Chapter Ten
As they arrived back at the ranch and pulled off the main road and onto the dirt track that led them to the house, they noticed something was very remiss indeed.
It wasn’t hard to spot.
Even in the dark, the land around there was completely open, not hidden or obscured by trees, and the red and white flashing lights of several police cars in the distance by their house was a bit of a giveaway.
“Shit!” Frank cursed aloud and quickly switched off the headlights of their car, then hurriedly began to turn it around, the tires screeching a little in the dust and kicking up a small cloud.
“Oh my God, Frank, what’s going on?” Sammie asked in horror, her eyes widening and feeling slightly sick, her chest tightening up and her heart beating rapidly in her chest.
Frank was feeling much the same way, although his was probably worse. This couldn’t be the end. Not now. Not after everything he’d worked so hard for.
He was too busy freaking out inside his own head to really pay much attention to Sammie’s question, or even really hear it. He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and took them careering off back the way they’d just come from.
“What the hell is going on, Frank?” She demanded again, louder this time and more frantic.
He was driving so fast and erratic, she gripped the side of the passenger door and reached to flip the music off. She couldn’t exactly sit and listen to and enjoy music in a situation like this.
“Why are there police at the house?” She continued, twisting round in her seat and looking back out of the window. “There’s like…three cop cars…”
“I know,” he muttered, his jaw set, teeth gritted.
“Why are we driving away? Why don’t we go and see what they want?” Although even as she asked that question, she knew it was a stupid one, and even though she didn’t know the exact answer, she knew it had to be something to do with Frank. Suddenly, things were starting to make sense – why he never spoke about his past, why he’d been acting so strange lately.
“I know what they want,” he said bitterly.
“Oh God, I think they’re turning around, Frank, I think they saw us…” She gasped as she continued to look out the back window of the car, feeling like the flashing lights were getting closer instead of far away.
Frank glanced in the rear mirror then floored it, gripping the wheel tight. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna get us out of here.”
“I…I’m scared,” Sammie admitted.
“It’s gonna be alright,” Frank insisted firmly. He needed to be strong for her now. Sammie had never been in this kind of situation before, clearly. But he knew how to deal with it. He knew what he was doing. He pulled the brim of his hat down lower over his eyes and looked at the road ahead with a determined, set jaw.
“Where are we going?” asked Sammie desperately, freaking out over how fast they were travelling, and over the fact that the police were basically chasing them. “Don’t you think you’d better tell me what’s going on?”
“Don’t you think we’d better get to where we’re going first?” He snapped, stressed out and needing to concentrate on the road so he didn’t crash the damn car.
“Which is where?!”
“Just shut up!” Frank raised his voice.
It was the first time she’d ever heard him shout, and it definitely stunned her into silence. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out the window as the dark scenery whizzed by. Perhaps her grandmother had been right all along. Maybe Frank was a psycho. What if she never got out of Texas alive? Right now, it seemed like a distinct possibility. She should have listened to her grandma.
After a few minutes of driving in silence, Frank sighed quietly and mumbled. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled, I’m just…a bit stressed out right now.”
“Me too,” she huffed slightly. Stressed out was an understatement.
Suddenly, he took a right and veered off the main road and onto the dusty earth, heading out into what looked like open grass and desert space.
“Where are we going?” she asked again, quieter this time.
“I have a backup plan…I know a place”.
None of this was making sense. Backup plan? Had he always known this might happen? Who even was he? What had he done to have the police after him like this?
“We’re gonna have to ditch the car though,” he added, much to Sammie’s horror.
“What?! We can’t! They’ll catch us!”
“They won’t. We’ve gained good ground on them. But we need to move fast.”
And with that, he slammed on the breaks, nearly sending them both through the windscreen if they hadn’t have had their belts on.
They quickly unbuckled and clambered out the car.
To Sammie’s surprise, Frank ran around to the trunk and flung it open, grabbing their bags of shopping.
“You’re taking the goddamn shopping?!”
“Relax,” he grinned. “We spent good money on this, I’m not letting you lose it. The cops’ll probably seize the car when they find it. Here.” And he shoved one into Sammie’s hand for her to take. “Follow me.”
“Doesn’t look like I really have a choice,” she mumbled.
He set off running, and Sammie followed, trailing a little behind but staying as close as she could, not wanting to get lost in the pitch-black darkness that surrounded them. She was glad that Frank apparently knew where he was going though.
After a couple of minutes, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness and she could see, in the distance up ahead of them, a small, rundown looking building, like an old abandoned ranch house.
