Charity's Warrior Read online

  "Not a fuckin' sound," he barked. "I'm right out here, keeping an eye on your damn boyfriend. I'd hate to have to shoot us all."

  I didn't hear another thing for a long time, while the darkness inside was growing hotter and hotter. Eventually, the heat and drugs made it impossible to stay conscious. I was in and out for hours until Steve came for me again.

  The rustling of the car cover being pulled off got my attention. It didn't get any brighter; the sun has long since set. I can see Steve working through the window, putting the cover back on the car he'd gotten it from. The heat is intense now, and I find myself begging for him to open a door or window, anything to get some air in here.

  Finally, he opens his door and gets back in. He starts the engine and air blasts from the fan. It's a huge relief, even though it's going to take a little bit before the air conditioner will cool it off.

  "Your boyfriend is a stubborn prick!" he snaps as he turns to face me. "He waited hours to see if we would go back. I still don't have a fuckin' clue how he tracked us down."

  Steve put the car in drive and we left.

  "The prick froze my local accounts. That's the only way I found out he knew where we were. If it had been five minutes later, he would have gotten us," Steve said through a sarcastic chuckle.

  He turned to me, his face red with anger. "Hey!" he shouted. "Just who the fuck is this guy that he can do something like that? Who the fuck are you mixed up with? Froze a fuckin' bank account, who the hell does that?"

  It was a lot of questions considering he knows my mouth is taped shut. He turned around and drove.

  My system is nearly empty of his drugs now, but I don't dare move. It was better if he doesn't know. It might give me an element of surprise when I need it. And I know that gun is still up there with him somewhere. It's best that I just lay here watching the streetlights pass.

  Awhile later, I feel the car jerk and I see Steve trying to sit himself up. I don't know when the last time he slept was, but it was taking its toll on him. It happened two more times over the next fifteen minutes and I hear him cursing at himself for it. The dashboard lights have his face twisted up in ominous shadows around his swollen eyes.

  He had to pull over. It wasn't optional any longer. Once we are stopped, he pressed his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes and scratching his fingers through his hair. "Son of a bitch," he breathed. He sounded worried, and he needed to be. "What the hell am I gonna do now?"

  He put his head down on the steering wheel for a bit. I can't tell from here if he fell asleep or not. The only part of him that moved at all was his sides as his lungs slowly pulled and pushed the air in his lungs.

  Suddenly, he sits straight up right. I see him look back at me for a moment, and then he is digging around in the passenger seat again. All I can do right now is pray that he isn't looking for his gun.

  He came back up with it in his hand.

  Oh Christ!

  For a moment, I feel dizzy, the complete fear threatening to knock me out cold. My panicking chest pulls in great bursts of air through my flaring nostrils, just as I see him put it to his own head first.

  Yes, great! Let him kill himself. Fuck him, as long as he doesn't hurt me!

  Then, like a mad man, he starts talking to it.

  I don't know where the gun is, but now I see what he has in hand is just a cell phone. Its shiny black case was easily confused with the gun he'd pointed at me earlier, especially when I wasn't willing to look at it so close again.

  "It's Steve, Mom," I hear him saying.

  He spends a few minutes convincing her he is alright, and my heart is breaking the entire time. I know her, I love his mother, and I have no way to tell her right now that her son is already dead. This thing talking to her was not the child she'd raised. If she knew what was happening, what he was doing to me, she would be beside herself.

  Listening to him take advantage of her is starting to piss me off, but I am helpless to stop it. Somewhere up there, he did still have the gun, and there was still tape on my mouth, and chains on my hands. He convinced her to wire him money, telling her it was so he can come home.

  When he hung up, he put his head back on the steering wheel. "Get comfortable," he mumbles back to me. "Because of your boyfriend, we can't go back where we were, and I don't have the cash to go someplace else. I have just enough gas left to go pick up cash wired from my parents, so this is our room for the night."

  He was quiet for a short time.

