Who: Hal, Wren (and bonus implied!earpiece Charlie) What: A delivery Where: All over the place? But starting at a funeral home When: Yesterday Warnings: Nothing beyond the pale
Really, the chances of things going right were very slim.
Wren had met the girl, Amanda, the week before. Amanda, aged 17, lived with a man much older than her, a cruel man prone to cruel things. The man had hired Wren for add-on services, and Wren had spent a night with them. In the quiet still hours of morning, they’d concocted a plan. A silly plan that hearkened back to Shakespeare and apothecaries and too many viewing of Romeo and Juliet.
Amanda was in love with a young man who worked at the local funeral home, the same funeral home that was being used for an elaborate service later that week - a service Amanda and her lover would be attending. The plan, you see, was simple. Amanda would hide in a ventilated coffin, and she’d get taken away, and she’d be free to spend the rest of her days with the young man she loved. The problem was that Amanda was never alone, was never allowed to be alone. The man, unwilling to lose the prize he’d purchased at a high price from Amanda’s father, kept the girl home and under tight surveillance.The key to all of it was to slip away during the wake, crawl into a box and not be seen. The money for the transport was being stolen from the man before, stolen by Amanda who earned no wages for her work.
It was all entirely ill-planned.
Wren had texted the transport men on Wednesday, as promised. And on Thursday evening, she found herself dressed in a sedate dress of somber gray, her hair in a harmless brown ponytail with a gray ribbon, not a touch of makeup on her face. She looked every bit the harmless schoolgirl as she slipped to the bathroom of the funeral home, as she texted the transporters the address. Then, with timing that was more luck than planning, the reverend began his speech, and Wren made her way to the rear door of the funeral home, even as Amanda and her boyfriend secured her in the box, Amanda having excused herself to use the facilities. They had 5 minutes tops, and Wren was counting out every one of those seconds.
On Wednesday evening--well, early Thursday morning, really--Hal and Charlie went to check out the immediate area. When they pulled up across the street from the funeral home, Hal squinted out past Charlie through the passenger window at the demure glass front windows and the long road going out behind the parking lot for loading and unloading, and he said, “I got a real bad feelin’ ‘bout this, mon ami.” After some more scouting, Hal found that behind the row of commercial businesses featuring the funeral home was a residential row of houses, and one of the houses two down from behind the funeral home was on sale.
Thursday afternoon the borrowed box truck was sitting on the driveway, looking innocuous, and Hal was scowling at his phone while Charlie sat inside an unfurnished living room inside. Finally the text beeped as it arrived, and Hal started up the truck. He pushed a button on his earpiece to connect the two, and he said, clearly over the connect, “We on, finally. It’s de damn funeral home, Charlie. Ah knew it was gon’ be de damn funeral home. Couldn’t-a been de laundry,” he grumbled.
The truck pulled out to the street and around the corner, beginning a slow cruise down the road outside.
Wren was anxious and it showed. Her head was bowed, brown hair brushing forward against her cheeks, the chaste dress she wore almost blending into the gray of the night. Someone would undoubtedly notice anything that was not a hearse pulling up the funeral home, and she hoped the collection of cars lining the streets for the service would help with that eventuality. It was a double-edged sword, not requesting a hearse. It meant there would be no immediate indication of how Amanda had disappeared, but it also meant someone might remember a vehicle that didn’t belong in the area. Behind her, Amanda’s love whistled, letting her know Amanda was situated, and Wren took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her nerves. Slicing up men in alleyways was much less nerve-wracking than this.
Hal knew very well that he was sticking out like a daisy in a swamp in the damn truck, but the fact was, they couldn’t move something of the dimensions she mentioned without a truck like this, and they didn’t make them in camouflage effective in middle class neighborhoods. He did his best and slowed down the truck to muffle the engine, then pulled into the docking bay. There wasn’t a choice. It would be worse if they moved the box, whatever it was, because if they had to carry it for any distance, they’d have a big problem. Hal and the truck backed into the loading dock and he let the engine idle while he watched the side mirror for some sign of what was ending up in the truck.
Wren had to stifle a groan when she saw the large white truck, and she hurried to the dock door and whistled back, her tone matching the whistle from earlier. The dock doors opened and a simple pine box came into view. Wren moved toward it, and she whispered to the young man carrying it. A moment later and Wren was lifting the doors, trying to do it as slowly as she could manage to keep the sound from being as tremendously loud as it seemed in the darkness of night. Nearby, men smoking looked toward the white truck and looked away again, and then the coffin was being pushed over the truck’s wooden floorboards, and Amanda’s lover was whispering against the air holes in the coffin and retreating. Wren had to jump up to grab the rope on the truck bed door, her feet sounding loud against concrete to her own ears, and then the door was groaning closed, and she was bidding Amanda’s lover goodbye.
