Is this how it feels to be the bad guy in the story? Is this how it happens? You see people far out on the edges of human experience and they seem so normal, and you wonder, how did you get there? How did you go from normal like the rest of us to …that?

Leaving behind the bewildered Bolivian woman and the small boy clutching at her skirts, Nora and I set off again, into the heart of the storm. The rain beat down so violently on the roof of the car we couldn’t hear one another even if we shouted, so we exchanged weighty glances at one another and drove off, my still-trembling hand on her thigh, as though to reassure myself that she was still there.

The roads became rivers. It was madness. But it was, as Nora said, a madness that both of us seemed unable to resist anymore. Were we evil? Just stupid? I didn’t know. I can’t really describe to you how beautiful she looked at that moment, with the blue light from outside hitting her cheekbones in that otherworldly way, the darkness in the evening sky nothing compared to the black in her eyes. I wish I could describe properly to you what this woman did to me, and why I was so powerless to resist it. I wish you could see it now with me, could feel the raw devotion I felt for her in that moment, our strange new lives unfolding before us like something of biblical proportions, something on a scale that scared even me.

I drove slowly and carefully, not knowing where I was really going anymore. Navigating the treacherous roads was not as absorbing as the task of trying to think straight, to lay down my million thoughts in a line and look at them plainly. She was right. It would be self-defense. We had fled the country and he had followed us. He was a convicted murderer who had already been dragged through the public eye as a man capable of unthinkable corruption and violence. He had made an attempt on our lives once before. And he was currently a fugitive, for fucks’ sake. It was hard to think of a man more deserving of justice.

I looked over at her in the passenger seat. Once, we had driven like this in the wide open sun, drunk with love for one another. I looked back out at the roads, being washed away in a deluge even as we drove on them. Peals of water lashed down over us, but we drove on.

No, not evil.

Not Nora.

Right then she felt more to me like Lady Justice herself, doing something I was ashamed to admit I had failed to do so many times myself: take charge. A few short years ago I was a different man. I was cocky; adamant that I hated everything my father stood for. And yet, hadn’t I become just like him? Wasn’t Nora’s mission to face this monster head on more honest than the decade of semi-crooked business I’d engaged in back in California?

She said she was bored with the life we made. Bored with the neighborhood moms and the bland ease and the pretty little role I plonked her down in, a role I thought we both wanted. But maybe I was bored too. Maybe I wasn’t any different and I had chosen the least housewifey woman in the world for a reason: because I knew she’d never let me get too comfortable. Now, we were busy with the scariest roleplay of our married life, and Nora was the avenging angel in a summer skirt and a look in her eyes that could make small children cry. It would be the role of her life, I was sure of it.

“Watch out!” she cried, and I spun the wheel and brought the car skidding to the left to avoid a massive tree trunk, floating right down the center of the road like a miniature ship, complete with leafy sails whipping in the wind.

“Was that—?”

“A fucking tree,” I muttered, and carefully pulled the car back onto what could have been the road. I then guided us again up and through those black cords of water gushing down the road. I had never seen so much rain in all my life.

“Where are you going?” she yelled, her knuckles white as she gripped the door handle and tried to steady herself as we bumped along over the rocks and debris.

“We can’t stay on the roads anymore. We need to get higher up.”

Night had fully fallen and there was no lighting to speak of – only the two weak beams of the car’s headlights illuminating the great tumult of leaves and bark and endless water rushing past us at a speed. I hadn’t expected this much water. I was sure it was lapping well over the car tires, and with each thump over a hidden jagged rock, the water sloshed high up enough to splash onto the side windows.

Nora perched on the edge of her seat and with wide eyes watched the flood unfold around us. All at once she yanked her legs up onto the seat and threw me an alarmed look.

“Water!” she cried and I looked down to see an inch of rain water sloshing round the floor of the car. I dropped a gear and picked up the speed, tilting us both backwards into our seats. By some miracle, I hauled that groaning vehicle up onto what looked like a relatively dry rocky ledge. Though I couldn’t properly make it out, it felt as though we were skimming the shielded edge of a steep hill, allowing the flood of water to surge down and past us below.

Soon we were held at least a yard above the rolling river beneath us that had only a few moments ago been a road. I had no idea how long we had here or how much higher the water would rise, but I knew we had to keep the car running and out of the water for as long as possible. It couldn’t rain forever.

