Joel Goldman - Die, lover, die

Lauren Blaine didn’t know who was in the car behind her, and she didn’t know when they’d picked up her trail. She looked over at the man in the passenger seat. He looked back, his face a blank. He had nothing to say. He seldom did.

“I don’t think I can lose them,” Lauren said.

The man’s head moved a fraction of an inch in what might have been considered a nod.

“I’m going to try, though.”

Another slight movement, which Lauren took for assent. She pressed down on the accelerator and the Cadillac CTS-V surged forward. They were on a little-used farm-to-market road, a curvy, hilly two-lane blacktop that Lauren had turned onto from the Interstate. She’d planned to cut over to the state highway to the west and follow that to their destination. Now she wished she hadn’t taken the shortcut.

The car behind her was gaining, which seemed impossible. The Caddy was the fastest production sedan made in the U.S. But maybe the car behind had been made elsewhere.

Lauren risked another glance at the man beside her. He unfastened his seatbelt, reached inside his jacket, and pulled a Kimber 1911. 45 from a shoulder holster. Lauren didn’t think a gun was going to be any help, but seeing it did make her feel a little better. The man refastened his seatbelt.

Lauren didn’t feel better for long. As the Cadillac crested a hill, she saw a slow-moving farm combine not a hundred yards ahead. It was so wide that it took up most of the road.

“Uh-oh,” the man said.

Lauren’s heart was in her throat, her pulse pounded, steadily increasing as they raced closer to the combine. It went from a metal insect on the ribbon of road to a behemoth of mud-splattered steel in a terrifying span of seconds. She looked at the man seated next to her for guidance, but his eyes told her everything she needed to know. They said, whatever you do, don’t slow down…

POP! Lauren heard a flat, harsh sound, remembered getting so angry with a man for cheating she’d slapped him across the face; it was that kind of sound but smaller somehow, more compact. The wind screeched into her face. With a feeling of dread she located the tiny spider web shape in the safety glass inches from her headrest. A bullet hole. The men in the other car were shooting at them. One round had come within inches of erasing her life. The sound came again.

She panicked a bit and their car fishtailed down the highway, an accidental but effective evasive maneuver. Lauren slid from the road and danced along the embankment, flattening wheat. She briefly wondered if she should gun the engine and try her luck in the fields. But they had no idea what was out there in the rows and rows of wheat, ditches and sink holes and rocks perhaps, scores of ways to stall the car. On the other hand they would be free to run on foot and covered by the seemingly eternal ocean of tall wheat.

The combine driver leaped from the machine and Lauren jerked the wheel left, crossed the road and bounced the car into the field. Her sense of direction was nearly always wrong and she was counting on that, heading opposite of what felt right to get to Kansas City. For over ten years, the darkness of LA clubs had replaced the open sky bordered by glistening grain, beauty she still hoped to reclaim.

Paolo turned. “Shit!”

Her lip curled and trembled. “You’re the one insisted on coming.”

“I saved your ass!”

She clenched her jaw and checked the road. No car on the hill. Ahead, one hope for cover; a sloping barn against the blue.

What had she been thinking? After two years of marriage, watching Jimmy’s drug money grow and keeping her Kansas roots secret, she’d sacrificed her lead-time. Her little farm, the herb garden, dogs, chickens, the pot-bellied pig… all her dreams traded for a one-night stand. Now up to three nights. If she’d known that Jimmy was so well connected-but no, it was her stupid drinking that got her into trouble again.

She glanced out the side window. The other car still hadn’t crested the hill. Christ, yes! A few more seconds! She glared at Mr. Smooth-face-square-jaw, his wide eyes shifting between barn and highway-what the hell was his last name? She should be sick of those thick lashes and muscular lips, finished with all six foot three of him, but she still felt the warm sting, making her want it again-if only she could find the fucking highway.

“Pull into that barn,” Paolo said.

She shot him a glare. “What the hell else did you think I was going to do?”

But she did it anyway, sliding through the open doors that seemed to be waiting for her. She didn’t wait for the jerk’s help — she scrambled out, shut the barn doors, the scent of hay strangely comforting. In some weird way, she was home.

“We’ll wait it out,” she said, and turned, and the handsome prick was grinning at her, the Kimber pointed right at her.

“Fuckin’ funny,” he said.

“I was just thinking that.”

“You figured they were after you. No. Me.”

“They’re not Jimmy’s people?”

“No.”

“Who are they then?”

“Does it matter? You knew I worked with Jimmy. You knew I swam in those waters.”

Talkative now, all of a sudden. Why hadn’t he shot her?

Of course. The farmhouse. A shot might bring Farmer Brown. But this move — pulling the gun on her — it spoke volumes: he was stupid. He could have picked the right moment to show his hand. Too early in the game…

“You don’t need that,” she said, gesturing toward his gun-in-hand. “We’re in the shit now. Together. I’m helping you. Why — “

“That’s the funny thing. Jimmy hired me to take care of you.”

The prick had picked her up in that bar and screwed her silly for how long? And his end game was a bullet?

“Sit over there.”

Apparently he didn’t see the pitchfork leaned against the post.

She knew she had only seconds to fill her fingers with the pitchfork handle then turn and stab him before he could get an accurate shot off. She remembered how he’d complimented her after their fourth round of lovemaking. She obviously inspired him. Now she hoped that doing a slutty walk in her tight red skirt and sweaty white blouse could distract him from the Kimber in his hand.

She might have been a stripper strutting her stuff as she walked away from him and toward the bale of hay where he wanted her seated. Subtle he wasn’t. In the dusty confines of the barn, lazy dust-filled sunlight streaming through the shattered windows, his breathing became loud and short. Horndog.

As she approached the post the pitchfork leaned against, she put her hand to her backside and rubbed, as if giving herself pleasure.

Harder and harder came his breathing. That wasn’t the only thing that was harder no doubt.

God, could she actually pull it off? Suddenly the whole plan seemed absurd. He’d kill her right here and right now. What had she been thinking?

But wasn’t he going to kill her anyway? What did it matter where she died?

At times in her life she’d been so frightened that she seemed to be watching herself from a distance. A woman who was her twin sister would be trying to extricate herself from a dangerous situation. But Lauren Blaine had the easy part. All she had to do was watch.

“Drop it.”

She turned toward him still holding the pitchfork. Fuck, she was angry. She wasn’t sure if it was at this prick or at Jimmy, but her rage was near choking her. “Why don’t you just shoot me already?” she demanded.

He scratched lazily along his jaw with one hand as he trained his. 45 toward her chest with his other. Showing a thin smile, he said, “I’m not done with you yet.”