Page 36 of Wandering in Darkness
“Okay, on the count of three,” Grayson says.
“Okay.”
“One… two… three!” We both kick the door at the same time. It groans against our punishment but doesn’t give up yet. “Again.”
We kick it again. This time, the door cracks and flings open. The man who’s in the room with us hurriedly backs away, like he thinks hiding will be the best option, and it might be because I need to get to Antonio quickly and don’t have time to deal with him. I rush out of the room and run down the hallway, gun out and ready, but when I get out of the building, I find the SUV Antonio had been waiting in still sitting there, door open, driver’s seat empty.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I yell as I see their vehicle, a newer SUV, speeding down the road.
Grayson runs toward the driver’s seat but I push him out of the way.
“I’ll drive.”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m the better driver.”
“You most certainly are not! Do you not remember the time you rear-ended someone?”
“Because you distracted me!”
“Oh of course, blame it on me!”
“Cal, you’re better with a gun than me. I’m driving,” Grayson says, and I realize that he is quite right. So I get into the passenger seat and don’t even have the door closed before he’s off.
I reach into the back seat to grab my rifle, more than prepared to see how I can do shooting out their tires at this speed, but find it rather empty.
“Where did you hide my gun?”
“I didn’t… hide it. I laid it right on the floor.”
I hesitate as the realization of what he’s saying settles in. “They… they stole my baby. Those motherfuckers… stole my baby.” I’m pissed about Antonio and now I’m pissed about my gun. These assholes really need to watch their backs.
“We’ll get it back.”
“Fuck,” I grumble. “You’re going to have to get significantly closer before I can shoot them.”
“Cal, I’m really sorry,” Grayson says, and it’s quite clear he’s not apologizing about his inability to make up the distance or the Antonio thing. He’s apologizing aboutthat. “I’m so sorry. I really am sorry.”
“Stop,” I tell him, not wanting to hear it. “I need to concentrate. I can’t do this right now.”
“You can never do this,” he says as he slows the SUV just enough to take the curve. “No matter how many times I beg. No matter how many times I ask, you can’t do it. I know it’s because you don’t want to think about what happened. Deep down, you know that there really wasn’t anything I could do to remainhere with you. But if I’d just listened to you better. If I’d just understood. Please, let me apologize. Stop pushing me away.”
“I can’t because every time I talk to you, I think of them!”
“I want you to only think of me.”
I wish I could… I wish I could go back to that time, but I can’t. “Please, not now. Just help me get Antonio back, and then… then I’ll listen to you. But not now.”
“Okay,” he says, pushing the vehicle as hard as it’ll go, but it seems like no matter how fast we drive, they’re still so far ahead of us. My stomach clenches as I fear that we won’t make it to Antonio in time—that I’ll have fucked up so badly that I’ll lose him too.
Voicing my worries aloud, I say, “I can’t lose him too.”
“You’re not going to. I doubt his life is even at risk. He’s worth nothing dead. They want to use him. That’s all this is,” Grayson reassures me.
“Right… but we’re not catching up to them. We’re not even getting close to him.”
I glance over but I know he’s going as fast as he possibly can. I’m really not certain what he could do to go any faster.
Desperate for something, I look over at the GPS screen and see that there’s a lane that cuts to the right. If we take it and they end up doing a left at the end of it, it would put us farther back, but it would also give us a brief moment where we would be lined up beside them as the roads drew close before veering away.
