“Calm down,” John says. “We’re just going to talk. Get us some beers.”
She gives me a venomous look, but she does as she’s told and goes to the fridge, getting out a couple of beers. She proceeds to shake them and put them on the table in front of us.
“Go off,” she says. “Enjoy your beers, jerks.”
“That’s enough,” John says.
“You promised me that I was never going to see him again. Now you want him to marry me? No,” she says. “Never. Not in a thousand years.”
“You’re acting like a child,” John says. “You don’t want to talk? You can go to your room.”
She storms out.
“She’ll come around,” he says, tapping the top of the beer. He waits for a moment, then cracks the beer and shoves it to his mouth, sucking up all the foam from going everywhere.
I follow his example. I was planning on killing this person just a few hours ago, and now it seems he’s going to be family. I did not expect to find a kindred spirit in my pursuit of Laura, not in the form of a heavyset man running one of the most brutal criminal rings in the country.
“Did you see that guy in the gym the other week?”
“I consulted on the case for the police.”
“Oh, yeah? They didn’t catch him, did they? So are you bad at consulting, or…”
“Or what?”
John smiles. He doesn’t ask the question that is lingering in the air between us.Or did you do it.That’s what he really wanted to say. But he doesn’t need to. Because he knows.
He knows in the same way I know a string of crimes stretching from California to New York belong to him.
We share a beer, and then another, and then another. The house comes slowly back to life. Dinner gets cooked and served, and I help eat it. Laura’s family is a truly lovely, vibrant collection of people. I don’t often feel connected to those I meet. Usually they just feel like a series of either obstacles or advantages.
“You’re not such a bad guy,” John says as the evening is winding down. “You’ll be a good son-in-law. I might even have some work for you.”
And just like that, I am plugged into an entirely new network.
I thank him and his wife for dinner and go out to my car.
Which isn’t there.
Laura must have stolen it. She must have taken the keys from me somehow.
Or… no. She never came near me.
Then it occurs to me. The little kids. She must have sent them out to get the keys out of my jacket when it was over the chair. She deployed them like a couple of tiny commandos. I chuckle to myself. How absolutely adorable.
“What’s the matter?” John comes out onto the porch.
“She’s stolen my car,” I tell him.
“She’s really mad at you,” John laughs.
Laura
Lights are coming up behind me, fast.
So I guess he’s found me. Makes sense that he has a tracker on his car. I never thought that I could actually get away with this. I just wanted to do something to show this asshole that I really am going to be a huge fucking problem for him if he tries to keep me captive. Nothing is going to be as easy as he thought it was going to be.
Does he expect me to pull over? I don’t fucking think so. He can’t make me. That’s the fun thing about cars. They’re really hard to stop unless you’re the police, and even if you’re the police it’s still not that easy.