  "I don't see too many ways out of this," he finally said to me. "I don't know what you got me mixed up in, but I can see this isn't the average boyfriend."

  Steve turned his face toward me without lifting it off the wheel. He looks exhausted and at the end of a road.

  That is not a good thing.

  "I do believe this is going to come down to me or him being dead. Since he's got a whole team on his side, maybe he has the upper hand," he said slowly. "Then again," Steve lifted his right hand, made it into the shape of a gun and fired at my face, "I've got you."

  I'VE BEEN HEARING A sound now for about three or four minutes. At first I thought it was a distant truck, but it's been growing closer and louder. When I realize it's the sound of a helicopter, I give up hope that it might be Justin's black SUV's grinding down the road as he comes for me.

  Strange that it keeps getting closer, though.

  Now it's so close that it pulls Steve from a sound sleep. He barely moves, his head tilts as he listens and tries to convince himself that it isn't getting louder. But it is.

  "What the fuck is this now?" Steve says under his breath.

  In moments, the damn thing is right above us. We are both in shock, I think.

  A helicopter, really? Who the hell has a damn helicopter?

  Steve puts his head against his window, trying to see. I wish he was dumb enough to roll it down and stick his head out, where they could blow it the hell off.

  Suddenly we are flooded with light. It blasts through the windshield and the back window at the same time, startling us. Knowing the helicopter would distract us, they had snuck the SUV's right in on us. We didn't even see them coming. Under the blinding light, I can't actually see the SUV's, but I know it's them, just as I know that Justin is in the one in front of us.

  I can feel him.

  I hook my feet under the chair for leverage, and I fix myself upright in the middle of the backseat where Justin can see me.

  What came next was so unexpected that I didn't believe it happened, not for the first quick moments.

  Steve eyed me for moving, shocked and angry. The car keys had been dangling in the ignition. He turned it and the car roared to life while he stared at me for betraying him.

  We hear voices shouting at us, but in the flood of light, we can't tell if they are shouting through their windows or if they had gotten out and are coming up on us on foot. Oddly, I feel like I'm the only one curious about that. Steve is blank.

  There is going to be a last stand, and it's going to start now.

  He carefully puts the car in drive.

  A single tear slips along his cheek.

  My ears fail. Every sound vanishes as the terror renders me temporarily deaf. I fix my eyes out through the windshield into the light there, connecting with Justin the only way I can.

  Steve lifts his hand. The cell phone is gone. The gun is back. There is no mistake this time.

  He aims it at me and fires.

  My hearing returns at the thundering crack!

  It feels like he punched me in the chest for a second. I'm pushed back against the seat, and then I'm burning. When I look down, I see the sheet draped over me becoming red.

  He shot me!

  No hesitation. No warning.

  I'm not alright! I'm not alright!

  As I fall to the back seat, I hear shouting and loud popping and thumping. I'm sure they've opened fire on him. The bullets rip through the hood as Steve stomps the gas and pulls the wheel. The entire car jerks as he hits
something and bounces off.

  My breath is lost. When I try to catch it, I feel gurgling in my chest on my left side. It's too much to accept.

  I pass out cold.

  WHEN I COME TO again, just a few moments later, I'm half on the floor. Steve is screaming and laughing, as if he's playing Grand Theft Auto. This is all just a game to him now. I think he's knows his fate, and he's snapped—completely insane. We swerve to each side and I can hear the car's engine screaming.

  The air smells metallic and acrid, and I think it might be a combination of the sheet and my burnt flesh where the bullet passed through them both.

  My chest still gurgles when I breathe, and it hurts so damn bad. The pain is an intense heat, like a hot pole ramming through me from front to back.

  Steve never acted like this before. There was never any sign of this craziness. Until now, his biggest flaw had been being a bore. He didn't have any visible ambition or drive, no goals. Seeing him now, it was as if someone else had put him on like a suit. It looks like Steve, but that's all there is.

