Chapter Fourteen

When he let me out of the boot of his car, it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I was in a garage, I realised when I saw a work bench which ran the wall beside the car. As I blinked I could see tools, then a shiny motorbike caught my eye, and another.

“Sorry.” He told me as he gently took my hand, “I hope you’re okay.”

I nodded as my eyes found his face. He was wearing a look of deepest concern. I spoke no words as I followed him inside the house. I wanted to know why we were there, but didn’t feel like it was a good time to ask. I mostly just felt like I needed to breathe. That boot had been hot and uncomfortable and standing here now didn’t feel comfortable in the least. In fact, I felt like the stress of everything was making me feel nauseous.

The nausea was overwhelming as I slowly followed him around the house at his command.

After a while he looked at me, broke out of what he had been doing and asked me, “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, “No.”

He let out a deep sigh at that and asked me if he could do anything to help. I sensed that he wanted me to tell him quickly so I did, “I think I need a bucket.”

Moments later, I was face down in my bucket, vomiting up every last bit of stress and butterflies from my tummy. I had never felt this way before, this real fear, it was so intense and overwhelming. My head was spinning, my guts were churning and everything – every bit of stress and worry – was coming out of me through my mouth then.

John’s hand caught my hair and pulled it back from my face. His movement was so gentle, and so soft that it made me want to cry.

In the same moment that this man had done something so awful to me, he had also done something so kind. He had driven me to the cliff, prepared to shoot me off, then had caught himself, stopped himself and had come back with me. He had taken me and taken care of me – as best he could for a situation where he had to pretend to kill me – then when it was all said and done, he was still there to hold back my hair when everything came up from my insides, caused by the fear he inspired within me.

I was sure I had looked ugly as I vomited into my bucket. I was sure he had thought this was awful to watch, but when I was done, he just took the bucket from me and put it into the toilet without a word. He flushed its contents and cleaned it out before giving it back to me.

“In case you need it again.” He said without a trace of irony and without looking at me, as if to allow me my modesty.

Then he went back to what he’d been doing before. As I watched him moving about the house I realised what he was doing. He had money hidden everywhere in fat wads and was packing it into bags. I guessed this was all for my new life.

The cop part of me wanted to object – I couldn’t live off the proceeds of crime – but I didn’t. I held myself back and just focused on my breathing. I would take whatever he gave me and get out of here. I was already wanting to reach out, to hold him, to kiss him and tell him how much I loved him for what he had done for me. All while still knowing it was still him who had driven me to the cliff, held the gun to my back and had been prepared to shoot that gun.

I was trying to not let my feelings and the lovey dovey voice inside my head get the better of me, but I couldn’t help it. Every bit of logic and reason was gone right out of the window when he’d dropped the gun.

Logically, he should want to kill me. I am between him and what he wants. Criminals are not sentimental people by and large and John shouldn’t be sentimental. But then, he was behaving like a man who was sentimental.

I put my bucket down in the hallway near the garage and went to find him.

“John?” I called to an unfamiliar house. In all the time we had been dating, I had never been to his home. I had only ever been inside my own home with him or out in public.

The place was a mess. The whole thing appeared like a teenaged boy’s bedroom with dirty clothes, books and other household items strewn about the place.

When I found John he was in a bedroom – one which I guessed must have been his with a slept-in bed and piles of clothes on the floor. I don’t think I had ever seen a house so messy in my life, even as a cop when we would raid a house, there would be plenty of mess but this one took the cake.

I looked from the mess about my ankles to the three black duffle bags to John, who was looking right at me as he zipped a bag with expert fingers.

When I took a peek inside the bag, I could see bundles of cash. There were wads of green hundred dollar bills and wads of yellow fifties. I only caught a glimpse before he shut the bag but it made me feel uncomfortable.

The weight of what I was seeing settled on me. We had come back here so he could pack money for a new life. Was it my own new life these bills were for or his own? Or, was it for our new life together?

The thought of leaving together to start a new life left my body feeling heavy and my mind racing. This man had just gone to shoot me dead, yet I wanted him still. My heart had never bet so strong for someone in my whole life as it was for John in that moment.

