Drive (7 page)

“Can you try and stay focused, please?! I’m serious. What is the plan here? I mean, we can’t just spend the rest of our lives running.” At least, she hoped that wouldn’t be the end result.

Slowly Sawyer pulled himself into an upright position, leaning his bare back against the cold, hard headboard pinned to the wall above their bed.

“We’re not going to run forever. The fact that no one has caught up to us yet is a good sign. In the morning, we’ll find a payphone and you can make the call in to my contact at the station-”

“Me? Why me?” Jordan interjected.

“Because we won’t know who’s listening in and no one is going to recognize your voice. It’ll be fine. I’ll write out exactly what you need to say and he’ll understand. He’ll be able to get us some help. Who knows, you may even be back before your suspension is up,” Sawyer winked, trying to diffuse some of the tension that began to grow whenever the reality of their situation seemed to creep into the conversation.

“I doubt that it will matter much. I’m going have a lot of explaining to do when I get back…starting with the fact that my rig was trashed, I stole supplies and then was party to a whole string of car heists before going on the run with a semi-criminal.”

Sawyer laughed.

“None of that is going to be held against you. Trust me. You make that call tomorrow and I’ll get you out of this mess.”

Jordan leaned her head back into her hand and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

“It’s not really going to be that simple,” she said quietly.

Sawyer lowered his lids and sighed.

“No, probably not.”

He felt a pang of guilt as he opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of her. Her face was still directed at the ceiling above them, staring blankly at the off white popcorn texture as though she was watching the next few days play out across it like on a movie screen.

“Listen to me,” he said. He waited for her head to turn toward him again. When her eyes met his he continued, “The truth is, I have no idea what is going to happen next. Calling in is the first step toward getting you back to your life and out of danger and both
will
happen, but you’re right, it won’t be simple. I don’t know how quickly they’ll be able to bring us in or how fast things will move once they do. It’ll take a while to wrap up my case, give my statements, provide my evidence and figure out if everything I’ve done over the last few years has been enough to put away enough people to make a significant difference. In the meantime, you’ll have to be guarded, go into witness protection probably – at least until we go to trial.”

Jordan listened to him quietly. He wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t already figured out on her own. Somehow hearing the words out loud was different. She suddenly found herself wishing they
could
just go on the run forever. Never come back to face what was likely going to be long and ugly and, in truth, would bring her life to a complete standstill as she sat in limbo waiting for everything to pass. She wasn’t sure she was prepared to make that kind of a sacrifice.

“There’s no other way?” She had phrased it as a question, but stated it as fact. Which Sawyer confirmed almost instantly.

“No. There’s no other way. Without help, it’s us against the shark infested ocean…we either drown or end up fish food.”

Jordan didn’t say anything else. She let her head sink back into her pillow and lay there solemnly. She felt Sawyer’s movements beside her as he slid his body down again and under the covers, but she didn’t turn her head to see. It wasn’t until he reached his arm around her and pulled her close, that Jordan realized how rigid her body had gotten, as though it had seized up at some point during their last conversation. Within seconds all of the stiffness turned to
jello as she felt herself melt into him, finding that safe spot where she knew nothing could harm her. Sawyer would protect her. She knew it was crazy and definitely stupid, but she didn’t care. Her brain could say whatever it wanted, her heart was taking the lead on this one, claiming control and easing her mind with a certainty she had never felt about anyone. Before now.

              Jordan was surprised to wake up to sunlight. She hadn’t expected to get any sleep at all after the conversation she and Sawyer had had just a few hours earlier.  This time, her hand didn’t need to search for him beneath the covers. His body was still lying molded to hers with his arm wrapped snugly to her waist. For someone who had always valued her freedom Jordan found it hard to believe she hadn’t fought her way out of his iron grip once asleep. She hadn’t even moved yet when he said, “I need to show you something.”

             
Jordan lifted her head, surprised.

             
“How did you even know I was awake?”

             
“Your breathing changed and your muscles tightened up,” said Sawyer. He sounded odd, but Jordan couldn’t put her finger on what it was that seemed off and it made her anxious. She sat up and braced herself mentally for whatever was about to come.

             
“What is it? What do you need to show me?” The words had barely crossed her lips when Jordan noticed that the TV was on. Sawyer had muted the volume so she hadn’t been able to hear it, but there, flashing across the screen was her face along with her name and the headline ‘Organized Crime Claims Another Victim’.

             
“Turn it up!” she screeched in a panic, no longer interested in anything Sawyer had to say. He kept his mouth shut and did exactly as she said, his face clearly displaying his frustration over her discovering the news before he had been able to prepare her and possibly lighten the blow.

