HOSTAGE (To Love A Killer) (12 page)

              “You’ve already shot a few people back in Brooklyn. I thought we threw caution to the wind on actually getting away with any of this a long time ago,” said Ash.

              It was a decent point.

              “Where are we going to go after all this?” she asked.

              Ash smiled, glancing over at her for a long moment before returning his gaze to the road ahead. “Now that’s a question I like.”              

              “Oh, really?” she asked, her tone turning sultry and deep.

              “Definitely,” he said. “Tell me about what our lives will look like once we get through this.”

              Hunter gazed out the windshield at the road ahead. The late afternoon sun was sinking towards the mountains on the horizon, causing a stark, orange glare to cut across the land. The mountains looked purple and blue, dark but not dangerous. The landscape seemed peaceful. If it didn’t remind her of the farmhouse land, its acres and acres of fields and forests, Hunter would say she’d like to live out their days in the rural northeast.

              Then it occurred to her, was there anywhere they could go where she’d be able to escape and forget where she had come from? Maybe if they went someplace truly foreign she could. They’d probably never be able to set foot on an airplane, so that left them with options to flee north into Canada, or south into Central and South America.

              “Do you speak Spanish?” she asked.

              Ash laughed. “Not even a little bit,” he said, “but I could learn.”

              “I could see us lounging on a beach somewhere. Find a desolate beach where the sun warms our skin, and the water cools us down. When this is all over, I want to live carefree. I want to feel relaxed all the time. I want my life to be a vacation.”

              “That sounds nice,” said Ash, envisioning it all. “We could live in a cabana, fall asleep to the sounds of the ocean. What would we do for work?”

              “That’s a good question. Maybe we can find a beach restaurant and work there, or at a coffee place. It might sound crazy to you, but I liked my job in Brooklyn. I worked part time in a coffee house. It always smelled amazing. There was something nice about serving lattes, watching the customers chat. It had a simple atmosphere I miss,” said Hunter, remembering that aspects of her life were in fact, nice, uncomplicated, relaxing.

              “Maybe I could learn to surf and teach surfing,” said Ash.

              “I could totally see you doing that,” said Hunter. “Well let’s see, if we want to go someplace that has restaurants and surfing, we might need to choose a touristy spot. That could be nice. Then we’d really feel like we were living an extended vacation.

              “We could go to Brazil,” said Ash.

              “Rio de Janeiro,” added Hunter.

              “Or a little coastal town outside of Rio,” said Ash, elaborating.

              “Would we drive the entire way down?” asked Hunter.

              “We’d have to,” he said.

              “That could be nice. We’d see a lot of countryside,” she said.

              “Yeah, we’d have to drive through all the southern states. We could stop at all the landmarks along the way, see the capital, see New Orleans. Then head into Mexico and continue on.”

              Hunter realized how much ground they would need to cover to get to Brazil. It seemed like a world away. She wondered if she should have any real hope of getting there. Alone she was certain she’d never make it that far, but with Ash anything seemed possible.

              “Would Blair like it there?” he asked.

              Hunter smiled, “I think so.”

              “Would the girls?”

              She shrugged, “You know them better than I do at this point, but who wouldn’t like it there?”

              Ash looked over at Hunter. The way the sun kissed her cheek, its amber hue casting a glow across her face, she was beautiful, like an angel. She squinted against the glare, but even her furrowed brow, its imperfections, warmed his heart. He felt at home with Hunter. He would go wherever she wanted. Whatever she wanted, he would do.

              He reached across, scooped her hand into his and squeezed. She looked over at him, a coy smirk growing across her face. Soon it would be night. They would have to stop at another motel. Ash would have another chance to show her the ways in which he loved her. He couldn’t wait.

              Hunter returned her gaze out the window, as she cradled Ash’s hand in hers. He felt so good. How did she get so lucky?

              “Oh, shit,” said Twitch from the back seat.

              Hunter sat up and glanced out the side view mirror.

              No sooner than she did, the shrill cry of a siren sounded off loudly. Hunter jumped, staring at Ash with wide eyes for a long moment before turning all the way around.

              Behind them was a police cruiser. Its lights were flashing red and white in rhythm with the siren’s alarm.

              “What should we do?” asked Twitch. “The trunk is full of your weapons.”

              “I have to pull over,” said Ash.

              “Don’t,” said Hunter. “Just drive.”

              “It’s a cop. We can’t do that,” he said, with an edge of agitation in his voice. “We can’t do anything. Fuck!” He yelled, hitting the steering wheel.

              “Let me kill him,” said Hunter.

              “Are you crazy?” He shouted. “Kill a cop? Even I’m not good enough to pull that off! Not to mention his squad car has a camera that faces front. All cop cars have that nowadays. You’re not thinking, Hunter. Just let me handle this. Don’t say anything, got it?”

              Hunter nodded.

              “That goes for you, too,” said Ash, glancing at Twitch in the rearview mirror.

              Ash removed his foot from the gas and began pressing the brakes, pulling over to the shoulder of the road.

              This was so unfair, thought Hunter. The cops should be arresting Grizzly, raiding the farmhouse, shutting down his operation, and throwing all of the men in prison, not pulling them over. This was bullshit.

              Hunter reached down between the door and her seat where her purse was located, and grasped hold of it. It was heavy and hard in her grip. The gun that lay beneath was ready. Hunter had left it fully loaded with the safety off and a bullet in its chamber. She could shoot and kill in an instant.

              And she would if anything dared to stand in her way of rescuing Blair from her father’s promise.

