Page 8 of Keeping Her Safe

“When you go back, I want you to tell them to call me. I want to know if something happens to you.” He could hear the tears in her voice now.

“I will, Zeph,” he said softly. Reaching out, he ran a hand over her riot of red curls.

“Zephyr.” She looked out the window into the darkness.

He corrected himself. “Zephyr.”

“Now what?” She was still looking out the window.

“Now, we head north.”

She looked at him, her face a mask of worry. “Zachary, we have nothing. I don’t even have my license or credit cards.”

Before he could answer, they had pulled into his garage. After closing the door behind them, he cut the engine and said, “Stay here. I’ll be just a minute. Then we leave again.”

He needed clothes, and he had left his travel bag on the floor in the beach house. Running through the house, he grabbed a spare duffle bag from the closet and started filling it with enough clothes for seven days in the cold. Halfway through, he realized he was still in his underwear and pulled on a pair of jeans, not bothering to button or zip them. There would be time later for that.

With the bag full, he went into the closet and opened his gun safe, needing a case for the gun he carried, as well as a second gun and case. Each gun needed a case for the flight, and he could bring them as long as they were in a checked bag in a case.

“Can I put something in there?” Zephyr asked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Somehow, she had silently walked into the house and into his bedroom without him hearing her.

Once again, she was in gray sweatpants, but tighter than the ones from yesterday. The yellow T-shirt said ‘Florida’ across her breasts. The outfit and the wild, curly hair made her look young and vulnerable. Yesterday, it had been bound with a tie, but today it was free, and it seemed to be taking every advantage to run wild.

“What?” he asked.

“This.” She held out the green vase.

“Sure,” he said, reaching for it. “Is it full of money, Zephyr? Don’t you trust the banks?”

“No, not money. It’s the USB drives with all my books on them,” she replied.

He had the vase in his hand when she had said the words. His hand started shaking at the weight of what he was holding. Millions of dollars were on these USB drives. Maybe billions.

“Do you think it’ll be safe here?” he asked, moving a few guns to make room for it.

“No, but it’s all I have right now.”

He looked at the vase in the safe and took it out again. He walked out of the closet with the vase and a handgun in his hand. On the bed, he opened the gun case and took the gun out of it. Slowly he dumped the vase contents into the empty case. He saw there were around twenty USB drives in total. He grabbed a sock from the drawer behind him and placed the loose drives into it. “Are these the only copies?”

“No, my publisher has another set of copies, but these are mine.” Her eyes were on him, but she didn’t ask what he was doing.

“Do you want to bring them with us or leave them here?” he asked, holding the now-closed gun case between them.

“Here.”

“The safe?”

“No, he would look there.” She said the words that were running through his head.

“Where?”

She answered by taking the case and leaving the room, and he followed her into the bedroom next door. It had once been his bedroom, but now it contained an office. He realized this was also the room she would have slept in when visiting Brian. In the closet, she pulled out a few boxes that sat on the floor of his old things, boxes that had been there for years. When the boxes were out, she crawled in and came back without the case.

Smiling at her, he said, “I’ll put the boxes back. Did you take out my nudy magazines?” He knew the hollow spot under the carpet that was big enough for a few magazines.

“Years ago. When I was in high school, I stored all my books in there,” she said as she watched him pile the boxes back in. Her work was back in the same spot it had started in.

“We have to go. We’ve stayed here too long.”

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