Chapter Sixty-One

 

DAVIS

 

I suppose that the best time to leave was when we did it, anyways. I suppose that at night, that would be when Ryan would know the right people to talk to. He'd know where to go, how to get there.

I'm in the passenger seat. I'm not sure if that's totally wise, honestly, but it really doesn't matter all that much in the end. I could have driven, if I chose to, but I wanted to let him do it this time, and he did.

The car pulls up in front of the house. An hour to get his stuff together. He comes out with two bags, drops them into the trunk, and I guess that's him ready to go. It occurs to me suddenly that he has no idea where my apartment is.

He takes the bike, though. Of course he takes the bike, I should have expected it, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me. I move over to the driver's side and he follows behind.

Walking into the apartment, it doesn't take me long to realize that I don't know… honestly, I have no idea what I'm taking. What I want to take. I grab a bag and throw some clothing in it. Enough to last me a week or two, I suppose.

None of it was ever that important to me. I never needed anything here. I was always at the office, so there's really very little in the apartment that I need.

The thought sends a chill down my spine. I have to stop myself from getting too morose, to find a way to put a tent-pole to stop my sagging mood as the night goes on. There's hope, though. I at least have that much.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I know it's not going to be that I throw myself into my work, running after another pretty-boy gangster.

The bag's pretty heavy. I sling it over my shoulder and carry it down. Ryan's waiting on the Indian.

"Okay, now follow me," he says softly. He waits until I'm in the car to kick-start the Indian to life. He's already spent a minute getting it turned around before I came back outside, so it's no trouble to let out the clutch and get the bike moving.

He takes it real slow until he sees I'm behind him. It wouldn't be any good to get lost. If I'm following, I'm following. The night's getting pretty late, though.

Danny shouldn't have done me the favor he did, but I can't take it back now. Any minute now, he should 'notice' that we're gone, and then it's up to us to get the hell out of Dodge before they can find us.

Won't take long after that until they drop it. He eases himself onto the highway. I don't know about him, but I settle into the drive. It helps to take off the edge of tension that I've got building up in my chest.

Then, a mile or two before the border, we pull off to the side. There's tracks worn in the road, not so visible that you'd notice just driving by. It feels like we're following them, but I have a suspicion that Ryan knew the route before they were there.

He seems to be going by windage. We turn back south at a particularly nasty-looking tree. The tracks turn with us. A mile or two more, and you can see a chain-link fence that's been poorly-repaired from someone cutting it right in half and splitting it a mile wide.

Ryan's bike slows to a stop, and he gets off. He points back at the trunk as he walks up. I pop it and when I see him again he's closing the trunk, a pair of bolt cutters in hand. It doesn't take long to get the fence popped apart. He pulls it open by hand, holds it for me.

This is really the moment of truth. I don't know that there's going to be any coming back from this. I knew that I couldn't go back from the minute that I put those keys in his handcuffs, but now it seems to be a real, conscious choice.

Am I doing this?

I close my eyes and ease onto the gas. The car rolls forward, slips through, and my headlights illuminate into the dark night. It doesn't occur to me until I'm all the way through that maybe it'd be smarter to leave them off. That way, nobody comes to investigate the far-off lights heading right through.

Oh, well. Too late now. Ryan heads back and jumps onto his bike. It growls loud enough that I feel it in my chest as he comes through behind me, and gestures me to follow. He drives through the night, mostly without lights.

Twenty minutes later, we're finally back on a real road, and then thirty minutes after that we're in a town. Ryan smiles and presses a kiss against my lips as we sit in a Mexican cantina as the sun rises.

I don't know what our plans are. I don't know if Ryan knows, either. But I know that whatever they are, we're going to figure them out together.