Hannah
The fucking sun was shining right in her goddamned eyes. Hannah couldn’t distract herself from it. She wished she’d brought some sunglasses, but she’d been in a rush to leave Salvatore’s the other day and she hadn’t thought of everything. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she berated herself.
In the backseat, Alex started whining, softly at first. But he was about to start crying for real, and she’d have to pull over to feed him soon and change his diaper. She’d gotten lucky before with the empty parking lot. She realized belatedly that she should have taken the opportunity to take care of Alex when she was parked in the empty lot. Shit, I am just fucking up today, huh? Hannah said to herself silently. Alex deserved better. He deserved a real mom, not a stupid fuck-up who couldn’t even remember sunglasses.
Hannah was also sweating like a pig. God, she felt disgusting. She pulled her hair back from her face, using a hair tie from around her wrist to pile it all into a high bun on the top of her head, trying to get cool air on the back of her neck. She hadn’t changed her clothes in over a day, and she was probably starting to smell. Hannah wondered if Evan could smell her from the backseat. Why do I care? Hannah demanded of herself. I shouldn’t give a fuck if he’s comfortable or not.
He hadn’t tried to kill her again, she figured, but what did that really count for? That was the bare minimum requirement for being a decent human. He still wasn’t a good guy, and she shouldn’t let her guard down around him.
In any case, she still needed to shower. And sleep. Dear God, how she needed to sleep. She felt like there were huge weights on top of her eyelids, pushing them down further and further with each passing second. But where the hell could they go? She had enough cash for another motel room, but she didn’t really know this new area. Where could she check in at 7 o’clock in the morning without raising any suspicion?
“What’s the plan?” Evan asked from the backseat.
For some reason that irritated Hannah. Not as bad as he had before, but she felt like she was being nagged. Still, she held herself back from snapping at him. If they were going to be traveling together for a while, hiding from the same people, they could at least be polite. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“You got to stop sometime,” Evan said.
“I know,” Hannah replied, and this time a bit of her irritation seeped into her voice despite her attempts to keep it at bay. “But I have to be smart about it. We can’t just stop at any place. You guys found me quickly enough last time.”
Evan was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “There are cabins in the woods near here, you know. Maybe twenty, thirty miles off.”
Hannah didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t even know there were woods nearby. “You suggesting we break into one? It’s bad enough I keep stealing cars,” Hannah said. “I really don’t want to arouse any police attention, you know.”
“What if you don’t have to break in?” Evan said.
Hannah sighed deeply. “What are you talking about?”
“I know a place. We can go there without breaking in.”
She furrowed her brow, taking in his words. “What, do you have a key or something?” She saw Evan nod in the rearview mirror. “Is it…is it your place?”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “I bought it a long time ago. I haven’t used it in a while, but I still know where it is. We can go there now to hide out. It’s stocked up with food and water.”
Hannah bit her lip, considering. For some reason, the prospect made her a little nervous. Despite the fact that this car was stolen, she felt like it was hers in a way. She was driving. She was in control. Could she really trust Evan to take the reins for a while? What if this was just a long con, intended to drive her right into a trap?
“I can tell you how to get there and you can check it out, decide if you want to stay there,” Evan suggested.
Her teeth dug so hard into her lip that she could taste blood. Then, a plan dawned on her, turning her whole body cold and numb. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but it felt like the only way. “If I see any of your men around, if they surround us…I’ll crash the car, as bad as I can, before I let Salvatore get his hands on Alex. I mean it, Evan.”
He was silent a moment, and for a second Hannah wondered if he thought she was a terrible mother, a terrible person. In truth, she knew she couldn’t do that. She could never hurt Alex, even indirectly. But she would fight as hard as she could to keep him out of Salvatore’s grasp. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than Salvatore touching Alex, hurting him, or worse, molding him into a mini version of himself, another evil mobster who hits women. Hannah would die before letting that happen.
“I understand,” Evan finally said. “But I’m telling you, it’s our best chance. We need to go to my cabin.”
“Okay,” Hannah whispered, blowing out her breath all at once. She needed to calm the fuck down and stop assuming that Evan was going to jump her at any second. At least, he hadn’t tried anything yet, and he’d had plenty of opportunities.
And besides, she didn’t have that many options. It was either waste time driving around aimlessly until she found an anonymous-looking motel with a limited number of people around, or take Evan’s advice and go to the cabin.
