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“Get what you want,” I gestured to the space ahead.
“Uh… this place is probably hella expensive and I’m broke. Except for maybe ten or fifteen bucks in cash and loose change floating around in my bag.”
I grabbed a shopping cart. “Deke gave me a credit card for incidentals. Keepin’ you fed and safe without poisoning you while you’re in my care rates as an incidental. Get what you want.”
Ten minutes later, seeing we’d done the whole store and she’d only grabbed a dozen eggs, package of bacon, and some gluten-free bread, I amended, “New orders. Get enough food for a week.”
She looked around with uncertainty. So I started huckin’ things into the cart.
A package of steaks. A pack of chicken wings. Burgers.
“This got gluten?” I asked, lifting a bag of apples.
“Nooo. Fruit does not have gluten,” she said through a smile, eyes dancing with amusement.
I tossed four types of fruit into the cart.
“This?” I had a package of hot dogs.
“Meat might if it’s processed. Hot dogs, generally, yeah. You have to look at the ingredients. See if there’s breadcrumbs and whatever. Sometimes spice blends and sauces you wouldn’t think have it do have it.” She grabbed a bottle of salad dressing and read the back label, scrunched her nose, and put it back and picked up a different bottle and put it in the cart. She then put a jar of salsa in, too.
“I want these hot dogs,” I said, grabbing regular ones. “Those say gluten-free. Grab ‘em too.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t like ‘em.”
“Don’t like hot dogs? What? Over a campfire? Nothin’ better.” I looked at her like she was insane.
“Correction, I don’t like the gluten-free hot dogs. I like regular hot dogs. They just hate me with the fiery fury of a thousand suns.”
“Ah.”
And then I grabbed a couple things I knew she wouldn’t be able to eat that I wanted. Pop Tarts. Frozen pizza. Some other shitty junk food. Sugary cereal. Regular white bread and peanut butter. Beer. I already had a bottle of Jack Daniels in my bag as well as a carton of smokes and baggie with a couple strains of weed.
“What about this?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the shelf as I put a case of Coke in the bottom of the cart.
“Um... toilet paper might have gluten, but I don’t intend to eat it,” she replied around a wide grin.
I bopped her head with the eight-pack before I dropped it into the cart and reached for a case of Gatorade. “Look. There’s peppermint tea. Grab some.”
6
I turned the truck off and lifted my phone at the text alert noise. After reading the message, I told Gianna, “You can crash in Jojo’s room. She says you’re welcome to wear clothes in the drawers under the bed if you run low. Laundry machines downstairs too that we can use.”
“Oh, okay,” she replied, looking fidgety while chewing her lip, which was all that was visible of her face since my Aerosmith t-shirt was her makeshift blindfold.
I pulled the fabric down off her face. She looked ahead at the cabin and smiled. The smile was shaky.
“Not so bad?”
She shook her head. “Nice place.”
“The blindfolding, I mean.”
She exhaled hard. “Not so bad. Thanks, Jesse.”
She said that, but I knew it wasn’t easy, either. She was jittery at the notion of the blindfold, but for the last twenty-five minutes of the drive, to keep her mind off it I fired a whack of basic questions at her. Middle name. Favorite color. Favorite movie. Bands she likes. When we landed on the music questions, she seemed to forget to fret over the blindfold. So, music dominated the last fifteen minutes.
At this point I was no longer questioning her loyalty, but the thing was… if she didn’t know where the cabin was, she wouldn’t be able to spill about it under duress. Not that I liked the idea of her being put under duress. In fact, I really didn’t fuckin’ like it, was feeling like if they did get their hands on her it’d be my failure. I’m not a man who likes to fail.
And I explained myself to her before I pulled over to find something to blindfold her with. “This is our safe house. Only members get to know where it is. It ain’t personal, hostage.”
“Okay,” she agreed quietly, though fidgeting nervously.
“What’s your issue with being blindfolded?”
“My issue?”
“Worried you won’t be able to breathe? That you won’t get out of it, or someone’ll come at you when you can’t see what’s comin’ at you? What is it?”
“I… dunno.”
I replied with, “Bullshit, you know what it is, but you don’t owe me an answer for this. It’ll only be a half-hour max, and I’ll talk you through it. I take full responsibility for you, and I don’t take that duty lightly. How’s that?”