If this was a normal relationship where we had normal problems, we’d be having hot, frenzied make-up sex now. But this wasn’t a normal relationship, and we weren’t just fighting about normal civilian stuff, we were just returned from him abducting me before failing in his attempt to kill me and push my dead body off a cliff so I would never be found again.

John silently picked up the duffels, threw them over his shoulder and headed towards the door. He took them out to the car and threw them in the boot where I had just been. They took up enough space that I knew I wasn’t going back there.

“John?” I asked, as I had only followed him silently the whole time.

“Yes?” He asked, his voice hard but not quite as hard as his face.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

In the garage, beside his car he gave me the sweetest kiss. It was full of longing and sadness. Something in that kiss told me all that I needed to know.

He held me then as I cried onto his shoulder. I knew, I knew.

“You aren’t coming!” I wailed into his shoulder as he held me closer.

“No.” He told me, “I am so sorry, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” I cried.

John pulled my head back and looked me in the eyes. “Because I can’t. I am so sorry.”

His words were sincere, and left me gasping for breath. I couldn’t combat them, and that voice inside my head was telling me not to even try.

He reached for my hand and held it in his own. My tears were flowing freely, and I could feel the pain radiating from him. I knew he was in a bad way. I felt for him, I felt for me. I wanted this to all go away so we could just be together. Just the two of us, without all of this awfulness.

“I will come for you.” Was all he said. His voice was sincere.

All I could do was nod as we stared into one another’s eyes.

“Come with me.” He said as he turned and walked through the garage door and the house. We were in the kitchen when he stopped, got a glass and pored me some water.

“Have this.” He told me, “It will wash the vomit from your mouth.”

Our eyes met and he told me, “You smell like vomit.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed so hard I could barely stand and nodded, embarrassed.

I was surprised that even after everything, I still had the capacity to feel embarrassed in front of him.

But then, I wasn’t surprised at all. Things had always been pretty weird here.

After I rinsed, he kissed me again and among giggles he told me it was much better this time around. I couldn’t believe he had kissed me when my mouth tasted like vomit and laughed beside him.

There we were, in his kitchen, laughing about what had happened when I heard a loud crash from behind me. I turned to see a man dressed all in black running into the room. He was big, and covered in tattoos.

My breath caught in my throat. Was this it? Really? I had just escaped death once today, and now here another man was, with murder in his eyes and yes, a gun in his hand.

From behind me, John pulled his own gun and yelled at me to run. “Get to the car!” He cried as I ran towards the garage, my body bent double like a good ex-cop avoiding bullets.

There was yelling from behind me in the kitchen where the two men stood and then a few shots were fired over my head. They were just warning shots though.

I know if someone is serious about killing you, they just do it. This guy just wanted to prove a point to John.

I ran as hard as I could into the garage though, not wanting him to get bored of proving a point and shoot to kill or maim instead.

From behind me I could hear the two men yelling. I couldn’t find the keys anywhere in the car. I was flailing around looking everywhere when I remembered, when we had gotten out of the car, John had hung them on a hook beside the garage door.

I could still hear the yelling the whole time as I went to the door and picked up the keys from the hook. The yelling didn’t make much sense to me. It was mostly just abuse mixed in with a few words of warning. The two men were yelling about me. The man with the tattoos was yelling about how I should be dead, why wasn’t I?

A few quick strides with the keys and I was in the car, ready to pull out of the garage. I couldn’t work out though how to open the door, so I reversed through it. It took a few tries but finally the garage door gave way.

I was in the drive way, the door having given way from my reversing into it, neighbours watching me from every side when I heard it.

A gun shot rang out from inside the house. They had shot at me and hit walls before, but the dread in my chest grew. The sound wasn’t the same as before. There was just bangs as the shots were fired, not crashes as furniture and walls were struck.

I waited for a second shot, or a third. When none came, I knew that the shot must have hit its target. Someone had been shot.

Rather than cry as I so desperately wanted to, I reversed from the drive way and put my foot to the floor. I was getting out of here alive.

 *

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