“All right, tell me. Tell me where it is,” she told Evan. She felt a flash of fear hit her as she made the decision, but it faded after a second. Do something crazy, she told herself. Trust him for a change. It’s not like you have any other choice.
***
Evan
“Okay, take a left up here,” Evan said, leaning forward to see out the front window. Alex was whining louder and louder beside him, lending a sense of urgency to their mission. Hannah did as she was told. Evan didn’t know if he had succeeded in making a good impression, or if she was just so tired she had no more fight left in her. Either way, she followed his instructions to the letter until they left the main roads and went deeper into the woods.
“What next?” Hannah asked, her voice closer to a sigh than anything else. God, she must be tired, Evan thought.
“Now we just go straight for a mile and then take a left, another left, then a right,” he said, recalling the path from the last time he’d made this journey.
“Is it…is it, like, hidden by trees or…?” Hannah trailed off.
Evan gave a half-shrug. “Sort of? There’s tons of leaves on the ground by this time of year, you know, so you hear whenever anybody’s coming.”
“Do people come by a lot?” Hannah asked, a note of panic in her voice. She probably thought she was doing a good job hiding it, but Evan knew when people were scared. Hell, it was half of his job.
“No,” he rushed to say. “No, I just know from years of experience.” He wanted to say to her, You’re safe. You’re safe here. You’ll be okay. But he knew there was no basis for her to trust him. Not yet.
They made the last turn onto the narrow dirt road, and the car rocked back and forth on the stony path, jostling Alex enough that he shook all the way awake, wailing like he’d been struck. “Shh, shh, no, baby, no!” Hannah begged in the front seat. “No, baby, please, we’re almost there.” But her pleas didn’t work, as the baby just started screaming louder. Jesus, how does she put up with this? Evan wondered. Even just a few minutes of it made his eardrums ache.
They finally rolled to a stop in front of his cabin, trees scratching the sides of the car as Hannah pulled in as deeply as possible. “I just want to make it hard for people to see we’re here, you know,” Hannah explained, even though Evan hadn’t asked. She finally switched off the engine and turned to the backseat, pulling Alex out of his car seat and into her arms. “Okay, baby, shh, it’s okay, Mommy’s here. It’s okay.” She started humming lightly, rocking Alex in her arms back and forth until his loud cries transformed back into fussy little whines. “Better than nothing,” she muttered under her breath.
Evan reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys, isolating the long, thin brown key that would unlock the cabin’s front door. “You ready to go in?” he asked, jingling the keys a little to get her attention.
Hannah bit her lip and murmured, “Yeah, yeah, just a minute. Give us a minute.”
He could detect the note of fear in her voice. “What’s up?” Evan asked.
“I just—” Hannah sighed deeply as Alex’s tiny hands flew up to her face, pulling at her mouth. “No, baby, let Mommy talk, it’s okay,” she said to her child.
“Go on,” Evan prompted her after Alex calmed down a little more.
“It’s just…how do I know you don’t have, like, a trap set up in there? There could be thirteen guys with guns out ready to pounce on us the second we walk through the door.”
Evan nodded, more to himself than to Hannah. It stung a little, that she was still on edge around him, assuming that he was going to betray her or kill her or set her up. But it made sense. They’d still only known each other for a few hours, and for most of that time Evan had been tied up, for God’s sake. “Um, well, I don’t. I don’t have anything like that in there, so you can relax,” he replied, even though he knew it wasn’t that simple.
Hannah blew out her breath and bit her lip, not saying anything in response.
“Well, I can let you check it out for yourself and then decide if you want to bring the baby in,” Evan suggested, offering the key to the cabin.
She stared at him for a moment before readjusting so that she held Alex with one hand, reaching forward to take the key from Evan. “I don’t know whether I should bring Alex in with me or not,” she whispered to herself.
“Well, think of it this way,” Evan said. “If they’re inside that building, they know we’re out here already.”
“Gee, that’s reassuring,” Hannah said sarcastically.
“It is, if you think about it,” Evan replied. “If they’re in there, why haven’t they come out already and swarmed the car? They would’ve already done it.”
Hannah bit down on her lip nervously but nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna…I’m gonna head in first, all right? Just stay here.”
