The big fix, p.19
The Big Fix, page 19
“Hello?”
“Hey, Lib.”
“Penny! Where the hell are you? What is happening?” she shouted with the exact intensity I expected. I leaned away from the phone.
“I’m okay, Libby. I wanted to call and tell you that. I’m with Anthony.”
“Anthony?! Where did he take you? Did you know he told me not to call the cops?”
“Yes, and you didn’t, right?”
“Of course I did!” she screeched. “I don’t care what the hot guy next door says. If my sister goes missing, I’m calling the police!”
I smacked my hand to my forehead. “Libby! He told you not to for a reason!”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have, Pen. One!”
“I—” I started and stopped, not sure how to answer. Of course Anthony wasn’t the bad guy she thought he was, but I wasn’t sure how much of the truth I could explain.
Libby took advantage of my silence. “Warner knows you’re gone and he had something to do with it.”
“You went straight to Warner?”
“Of course! Who else would I call?”
I groaned, thinking of what Anthony said about Warner wanting to arrest him. My sister had only stoked the fire, and I needed to clear things up. “Lib, I need his number so I can call him and tell him I’m not missing.”
“But you are missing! I certainly don’t know where you are. Where are you even calling from?”
“Libby, please just give me Warner’s number.”
The sound of her fading grumble said she’d pulled her phone away. I reached for the pen and notepad sitting on the nightstand, ready to write it down.
“Here it is,” she said, and recited it. I quickly wrote it down.
“Thank you. Anthony told me you called Mom. Is she there with you?”
“Yes, she’s here. And I swear, if you don’t come back home and save me from her, I’m going to kill you myself.”
A laugh accidentally popped from my lips. I could picture her yanking on her hair and pacing around her kitchen in leggings and socks.
“Are you laughing right now?”
“Of course not. Try to calm down, Lib. I’ll be home soon. And don’t kill Mom.”
“Penny! This is not the kind of adventure I meant when I said you needed more adventure! Where are you? Can you at least tell me that? We are worried sick.”
Guilt flooded through me. I didn’t know how much I could say. Telling her where I was might make her come look for me—which would have been a challenge anyway, since I didn’t even know.
I picked at a thread on the duvet. “Right now, I’m in a motel room, but we’re about to get back on the road.”
“On the road? What, are you guys like road tripping?”
“Something like that.”
“To where?”
I laughed again. Darkly this time. “I wish I could tell you.”
She grew silent in one of her judgmental pauses that spoke volumes.
“Don’t worry, Lib. Things will be fine,” I said, trying to believe it myself.
She sighed. “I want you to be safe, Pen. And to come home.”
“I am safe.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. Anthony is with me.”
He walked back in the door again right as I said it and lifted his head at the sound of his name. His eyes warmed.
“Do you trust him?” Libby asked.
I watched him hoist the duffel bag over his shoulder. He’d found a T-shirt in the suitcase, and it clung to him in all the right places. He gave me a small grin and headed back out the door. If I was going to call Warner, I needed to do it out of Anthony’s earshot.
“Yes,” I told Libby. “I have to go.”
“Okay, but, Penny—”
I jammed my finger into the button to end the call before she could finish. Then I immediately punched Warner’s number into the keypad.
This early on a Wednesday morning, I imagined him sitting at his desk in the middle of the police station.
“Detective Warner,” he answered.
“Hi, Detective Warner. It’s Penny. Collins.”
A pause passed and his voice took on a concerned edge. “Hi, Penny. What can I help you with?”
I stood from the bed to peek out the door and make sure Anthony was still busy with the car. My words came out in a rush. “Listen, I know my sister told you I’m missing, but I’m not. I mean, I was kidnapped, but I escaped—and Anthony had nothing to do with it. Well, other than when he came to save me.”
Warner paused. I could hear his shock over the phone. “Penny, where are you?”
“Someplace safe, don’t worry. For now, at least.”
He let out a flustered breath. I imagined his dark brow folded in concern. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I wanted to call and clear up any confusion over what my sister might have told you. Anthony had nothing to do with my disappearance or with his uncle’s murder or Portia Slate’s bodyguard showing up in his closet.”
I feared I had divulged too much, but the latter part of my sentence got his attention.
“How do you know about either of those things?”
The truth just kept coming, and I hoped I wasn’t thwarting any of Anthony’s plans by sharing it, but I needed Warner to know. “Because the man who kidnapped me is the same man who killed them both. He told me before I got away.”
A stunned silence passed.
I peeked out the door again and saw Anthony close the trunk. I wrapped my hand over the receiver to shield my voice. “Look, Daryl, I know this all sounds unbelievable, but I swear I’m telling you the truth. Anthony is innocent. If you go to Connor Slate’s house, you’ll find Lou Griotti’s old green Cadillac somewhere on the property—and my phone! They took that and Anthony’s phone when he came to rescue me, and they moved Anthony’s car. We had to flee on foot when they started shooting at us. We’re still running from them. They are behind all of this. Connor and his henchmen.”