She was out of breath by the time they got there, her lungs screaming for air and her legs tired and aching, the sweat prickling down her back. Despite it being the dead of night, it was still pretty damn hot outside.
“It’s OK…it’s OK…” Frank panted, shouldering open the door of the empty ranch house. “We’re here.”
“Where…where the hell is here…” She followed him inside and dumped down the bag, leaning on her legs to try and get her breath back.
“My secret hideout,” smirked Frank, and picked up the bag for her. “Come on. We need to go downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“There’s a basement. But it’s well hidden. The cops will find this place, but they won’t know we’re here.”
“Oh God…” Sammie groaned and followed him. She really didn’t have much other choice by this point, although she did have a voice in her head telling her she was crazy for trusting him this much and she should just run.
He led her through the house and out the back door, then he crouched down in the small patch of scorched grass in the yard and searched around with his hands, before apparently finding what he was looking for.
Sammie gasped as he lifted up a concealed square in the grass to reveal a small hole with steps leading down.
“Wh-what’s…down there?” She stammered nervously.
“It’s OK,” he reassured her. “I’ve been here before and I’ve made it pretty cozy. And we have provisions in there, enough to last us a few days.”
A few days?! Her eyes widened. How long were they planning to be fugitives like this? And what would happen after the few days ran out?
“There’s even a record player. It runs on battery. We can still listen to music. It’ll be fun,” he smiled up at her. “We can check out those new records we bought today.”
“Frank, how can you be so casual about this?”
“Because…because I need you to trust me. We don’t have much time. We need to get underground.”
In the distance, she could hear the sound of the sirens getting closer, carried over the open plains. She knew he was right. The cops would be here any minute.
“Alright, alright…” She huffed and shook her head. “Then you’d better tell me absolutely everything!” She pointed at him dramatically.
He nodded solemnly. “I will. I swear.”
She nodded back, then took hold of the grassy entrance he was holding up. “You go first.”
“Fine.” He didn’t waste any more time, putting down the bags and clambering down the ladder, his body and head soon disappearing beneath the ground. “Pass me the bags,” he called up at her.
She did as he requested, passing them down one at a time.
“Now you come. I’m here…” He held up his arms. “I’ve got you…you won’t fall.”
Nervously, and with her legs slightly shaky, she reached down with her left leg and placed it on one of the rungs of the ladder. She felt Frank’s hand close around her ankle, gently supporting it as she slowly descended.
One leg after the other, she climbed down the ladder carefully, with Frank holding onto her the entire time.
There were only about fifteen rungs, so it didn’t take too long, and as she let go of the lid, it automatically flipped shut behind her and sealed them under the ground, the entrance well hidden by the patch of grass.
Once she was safely inside and off the ladder, she turned around to see what would apparently be her new home for the foreseeable future.
It was a small room, about the size of Frank’s living room back at the ranch. There were two single mattresses set up in the corner, on the floor, but covered with clean and expensive looking duvets. In the center of the room were three more mattresses, raised up on top of one another with a cover thrown over them, set up to be a makeshift couch, and in front of that, a couple of wooden boxes that acted as a coffee table, with a record player on top. Against one of the walls was a camping stove and a couple more wooden boxes with tins, water and other food provisions on top, including some beers.
Frank had already lit a small gas lamp which was illuminating the place, but as Sammie stood there taking it all in, he went around and lit several more, bringing more brightness to the gloom.
“I tried to make it as homely as I could…but obviously there’s only so many things I could shove down that small entrance,” he smiled and indicated to the ladder. “I couldn’t exactly fit an entire couch down here, or a double bed…but this works surprisingly well.” And with that, he sat down on the mattress couch, patting the space beside him. “Want to try it out?”
Sammie just stood there. She wasn’t exactly in the mood to just sit around and play happy families. She needed answers. And she definitely needed a beer. She walked over to the “kitchen” and picked up one of the bottles, cracking it open and having a swig. They were pretty warm, but it would have to do.
“I don’t wanna sit down just yet,” she mumbled.
“You might need to sit down to here this, Sammie,” Frank sighed, pushing his hands through his hair. He stood up and walked over to where she was, having to bend his head ever so slightly as he couldn’t stand fully upright with the low ceiling of their hideout. He picked up a beer too and opened it up, looking at Sammie and offering out his hand to her.
She stared at it a moment, then cautiously took it.
He gave her a small smile and led her over to the ‘couch’.
The two of them sat down. It wobbled a little, and she was slightly nervous about leaning back in case the whole thing just collapsed, but Frank was right…it wasn’t as bad as it looked.