Evan was tempted to ask why, but before he could Hannah left the car with Alex in her arms and walked up to the front door of the cabin, disappearing inside. Evan leaned back in the car, exhaling heavily. He was suddenly conscious of the anxiety he was feeling about something, but he didn’t know exactly what. He knew there was nobody inside waiting for them. He’d never told anybody about the cabin. There was no way any of Salvatore’s men could find out about it, let alone in a matter of hours. So why did he feel this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach? And how long was she going to make him wait out in the car?
There it was. That’s what was bothering him, he realized.
What if she doesn’t let me in? Ever? Evan asked himself. It would make sense. They were in the middle of nowhere, and she was finally in a secure place with a strong lock that even Evan couldn’t pick. If he were in Hannah’s position, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start boarding up the windows and doors and try to wait out the winter in safety. Of course, Evan knew by now that there was no way he was going to kill her.
Rule number five of killing: never get close to your victims.
He’d fucked up, in a huge way, and there was no going back. But there was no way for Hannah to know that. Maybe, in her mind, he’d lured her to a private location so he could kill her without any witnesses. After all, if he had attacked her in the car, they would have driven off the side of the road. If he was still planning on killing her, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it. Nobody would find her body, and he’d be able to snatch the kid and use the car she stole to take him back to Salvatore.
After another minute of just sitting and worrying silently, Evan decided to exit the vehicle and walk up to the front door. He knocked lightly, trying not to appear too aggressive. He didn’t want to scare her even more. “Hannah?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Um, yeah, everything’s fine!” she shouted from inside. “Just getting settled. Be there in a minute.”
But another ninety seconds passed and nothing happened. He didn’t even hear shuffling from inside. What was she doing? Just waiting on the other side of the door, trying to see if he was up to no good? Evan decided to knock again, a little firmer this time but still not very hard.
“Just—just a minute!” Hannah said on the other side of the door. She sounded nervous. No, more than nervous. Scared. She’s scared of me, Evan realized, and for the first time in his life that didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like a failure.
“Listen, Hannah,” he began, “I know you’re in a bitch of a situation.”
He paused to let her acknowledge the statement, but she didn’t say anything.
“I know you’re scared. You probably should be scared of me. I’ve done some pretty fucked-up shit. But there are more important things right now.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Hannah asked. Her voice sounded louder and clearer. She must have stepped closer to the door.
“Like Alex,” Evan said. “Salvatore will never give up. He’ll never let go of his son. Salvatore never talked to me about you, but he did talk about his kid. He thought he was building a dynasty, you know.”
He could hear Hannah scoff on the other side of the door. “Yeah, right. Fucking pompous self-obsessed jackass.”
“Exactly. Exactly. So that’s why you gotta know that he’s never going to let go of this. He’ll hunt you with everything he has.”
She didn’t say anything in response. Evan guessed that he wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t already know.
“You’re smart. You’re really smart. You were able to beat me when nobody has before. But you don’t have the sheer numbers that Sal has. He can throw everything at you, all the men, all the weapons, all the money in the world. You’re only one woman, Hannah. You need help.”
“And you’ll help me?” Hannah asked, but her voice wasn’t as mocking as it had been in the past.
“If you’ll let me,” Evan answered.
There was silence for a long minute before Evan heard shuffling on the other side of the door. Then, a second later, Hannah opened it, holding it to one side so Evan could step in.
“Thanks. Thank you,” Evan said as Hannah shut the door quickly and redid the locks and chains that kept the house secure.
For a second they just stared at each other. Evan wanted to know why she’d gotten scared again, but he was a little afraid that if he asked it’d piss her off. But then Alex, who was sitting on the floor in the center of the room, broke the silence with a weird-sounding burp.
“Sorry,” Hannah said with a shy smile. “I just fed him really quick when I got in the house.”
“I don’t mind,” Evan said, staring down at the little boy who was playing with the edge of his rug, until Hannah spoke again a second later.
“I’m sorry for making you talk your way into your own house,” Hannah said sheepishly, her eyes glued to the floor.
“Um, it’s okay,” he said. “But uh, why now? I thought, back in the car…” His sentence trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to say “you were beginning to trust me.”
“Well, I saw your guns,” Hannah explained, pointing to a far corner of the room, where four or five rifles were all stacked up next to each other.
“That’s not even the half of it,” Evan said with a laugh. “I got like twelve more in each room.” He saw Hannah pale in response, but he didn’t understand why. Is she scared of guns? Evan wondered. “Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head, but then she spoke again. “It’s just…well, I don’t like guns.”
“Why?”
