of him. "His keys were
jingling
.  When you're a prisoner, that’s the worst sound in the world.   He was coming at me with those keys, and I saw that his hand wasn't on his gun."  He shook his head. "I completely lost myself. I grabbed the gun."  He looked back to her. "I grabbed his gun."

"Please tell me something I don't already know, it’s been trained at my head for the better part of the morning.”

"It's technically evening now."

"Time sure flies when you've got a gun at your head."

Remy suddenly took the controls and veered the aircraft.  Soon, they were flying over a body of water that Violet could only assume was the beginnings of the Pacific Ocean, and her heartbeat sped up. If they’d hit the ocean, then they were officially hundreds of miles outside of Redding.  Why were they going over water?

Oblivious to her concern, he continued.  "I didn’t plan this.  After I took the gun, it was too late to turn back.  I figured, if I wanted the chance to prove myself, I was going to have to do it
myself. 
I had to take you with me, because it was the only way I could get out of there.  But I
will
let you go.   I will.  I'm not interested in hurting you.  I just want to prove my innocence."

Violet blew out an exasperated breath.  “There are other ways you could’ve proven your innocence.  Ways that didn’t involve breaking even more
laws.  There are attorneys out there who devote their lives to freeing innocent men who’ve been jailed for crimes they didn’t commit.”

“Which can take years, decades.  Not to mention a limitless supply of money and manpower.  Three things I don’t have.”

Violet watched him closely for a while. "So what are we waiting for?"

We.

Remy swallowed thickly, tried to ignore the rapidly escalating pain in his leg, and let his head fall back against the seat. "Dark...
I'm waiting for dark."

Violet sighed and fanned herself.  Even as the sun was slowly setting, the humid clouds seemed to grow thicker every second, and the stuffy heat was just as excruciating as it had been at high noon.  She unbuttoned her blazer and removed it, sighing in contentment when it was off, leaving a thin black cami underneath.

Like she did every afternoon after work, she tossed the jacket into the backseat with no concern about where it landed, or the mess she was making.  As she turned to toss the jacket, she caught Remy's eyes, and was shocked to find them riveted to her.  It took a lot to make her blush, but at the moment she found it difficult not to under his gaze. At first glance he looked angry, but closer inspection made the strong yearning that pulled his face taut clear as day.

Remy’s throat had run dry.  At first he wasn't sure if she was actually removing her jacket in front of him, or if he was imagining the entire thing.  He wasn't.  She’d swept it right off and thrown it in to the back of the plane, making her sweet scent fill the space even more than it already was. 

The sight of her in the flimsy black top, brown skin smooth with perspiration, immediately put to shame even the nastiest fantasies he'd been conjuring up in his head in the last seven months.  His response was intense and immediate. Her cleavage glistened with sweat that he wouldn't mind licking off.  If she'd let him, he'd lick every single inch of her.  Before he could collect himself, he envisioned her climbing onto his lap and fucking him in that very plane, bouncing on his dick until her head was banging against the roof.

Violet tilted her head at him, unable to accept that he was staring at her so openly.  “They’re called breasts,” she joshed.

He jolted, sputtered, and forced himself to look away from her completely. At this point, he was sure he’d lost his damn mind.  Here he was, a fugitive of the law with a gunshot wound in his leg, and all he could think about was what could be hiding under Violet’s skirt.

Violet’s eyes fell to his lap where the small pool of blood had quickly soaked the entire leg of his pants.  "You need a doctor.  Look at yourself.  You can't even hold your head up right now.  You're going to be dead soon."

It didn’t help that the sight of her undressing had sent every drop of the precious little blood he had left shooting straight for his dick. "I'm a fugitive convicted of murder, and now kidnapping.  Death is the only thing I can count on.  That... or freedom. And I think we can both agree I'm not shouldering the greatest odds on the latter."

Without answering, Violet pressed her head back against the seat, murmuring softly to herself.

It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, and Remy found himself unable to look away.  His curiosity got the better of him. “Do you go to church?”

Her eyes opened slowly, and she found herself entranced at the beautiful view they had.  “What makes you ask me that?”

“You’ve been saying a lot of prayers.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly religious woman. I don’t bow my head before a meal, don’t utter a quick one before I go to sleep.  Not ever.  I don’t know…” She shrugged and feigned a far-away tone of voice. “There’s just something about having a pistol pointed at your head that really brings it right out of you.”