Seven ♥
*
The phone rang. Grant was tired; when he saw the number, though, he picked up in spite of himself. He was tired of the bullshit, but he wasn't about to get any more of a federal manhunt going after him than he'd already called down on his head.
"Yeah," he said.
Sloane was on the other line. She had a hard tone to her voice. Grant knew that she was putting it there at least in part for the sake of whoever was listening. But he knew there was something in her that was pissed at him. Maybe she thought he was overstepping the bounds of the law, or something. He didn't know and didn't much care.
"You need to come in."
"That's a negative," Grant said. He looked over at Misty. "I've got trouble out here."
"You don't understand. We're swamped, Grant. You need to come in, and you need to do it yesterday."
"What's the situation?"
"I can't say," Sloane told him. He pulled the phone away from his mouth a moment. Stepped harder on the gas.
"I'm not coming in," he said. "But maybe if you tell me what's going on I can help advise you on what your next move ought to be."
"That's no good, Sheriff," she said. Grant gambled that she wasn't really arguing with him in any serious way. That she was just trying to hide the fact that she knew he wasn't going to budge.
The fact that she'd let him go, and that she'd given him the keys to another cruiser to 'get home' suggested that he was on the right track. But Sloane was a hard woman to read. It worked in his favor right now, but it didn't make things any easier even when he did know that.
"So what's the situation?"
"If you don't come in, these Feds are going to be up my ass so far they see daylight. They're pissed, boss. They say the girl's a fugitive from justice. Whatever the issue is, they're not telling. Way above our pay grade, they said."
"I'm sure it is," Grant said. "So keep them busy."
"You're coming in?"
"Negative," Grant said.
"Thank God," Sloane said. Grant hung up the phone.
Misty looked at him. He hooked the phone into its cradle on the dash and kept on moving. Then he thought better of it and turned around.
There was no chance they were going to believe that little charade. Not hook line and sinker. Which meant that they probably cover all their bases: what if he comes in? What if he runs?
The way Grant saw it, the answer was obvious, and it was somewhere in between.
"Where are we going?"
Misty looked at him with only a trace of the pain that he guessed must be exploding through her body, with a bullet hole straight through her hip. If anything she seemed to be managing it pretty well. He needed to get her someplace safe. And he had a place just like that, a few miles off. His place. At least, it was now.
"My place," he said. "We need to lay low for a while."
"They'll be right there," she told him. "They're going to be waiting for you."
"Then we'll be on the lookout," he said flatly. "But we can't keep moving with your leg like that."
"I'm fine," Misty protested. It was weak and it was almost entirely unbelievable. That she tried to pull it off at all was almost a surprise.
"You've got a hole in you big enough for me to stick my thumb in," Grant said. "I'm not telling you that you have to go to the E.R. if you don't want to, but I'm not letting you bleed all over my cruiser. We're getting this settled."
She didn't put up a fight. He was surprised by that. It must have been a testament to how much pain she was in. Every step of the way, Grant had been contradicted by everyone around him. This was the weakest protest he'd gotten to anything all night, short of ordering his dinner.
"So, we get to your house. Then what?"
"We take the next couple hours to recoup," Grant said. He hadn't thought any further out. Anything he came up with was bound to be a bad idea. He was physically and mentally exhausted.
"And then?"
"Then we cross that bridge when we come to it."
She went quiet. Her weight shifted to press the shirt harder into her hip. And whatever she had on her mind, she kept it to herself.
What Grant didn't tell her was that he wasn't sure where he was going to land at the end of this. He didn't know what he was up against, didn't really know their resources, and didn't know how to fight them even if he could guess. That made it hard to plan. When he had slept, maybe that would make a difference. Right now, all that mattered was finding a place to stay for a few short hours.
"You really didn't have to save me," Misty said. "I'd have been alright on my own."
"You looked like you were out on your feet," Grant said. "Lay your head back and try to rest. I know it's not comfortable."
"It's fine." Misty laid her head back, kept her weight hard on her hip. His shirt was looking more and more red, the more time went by.
They drove on in silence for another five minutes. He turned off the road, his eyes scanning the horizon. Looking for cars. At first he thought that she'd been wrong, that he was free and clear for all intents and purposes. Grant had no need to hide where he lived, but he was a fairly private person. That was what happened, when you had a wife who didn't want to be involved in your work.
Then, when you had a wife who you were having a rough patch with, the privacy only increased. When you started initiating divorce proceedings, and then an annulment… well, he hadn't been the most social person in the county, suffice it to say. And that had translated to not bringing anyone around. So there was always a chance that nobody really knew precisely where he lived.
The first strange car, he almost wrote off. There was nobody inside, the engine was off. He checked both things. There wasn't even a pair of teenagers necking in the back. The second car put him on edge. By the time he saw the third, and then the fourth, he was already turning around in the lot. The men inside the cars might have noticed him coming, but they hadn't put two and two together about who he was, even with the large six-pointed star on the side of the car.
He put the pedal down and kept on moving. He'd hoped to be able to lay his head down. But at this point, the number of options were dwindling, and he was going to have to figure something out soon. Because whoever was after Misty, they had his number now, and he was going to have to accept one of two impossible positions: give up the girl, or go on the run.
Neither was appetizing. He didn't spend any time at all thinking about which he would choose, though. The engine roared and the mile markers whipped by, and in spite of himself, he did something Sheriffs are not supposed to do as a rule: he went on the run.
Grant's eyes drifted off the road. He watched a mile marker coming up slowly; as they passed it whipped by. He jerked the wheel, and the car righted itself into the middle of the lane. He should be off the road. But he couldn't. At least, not yet. There was no good place to stop.