She shrugged a little. “My dad…he used to hold them to my head as a kid, as a joke, you know,” she said. Her tone sounded casual and light, but Evan could tell that it was forced.
“Your dad did that to you? Were they loaded?” Evan asked.
Hannah nodded. “Yeah, always.”
“Jesus Christ,” Evan muttered. “And I thought my family was fucked-up.”
She laughed then, and this time it was genuine. A smile lingered on her face, lighting her eyes up like wildfire.
It was the first time in a while that they were facing each other directly, Evan realized. In the car, they’d spent hours talking, but they’d been physically separated the entire time. Now, he could get a good look at her, really take stock of her appearance rather than scoping her out as a target. She had curves in all the right places and legs that went on for miles. Her face was beautiful, but in the way an old building is beautiful, marked with time. Maybe it was just because he knew what she’d been through, but Evan felt like he could read the history of her battles on her face. For a moment, he burned with curiosity about her, about whether or not she knew how strong she was, but he knew better than to ask.
“Anyway, I just saw them and got scared, I don’t know. It’s stupid,” Hannah said, waving her hand like she was physically pushing the conversation away.
“It’s not stupid,” Evan said. “It’s…did it make you think, ‘oh, he’s like my dad,’ or something like that?”
Hannah bit her lip for a minute before nodding slowly. “I think so. I just thought…how could someone trustworthy have so many guns?” She shook her head at herself. “I’m sorry. Stupid.”
Evan wanted to argue with her again, tell her that it wasn’t anything to apologize for, but he let it go. Instead, he cleared his throat and gestured to his bedroom. “Let me show you where all the guns are. Just in case.”
“In case…?” Hannah asked with a furrowed brow.
“In case you need them,” Evan finished, pointing to the hiding places where he kept weapons in each room. “It’s not likely, but you want to be prepared. Have you ever shot a gun before?”
Hannah shook her head. “No. I mean, I’ve held guns before. But I’ve always been too nervous to pull the trigger. Pathetic, right?”
In the past, Evan might have actually thought so. Violence was so habitual for him that he couldn’t quite understand anyone who didn’t take to it as naturally as he did. But there was something almost…honorable about it in Hannah’s case. She’d clearly grown up around plenty of guns and at least one person who was willing to use them, but she was different. How did someone who had been through so much come out of everything so…pure?
Evan shook his head in response to her words. “You’re pretty tough. You knocked me out cold with that frying pan.”
Hannah smiled a little at that. She walked over to one of the guns against the wall and dragged a finger across the level of dust that collected on top of it. “Have these ever been used?” she asked.
“Maybe for practice,” Evan said. It was hard for him to remember what all he’d done in the past several years. Usually he didn’t use guns for his hits. All of his guns were unregistered, but the chance of ballistics tracing the crime back to him was still enough to make him use his hands instead.
“Will you teach me?” Hannah asked.
“What?” Evan asked, confused.
“To shoot. Will you teach me? I want to be able to hit a target.”
Before Evan could answer, Alex started wailing again in the other room, causing Hannah to groan and hit her own forehead hard enough that it made a slapping noise. “Jesus, fuck.”
They returned to the living room, and Hannah picked Alex up, rocking him a little bit in her arms. “What’s going on here, sweetie? I fed you, I changed you. What’s the big idea?”
“Have you eaten yet?” Evan asked her.
Hannah sighed heavily and shook her head, bouncing Alex a little in her arms as he continued to fuss. “I haven’t had the chance yet.”
“When’s the last time you ate something?”
She shrugged. “A couple hours before you attacked last night.”
“Jesus, you must be starving,” Evan said. “Let me fix you something. I’ve got food in the kitchen.”
Hannah shook her head. “No, that’s okay, I’ll do it. I just got to get him to sleep first.”
As if on cue, Alex cried out louder than Evan had ever heard a baby scream. Goddamn, what was wrong with him?
Hannah sighed again and shut her eyes, swaying back and forth until Alex quieted down to a more acceptable decibel of whining. “He’s mad at me,” Hannah said.
“What do you mean?” Evan asked.
“All the moving around. He wants his room, his crib. He doesn’t know where we are or what we’re doing and it’s pissing him off.”
Evan nodded. That made sense. The poor little guy had been through a lot, more than any child could possibly understand. But Hannah…at this rate she looked like she was going to pass out from lack of food and sleep.
She blew out her breath again and opened her eyes. “Could you show me where the food is? I can make myself a sandwich or something.”
