5:01 p.m.

 

Day One

 

They walked in a silence for a while. Without cell phones, they couldn't call any friends or order an Uber. They trudged along, hoping they could flag someone down – it was eight miles to their apartment building.

Finally, Archer was able to score a ride by sticking his thumb out. The driver was kind enough to let Jo use his charger, so she plugged her phone in and after it had reached fifty percent battery power, she turned it on. When the screen finally lit up, she was surprised to see seven missed calls.

“Who is it?” Archer asked, leaning between the seats.

“It's Beeshonn, I think,” Jo mumbled, pressing a button to call the number back. She glanced at Archer, then lifted the phone to her ear. After four rings, the line connected.

“Jo! I've been calling you and calling you!” Beeshonn spoke in a stage whisper. There was loud music in the background, but it was quickly fading, as if she was walking away from it.

“Yeah, my phone was dead. What's up?” she asked.

“Right after you left, Buzz came into the back. He was acting all weird, going through your locker and shit. He was all red, sweating everywhere. I thought he was having a heart attack!”

“Why was he going through my locker?” Jo asked, though she wasn't exactly surprised.

“That's what I wanted to know – so I followed him to his office, was sweet talking him, giving him a massage, and I notice he's got your file on his desk!”

“Wait … what? What file?”

“Ya know, like your application and payroll stuff. It's spread all over the place, even a head shot of you. So I asks him what's going on, and he says nothing, so I sit in his lap and breathe in his ear like he likes, and he says you're in trouble with some bad people. Some guys had come lookin' for you, so he'd given them your address!” Beeshonn told her. Jo gasped and spun in her seat, staring at Archer.

“My address!? You're sure?”

“Yeah, sweetie, down to your apartment number. I don't know what you did, but I thought you deserved a heads up.”

“Fuck,” Jo hissed.

“I'm so sorry, honey. I hope you figure stuff out. I just didn't want you walkin' into an apartment full of debt collectors or something,” Beeshonn explained.

“No, yeah. Thank you. Seriously, I can't thank you enough. You're amazing. I am so sorry for all the times I called you names,” Jo gushed out. Archer whacked her in the arm.

“You called me names?” Beeshonn asked.

“What? No, I would never,” Jo spoke quickly. “I love you, Bee. Serious. If I'm alive on Monday, I'm going to goddamn marry you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”

She didn't wait for a response, just hit the end call button.

“They know where you live,” Archer spoke immediately.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Holy shit, they're probably at my apartment!”

“We don't know that, Jo. We don't know anything. Let's just go stake out the place. I have my keys, we can easily grab my bike,” he told her.

They didn't have much of a choice, anyway. Their ride was going to a street just a couple blocks down from them. He gave them a bunch of weird looks, and after letting them out down the street from their building, he wished them good luck.

Jo was scared out of her mind as they walked down the street, so she just followed Archer's every move. Walked hunched over, almost in a crouch. When he veered off into some bushes, she stayed right behind him. They finally came up to the hedge that lined their parking lot and got down on their hands and knees, crawling up and peeking through the branches.

“I see a car,” Archer whispered. She saw it, too. It was idling in front of the building, and a very large man was standing by the driver's side door.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“No clue. Look, at your window.”

“Oh no,” she gasped, looking at the building. Her apartment lights were on and large figures were moving behind the blinds.

“Shit, Mandy isn't there, is she?” he asked, asking about her roommate.

“No. No, she went to San Diego for the weekend, she's visiting her parents.”

“May want to call her and tell her to stay the week.”

They huddled in the hedge forever, staring up at her window. Every now and then, someone would bump the blinds, cause them to rattle and shake. Though they never lifted, Jo knew what was going on. The men from the club, the ones who had been giving Buzz the shakedown about her and Bernard Krakow, were now in her apartment. Tossing it. Though for what, she had no clue.

What the fuck does any of this have to do with me!?

“I feel like I'm going to be sick,” she moaned. Archer glanced down at her, then rubbed a hand up and down her back.

“Let's get out of here,” he offered.

“Where? Where are we gonna go?” she demanded.

“I don't know, a motel,” he suggested.

“We already spent like eighty bucks on gas – the rest of that money has to last us,” she replied.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked. She opened her mouth to respond, but then the sound of something breaking in her apartment echoed across the parking lot.

“No,” she replied meekly. “My home, Archer. It was an awful apartment and I didn't have much, but that's my home.”

“It's just stuff,” he whispered, hugging her close to his side. “We have each other. That's more important. Look, I'm gonna go get my bike. Wait here, don't make a sound, and I'll drive around, then you run out and hop on. We'll go somewhere … somewhere no one will think to look for you, and then we'll figure out our next move.”

She couldn't think of a better plan, so she simply nodded her head.

“Okay. But be careful,” she insisted, gripping onto his arm when he went to pull away.

“Baby, my middle name is careful.”

“One time you got distracted by a Baywatch rerun and tripped on my rug and chipped a tooth.”