“Penny, what are you—”
“I’m telling you, that’s who you want for your murders. Please don’t tell my sister any of this. I have to go! Bye!” I barely got the last words out before Anthony appeared in the doorway.
“How’s your sister?” he asked.
I fought to control my breath and heart rate. I swiped my hair out of my face. “Not happy, but she’ll live. Ready?”
He gave me a curious look before he nodded. “Yes.”
We drove across the street to the diner, which seemed unnecessary, but Anthony insisted on having the car within sight and as close as possible. He filled up the tank at the gas station before we went for breakfast. We sat at a booth. I ordered a short stack of pancakes and bacon. He got a ham steak and eggs. We shared an entire pot of coffee. I’d replaced my Silver State hat and threw on the aviators from Lou’s suitcase. Anthony wore a baseball cap that shielded the gash on his forehead—that was perfectly sutured with the superglue, thank you very much—and had his hair flipping out over his ears. Paired with the T-shirt and vintage jeans, he looked ready for a weekend stroll. It felt a little like we were on a date.
Minus the part with the strange man at the counter staring at us.
I took my last bite of bacon and wiped my fingers on my papery napkin. I hadn’t brought up the man because I was hungry, and I didn’t want Anthony to make us leave before I had breakfast. I spoke softly. “I don’t mean to worry you, and don’t look, but the guy at the counter has been watching us since we got here.”
Anthony’s eyes widened. His head turned toward the counter.
“I said don’t look!” I hissed.
The man sat sideways on a stool as he ate, leaning his elbow on the counter, with his body open to the dining room. Aside from him, it was us, another couple a booth down, a family with kids behind Anthony, and a handful of singletons at the counter. The place was a roadside diner stereotype: red vinyl seats, checkered floor, greasy menus, absolutely delicious food.
“He was in the mini-mart last night,” I whispered in case it was relevant. “He asked if we were from out of town.”
Anthony’s eyes widened again. “You talked to him? What did you say?”
“I said we were passing through. And you were a cop.”
This time, he rolled his eyes.
“What? He’s got truck stop serial killer written all over him. I was not about to let him think I was alone.”
“Well, if you’d stayed in the car like I told you to . . .”
I dismissed him with a wave of my fork and then stabbed my last bite of pancake. “I’m sure it’s only a coincidence. He’s not watching us. He’s probably just curious about our weird clothes.”
“I look normal today,” he counterargued.
The undeniable fact squeezed my full belly with nerves.
Anthony drummed his fingers on the table. He pulled out his wallet to drop down cash to cover the bill, plus a generous tip. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Stay here and check if he watches me go.”
“What? Don’t leave me here alone!”
“It’s just a test. I’ll be right back.” He shoved out of the booth, and when he stood to straighten his shirt, I caught a glimpse of the gun tucked into his waistband. The bathrooms were on the far end of the diner, back by the entrance and in the direction I’d been facing the whole time. I watched him go with a knot in my throat. As he passed, the man at the counter pivoted to sit straight on, and then turned his head to watch him walk the length of the room.
Great. If I had any doubt he’d been watching us, it was gone now, and then only further erased when he got up and followed him into the bathroom.
“Shit,” I hissed. I tried and instantly failed to convince myself it was all a coincidence. We were being watched, if not followed. And now the man with dusty boots and bloody knuckles had gone into the bathroom with Anthony.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
The little boy at the next booth heard me and curiously tilted his head. He had a milk mustache and syrup-coated sausage fisted in his sticky hand. My heart suddenly ached for Max and a day at home with my family.
But no. I was in a roadside diner in the middle of nowhere with no one to call for help, and my fake boyfriend—who wasn’t really fake anymore—had been stalked into an enclosed space with a menacing stranger.
In a snap decision, I reached for the steak knife they’d given him for his ham and tucked it up my sleeve. The icy blade pressed along my wrist, and I gripped the wooden handle. My heart beat in my throat and my eyes glued to the corner where the bathrooms were. If he wasn’t out in ten seconds, I was going to go check on him.
Ten.
The little boy at the next booth took another bite of his sausage link.
Nine.
His mother noticed how sticky his hands were and intervened with a napkin.
Eight.
The waitress behind the counter let out a bark of a laugh at something a man sitting there said.
Seven.
A trio of new customers entered the front doors.
Six.
Someone in the kitchen dinged the bell for order up.
Five.
I poked the knife’s tip into my arm and couldn’t stand waiting anymore.
I slid out of the booth and walked with my head down to the bathrooms. No one really looked up, but they had no reason to. They were none the wiser I had a steak knife up my sleeve and was potentially walking headfirst into danger. My heart was absolutely pounding. I’d begun to sweat. The blue button-down I’d tied at my waist clung to me like polyester plastic wrap.
In the small hall outside the bathrooms, I paused for a breath. Both the women’s and men’s doors remained shut, hanging still on their hinges. I strained to hear anything to tip me off there was more than normal bathroom activity going on behind the men’s grubby door, but the nearby kitchen was too loud: the cooks chatting, a radio bleating tinny music, the slap and hiss of food being prepared.