Evan and Hannah walked into the kitchen, and he began opening up the cabinets, showing the different food options he’d stocked up a week ago.
“I have stuff in here for pesto, I think,” Evan said, looking in the refrigerator and cabinets for the appropriate ingredients. “I can make some noodles and we can eat that, if you want.”
“No, no, that’s okay, I can just have some crackers or something,” Hannah said as she rubbed the back of Alex’s head soothingly.
“Hannah. Please, just let me,” Evan said, and without waiting for her response, he immediately went about his work, getting out a blender and a pot from underneath the sink. “I want to.”
She was quiet a minute, just rubbing Alex’s back as he fussed quietly. “Okay,” she finally said in a low voice, almost like she was afraid to accept his offer too loudly. “Thank you.”
“It’s no problem,” Evan said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hannah lean back against one of the kitchen walls, her eyes screwed shut. She needs to rest, he thought. She deserves it. But she deserved a lot of things that she’d never had before, he figured. The world was unjust that way. It was only people like himself who got what they wanted, he realized, a hard lump forming in his throat. It was only the bad people.
***
Hannah
For a hitman, Evan was really handy in the kitchen. Hannah couldn’t help but feel impressed as she watched him work, quickly cutting up herbs to blend into pesto sauce. She had never really learned how to cook. Her mother had died when she was young, and her dad…well, let’s just say her dad wasn’t much for chores. She’d grown up on a steady diet of Pop-Tarts and candy. When Salvatore came along, she ate better than she ever had her whole life. Maybe that was part of the reason she loved him, at first, before the bad stuff started. He showed her a world that she’d never seen before. Or so she’d thought.
It was all the same. Same old world. Same old problems. Same old evil men who don’t care who they hurt, she thought, clutching Alex tighter in her arms before he could slide down her body. He was wriggling a little bit, like he wanted to be let down, but she knew that the second she put him on the floor he’d whine to be picked back up again.
She kept blinking to stay alert, but honestly at this point she had reached that level of tiredness that looped back around into full consciousness. She probably couldn’t sleep even if she had the opportunity to right now. Hannah’s entire body buzzed with some kind of energy, somewhere between fear and anxiety and curiosity about this new place, this new side of Evan that she was getting to see.
He was focused, totally absorbed in the task of cooking as he boiled the pasta. Hannah wondered if that’s how he always was, if he set his entire mind and body to every task that he ever did. He must kill this way, too, she thought, shivers running up her spine at the images that flooded her mind in response.
She pushed the thoughts out of her mind. It wouldn’t do her any good to judge him right now. Sure, he was an unrepentant murderer, but he was also the only help she had right now. Where do I get off, thinking I’m better than him, anyway? All that good food I ate with Salvatore was paid for in crime money. I’m just as bad, really, Hannah thought. She found herself thinking back on those early days again, when Salvatore had picked her up out of nowhere and made her feel special. He’d even made her feel safe, for a little while. It was the first and only time she’d ever felt safe in her life. At the time, Hannah had thought that her days of pain and struggle and torment were over. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. She didn’t have to worry that anyone was going to hold a gun to her head.
And then, things changed. Things always change.
Maybe that’s why it was so hard to trust that Evan wasn’t about to betray her. Salvatore had seemed like a good guy once, too. Maybe all men were like that, secretly biding their time to hurt you. Maybe it was impossible to separate the good guys from the bad guys because they were all the same, all waiting to pounce the second you let your guard down.
“Do you want garlic bread?” Evan asked, breaking her out of her reverie.
“Sure,” Hannah replied, her tone casual, like she didn’t care one way or another, when really the prospect of garlic bread made her mouth water and her knees weak. God, I need to eat. I need to eat so bad, she thought.
“Hey, he’s gone quiet,” Evan said, referring to Alex, who was now staring at him as he worked at stirring the noodles.
“It’s a false alarm,” Hannah said. “He’ll start screaming in a second. He just tired himself out, that’s all.”
“Did you have a nanny back…back with…” Evan trailed off, obviously not wanting to say Salvatore’s name.
Hannah shook her head. “No. I didn’t want one. Kind of regretting that now, ha.” She closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the hard wall, wishing it were a pillow. The cabin only had one bedroom, though, and she figured she was going to end up sleeping on the couch that night. That is, assuming Alex ever calmed the fuck down and let her get any sleep at all.