“Shut up, Jo.”

It was their nature to tease and bicker and banter, but in reality, she was terrified. These were serious bad guys, shit was going down. Archer could get hurt, or worse. Just the thought of it made her heart crack and splinter. What would she do without him in her life? When he went to stand up again, she jerked on his arm, almost causing him to fall back. Before he could snap at her, she leaned in and kissed him quickly.

“I'm serious,” she whispered with her lips still touching his. “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

He smiled against her, and when she looked up, she could see that a street lamp was catching his eyes. The hazel appeared dark brown, with a quicksilver rim around his iris. His eyes moved to her lips, his full lashes drooping with the motion.

“Me, too. Be back in a second.”

He kissed her once more, then he was gone, scurrying along the back of the hedge. She watched until he got to the other end, then he disappeared around the corner. Jo held her breath and looked back through the branches, watching as he made his way behind a row of cars.

He made it all the way to the end of the row no problem, then ducked between vehicles to move closer to the building. Their luck ran out after that – his bike was parked in a spot without any other cars around it. She finally let out the breath she'd been holding and started panting.

“Careful, Archer. Careful, careful, careful,” she whispered.

Everything in the apartment complex had been quiet up till then, but suddenly there was some sort of commotion in the entry way to the building. The big man standing guard next to the idling car turned around, and Archer made his move. She bit down on her bottom lip as he dashed across the pavement to his bike, then almost passed out when he swung a leg over his seat. She let her eyes fall shut and sent up a thank you to heaven.

He made it, we're safe. We're good.

“Over there!”

Jo's eyes popped open and she almost screamed. Several men were standing on the stairs and one of them was pointing at Archer. Everyone held still for a moment, suspended in time.

Then everything happened at once. The men started running down the steps. Jo almost threw up. Archer kick started his bike, then spun it around in a tight circle. She was pretty confident he could get away before any of the men could reach him, and definitely before they could get in their car to chase after him. But then one of the men whipped out a gun and every ounce of self-preservation she had flew out of her body. Without one single thought for her own safety, she leapt to her feet.

“ARCHER!” she screamed as loud as she could.

Every single person in the parking lot turned towards her. Including Archer, who almost lost control of his bike. He managed to stay upright, though, and zipped out of the parking lot, flying over a curb.

Jo expected a barrage of bullets to come flying her way, so she dropped back behind the hedge and began crawling towards the street as fast as she could. Gun shots rang out and she started screaming again.

None of the bullets were coming her way, though. They didn't seem to know where she was, so they kept shooting in Archer's direction. As he came around the outside of the lot, a dumpster wound up between him and their pursuers, and she shrieked as bullets ricocheted of the heavy metal.

“More your ass, Jo!” he shouted at her.

She glanced once over her shoulder and saw that there were two men with guns, and both were reloading. With her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest, she jumped to her feet and went into a dead sprint.

Archer slowed down just enough for her to leap onto the back of his bike. She'd barely settled in before he gunned the engine, almost throwing her off. She screamed and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding on for dear life as they raced down the street at suicidal speeds.

“Remember everything I taught you!” he yelled back at her. She had her cheek pressed to his back and she nodded. She'd been on Archer's bike a couple times, and he'd explained to her how she needed to just do whatever he did; keep her weight back when he braked, and hold on tight when he accelerated.

Hold on tight – not a problem today.

They drove forever. She kept her eyes closed the entire time, just trying to remember how to breathe correctly and feeling his body. She was shaking and she was hyperventilating and she was absolutely fucking terrified.

When she finally lifted her head, it was to find that they'd stopped in some park. She didn't remember it happening. She was completely out of it, her mind back in her torn up apartment.  She had a death grip around his waist and he had to work to get free from her.

“Are you okay?” he asked, squirming to get off the bike without dislodging her.

“Fine. I'm fine,” she whispered, staring straight ahead. He turned to look at her and moaned.

“Jojo, don't cry,” he begged, cupping her face in his hands.

“I'm not.”

“Jo.”

“What?”

He wiped his thumbs under her eyes and she could feel the moisture. She was crying. More like sobbing. She gasped and choked on air as she stared at him.

“We're gonna die,” she croaked out.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, pulling her off the bike. “I won't let that happen.”

“They had guns. They shot at you. I thought they were going to kill you, and then you'd be another body in a trunk,” she sobbed.

“They didn't kill me. That won't happen,” he insisted, rubbing his hands up and down her arms.

“How do you know that? I don't want to die, Archer. I don't want you to die,” she cried.

“No one is going to die, Jo.”

“Someone has already died!” she yelled.

“Please don't cry,” he whispered, pulling her into a hug. “It kills me when you cry. I can't stand it. Tell me how to make this right. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I'd do anything for you, Jo. Anything. Just please, don't cry.”

But she couldn't stop. She gasped for air and soaked the front of his shirt and just cried. Cried and cried and cried.