  Crazy or not, he has me trapped and I won't last very long this way.

  There was a thump and the sensation of being pushed. Justin and his crew are trying to push us off the road. We fishtail to the left a bit.

  They need to hurry!

  They need to get me to a hospital. The blood is soaking the sheet, and I feel weak. I'm dizzy too, from not breathing right.

  I suddenly choke and cough, and blood splatters through my nose onto the back of the chair in front of me. The rest of it is in my taped mouth with no way out but down, so I swallow it before it makes me choke again.

  Steve manages the car back under control and laughs at himself proudly. Each moment he runs, I am closer to death, but he is oblivious. I don't think he even remembers I'm back here.

  The engine screams again, running scared from the giant black beasts running it down. Younger, stronger beasts with bright eyes and steel teeth hungry for a meal.

  They bump us again, hard, and I feel the car going sideways. Steve must have learned a few things from Xbox; he let off the gas, but didn't make the mistake of braking. He turned into the slide and waited to feel the tires catch before gunning the gas, pulling the car right out of the spin.

  "Wooohoooooo!" Steve yelled, laughing. "That's fuckin' right, Baby! That's how you do it.”

  The rocking and twisting is tossing me around the seat, but I clearly do not matter. Nothing matters right now. Steve doesn't even care for himself.

  The car lights up again, the SUV's headlights closing back in. Steve punches it, but the lights keep getting closer. Moments later I feel the contact again, the crunch of metal. I hear the black beast's growl. This time there is much more power, Justin is done playing. We turn sideways again, but I can still hear the SUV, still feel the banging and pushing.

  We finally got completely sideways, and I am thrown to the floor.

  The car pitches and I am on the ceiling next to Steve.

  The bastard is still laughing. He's flopping around on the ceiling while his car rolls out of control, and he doesn't see how real it is.

  We rolled further and it shot me to the back where my head hit the window and brought on the blackness.

  WHEN MY EYES OPEN again, I'm lying on asphalt. There's glass everywhere, little cubes glistening in the lights, and chunks of metal and plastic. The sound of helicopter propellers are roaring into the night, muffling frantic shouts and other sounds I am too incoherent to understand.

  It's like waking up in a war zone. Someone is moaning in pain, and it's surreal to realize it's me. The air is thick with engine exhaust and burnt rubber, and a black helicopter is trying to land in the center of the road about thirty yards away.

  Someone is touching me now, fiddling behind my back. My hands and ankles come free and I hear the chains being tossed away. It's not relieving at all, not with all the other intense pain and emotions that I'm feeling.

  I'm gently rolled to my side, but that is excruciating on my chest, as if I'm being kicked, making me cry out. That's when I realized the tape is gone. I hear Justin's voice, and that dulls the pain, or at least the idea of the pain.

  "I know it hurts, Baby, but we have to keep the blood from pooling into your other lung. I've got you now. No one's going to hurt you again. I love you. Be my Warrior, and you'll be fine," he said.

  I began to cry. Just to have one more chance to hear him call me Warrior was more than I had expected. At some point along the way, when I hadn't even realized it, I had come to believe I was not surviving this. With every bit of hope that Justin would save me, there was the doubt he would get the chance. Steve firing a gun at my chest changed me from thinking I would probably die, to knowing that I am dying.

  If Justin doesn't get me out of here soon, that's still going to happen.

  "I love you so much," I cried. "I prayed for you, Justin. I was so scared and I just kept thinking if you didn't come for me, no one would," I told him.

  It was so hard to talk. I'm out of breathe and struggling from that little bit.

  He wiped my tears. "Don't cry, Warrior, you're safe now." His hand was softly rubbing my face. "He'll never touch you again. We'll get you out of here in just a couple minutes, as soon as the helicopter is ready."

  I heard Lena's voice call out to him. Behind Justin, I can see her and some of the others. They have someone between them that they toss out, stumbling toward us.

  Steve.