I don’t mean to paint the situation in the wrong light, though. Inside the car, the rain thrumming mercilessly all around us, my mind became quiet and calm. The task ahead was obvious and I knew what needed to be done. My focus narrowed onto that spot and though my shoulders hurt from being thrown around inside, and though I was aware on some level of being filled with adrenaline, there was a grace to the whole situation, an ease. It thrilled me to the core. Eventually I managed to drag the car up a little higher and left us idling there for a moment, while I glanced around to gather our bearings. For the time being, we were safe.

Why do people do extreme sports? Why do people get painful tattoos or run grueling marathons? I wondered if it was for the unspeakable sweetness of that moment as we sat together, the moment when it was over, and we got to rest and breathe as survivors, maybe even heroes. How perfect ordinary life seemed now, on the other side of the extraordinary. How wonderful to rest for a second and feel the joy of being alive, and how strange to feel it only when that very life was being threatened.

I looked down and realized she had reached over to touch me. I glanced at her, then back down at the hand, which was now snaking towards my crotch.

Fuck yes.

I lunged at her and kissed her hard, grabbing ardently at her hair, pulling her closer into me, plunging my tongue into her sweet little mouth. We kissed hungrily like this for an eternity, and the more I kissed, the more I needed to, the more I was sure there was some part of her I hadn’t tasted yet, and if only I could pull her closer in.

“I love you, Dean… I love you, Dean,” she whispered against my lips, like a mad woman, and when I saw her eyelids flutter half closed, I kissed these too, then kissed her wet cheeks, and her jaw, and down onto the cool smooth skin of her neck

“What’s that?”

Even through eyes squeezed shut, I could make out the faint golden sparkle of light approaching. We both spun around and looked behind us, gawping at what seemed to be a single beam bouncing towards us through the darkness, disappearing for a moment behind a swell of water, then reappearing again.

“Someone’s coming,” she said. Someone indeed.

I pulled away from her and twisted around to follow the ascent of the car, which I soon realized wasn’t a car at all.

“A scooter. Someone’s coming up here.”

We could do nothing but look on mutely. A million thoughts flashed through my mind, all of them cut short when the silhouette on the scooter became clear – a man, bouncing on the seat with both legs outstretched to steady his ride. He didn’t much look like the grim reaper, but it felt like fate himself had come to fetch us and wreck our plans. I grabbed the ignition key and readied myself to pull off again, but Nora’s hand was soon on my shoulder.

“Let him come,” she said. The rain was easing up a little, but the flood of water already under us seemed fuller than ever. I had no idea how long the mud under us would hold before we ended up being slid downstream just like the tree we had seen a while back. But if Nora wanted to stay, we would stay.

The scooter, still veiled by the sheets of silvery rain pouring down, slowed a little as the driver appeared to be thinking about his options for tackling the incline. I turned to see Nora scrambling for her little bag, filled with the unlikely weapon that she had brought with her. I had to fight the lure of stepping in to take it from her, to protect her and pluck those hard, dark thoughts from her mind once and for all… but I knew she needed this. If Nora needed me to be here while she faced her demons, then that’s what I would do.

The scooter couldn’t cross through the thick band of water separating us, which had now grown even wider since we perched ourselves on the mountain edge. When the figure stepped off the seat, I watched in awe as the scooter buckled under and tumbled away down the river, like it was almost never there. The figure left standing watched it go, and then spread his legs wide to squat down against the heavy current, to prevent the same fate for himself.

Was it my father? Could I know it was him for sure, from the way he moved through that wall of water? Did I know him well enough to say that the wild flailing he made of his arms as he tried to find his balance was something I’d recognize?

Click.

I spun to see Nora holding the gun in her hand. I asked her a million questions with my eyes, none of which she answered. I nodded. The look in her eyes was the only solid thing in the rolling landscape around us, the only thing I trusted. I won’t tell you that this was the apex moment of my life. I don’t want you to think I’m being dramatic. But as that figure slowly bumbled a little closer, one halting step at a time, I couldn’t resist the feeling that the big Event of my life was happening, and even if I wanted to stop it, it was rolling ahead now in the wheels of fate, out of my hands.

A clap of thunder startled the figure who wobbled a little, dipped under the water and then burst out again, arms flailing. He looked like he was made of the black water itself, drenched and just barely fighting off the flood. Would the river carry him away before Nora had her way with him?

But no, he kept on approaching us. When he was only a few yards away, Nora found her way onto my lap and was now at the window, both hands pressed up to the glass, watching his every staggering move, the weapon at her knees. Upstream a massive crack brought all three of our heads spinning to watch as a large tree branch came hurtling down the river. The figure leapt back to avoid being hit, but in doing so lost his balance and tumbled forward, getting closer towards us but slipping a good few yards down the stream before scrambling for his feet again.