Being accused of trying to kill some random civilian was one thing. He could prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was innocent of that. But he had a feeling about Misty. He told himself that the feeling had nothing to do with their past together. Maybe he believed it, somewhere deep in his heart.
She was asleep, finally. It was almost pleasant. He chanced another glance over at her, telling himself that he wasn't going to drift again. He had learned his lesson about being careless. She was as beautiful as he remembered.
She was stronger than she had been, though. Harder on the outside. She needed some of that toughness; always had. He'd been there to protect her before. Not when she left. She didn't want him to follow, and he couldn't force himself to leave. Once he'd managed to get his head on even a little straight, she was gone for good. So he joined the Army.
Grant thought he'd learned his lesson about carelessness, but looking away from the road was careless. He saw headlights coming toward them when he looked back to the road. He almost swerved on reflex before he looked at the lines on the road. He hadn't drifted. Neither had the oncoming car. He forced his hands to steady and kept driving. The oncoming car passed harmlessly by him.
He needed to sleep. He was starting to see things. Starting to imagine things. There was danger all around him, he knew that. It was hard to avoid admitting it, at least to himself. But that didn't mean that he needed to be irresponsible. He pinched his lips together and looked hard at the horizon.
"God damn it," he said, only to himself. The sound of his voice startled him. It was too loud. He glanced, only for an instant, over to Misty. She didn't move an inch. Her color was alright, he told himself. He almost believed it.
He needed someplace to go. Some place where he could try to sleep. Only one immediately came to mind. He dismissed it out of hand. He was willing to let her into his life a little bit, but there were limits to that. Limits for anyone.
So he started going down the list. He was too tired for inspired thinking. The only thing was to try to be systematic. If he could wrangle his brain into a structure, then the fact that it moved slowly wasn't going to make much in the way of difference… right?
Could he go home? No. Did he own property, other than his home? Yes. Could he go there? He could. Would he? He would not. He let out a breath. That was easy. Next step.
Was there someone he could call on, who could be trusted not to go to the police? There was not. His parents were long gone, and Heather… well, it had been a fairly amicable split. But he wasn't going to ask her to get involved in this situation. He couldn't, it wouldn't be fair. The list of other people in his life was short, and few of them were better than acquaintances.
Then what about public places? Sleeping on the street wasn't an option. He needed to be able to perform some first aid. That would be impossible with the two of them sitting on park benches. And it would be impossible to stop someone from finding them while they slept. He let out a breath.
Which left private establishments. Paid. He thought about the offer to stop at a motel. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The offer didn't stand, as far as he knew. Few things did, when you were bleeding like a stuck pig.
He hadn't stayed in a motel for years. Not since he'd gotten out of the Army, and then only a couple of days while he made his way back to Idaho.
Grant caught his thoughts slipping, following tangents. He was too tired for this. He needed to sleep. He just had to get them someplace with a warm bed. Two warm beds, preferably. Cold beds were acceptable, as long as they were beds and they were inside, and nobody was going to immediately call the cops.
So that left motels and hotels. Were they an option?
He took a long moment before deciding that no, they weren't. He needed to be incognito. They were going to want him to pay with plastic. Plastic that would immediately set off the search for him, right to his location. It wasn't like he had a set of fake credit cards lying around, after all. He let out a breath and closed his eyes.
There were some places where they might take cash. Not the kinds of places that he wanted to go, but as they say, any old port in a storm.
The trouble was that he didn't have the cash on hand. If he stopped someplace to get cash, then he had the same problem as before, once removed: he'd ping an alert that would bring the entire Federal government down on his head. The fact that he could drive away wasn't going to make all that much difference.
Grant grit his teeth. He was caught between a rock and a hard place, and he knew it. He hated it. He looked over at Misty. Her face twisted in pain, but she still didn't stir from her sleep. There were few people who he would have done it for, but he needed to keep her safe. There was only one way to do that, and as much as he hated it, he wasn't going to risk her safety just so that he could protect his privacy a little bit.
He let a breath out his nose and started plotting a course. It was almost forty miles, but the good news was that he hadn't been going the wrong way. If he'd been going south all this time, it could have been a hundred by now.
He took the straight shot up, took the exit. He was exhausted, but the routine was almost normal at that point. He'd done it a handful of times, but it was always in emergencies like this. So the act of going there almost made it easier to keep himself awake.
The house wasn't his. At least, according to the paperwork, it wasn't. It belonged to a man named Anthony Harper. Anthony Harper looked and sounded quite a bit like Sheriff Holloway. If you put them into the same room together, which no one ever had–at least, not knowingly–they would have been indistinguishable.
But they had different addresses, and they both paid their bills–Anthony was quite a bit more reliable, but his bills were almost nothing each month–and they both had different social security numbers.
Which was enough to disappear on, if you were careful. And Grant had always been careful. He pulled into the driveway. The clock read 2:05. He turned off the engine, and the dashboard clock stopped saying anything. He eased out of the driver's seat, walked around to the passenger side, and helped Misty out. She'd woken, apparently, when they stopped. She only mostly needed help. Her leg almost took her weight, even.
Grant Holloway, for all legal purposes, stopped existing. Anthony Harper reached into his pocket, grabbed Sheriff Holloway's keys, and fanned them out. Grabbed one from the middle and slipped it into his lock. Opened the door. Stepped inside.
The room was dusty. He needed to use air fresheners next time, or it was always going to smell like an underused closet. He helped Misty inside. Four steps past the foyer, he stopped cold. The computer was on. It wasn't supposed to be; it was an expense he didn't like paying, when he was off being someone else, in some other place.
The screen was his own desktop, except for one thing. A Word document, taking up most of the screen, in the approximate middle, with large text spread across it. Even from across the room, he had no trouble reading it.
"Welcome home, Sheriff Holloway."