  "I'm not leaving you, Charity, I'm right here," Justin said as he fixed my hair and stood up.

  I fight to stay conscious, but the darkness is creeping in.

  Steve looks a bit banged up, but fine. Of fucking course he's fine. He's standing on his own and puts his hands up to fight when Justin turns toward him. Justin was on him in two steps. Steve took a swing that Justin ducked away from easily before unloading two or three punches to Steve's face that brought him to the ground unconscious.

  The darkness moved in closer on me, but through the tunnel of vision I still have, I see Steve's face. His nose is more than an inch off to the left and ripped and bloody on its right. He looks like he was caught mid-yawn, and I think that means his jaw is broke. There's also a rip in his cheek that will need stitches.

  "He's mine. Tie him up and put him on an IV. Keep him alive until I get to him," Justin ordered as he came back to me.

  I feel his hand putting pressure on my wound. "The helicopter's ready. We're going now, Babe." His voice is distorted, like we're under water.

  Justin lifts me himself and begins to carry me. The last thing I see is Lena and the others loading Steve's limp body into the back of one of the SUV's. Then the tunnel closed completely.

  CHAPTER VIII

  "How is she today?" I heard someone asking. Their voice is very far away, hiding in a thick blackness.

  "She still hasn't woken up, but the Doc says her vitals are strong, better every day."

  That one was Justin, I'm sure of it. They were talking about me, but I'm confused as to why—and why they were talking in terms of days.

  Was it possible that I've been lost in the darkness that long?

  "The swelling in her head is gone?" the other voice asks.

  "It's down. We just have to wait and see if there is any residual damage," Justin adds.

  "And how are you holding up?" the other voice asked. It's starting to sound like it might be Lena.

  "I almost killed the love of my life. This is all my fault. If she's not okay—I'm not okay," he answered. He sounds absolutely miserable.

  "Justin, you know that isn't true," the female voice said. "You saved her life. We did the best we could, the best that anyone could. Her ex-boyfriend did that to her, not us—not you!"

  "If I didn't push them out of control, they wouldn't have rolled, and she wouldn't have hit her head," Justin said flatly.

  "If you didn't stop them when you did, she would have drowned in her own blood. You heard the Doc when we brought her in. H
e was barely able to stabilize her, and that was a few hours before the trouble with the slow swelling in her head. He told you himself, five more minutes and there would have been nothing he could have done. Five more minutes, Justin, and you would've lost her."

  Justin doesn’t reply.

  "She's going to be fine, Justin. It's just a matter of when. You need to snap out of this now! She's going to need you when she wakes up. I can't imagine the questions she's going to have. The truth is going to be hard as hell, for both of you; you've got to be the strong one because none of it is her fault. You finally started to grow a pair with her—she deserves to have you use them."

  Yes, this was definitely Lena.

  "You're right," Justin consented. "She's my Warrior, and I've got to be hers, too."

  My heart is glowing. I can't see it through the darkness, but I feel its heat.

  "Damn thing is," Justin said, "I was telling her everything that night. She deserved to know."

  "Not everything, right, just the things that affected her?" Lena asked.

  "No—everything," he said. "I don't want to hide anything from her. She deserves better than that."

  "Justin!" Lena snapped.

  "Lena, you know it's too late now, anyway. After what she witnessed out there, only the truth will makes sense. Her insurance agent boyfriend just tracked down her kidnapper with a trained team and a helicopter. You have a good cover story for that?"

  Lena didn't say a word at first. The silence was tangible. "Point taken," she said at last. "You better be damn careful. And be prepared to shut us down for a while if she doesn't take it well."

  "I'm ready for that," Justin said. "I'm ready to give all of it up if that's what she needs."

  I don't know exactly what they're talking about yet, but I expect that Lena is going to be pretty pissed off hearing that. I suddenly feel like I've destroyed something, maybe even ruined a friendship.

  I hear a rustling sound, like what you would hear rubbing the shirt on someone's back.