              Ash stared, eyes glued to the cop. He was still behind the wheel of the squad car. The siren still blared loudly, the lights flashed. The cop seemed to be looking down, his lips were moving. Ash was hoping they had been pulled over for speeding or a broken taillight, anything minor and unrelated to Brooklyn. But the fact that this cop seemed to be in conversation greatly worried Ash. If this officer already knew that he was in possession of a dead man’s vehicle, then things could get very complicated very quickly. Hunter’s suggestion to take the guy out might not be the worse plan. But unless they could ditch the car and proceed with cash alone, then the very same problem would find them again and again.

              There was no way to get out of this.

              Not this time.

              Ash returned his gaze to Hunter.

              Her gun was drawn.

              And the police officer had just stepped out of his vehicle.

              “Hunter, don’t,” said Ash, his nerves rising into a panic at the sight of the gun in her hand. “Put that away, please. We don’t know why we got pulled over, just hang in there and let me handle this.”

              Hunter gripped the gun even more firmly, hesitating to relinquish control. The cop was slowly approaching the car up the driver’s side, Hunter could see looking through the side mirror. He would be at Ash’s door any second.

              “Hunter, I’m begging you to trust me,” said Ash nearly in a whisper. His whole body was tense.

              “Hunter,” said Twitch in a low tone, as the cop stepped passed his window.

              Quickly, she slipped the gun back into her purse, but kept the opening flap loose and her hand nearby. If he indicated at all that they were suspects in the Brooklyn murders, if he so much as asked them to step out of the vehicle, Hunter would not hesitate to kill. Images of her nightmare came to mind, swirling and overlapping  chaotically. She tried to shake them, focusing on what she knew about Grizzly. He was manipulative, that much was certain, but he kept his word. He had said they had until Sunday, that Blair would remain unharmed until then, and she had to trust he was being honest. She had to trust him at his word. How insane was that? To trust a monster was such an impossible proposition, and yet deep down she knew she could. She sensed Blair was fine, scared but fine. So long as Hunter got there in time, the real threat would fall on Hunter and her alone. She had to get there, to put herself in harm’s way, switching Blair out from the chopping block. That was the only thing that mattered. This cop was not going to stand in Hunter’s way.

              Just as the police officer raised his arm preparing to tap on Ash’s window, Ash rolled it down.

              “License and registration,” said the officer with zero intonation in his voice. The reflective aviator sunglasses made it impossible to see the cop’s eyes. Ash had no way of gauging if this was a casual pullover or a serious attempt to apprehend two killers. At least the cop was moving slowly. It was also favorable that he was alone, no partner waited for him in the passenger’s seat of the squad car. Hunter’s gun crossed Ash’s mind. He wasn’t about to kill a cop and seal his fate to spend the rest of his life in prison, but it would get them out of this if things went south. He couldn’t let Hunter do it, though. If anyone took on the risk, it would have to be Ash.

              Ash extracted his license from his wallet after fumbling through its myriad folds, buying time. He had no idea where the car’s registration was, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that even if he located it and handed it over, it would clearly state the name of the vehicle’s owner, and Ash would have a lot of explaining to do.

              “May I ask why you pulled us over, Officer?” he asked, again attempting to buy time.

              As Ash eagerly anticipated the cop’s response, hoping to engage him into any degree of conversation that would help humanize Ash and possibly gain the cop’s sympathy, Hunter searched through a mess of papers in the glove compartment. It was mostly receipts, trash, and the like. She kept at it in search of the car’s registration.

              “I’ll need the vehicle’s registration,” said the officer repeating himself, but this time in an aggravated tone.

              “Yes, Sir,” responded Ash quickly. “We’re getting it now.”

              The officer leaned down, observing Hunter on the other side of the car as she searched in a frantic manner. He then began eyeing Twitch in the back seat.

              Twitch knew cops generally did not like him. It was as though they would look at the gradient mohawk, beaten up denim jacket with its arsenal of punk band patches, and his plethora of piercings and tattoos, and instantly pegged him as trouble. It was an instinctive, knee-jerk type reaction. No one needed that kind of problem right now, so Twitch made a concerted effort to glance away, avoiding eye contact, as the cop stared.

              Hunter came across a faded piece of paper that was most definitely the car’s registration. In clear black ink, she read: Lorne Mann after the words “registered to.”

              Hunter nearly stopped breathing. Her heart sank into her stomach, and bile and dread crept up her throat, clipping her words, choking them in.

              She looked at Ash. Her eyes conveyed her panic. It was no longer just a question, a sense of doubt. Hunter had no idea how they would ever get out of this.

              Ash wanted to remind her to breathe. He wanted to tell her that the officer had no right to collect her I.D., or Twitch’s for that matter. The officer didn’t have to find out who she was. Ash would take the fall for all of it and wouldn’t give her up. But he couldn’t say any of that. Not with the police officer leaning on his windowsill, growing less and less patient.

              Ash took the registration from Hunter and at long last handed it along with his license to the police officer.

              “Wait here,” said the officer before heading back to his squad car.

              When he was beyond earshot, and Ash saw him open the driver’s side door and climb in, Ash turned to Hunter. “If he asks for your I.D. don’t give it to him. Say you lost it. You aren’t Hunter Mann.”

              “Okay,” said Hunter. “Did you see the registration? This is my dad’s car. What should we do?”

              “There’s nothing we can do,” said Ash.

              “Yes, there is,” said Hunter. “I can shoot him.”