“He’s drowning,” she whispered.

She was right. But he still stood, fighting off the water, coming for us. In no time he had reached within an arm’s length of the door, and was grasping up at us like a man on a cliff edge, his fingertips sliding again and again off the slick metal but failing to secure a hold on the car.

“Let’s pull away a little,” she said. “Not completely. Just out of his reach.”

My Nora. My strange, dark, almost diabolical Nora.

I put my hand on the ignition again and turned the engine over, but it wouldn’t start. She didn’t seem panicked. Instead, she set her jaw and looked out at him through the window, sputtering in the rain with the water threatening to take him under again. At first I couldn’t hear it clearly, but the second time he yelled out I heard it.

“Help me!” he screamed, and floundered for the door handle. Just at that moment the car groaned and lurched, and my hand instinctively went to the hand brake to steady us. But still we rolled slightly back and then paused. We weren’t sliding. The mud and gravel underneath us was. He was now thumping loudly on the glass.

Nora reached down to open the window but I stopped her.

“The car’s sliding, Nora. If you pull him in he could tip the car.” But she opened the window anyway, and instantly a wet slice of the storm came bursting onto my lap, dousing us both in rain. His fingers curled over the edge of the opened window and the car groaned again, this time louder.

“Don’t open the door, Nora, the car will flood!”

The scene before my squinting eyes was a crazy jumbled painting of blue and grey streaks, and somewhere in that rain and darkness I saw Nora reach forward and clasp her hands tightly round the pale, wet arms of what I could now clearly see to be my father. The car groaned and he yelled out and in a great wet crunch she had pulled him halfway inside, after which he kicked and clambered in the rest of the way, over my lap, before flopping behind back onto the car seats behind us.

We were all completely drenched in warm rain water, fumbling in the dark, but it took me no time at all to reach for the gun and press it into Nora’s hands.

“Do it,” I said.

She was now in the passenger seat, I was in the driver’s seat and we were both swiveled around on our knees to face my father, spluttering and soaked through like the strangest fish. He looked old. Frail, almost. His mouth hung loose and his hair looked stringy and pasted wet against his scalp. It was a rare moment to catch him not wearing a suit, not looking groomed and dapper and in complete control.

“Mistress,” he said with a sneer, and put his hands in the air.

The barrel of the gun was steady and aimed squarely at his head.

“I had hoped we would meet under better circumstances,” he said.

Was the car about to move again? How long before all three of us were tumbled down this river? Nora inched forward to him, but I was glued to the spot. She needed this. She wanted this. Everything was coming to a head and she seemed to be relishing the moment, enjoying how good it felt to turn around and confront the thing chasing us, to stare into its dark eyes and challenge it. Nora and I had made it, despite how fucked up she was, how fucked up I was, despite everything that had stood in our way, we had made it, and we were just seconds away from the finish line.

“You like holding that gun, don’t you, Mistress? Does it make you feel powerful?” he said and chuckled quietly to himself.

The bang reverberated throughout the car and numbed my ears, but in a flash I saw that she had missed him, and that he was now squirming away and lurching towards us in the front seats. The car wobbled and jerked back a few feet, causing a sickening crunch of the gravel and mud beneath us. In slow motion I saw him struggle to steady himself as the car tilted backwards. The gun flew from Nora’s hand and he went for it.

He swiftly snatched the gun, cocked the trigger and sent another deafening boom into the air, this one bringing a bright red burst to the edge of Nora’s arm. She was flung backwards against the dashboard, grimacing.

“Nora!”

We had to go. The car was going under, and fast. What happened next did so in just a few seconds, but to this day I can remember each millisecond unfolding in perfect, drawn out clarity. An animal rage in his eyes, he steadied himself and aimed at her again, but Nora was now perched up on the dashboard, high above him, and with one forceful movement she brought her knee to her chest and then kicked it down again, right onto his chest.

“Let’s go!” she screamed, and reached for the door handle.

“Nora, no!” I yelled, but the door was flung wide and instantly a gush of water hit the car. Her hand flew so quickly to mine, and clutched it so tightly, I was sure she was near to drawing blood. Propelling myself off the door on the driver’s side, I kicked up and followed her as she leapt from the door on her side, miraculously diving clear of the torrent now swirling into the car.