Right on schedule, Alex started crying again, but at least it wasn’t as loud as before. “Shh, baby, shh, please stop punishing me. I know you miss your bed, darling,” Hannah murmured to him, bringing him up to kiss the top of his head.
“I think he just does it to get attention,” Evan said, sticking a pan with garlic bread into the oven.
“Yeah, well, it’s working,” Hannah said with a laugh. They fell silent again, and Hannah just watched Evan work. She couldn’t help but admire the curve of his ass as he bent over to check on the bread before she realized what she was doing and snapped out of it. Objectifying your would-be murderer? Nice, she taunted herself.
She inwardly argued with herself: on the one hand, it was disgusting, having any kind of attraction to a hitman. But on the other hand, she’d been so well-behaved her entire relationship with Salvatore. Even when he was flaunting his mistresses right in front of her, just to hurt her, she never strayed, partly because she knew Salvatore would kill her if she ever so much as looked at another man. So, it was nice, staring at Evan’s body, even if she still half hated the person it belonged to. It was a tiny little rebellion, doing something that would make Salvatore absolutely incensed.
“All done,” Evan announced a minute later, getting plates out to fill with pasta and bread. “Sit down,” he directed her, pointing at the kitchen table.
Hannah complied as best as she could, holding Alex still in her lap when he tried to climb up onto the table. He was so full of life. It made Hannah smile to think about, but she wished she had even a fraction of his energy. Maybe I used to, when I was a little kid, she thought as Evan put a plate down in front of her and handed her a fork. But it’s all gone now.
Holding Alex as still as possible with one hand, she started eating with the other, twirling her noodles around with her fork to achieve maximum pesto coverage. She hadn’t eaten this in years. It tasted even better than she remembered. For a few minutes, they just ate in silence, but then Evan spoke up. “Do you like it?”
“Are you kidding?” Hannah asked, finding herself smiling. “It’s delicious. Where did you learn to cook, Italy or something?”
“Or something,” Evan replied, smiling back at her. Hannah felt a rush of heat climb up her spine, so she tore her eyes away from his face, staring down at Alex instead. She didn’t know why she felt so embarrassed. It was like she was in high school again, chatting up the bad boy that used to make fun of her. It made her feel a little sick to her stomach to think about. I’m not attracted to him, she argued to herself. I don’t like him at all. He’s a murderer. He’s a monster. He’s evil.
Evan finished his plate before her, not because she wasn’t starving, but because it was hard to eat quickly when she had Alex to handle. He was squirming in her lap, whining a little in his desperation to climb up on the table and play around with the noodles. “Alex, stop,” she said sternly, pulling his tiny hands back from the table. “Stop it.”
“He’s a little handful, isn’t he?” Evan said as he rinsed off his plate.
“Yeah, he’s a brat,” Hannah said, kissing the top of his head again. He was her whole world, but it got exhausting sometimes, dealing with him on her own. He was this little ball of light and energy and just life, and Hannah mostly felt like an empty shell instead of a person.
After another few minutes, Hannah finally finished her meal, getting up with Alex in her arms to put her plate in the sink. “Thank you,” she said to Evan. “It was amazing.”
He blushed—actually blushed, like a schoolboy—and looked down at the ground. “It was nothing.”
“Anyway,” Hannah said, “thank you. I really needed that.” She groaned and shifted her weight from one leg to the other, trying to ease the pain of her full bladder. “And now…I’ve got to pee. Jesus Christ. They don’t warn you before you become a mother about these things.”
“Can’t you put him down?” Evan asked.
“I would if he was asleep, but I’m afraid of what he’ll get into if I take my eyes off him. You know, all the guns,” she said, gesturing to the nearest weapon on the wall.
Evan cleared his throat but didn’t say anything right away. Hannah saw him flex his hands into fists, like he was pumping himself up for something, and for a second her heart froze with fear. “I could, you know, I could hold him,” he finally said in a low voice.
Hannah wasn’t certain that her ears had interpreted that right. Evan was offering to hold her son? “I, um. I,” she stuttered in response.
“Just as long as it takes you to pee and whatever else you need to do,” Evan rushed to say.
“Um, where’s the bathroom?” Hannah asked instead of answering him directly. Evan walked her back out into the living room and through the doorway to the right. Hannah bit her lip, considering her options. If she could find a way to unbutton her jeans and push them down with one hand, she might be able to hold onto Alex the whole time, but it would be a struggle. She didn’t want to drop him. God knows the poor boy had been through enough physical trauma, more than enough for someone his age.
