Page 1 of Heartbeats Amidst Chaos: Part 3

Chapter one

Elio had been waking slower than he used to, and this morning was no different. Being caught in an explosion and suffering a head injury changed more than one might expect. The nightmares had come as no surprise, but he still wasn’t used to the way waking forced him to swim up and out of a deep, dragging darkness.

Sometimes, by the time he was fully awake, he was gasping with panic. Occasionally, he even found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, his heart pounding in his chest.

This morning, he felt disoriented but calm as the fingers of sleep reluctantly fell away.

Finally prying his eyes open, he lay still, taking inventory and trying to figure out where he was. He lay on his side in a cheaphotel bed—the thin, coarse sheets were a dead giveaway. What did give him pause was the woman in his arms.

Rissa’s back was to him, her ribcage rising and falling with deep even breaths beneath his forearm. Her dark hair was splayed across the pillow, tickling his chin and smelling of pineapple.

Elio’s breath quickened as he tried to remember the night before. Slowly, it came back to him. The office and Rissa spinning before him in her tiny black undergarments. Bringing her to orgasm on the desk. His dick began to rise just thinking about it.

But there was also the before and the after. The police showed up and his near arrest. The mysterious group opened fire—either on them or the cops; Elio wasn’t sure. And his and Rissa’s final decision to go on the run together.

He remembered saying it was safer that way and thinking that they had no one to trust except each other.

However, as Rissa had wriggled back into her thong and dress and they’d walked back to the car, he began to suspect that she didn’t really trust him either. She had grown silent and pensive, turning her head away from him to stare out the window as they drove through the night to this hotel. And, he admitted to himself, he still wasn’t positive he trusted her. Shecouldhave brought the police to their rendezvous. She had not outright denied it.

Slowly, quietly, Elio eased himself away from her, sitting up on the edge of the bed. The shabby little room’s air conditioning was noisy, but it wasn’t working very well. It was hot, and they had tossed off the thin upper sheet and coverlet in their sleep. Rissa lay slightly curled in on herself, wearing only her thong and bra, her long legs and slim torso tan against the white sheet.

Elio forced himself to look away, his mind returning to the night before and the way they had tacitly admitted their mutual distrust by agreeing to share the bed. That way, neither one could slip away or make a call during the night.

Rumpling his hair and sighing, Elio tried to remember when he had put his arms around her and pulled her close, but it must have been after they’d both fallen asleep. Well, then, Rissa never had to know about it.

Elio sat in only his briefs. It had simply been too hot to try and keep clothes on while they slept. He recalled the way Rissa removed her dress for the second time that night—soberly, without fanfare—draping it over the single chair in the room before slipping under the sheet. He had followed suit, falling asleep almost immediately despite expecting tension over their unusual circumstances to keep him awake.

He was glad for the rest. Now that the final foggy vestiges of his strange, post-trauma sleep were falling away, his mind felt clear and ready for action.

All he had been truly sure of last night was that the city was no longer safe for either of them. They needed to go on the run, andhe wanted them to do it together. This morning, he realized they needed a plan. Where were they going to go? What were they going to do? And who were they going to be?

He stood up and stretched, wincing at the pain that still lanced through his side and leg when he moved too quickly. He visited the bathroom, pulled on his pants, and shuffled toward the door, pausing once to glance back at Rissa who had not moved.

Stepping out onto the narrow balcony that connected all the upper-level rooms to the stairs leading down, Elio was hit with a blast of hot, humid air. It was only six o’clock, but the sun was already hard at work.

He pulled the burner phone from his pocket and dialed the number of one of his grandfather’s colleagues, a man whose talents were in high demand among the lawless of the city but whom Elio had never expected to contact on his own behalf.

Chauncy answered on the third ring.

“What’s so important so early in the morning?” the man’s gravelly voice grumbled. “Don’t you people know I work nights?”

“I know you work nights, Chauncy,” Elio said. “That’s why I’m calling.”

He could hear the new alertness in the forger’s voice as he asked, “Who is this?”

“Elio Accardi,” Elio said. “I’m in need of your expertise.”

“Elio Accardi.” There was a good deal of unsaid information in Chauncy’s simple repetition of the name. His tone told Elio that he knew exactly who he was and exactly why he needed Chauncey’s services. But Chauncy simply asked, “What can I do for you?”

Elio ran through his needs briefly, told Chauncy where he could find pictures of both him and Rissa online, and then hung up and used his phone to wire over the price Chauncy had named. He then dialed the diner he could see on the other side of the road and ordered breakfast for both him and Rissa, tipping ahead of time and asking them to leave it outside the door to their room.

He paused for another moment, looking around the quiet motel parking lot and the road that stretched straight and flat in both directions. He had reserved their room over the phone and Rissa had then gone in to get the key. No one had seen him, and she wasn’t yet wanted by the law—at least, not publicly. Thirty miles outside town, on the road to nowhere, they were safe.

For now.

Reentering the room, Elio found Rissa sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking down at her phone. Her hair fell in disarray around her bare shoulders and across her breasts. When she looked up at him with sleep-hazed eyes, he knew he had never seen anything more beautiful. He wanted to cross the room intwo strides, push her back down on the bed, and kiss her until she begged him for more.

“Good morning,” he said.

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