“Nothing but fruit and vegetables for another forty-eight hours,” Doc says. “Orchard’s a hell of a drug.”
Halfway to Vermont, I take over driving from Eli. He looks battered, his golden skin ashen. The betrayal of being shot at a wedding, the violation of it has hit him hard. To Italians, weddings are sacred as church. Maybe more so. The repercussions of it will be with him for a long time.
When the road becomes thick with snow, when the forest closes in on us from all sides, I know we’re close. Doc’s already jammed the van’s GPS, making us impossible to track, but when we get to the last town before the safe house, I pull over at the storage unit we keep for this purpose.
January and Bobby are deposited in our Ford SUV, and we all work to put the snow chains on the wheels. Then Eli stocks the back with food and clean clothes as Doc and I tear the license plates off Parker’s van. We drive it to a nearby glade and slosh gasoline all over it.
“Shame,” Doc says, striking a match. “It’s not a bad ride.”
“It can go to hell along with anything else Parker’s paid for.
Once the van’s gone up like the Fourth of July we return to the SUV. January is shivering in the back seat. “Not to sound like a little kid, but are we almost there?”
“Almost,” I reassure her. “Another hour, Pryntsesa.”
The drive up the mountain is difficult. Even with the chains, the roads are slippery and seem like they haven’t been driven on for months. My eyes are heavy with exhaustion, and I accept Eli’s offer of a Marlboro, willing the nicotine to keep my brain sharp.
Some hopeless part of me is convinced the cabin won’t be there. That it’s been bombed or burned into nothing but when I turn right at the wooden stake we use as a signpost, there it is. Our cabin safe house, the last place in the world where anyone should or could find us.
“Here,” Bobby slurs with relief. He’s full of every sedative Doc could find and I’m surprised he’s still awake.
I pull up and notice January staring at the cabin with a frown. I don’t blame her. From where she’s sitting it looks like a shack, not much bigger than the one I built on the grounds of Velvet House. For the first time in hours, I feel a stab of pleasure. I’ll get to see her face when we lead her inside.
We get out, my hair and eyelashes instantly freezing from the cold.
“Excited to experience your new home, Tits?” Doc asks with a sly nudge.
“I…um, will we be able to wash inside?”
“You’ll see.”
Eli uses his retina to unlock the front door and then each of us has to press our eyes to the lens and then a palm to the electronic pad behind a hidden panel.
“Confirming January Joy Whitehall is present,”the computer announces when January puts her hand on the screen.
She blinks. “You guys already have me on the system?”
“Yeah, otherwise you’ll be shot,” Doc explains. “Any weirdos come within a hundred feet of this place, the facial recognition guns’ll take them out.”
January looks a little disturbed, at least until we open the front door. When Eli flicks on the lights and she sees the inside of the safe house, she lights up like it’s Christmas. “Whatisthis place?”
“Our safe house,bella,” Eli says with a trace of a smile. “Did you expect us to sleep in one room?”
“Um, kind of.” January turns on her heels, taking in the spacious, wood-lined walls, the sloping staircase that leads to a huge underground living area, and probably the fact the place has already been remotely heated to 72 degrees. “This isamazing.”
“There are seven bedrooms and four bathrooms,” Eli says. “A fully stocked kitchen and pantry, a hot tub, a weapons room, everything we could ever want, my ruby. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go to bed.”
Without waiting for an answer, he stomps off downstairs.
“Should I go with him?” January asks in a small voice.
“Nope, let him breathe.” Doc wraps an arm around Bobby. “And I better get this one to the med room to inject him with an ass-load of morphine. I’ll see you in a bit, Tesorina.”
“Bye guys,” she says softly, before turning to me. “What now?”
I look down at her. She has dark shadows under her eyes, and her glitter and black makeup is smeared across her cheeks. The sight of it tears at my insides. This morning we were going to a wedding, a tense public event for us to grit our teeth through. Now we’ve pulled the ripcord on our lives, fled to a place we come to only when every other safety measure has failed us.
I reach for January, pulling her into my arms. “Now we have a shower and sleep.”