But handing him off to Evan…The hitman’s whole motive to start with was to grab the baby and take him back to Salvatore. What if this whole time, he was just waiting for an opportunity to steal him without killing her? Salvatore might even prefer that, if she was stuck living without her son. In the time it took Hannah to pee, Evan could leave the cabin, get in the car, and peel off down the road, and Hannah would have no way of catching up to him. Unless…
“Give me a second,” she said to Evan, walking out of the cabin to go stare at the license plate of the SUV. She repeated the sequence of letters and numbers to herself over and over again, closing her eyes to conjure up a mental photograph. If Evan went off with Alex, she could call the cops and report a kidnapping. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best option she had given the circumstances.
“Okay,” she said as she reentered the cabin, holding Alex out in Evan’s direction. “You can hold him. Just for a minute.”
Fear visibly flashed over Evan’s face when he took Alex into his arms, holding him at an awkward angle. Hannah corrected him, making sure that Evan supported all of her child’s weight, before heading into the bathroom. All the while, she strained her ears, trying to hear if Evan was trying anything while she was away, but she couldn’t hear anything other than Alex’s normal whining. He probably missed his mother. Hannah smiled a little at that. She might have lost everything, over and over again, but she still had her baby. That meant that she had all the love in the world.
Washing her hands thoroughly, she stared at herself in the mirror. Goddamn, I look awful, she thought. Huge dark bags hung under her eyes, and worry lines were evident in her forehead. She’d never seen herself look so worn down, even after years of living with Salvatore. She needed sleep more than anything in the world.
When she exited the bathroom, she didn’t see Evan or Alex right away, and she felt like her entire stomach had been ripped out of her body. She ran across the room, bolting for the door to see if the car was still there, when she finally heard Evan whisper, “Hey.”
There he was, sitting on the couch, with Alex asleep on his shoulder.
Evan’s face was strained and a little red, like he was exercising heavily, but Hannah had never seen Alex look so peaceful, his little hand wrapped around the collar of Evan’s shirt.
“Wow,” Hannah whispered. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was the only thought her brain was capable of forming at the moment. Just…wow. Alex had never taken to anyone that fast. He’d never even fallen asleep in Salvatore’s arms before.
Hannah slowly approached the couch, not wanting to wake her son. “Did he…he just fell asleep right away?” she asked.
“Took him a few seconds,” Evan said. He was still red. He must have felt embarrassed for some reason, although Hannah couldn’t understand why. It was like he’d been caught doing something bad.
She was hesitant to move Alex, afraid that the slightest disturbance would wake him up and send him right back into wailing, but Evan looked so uncomfortable, like Alex’s weight on him was ridiculously heavy. She slowly sat down next to Evan and lifted Alex off of him and onto her chest instead. “There we go, there we go, baby,” she whispered as Alex opened and closed his eyes again.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Evan.
“Me? I didn’t do anything.”
Hannah shook her head, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. “You did something. You calmed him down, somehow. I don’t know what you did. But thank you.”
Evan was silent. He didn’t nod or shake his head or anything. Hannah couldn’t read his face, either. She decided to drop the issue, even though the image of Alex sleeping on Evan lingered in her mind. She couldn’t seem to shake it away.
A minute later, however, she felt that familiar weight sitting on her eyelids again, making it harder and harder for her to keep her eyes open.
“Can I…sleep here?” Hannah asked.
Evan nodded quickly and got to his feet. “You have to sleep sometime, right?” he said. “I’ll leave you alone.” He began to retreat from the room before Hannah stopped him with her arm.
“No, no, you don’t have to go anywhere. I’m a heavy sleeper. You can go about your business and I’ll be fine. I can sleep through anything. I always have.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Evan said, and Hannah couldn’t read his tone. Was it…admiration she heard in his voice? That couldn’t be right. What was there to admire about her?
“You’re a strange one, Evan,” she murmured, her eyes sliding shut.
She thought she heard Evan say something in response, but she couldn’t make it out before falling into the sweet abyss of sleep.
***
Evan
“You’re a special one, Hannah,” Evan murmured softly. Looking down at her, he once again imagined scenes from her relationship with Salvatore. He thought of her being hit, cowering in fear, living her life according to his whims. Evan felt a burning rage start to bubble up from the bottom of his stomach, and he knew what he was going to do.
One last job for the road. He had to kill Salvatore with his own two hands.