             
Jordan watched in frozen horror as the newscaster announced that she had been the victim of a violent crime committed by an undisclosed suspect and was believed to be dead.

             
“Oh my God,” it was barely a breath, “I have to call my mother.”

             
Sawyer reached for her wrist just as she was climbing out of the bed.

             
“You can’t, Jordan.” His eyes, while genuinely sad for her, showed a cold cutthroat side of Sawyer she hadn’t seen before now. She pulled her arm from his grasp and leapt out of his reach.

             
“Don’t tell me what to do! Do you have any idea what this news will do to my family? The kind of pain my mother will suffer thinking that I’ve died? No! I will not be the one to make her suffer like that! Not after everything she’s already been through!” she shouted at him as he stood up from the bed and slowly came toward her. She physically fought him as he tried to place both of his hands onto her shoulders this time.

             
“Get off of me!” she hissed, using both of her hands and the weight of her entire body to shove him in the chest, but her attempts against him were almost laughable, as he stood there unmoved, solid in spite of the pain she inflicted on him due to his already injured shoulder. To make matters worse, Sawyer firmly gripped her by both wrists, bringing her struggle to an end.

             
“Stop fighting me, Jordan. Don’t you think I know what this means? Believe me, I do! I haven’t talked to my father since before my mother died…and she passed while I was off working some case that consumed my life so completely, I didn’t even find out about her death until six months after it happened! God only knows how she felt those last months wondering if she was leaving me or coming to see me again. And my father…I’m sure he gave up on me a long time ago. I would have…but no matter how much regret I feel or how much I wish it was different, I know that it can’t be. Not now, not as long as I do the work that I do. And you can’t either. Things are different now, Jordan.” He sighed heavily, slowly loosening his grip on her. Tears were welling up in her eyes and he could barely stand the way they pierced through him as though she wanted him to feel every last ounce of her agony.  He did. The knowledge of that frightened him more than anything. He had spent years shutting off his feelings. Building emotional walls so steep, he could be certain they’d protect him from ever getting emotionally involved with his mark, no matter how much they treated him like family. This had come at a cost of course, one being that he never felt connected to anyone, criminal or otherwise. He had given up any ideals of ever having a steady woman in his life, let alone ever having a family, a long time ago. He had been certain that his heart had gone so numb from the choices he had made, it would never beat for anyone but himself. Then Jordan showed up. From the first moment he’d seen her, she had clouded his judgment, so much so that for the first time in his career he had found himself at someone else’s mercy – hers. Something he was starting to think he was going to have to get used to.

***

Jordan watched Sawyer’s face as he tried to hide the pain behind his deadened expression. It didn’t matter what he did. She had seen all she needed to see the second he looked down into her tear streaked face.

“I can’t just let them suffer like this for no reason,” she pleaded with him, but Sawyer just turned his back on her and walked away.

“Let them suffer Jordan… you let them suffer, you let them live.”

She stood there staring blankly at the TV, no longer taking in any of what the reporter was saying while tears quietly continued to run down her cheeks. She knew Sawyer was right even though it all felt so incredibly wrong. When she finally managed to pry her eyes from the screen she searched the room for Sawyer, but he was nowhere to be seen. Surely, Jordan would have heard if he had left the room. It took her a second to clear her head enough to take note of the sound of water running. It was coming from the shower. Relieved, she dragged her feet over the shabby old carpeting toward the bathroom. The door was only leaning against the doorframe so she rapped it once with her knuckles and then entered without waiting for his invitation.

“There’s something I still don’t understand…why do they even think I’m dead in the first place? Do you think the people after you left some sort of a body for the cops to find?”

Jordan could see his outline behind the shower curtain as he brushed the water from his face with his hands before he answered, “They could have…but they would have had to work fast to find a body similar to yours and then destroy it to the point it couldn’t be identified, plus, they would have nothing to gain from it other than another crime that could possibly be pinned on them in the long run.”

“What if they did it as a trap, you know, to get me to call home?” she asked, but even before she heard the words she could see him shaking his head.

“They know you’re with me and they know I would never let you do that.”

Jordan heard the water shut off and watched as Sawyer’s hand reached out to pull back the shower curtain. If she hadn’t still been so pissed, she’d have thoroughly enjoyed the view of him standing there wearing nothing but the beads of water that rested on his muscular body and the mischievous grin that appeared on his lips the second he noticed she was no longer keeping her gaze at eye level. As it was, she was in no mood to have any thoughts of Sawyer that were even the least bit flattering to him.

“Okay, well, since all of my ideas are apparently stupid, why don’t you tell me your theories then?!” she said sounding far too flustered given the conversation.

Sawyer had just finished fastening a towel around his waist.

