Page 20 of Break for Me

“No.”

“Do you give everyone stupid names?” She asked, noticeably frustrated by my lack of conversation. I grabbed her foot and put my thumb right over the open wound. Her eyes widened nearly to the size of baseballs, but she didn’t scream or try to break loose.

“Try not to move,” I said and got ready with the needle.

“Who else do you think is after me?” She asked.

“Funny. I intended to ask you the same thing.”

I looked up at her again when she sighed. She’d already looked away. I didn’t figure she was going to have any interest in telling me the story of how she ended up in this place just yet. It was only a matter of time, though. The closer that we made it back to the drop point, the more she would talk. I would know her life’s story by the time that we rolled back into Philadelphia because she would try everything in her power to convince me that she wasn’t the bad guy in this tale; that she just needed someone to help her get away because she was the victim here.

“Do they teach you how to do this in kidnapper school?” She asked.

“Kidnapper school,” I repeated and scoffed. “No. But they teach you how to do everything you might need to know to survive on your own if you’re in the Marines and become a Raider. Anything you don’t know going in, you pick it up as you need it.”

“A Marine Raider? Never heard of them. Is that something you’re making up? I knew you weren’t a stable human, but just how unstable are we talking here?”

This would be easier to stay hateful if she wasn’t fucking funny. I shouldn’t have had to put that amount of effort into not laughing at someone.

“Normal people say thank you when someone helps them,” I said.

“I wouldn’t need help at all if you hadn’t kidnapped me.”

“Little girl, you need more help than anyone I’ve ever met. In more ways than a set of stitches.”

The fire in her eyes suggested that if I hadn’t been holding a needle that was still being threaded through her skin, she probably would’ve used that fucked up foot to kick me right in the face. It sparked enough anger that we were at least able to finish stitching her foot in silence. I didn’t take any extra time to give her a chance to throw her attitude at me again. I scooped one arm under her knees and one around her back to pick her up. She squirmed at first like she thought she might get away, until she realized I was just moving her because her foot would be almost completely numb by now. While it would’ve given me immense joy to watch her attempt to walk, I still wanted to shower. In silence.

I dropped her on the bed next to her shit and I went back to the bathroom with my change of clothes. She’d never be able to get through the door with the lock I’d put on it. She’d have to break the windows to get out that way and I’d hear it. She wouldn’t make it far with a foot that she couldn’t feel. And there wasn’t an inch of this room or her shit that I hadn’t checked to make sure anything that she might use as a weapon was locked away in Persephone. Then I locked myself in the bathroom to keep her from getting to the first aid kit or my phone. She shouldn’t have been able to hurt me or herself with anything that I’d left available to her. With that knowledge, I turned the water on as hot as it would go and just stood there until it wasn’t hot anymore. I didn’t cut my time short or even so much as consider getting out of the shower when I heard something crash against the bathroom door. I had absolutely no doubt that it was the ridiculously old school landline phone that was in every room of this motel. I’d already cut right through both chords that had connected it to the wall, and she apparently didn’t appreciate it very much. I couldn’t begin to imagine who she thought she could call for help.

Once I was dry and in comfortable clothes, I called Memphis back.

sixteen

TRISTA

The water stopped running several minutes ago and he still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. I’d already crawled and hopped all over this fucking room looking for anything at all that I could’ve used against him, but there was just nothing. He hadn’t even left a fucking pencil. I spent an extra second wondering how much damage I’d be able to do if I used the Bible on him. I might get lucky enough for him to spontaneously burst into flame if I cold-cocked him upside the head with it. I ended up leaning into the bathroom door with my face squished against the cold wood, trying desperately to hear what was being said when I realized he was on the phone again.

I should’ve known they’d eventually send someone better after me. The others hadn’t exactly been easy to get away from, but they weren’t that hard either. I tried to just run barefoot into the woods, from a fucking Marine. I had no chance of that being successful, before I’d ever even tried it. I shook my head at my own stupidity. I shouldn’t have assumed it would be as easy as it had been the other times. I could’ve saved myself one terribly painful injury if I’d stopped to think that through a little more. But now, I had an injury that I’d have to consider in to the factors of every escape plan I formed from this point forward.

I wondered again who he was talking to. His voice took on a different tone when he talked to her than it had when he talked to me. He laughed and joked with her. Not at all the way that he joked with me. He cared about whoever she was; but when those jokes were directed at me, they were meant to also wound. I couldn’t imagine a wife or a girlfriend being okay with whatever his current line of work was so I didn’t believe they were intimately involved. And the relationship was much too laid back to be employer and employee. I couldn’t understand his mumbles through the door, no matter how hard I pushed my ear into it. I was just fucking lucky enough to catch myself with both hands on the doorframe when he opened the door while I was standing there like an eavesdropping psychopath.

“Learn anything useful?” He asked, with that smirk that made me want to smack him to death.

“That you really don’t know how to be a gentleman. I had fifteen minutes just so you could have hot water for forty.”

He laughed. “Would you like help getting back to the bed or would you prefer to hop over there yourself?”

My glare was enough for him to just nod and push his way by me. He looked weird in regular sweatpants and a T-shirt. Weird enough that I couldn’t do anything but stare at the tattoos that covered every inch of his skin on both forearms while he made his way across the room and to the door again. He took the little locking contraption off the door and went outside. It crossed my mind to go flying across the room to get out there myself, but I couldn’t do much flying. By the time that I would even make it to the door, he’d be back in and locking it. I hobbled toward the bed closest to the bathroom and sat on the edge of it while he carried in a massive pink duffel bag. I put my hand over my mouth to try to stifle the laugh at the sight of it.

“Memphis thinks she’s funny,” he said when he dropped the bag on the other bed and unzipped it. Making this ridiculous man carry a pink duffel bag around in public was glorious, so I had no doubt from that moment that Memphis absolutely was funny. He pulled a garment bag out of the duffel and took it to the dusty little closet to hang it up. I crawled across the bed to get to the TV remote while he set up a laptop and plugged his phone into it. I tried to ignore his clicking around on the keyboard by turning up the volume on the TV, more than once. It wasn’t more than an hour later, he’d started packing everything back away. I curled myself under yet another disgusting motel comforter, assuming he was about to decide that it was my bedtime anyway. He turned off every light except the little lamp on the nightstand between the two beds and I absolutely panicked when he put a knee on the mattress next to me.

“Move over.”

“Um, I think the fuck not,” I said. “There’s a whole bed over there with your name all over it, Mr. Marine.”

He laughed and pulled a handful of zip ties from his pocket. I watched him tighten one around his own right wrist. He struck out like a damn lightning bolt to grab my left hand.

“Unfortunately, you are the biggest flight risk I’ve ever encountered,” he said, putting one of the ties around my left wrist. “And I can’t trust you to just stay in a bed and actually sleep knowing that I have an entire pink bag full of goodies in this room with us.”

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