Hi Everyone!
Thank you for all the wonderful comments and speculations about the previous chapter, and thanks to all of you who are regular readers. Hopefully you'll enjoy this new chapter just as much as the previous ones.
Enjoy!
psyche b.
13. Deeper
The frail was anxious and had been since they'd pulled out of the driveway. Creed couldn't really blame her either. The whole thing pissed him off. With all the shit he'd done, he was the one who should have been a fugitive. She should have been...what? It had been so long since he tried to picture her as anything but his that now no images came. He just knew that she deserved better.
From the corner of his eye, he could see that she was knitting something again. He didn't give a shit what it was; he was looking for outward signs of the anxiety that permeated her scent. Her jaw wasn't clenched. Her hands didn't tremble or grasp the nasty-looking nest of needles any more tightly than usual. Her eyes were fixed on her work and every so often she'd stop to count. She might have been sitting on the couch next to him. It was perfectly ordinary and too fucking perfect.
He'd seen that kind of calm before, but only in wartime. Being under fire was one thing, you could wait it out or fight it out and you learned how to tell the difference if you lived long enough. Being under threat was something else. That shit could go on for an hour or a week or a month and there was no way to tell when it was going to end until it did.
Guys handled it different. Some didn't sleep, some slept all the fucking time. Some parked themselves in one spot and waited for something to happen. Others couldn't take the indecision and went looking to make something happen. Then there were those who just went on about life as if there was no threat looming. Usually it meant they had already seen too much shit. Already spent so damn much time under siege and learned how to go numb to the insidious agony of it.
She started to hum along with the Vivaldi that was currently playing. Even that gave nothing away.
"Frail."
She looked at him, a nervous little smile on her lips. "Sorry, was I humming?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't too annoying yet. You hungry?"
She glanced at the clock before she answered. "It's nearly lunchtime."
"Not what I asked."
A little shrug, her eyes turned toward the window as if she was suddenly fascinated by the scenery that was slipping by. "It's been hours since breakfast."
He recognized the deflection, but calling her on it wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good. "We'll stop in half an hour."
"Sounds good." Another flicker of a smile.
He gripped the wheel tighter. She was doing exactly what he told her to do and watching her do it made his teeth ache.
"Frail." He waited until she looked at him. "Pretend for other people."
She blushed. "Am I that bad at it?"
"No, but I don't wanna watch you fall apart before we get to Philly."
"Philadelphia in Pennsylvania?" The surprise registered in her voice.
"Yeah. Unless they moved it and nobody told me."
"I didn't think that was exactly on the way."
"It is when you're avoiding New York State as much as possible."
"I didn't realize you were planning to..." Some of the anxiety faded. "Is that where we're spending the night?" She seemed hesitant to ask the question. Probably because of the trip to Maine.
His shoulders twitched in a little shrug. "Thought about driving straight through, but I figured there wasn't any big hurry. Got any more questions?" He made sure to add a little snarl to the end, just because she would be expecting it.
She smiled a little, probably recognizing his pretense and following his lead. "No."
He could smell her anxiety receding. He couldn't say he understood why, but he wasn't going to question it either.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Somewhere in rural Connecticut, they changed vehicles again. Kelly was familiar with the process this time, so driving up to a seemingly ramshackle building in the middle of nowhere wasn't nearly as unsettling as it had been that first time. The black BMW 750i had a cherry undertone to the paint and an air of danger and power surrounding it. In other words, it had Victor written all over it.
She tried not to stare at it as he moved the luggage and covered the Escalade, but she didn't succeed. While she tried to keep out of the way, she wondered if he changed vehicles midway through every trip, and if he did exactly how many he had. She knew they weren't all like this. The old Chevy he'd driven from the cabin wasn't-
A sharp tug on her hair broke her train of thought and pulled her off balance. Kelly stumbled back into his chest. He supported her weight with his hand on her head. He nipped the sensitive spot just under her earlobe, leaving another stinging scratch. It made whatever she was thinking about seem monumentally unimportant. She leaned back into him. He chuckled and gave her a little shove.
"That staring's another habit I'm gonna have to break you of." He grinned and walked around to the other side of the car.
"I was trying not to stare." Kelly said when they were both inside.
"Well you were doing a shitty job of it." A little smile teased around the corners of his mouth and eyes.
"We left for Maine in a blue Impala that had seen better days. The change is taking a little getting used to."
He shrugged and backed out. "It's what people expected." He got out to close the doors and reset the codes. Kelly wondered how he remembered so many different ones.
"What who expected?" Kelly had her knitting out again, but it was sitting in her lap. She turned a little in her seat to look at him. Much of her time with Victor was spent in silence. She got the impression he liked it that way, and she didn't feel compelled to fill the empty space with meaningless chatter either. When he was in the mood to talk though, Kelly found that she would rather listen to him than do anything else.
"People in town." He maneuvered carefully on the dirt road and onto the small lane. "For the most part, people ain't really very observant, except when it comes to something that they think doesn't quite fit. They might not even know what about it seems off, but it sticks out all the same. They would take one look at this car or the SUV and wonder why I built in the middle of fucking nowhere instead of on one of the lakes. The Impala is similar enough to what most of them drive that it doesn't draw a second look or a second thought. I'm just another guy who works hard for his vacations. They forget me as soon as I'm out of sight."
"And in Maine the Impala would have stood out because people in town would have known that restoring the house was an expensive project."
"Exactly."
"The Escalade wouldn't have fit in where we're going now?"
A little smirk curled the corner of his lips. "It would have, but this was on the way."