“I never said your ideas were stupid. I just don’t think they’re likely. The truth is
, I don’t know who would leak that kind of false information to the media. The only thing I keep coming back to is that they’re doing it to protect you,” he said moving past her in the doorway. Even though they didn’t actually touch, Jordan felt a rush of warm air tease her skin as he walked by. The scent of soap and fresh laundry reached her nose, and for just the briefest of moments she allowed herself to close her eyes and inhale him while his back was turned.

“Protect me how?” Jordan asked, her anger fading with each breath she took in. It was as if he was some sort of a drug she was getting high on, hooked after just one taste.
Pathetic
, she scolded herself.

             
“Because it would keep the wrong kind of people from looking for you if they thought you were already out of the picture, see?” Sawyer was busy talking to her reflection in the mirror while trying to examine his shoulder at the same time. He had considered asking Jordan to do it, but given her foul mood at the present he had opted against asking for any additional favors.

             
She watched as he struggled with the bandaging for a bit, using only the one hand.

             
“You look ridiculous,” she snorted after a minute. “Here, let me do it.”

             
Jordan didn’t wait for an answer. She simply slapped Sawyer’s good hand out of the way and went straight to work. The wound was looking good all things considered.

             
“So what now?” she asked after working quietly for some time.

             
“We stick to the original plan. You make the call to my contact and we take it from there. His name is Gary, Gary Mortison. I started writing down what you need to say while you were still sleeping. You don’t have to get it word for word or anything; just enough so he can figure out that the message is coded.”

             
Jordan watched as he broke away from her and walked over toward the bedside table to retrieve a small notepad and pen. He held it out to her and explained, “I worked my badge number into it, along with our location. It should be just enough for him to figure out where we are, but not enough for anyone else who may be listening, to understand.” He paused, hesitant to finish his thoughts out loud. “There’s one more thing.”

             
Jordan frowned, “What?”

             
Sawyer’s hand reached up to twist a strand of her long black hair between his fingers.

             
“You’ll have to do something to alter you appearance. Your face has been all over the news. People are going to get confused if they see you walking around alive and all.” He dared half a grin and Jordan hated the fact that it was contagious enough to make her smirk in spite of herself.

             
“What do you expect me to do with this?” she asked, grabbing a fist full of her thick dark hair. “I mean, I can dye it every color under the rainbow, but it’s not likely to show up, unless I bleach it, and honestly, I’d rather people think I’m a walking corpse than a blonde.”

             
Sawyer just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Be creative.”

             
“Oh, okay,” Jordan replied in a sarcastic grumble. She turned to face her reflection as if the mirror would tell her what to do. She knew she had at least one option. Cutting her hair would make a big difference. Few people knew that her straight hair actually had quite a bit of natural curl to it which only increased the shorter she wore it. It was a start, but it wouldn’t be enough. Jordan took three long strides to reach her bag on the other side of the room. She could feel Sawyer’s eyes resting on her as she searched through her stuff, but she didn’t look up. The first thing she pulled out was a pair of scissors. Next, she located the hydrogen peroxide. Jordan made a face just thinking about the prospect of becoming a blonde. Not that there was anything wrong with that particular hair color, it just wasn’t her. It had never been her. And it wasn’t about the associations people made between blonde women and stupidity that made her feel so adamantly about not wanting to dye her hair that color. In her mind, there was a softness about a shade so fair that she simply couldn’t relate to and rather than keep her hidden from view, she feared her own awkwardness and feelings of inadequacy would make her stand out so much so, she might as well just dye each strand of her hair a different  color.

             
About to succumb to the prospect of becoming what she feared, she suddenly caught sight of the iodine. She had no idea if it would work, but it was certainly worth a try. Feeling encouraged by her unexpected triumph over the hair fiasco, Jordan grabbed her supplies along with a fresh set of clothes and disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged an hour and a half later, her hair had been chopped up to her shoulders causing it to curl wildly around her head. While her roots were still as black as they had ever been, she had successfully bleached and then dyed her tips a rusty red. While it was eye catching in a way, it still managed to change her general appearance enough to make her less recognizable. Sawyer gave a loud whistle of approval when he saw her.

             
“Wow.”

             
“You told me to be creative,” Jordan shrugged.

             
“Indeed I did,” said Sawyer coming closer to get a better look. Jordan noticed that he was wearing a new shirt. This one wasn’t ripped or bloodstained.

             
“Where did you get that?” she asked tugging at the material with her fingers.

             
“I might have wandered into a room or two while housekeeping had the door open. Found a new jacket too,” he said pointing at a leather coat on the bed.

             
“Thief,” Jordan muttered.