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“I need to go get, everything,” I tell him. “I can meet you at your shipping containers, or…”
“I am not letting you out of my sight,” he growls. “Not after the last week, thinking you were forever gone.”
Now I feel guilty for a whole other reason. It’s like there’s no escape from the burden of feeling once you get involved with someone.
“Listen. I thought there was no way you’d ever want to see me again. I thought I’d done something so heinous I was never going to be right with you, or the law, or whatever passes for a god around here again. What I did was wrong. No matter how many people tell me it was reasonable or even a good act, I know it was wrong. I know…”
He grabs me again as my voice starts to crack.
“This is the problem when good girls go bad,” he says. “It’s not easy feeling outside the law when you’re used to being inside it. Those rules don’t just protect the public. They make you feel safe too. But now you know you don’t always play by those rules. You thought you had a limit, but limits are always moving. I never thought I’d love a normal woman. I never thought I’d encounter anybody as strong as you, as defiant as you, as beautiful as you. But I did, and so my limit changed.”
“You are equating me killing Rage to you falling for me.”
“In a way,” he says.
“It’s not the same thing. It’s wrong to kill.”
He pauses, the corner of his lips twisting wryly before he replies.
“Do you want another spanking? How about a whipping? I can entertain your desire for punishment, Sally. I can put you in a cage of my own making and you can serve your sentence on your knees.”
My jaw drops. I’m not sure how to respond to him. I feel my face flushing bright red. He’s right, this guilt is making me yearn for punishment. Going over his knee isn’t enough to atone for taking life the way I did, in a fit of temper and righteous grief.
“I think you do,” he chuckles. “Let’s go get this vehicle.”
“I trust Hank with a lot of things,” I say. “But I don’t trust him with seeing you. I should go on my own. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I can come back here when I’m done, and you can sneak down into the cab.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
9
I’ve got a body in a dumpster on the back of my truck, and a mothman tucked up into the bed space of my cab. Everything I need for a wild fucking roadtrip.
“You ready to go?” I ask the question over my shoulder.
“Sure,” Justice says.
“I am sorry,” I repeat. “I know this is fucked up. He was…”
“An asshole who tried to kill you. Don’t worry,” Justice says. “My feelings are not as intense as you might imagine. We were taught better than this. He knew what he was doing, and he had to have known what the end might be. Let’s go home.”
Home. He says it as though it is where we all belong. Wouldn’t that be nice.
* * *
It’s about a nine-hour drive from New York to West Virginia. Not that long of a trip, really, except when you’re doing it in a truck. The plan is to start early, around four in the morning while Justice is still awake enough to get in the cab, drive through the early morning, and get in around noon. He’ll still be asleep then, but I’ll park up at the address he gave me and wait for him to wake up. When night falls, he’ll show me to what I guess counts as his home. I’m not sure what will happen then.
* * *
It’s about midday in some buttfuck state that’s not New York when a prick with a highway cruiser puts his lights on and decides to ruin my plans.
“You got a tail light out,” the highway patrolman says when he’s done slow-sauntering all the way from his car to my window. He’s tall and skinny and has one of those long faces.
“I’m sorry, officer,” I say. I hand over my badge with my license and registration, expecting that to be the end of things. It’s not the end of things. He glances over my documents and hands them back to me, then casts his eye back over the truck in a manner that suggests he’s going to waste my fucking time.
“New York City Deeeetective,” he says, drawing out the worddetectivealmost like it’s a bad thing. “Think you’re pretty special, huh?”
“Nope.”