My feet used the car seat, the gear shift, then finally the lip of the outside door as steps of a ladder I scrambled over, and in a heartbeat we were free of the car, just as a third shot rang out behind us. But this one sounded different. It sounded contained. One hand clawing at Nora’s, and the other trying to find solid ground underneath the vicious tumult of rocks and black water and still more rain, I watched as the car groaned one last time and wrenched loose. I heard Nora screaming somewhere ahead and above me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the unbelievable sight of an entire car being rapidly pulled away and swallowed by the flood.

We somehow managed to scramble higher up onto the cliff face, clutching at exposed roots and rocks, and soon we had gained some ground. But I never took my eyes off the car. Only half of the trunk could be seen poking out of the water now and the rest was submerged. No sign of him. Had the water done Nora’s job for her?

When the car disappeared fully underneath I reached for her and cradled her hard in my arms. The rain beat down on our tired bodies and sodden clothes. Her body jerked and shook in my grasp with what could have been laughter, could have been sobbing. I don’t know how long we stared at the water, and the spot where the car used to be. But eventually the thought settled: it was all underwater now. Gone. My father was buried in a grave of murky, gritty water, and would never, could never come for us again.

Eventually the rain softened a little and the great sloshing water slowed a little into a steady flow, the path already well beaten. My eyes, adjusting to the darkness, could make out the very tops of small trees poking through the water, which itself was filled with debris of all kinds. But my father was not there anymore. The sudden weight of the water-filled car, along with the momentum of the flood, had sucked him in and down, and now it was hard to believe that an entire vehicle was contained in there somewhere. My father had been one of the most powerful men in the world. He had been a giant. And now he shared the same fate as snapped twigs and branches, here where his money and notoriety meant nothing.

I couldn’t think clearly just then. When I felt Nora go limp in my arms and when I noticed that she didn’t respond to me calling her name, I didn’t think about what I needed to do, I just did it. The wetness of the blood as it gushed from her arm felt different to the wetness all around us. Warmer, and thicker. Though I couldn’t think at all, I now recognize this one moment as the moment I became a man. My own man. I hadn’t realized the sheer weight I had been carrying, the invisible ropes that bound me to my father, ropes that were always pulling, pulling, pulling me towards the same fight, the same awful dilemma.

But once the water had rinsed that all away, I felt light. It barely felt Nora’s weight at all as I knelt down, hoisted her over my shoulders and stood up again, ready to find a way off the mountain face and to safety. How light a load she was, compared to all the bullshit I had willingly carried all my life! As a little boy, nothing in the world had seemed more important than making my father proud, than impressing and, later, beating him. But now he was gone, and I felt for the first time how utterly pointless it all was. I had never needed money. I had never needed ‘success’. It had all been for him, to please him, to compete with him, and now he was gone.

One painful step at a time, I dug my toes into the crumbling hillside and found a path. The rain eased a little and eventually stopped. The river of rushing water still whispered below, but I didn’t feel afraid. In time, I found a path through a knot of thick bushes and out onto flat ground, where I could dimly make out an unflooded road in the distance.

“Nora? Baby are you with me?”

No answer.

I picked up the pace, almost running towards that road. I had to find help for Nora. She had been shot in the arm, but the real threat was gone now, and I felt an unspeakable optimism as the road came into clearer view and I even detected the lights of some houses in the far distance.

“Nora? Stay with me, ok?”

When we reached the road I gently placed her down for a moment to rest, catch my breath and think. She was warm and still breathing, but likely in shock. If I put my head down and ran I could make it to those lights in twenty, maybe thirty minutes. When I knelt down to lift her again though, I saw the bright glint on her now open eyes.

“Nora…”

“I’m fine. I’m OK. It doesn’t hurt. Don’t worry about me, it’ll all be fine,” she said quickly, tripping over her words.

“Nora, I need to tell you something. Back there, in the water… he’s gone, Nora. You saw that didn’t you? He can’t chase us anymore.”

“I know,” she said plainly.

“Nora, I love you.”

“I know. I have to tell you something too,” she said and struggled to prop herself up on her elbows.

“Yes? Anything. Just tell me.”

“We’re being honest now, aren’t we? A new era. Honest with each other,” she said, sounding a little delirious.

“Yes, yes, of course. Tell me anything you need to. Are you happy? Are you OK?”

“Oh I’m perfect. Never been better. But there’s one more thing I wanted to be honest about. One thing I should have told you, back there at the house. Don’t ever buy me lingerie again, OK?”

“What?” I said, but she had passed out and was limp again in my arms.