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I’m guessing that it won’t.
The ground beneath me is unforgiving and icy, so I have to coordinate my steps to avoid slipping. It’s a sordid dance, practicing caution while a maniac is hunting me down. At this point, I’ve had to remove myself from the reality of my situation. Vadik has planned this for a long time, and the odds are in his favor, maybe for the first time ever.
I lock the car as soon as I get inside, and unsurprisingly, the girl I picked up is cowering in her seat. I’m shocked that she didn’t just jump into the back, but I guess she doesn’t have the same instinct for these things. If I thought I had a chance at getting her home without the cops being involved at all, I thought wrong.
She’s going to be a liability like I could have never imagined. Based on the expression on her face, the horror she’s experiencing is enough to split her mind from her body. She’ll become completely divorced from reality, and that will slow me down to a grinding halt. I’ll have to make a choice of whether I’m going to save her or leave her behind, and that was never, ever supposed to be a part of the equation.
“Go faster, we’re being shot at!” she shrieks as she watches me reach into my coat pocket for the keys.
“No shit, I hadn’t noticed,” I reply with irritation as I pull them out and start the car. “Besides, this car is practically bulletproof. It’s as safe as we need it to be, like a cocoon.”
She looks at me incredulously before she reaches her hand towards the passenger controls on the inside of the door and unlocks it.
If I had properly estimated how stupid this girl is, I could have prevented this somehow. But I didn’t, and now she’s running awkwardly through the snow in vain. It was against my better judgment to allow someone as unpredictable and domestic as her into my car, but I can’t undo it now. All I can do is try to make sure that she doesn’t show up on the news tomorrow morning, face-down and bleeding in the ditch.
Somehow, Vadik doesn’t even see her as she sprints away. He’s so hell-bent on capturing and killing me that he doesn’t even realize that I have a passenger yet. He’ll see her eventually, perhaps within seconds, but I still might have the chance to save her.
I put the car into drive and speed towards her, making sure to get just close enough to apprehend her without striking her by accident. The fear in her eyes is obvious when she looks back at me, but she won’t know true fear until Vadik gets ahold of her. If he believes she’s my girlfriend, he’ll hold her hostage to get to me.
The bratva holds a code of honor, but only those with a sound mind can abide by it. The rest are ruthless and impossible to tame. I should have turned him loose as soon as I noticed his mind begin to melt.
When I’m as close as possible, I slam the car into park and jump out the door. She tries her best to keep running, but the two-inch heel and lack of traction on her boots betrays her. She clearly didn’t give much thought to how far she’d get. I’d be shocked if she managed to run an hour away from here without hurting herself and freezing to death.
Though I can’t blame her for trying to escape, she clearly hasn’t considered the range of consequences that running away could cost her.
I toss her back into the car and jump across the hood to get back to my side. I might have scratched the paint with the buttons of my jacket, but I can be angry at myself about that later. Right now, I’m angry at myself for picking up a civilian on the side of the highway. I can’t even remember the last time I did something so stupid. Maybe I need to stop being so nice.
I lock the door again as soon as I’m back in my seat, and I speed out of the parking lot before she has a chance to run away again. She’d be on her own if she chose to do that, but the guilt of leaving her would still eat at me.
As soon as we’re out of the parking lot, she hastily reaches into the glove box and grabs my gun. The way she’s pointing it at me shows no indication that she knows how to hold it, which is equal parts entertaining and dangerous. If the gun was loaded, she could end up injuring and disfiguring both of us without the promise of sweet death to save us. Both of us, forced to walk through life with our bottom jaw missing.
Also, how the fuck did she know it was there? What was she looking for while I was gone?
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” I ask her, smiling with amusement as I glance over at her very serious yet unthreatening face. She has round cheeks that make her look young and innocent, causing any threat she makes to sound like a joke.
“You’ll find out if you don’t let me out of the car,” she replies in an unnaturally deep voice. She’s trying very hard to be intimidating, which just makes her efforts even less so.
The pain from the bullet wound is starting to reach me now that we’ve escaped into relative safety, so I need to take control of the situation as soon as possible. She needs to be out of my life, without my name or information, right fucking now.
“Go ahead and fire it. See what happens.”
I’m sure that she’s seeing red from behind those big, shiny eyes, but she doesn’t have the guts to do anything about it. She thought that threatening me with my own gun would be enough to cause me to surrender to her. If she had been paying any attention at all, I would imagine that she could figure out that I’ve been faced with horrors beyond her comprehension. I’ve seen things that would make a grown man curl up and cry for mercy on a concrete floor, and that’s just a Tuesday for me.
“Just fucking let me out of here! God!” she screams.
“Do you want to die? Huh? Do you want to feel the life drain out of you while you freeze to death? Because you’re practically begging for it right now,” I warn as my amusement quickly vanishes. Now she’s tempting my wrath, and I’m quickly running out of energy. I can’t waste it on being angry with her, but she’s making it tremendously difficult.
“No, but I don’t want to die with you either! You’re the reason I’m going to die at all, you fucking asshole!”
As the tension grows to an uncontrollable level, I can feel the effects of blood loss beginning to subdue me. I need to wrap up this bullet wound fast, or we’re both dead in the water.
“You need to calm the fuck down or you’re going to get us both killed. Do you understand me? You have no idea what the hell you’re messing with here. Just do what the fuck I say and everythingmightturn out okay. Do you understand me?” I ask as my voice rises.
She lowers the gun a bit, and for a moment she’s silent. I can’t translate her silence as either acceptance or additional anger, and I wish to god she would just stop making this a battle of wills. If I wanted her to die, I would have left her back at the lumberyard. Why the hell can’t she see that?
5
Holly