I waited the final four seconds of my countdown and turned the knife blade-out in my hand. I held my other hand out to push open the door, shaking all over at what I might find on the other side, when I heard a gunshot.
I froze. My blood turned to ice. My body refused to move. I stood there like a stone statue as people out in the dining room screamed and I feared the absolute worst. The entire universe narrowed to a single point. The moment lasted an eternity.
And then the door swung open, and Anthony came barreling out. He grabbed my outstretched hand like I’d been reaching for him and pivoted me in the other direction in one swift move. Before I could take a breath, he was dragging me toward the exit at a full run.
The diner had erupted in chaos. The cooks were shouting; the waitress was screaming; the customers were ducking in their booths.
“Did you shoot him?!” I heard myself scream.
“Only in the leg. We’ve gotta go!” Anthony said, and yanked me back into the hot morning sun.
“Oh, my God!”
Thanks to his preparedness, the car was parked right outside the door.
“Get in!” he commanded, and let go of my hand.
I sprinted for the passenger side, still trembling and my ears ringing, when sight of a black pickup truck caught my eye.
“Penny! What the hell are you doing?!” Anthony shouted when I ran off in that direction.
Without answering, I dashed to the truck and plunged the steak knife still in my hand deep into the front tire. It exhaled an angry hiss, and the truck sagged. I left it embedded there and ran back to our car.
“Now he can’t follow us!” I wailed, and wrenched open my door.
“Why do you have a knife?!”
“Because I was coming to save you!” I threw myself onto the front seat.
“How do you know that’s his car?” Anthony said as he cranked the ignition. People were starting to pour out of the diner.
“I saw him getting gas last night. Now go!” I slammed my door and smacked the dash.
He hit the gas, throwing us in reverse at first, and then left a plume of smoke behind us as we peeled out onto the road. I twisted in my seat to look out the back window. A cook had run out into the parking lot and was waving a rag at us. Half the customers were probably on their phones dialing 911 already. Anthony put the muscle car’s full muscle to use and sped us away from the scene with a thunderous roar.
When I caught my breath, I looked over at him to see a bright red ring around his neck.
“Oh, my God. Are you okay?” I reached for him, and he flinched.
“I’m fine. He got an arm around me for a second.”
The furious shade of scarlet coloring his skin and the dappling of bruises on his collarbone suggested it was more than a second.
“Who was that guy?”
“Someone working for Connor.”
I looked out the back window again and didn’t see anyone chasing us. Not yet at least. “How did he find us?”
“I told you: limitless resources.”
I sighed and squeezed my fists with worry. “Well, that bodes well. Where are we heading now?”
He stared out the windshield, eyes focused and both hands gripping the wheel as we tore down the road at near ninety miles an hour. The blip of a town was already in the dust behind us. His words came out with a grit that put a dazzling shiver in my blood.
“To put an end to this.”
CHAPTER 12
We drove for four more hours. The scenery didn’t vary much: endlessly straight roads bending with the horizon, flat plains with scrubby little bushes, rolling hills, the occasional mountain range popping up and disappearing. Anthony’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror like a Ping-Pong match between it and the windshield. Every once in a while, a car would hug our bumper, and my heart would vault up into my throat. Anthony’s knuckles would turn white on the steering wheel, and then the car would whiz around us to pass on the two-lane highway.
If we were still being followed, no one had caught up yet.
Shortly after the sun had crested the sky’s midpoint and begun its slow descent into another blazing summer afternoon, we pulled off into a town bigger than our previous stop, but still small enough to count as the middle of nowhere.
“Dare I ask where we are?” I said. I shifted and felt my blood recirculate after becoming one with the vibrations of the road for so long.
“Elvin, Nevada,” Anthony answered.
I looked out the window at the passing scenery. Old trains, squared-off brick buildings, a small casino. It had all the markings of an old foothill mining town. “Is this our final destination or another pit stop?”
“Semi-final. We’re not staying here, but this is where Portia is.”
The announcement made me tingle all over. Finally. “And what’s the plan, once we get to her?”
He shot me a glance, which I did not like the weight or silence of.
“You do have a plan, right?”
He stroked his jaw and did not answer.
“Anthony! We came all this way, and you don’t have a plan for what’s next?!”
“I’m working on it! I told you, it’s complicated.”
I grumbled and sat back in my seat, wondering if I’d ever see my apartment again. “I’m never going to make tenure.”
He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Yes, you will. I promise. I’m going to make this right.”
We rolled down a central street, which landed somewhere between quaint and dismal. Half the storefronts were abandoned, and the other half looked stuck several decades in the past. “Why this place?” I asked.
“Could you find it on a map?” he said.
I watched another block pass, this one entirely occupied by a rectangular park shaded in leafy green trees. An old man sat on a bench; a middle-aged woman walked a dog. Even from inside the car, I felt the town’s insularity. No one came to live here because they wanted to; anyone here had been here all along.
“Probably not.”
“Exactly. Plus, there’s an airport.” He pointed off to the north where I saw a landing strip and row of tiny propeller planes. The little municipal airport lacked soaring air traffic control towers, the staple of international hubs, but it could get the job done for a private jet.