“I guess you want some answers.”
“You guessed right.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting.
He cleared his throat softly and began to speak.
“I’m kind of…well…I guess you could say I’m on the run.”
“No shit.”
“That’s the reason I had to leave New York…the reason I moved out here to Texas in the middle of nowhere, because I hoped no one would ever be able to find me here.”
“What did you do?” She asked quietly, unsure whether she really wanted to know, but she needed to.
“I’ve…pretty much been a criminal my whole life,” he admitted, looking down at his hands and picking the label off his beer bottle anxiously. “Remember when you asked me why I’d never had a girlfriend or a wife and I said it was because I was…occupied?”
“Y-yeah…”
“I’ve spent 18 years of my life in jail. Not all in the same sentence but…over the years it all adds up.”
“Wow…” Sammie was in shock. Of course, it wasn’t a total surprise that he’d been hiding something but…it was still a shock. And he still hadn’t answered her question. “What did you do?” She asked again.
“Me and my buddies…we robbed places. Stores, gas stations, post offices, banks. We got away with it, mostly. That’s how I made all my money. But then we hit this big bank in New Jersey and it all went wrong. Everyone got arrested and thrown in jail. Everyone except me. I managed to get out, made my escape, fled New York and left my old life behind.”
“That’s when you came here.”
“Yeah. And I was doing pretty damn good here too. I mean, I always had a backup plan with this place but…I was hoping I wouldn’t have to actually use it. Then yesterday…when that paper arrived from New York…”
“I knew it was something to do with that!” Sammie interrupted, feeling pretty triumphant that she had managed to figure these things out.
“Ha. Yeah. I uh…I have the papers sent to me pretty regularly, so I can keep up with what’s going on in the trial…a couple of the guys I did the job with, they appealed against the sentence and…what I read yesterday…is that one of them turned tails. He identified me to the cops, told them my name and where I’d lived previously in New York, presumably they offered him a lighter sentence for information. I mean…I get why he did it but…sucks for me.”
“Oh God, but…how did they find out you were here? Even if they knew your name and where you used to live, how did they find out where you’d moved to?”
“I…have no idea. That part’s still a mystery to me. But I knew there was always a risk of it happening someday.”
Sammie fell silent, reflecting on everything Frank had told her.
Frank watched her nervously. It was a big deal for him to have admitted all this stuff to her, and he just hoped she could still find it in her heart to love him.
“This is…crazy,” she murmured after a while, mostly to herself. There were all kinds of thoughts running through her head, and a load more questions. “Have you ever…killed anyone?”
“What?” Frank looked positively taken aback at the question. “Oh God no. I could never! I’m a real softie, I couldn’t even kill an animal. I just steal, babe. That’s all.”
“That’s all? My future husband is a fugitive bank robber!”
Frank couldn’t help but smile a bit, and slightly raised one eyebrow. “Future husband? So…you are into me?”
“Of course, I’m into you”.
“Still into me? Even after…this?”
“I…I need some time to think about all this.”
“Of course,” he mumbled, looking down again.
Upstairs in the outside world, the sirens got closer and louder. The two of them fell silent, just sat there together, listening.
They heard car doors opening and closing.
They heard footsteps directly above them, mumbled voices although they couldn’t make out what they were saying.
It was a tense few minutes. Five minutes? Ten? Sammie wasn’t sure.
She reached out for Frank’s hand in the semi darkness of their hideout, a little frightened.
He gripped it, held it tight, gave it a little squeeze. Just his presence was reassuring. Her feelings had rapidly grown for him over the past few weeks since they started talking, and even more so now after the days they’d spent together since her arrival in the States.
She realized in that moment that she still loved him and cared for him, no matter what he had done in his past. It wasn’t as if he lied to her. He just never revealed his secrets. Until now.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, the voices and footsteps stopped. More car doors slammed, engines started, and the sounds of the police cars receded into the distance. They were gone. For now.
Both of them let out massive sighs of relief, the break in tension causing them to look at each other and giggle slightly.
The whole thing was exhilarating and scary, but the adrenaline had given them both a rush, and Sammie found herself leaning in to urgently kiss Frank on the lips, as if the situation had actually made her horny. She wasn’t sure what it was. It was almost animalistic and primal, but she was trying not to think too much about it.
Frank felt exactly the same way, and responded as such, his arms wrapping right round her as he pulled her onto his lap, kissing her frantically and pulling at her clothes, urgently clashing his lips against hers.