Page 34 of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

He slumps, Michael shoves his limp body out of the way and the dead guard face-plants to the right.

Michael strides inside, the barrel of his gun pointed right at me. “You’ve been bad, Liv. The game has gone on long enough. Look what you forced me to do.” He motions with his chin to the brain matter. “You lay with him?” he asks.

“The guard?” I stupidly ask. My voice rises to a high soprano.

He grits his teeth. “The guy.” Gage, he’s talking about Gage. “You did, you fucking whore.I see the guilt on your face.” When he shouts, his spittle hits my face.

I watch stunned as he marches behind the counter, sinking his fingernails into my skin as he grabs my arm and yanks me hard enough to bring me crashing into his body. The gun barrel, still hot, burns through my blouse where he has it butted against my ribs.

Then his lips are on mine, forcing his tongue inside and he groans. “So sweet,” he grumbles as he tears his mouth away. “Move.”

I have no choice. If I ever want to see Gage again, I have to cooperate. Michael doesn’t want me dead, at least not yet.

We have to walk through the puddle of thickening liquid pooling around the dead guard. Through the stench of iron and death lingering in the air. Each step makes a sickening squick sound, a combination of squeak and squish derived from our rubber soles hitting wet, leaving deep red footprints all the way to his truck.

My captor moves us to the driver’s side, where he shoves me in first, forcing me to climb over the center console while he follows. He never cut the engine when he dropped out gun blazing, and so he only has to throw the truck into drive.

Hot tears flood my eyes.

Covered in blood spatter, Michael reaches to turn on the radio, though a cassette tape clicks on instead. Air Supply. I recognize the band and the song from my mother’s collection of tapes. The ones my great-grandfather had lovingly saved.

He’d taken my mother’s music when he trashed my house. The tears fall harder.

Michael calmly sings along with the lyrics as if out on a Sunday afternoon drive. He clicks on the blinker and turns onto the street leaving town.

It’s all I can do to keep from vomiting when he reaches a bloody hand over to stroke my thigh. “Don’t think this means you get out of punishment,” he says, throwing a glance to his roving hand.

I swallow hard and wipe at my nose but say nothing. What could I say? Anything other than what he wants to hear in his delusional mind will just get me in more trouble. I have to keepmymind clear. Agree with him, go with it until I can’t go anymore. From where I sit, it’s the only way I can think to survive.

We drive for a while. Hard to tell how long. He taped over the digital clock on the stereo with duct tape. But I know we go deeper in country, away from the salt and sea air of the Chesapeake. At last the SUV eases to a stop.

“If you hadn’t forced my hand, it wouldn’t need to be this way. But until you learn, Liv. Until you learn when you’ve taken the game too far, that your actions have consequences, this is how it has to be.”

Michael opens the center console to pull out a syringe. I watch him uncap the end of the needle, flick the tube, and push some of the yellowish liquid out through the tip. I push back against the door, yanking at the handle, which won’t open. The door lock is broken, probably for just this reason. Yet it doesn’t deter me from pushing harder against the door, pushing away from Michael.

Though, with nowhere to go, he stabs the needle into my thigh, the same one he spent the drive petting, and pushes down on the plunger. Almost instantly my body feels heavy, lethargic. My head swims. My vision clouds, and then crushing, crushing blackness.

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