She went around to the passenger’s door, and she hauled herself up and opened the door with the ease of someone who had been in large cab-style trucks before. She looked out the window before looking at the driver, and she whispered “go” as she looked.
The truck was rolling away from the dock before she even got the door shut. Hal got a good look at her before she got a look at him, and years of professionalism kept him from driving the truck into the low wall dividing the funeral home from the rest of the neighborhood. “Wren, girl, what you got yo’self into?” He caught the outside of the truck’s steering wheel and hauled it around, and the truck eased out into traffic and pulled away, smooth as butter, and he didn’t rev the engine once. Wren was the single last person he would have thought to see at a funeral home, especially dressed down, like she was, and he almost didn’t recognize her without all that shine and sex-drive on. Hal hissed abruptly, as if she replied, and said, in a new voice of irritation, “Le chat dangereuses! Non! Je ne sais pas. It is not my fault!” He was talking to someone in the earpiece he was wearing on the other side of his head.
She recognized his voice before she even looked at him. She closed the window, and she sat back, her body immediately turning toward his on the seat so she could look at him. She cocked her head to the side, her ponytail swaying back and forth over her gray covered shoulder. She wasn’t worried about the driving anymore, because the fact that he was driving made her feel slightly optimistic (for the first time that evening) that they might actually succeed in what they were doing. She was reaching out a hand to lay it on his arm when he hissed, and then her eyebrow went up curiously. She leaned forward, moved toward him, and she reached around to touch just beneath his ear. “The mysterious roommate?” she asked with an innocently entertained smile. She pulled her fingers back, curled her legs up on the seat beside herself in a move that was as sensually fluid as if she had been dressed in fully seductive regalia. “Hi.”
Hal looked annoyed. “He mad at me now. You steal one of my cards, cher?” There had been cards in his room, buried among the clutter. He was still driving, though, still glancing at his mirrors and doing a fine job of utterly ignoring the fine little body curled up in the passenger seat. This was business and Hal was all business. So far, anyway.
She shook her head, and her expression was completely honest and completely truthful. “I got your number from the Drunken Fish. It’s a bar on the outside of Rainier,” she explained. “There wasn’t a name along with it, or I would have knocked on your door about it instead of texting.” There was no subterfuge or deceit in her words, and she glanced past him at the mirrors when he looked outside. “Tell your roommate I said bonjour,” she said, sweetly.
“She say she got it at de Drunk’ Fish, you ass,” Hal snapped into his earpiece. He turned his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “Charlie, he ain’t too pleased with dis job, cher. Ah sure hope you plannin’ on payin’, or it’s gon’ make me look bad.” There was a hint of a smirk at the edge of his mouth nearest to her that said he wasn’t really concerned about Charlie and his displeasure. Charlie always had something to be displeased about. His expression changed and he snapped, “She know yo’ name already! Well--” temporarily stopped, “--Ah may have said somethin’, at one point--” angrily again, “well what difference it make now?!”
She smiled as she leaned her cheek against the seat's back, listening to him bicker with Charlie who she was more and more interested in meeting with every additional retort. Hal was a man who didn’t reign his emotions, and she liked that about him. When he was displeased, he sounded displeased. When he was entertained, he sounded entertained. When he wanted you, he acted like he wanted you. It her chuckle just a little, just softly, and she reached into the hip pocket of her dress and pulled out the entire amount (not just the pickup amount), and she put the neat roll of dollars on the dashboard. “It’s stolen,” she told him, because he was him. If he had been anyone else, she would have only given him the half he was owed right then, and she would have let him think it was clean money.
“Dat won’t make it less green, pretty.” He smiled at her, and then he smiled at the money, and he took it just fine, securing it in a front jacket pocket opposite his heart. “She pay,” he said into his ear. “Now will you--” he stopped. His expression changed. The truck braked slowly at a light and they sat and watched the traffic pass. His voice changed too. “Cher, you better tell me what Ah got in de back because whatever it is gon’ get rattled around a bit. Charlie say dere’s a Buick comin’ after us in a hurry.”
She looked out her window immediately, the safe still of the truck cabin shattered with his change of tone. She couldn’t see anything, but she trusted him, and she knew the man they were running from had a Buick Enclave, she’d been inside it. It was black and sleek, and it had bulletproof windows, and it had an entire collection of sharp and stinging things inside. She worried, immediately, about the boy at the funeral home (who seemed more boy than young man right then), and she looked back at Hal. “Her name’s Amanda.”
He turned his chin all the way over his shoulder, got a look at her eyes, and shut his. “Merde.” He readied himself and turned a corner. The truck lurched. “Charlie, de cargo, it’s a girl. We gon’ need to transfer fast, dis t’ing don’t race none.” His eyes slid once to his side, then back to the road. “Don’ shoot nothin’ yet.” He put both hands on the wheel and pushed the truck into a different part of town, more clustered with buildings, and it blended in far better than it had at the funeral home.
Wren didn’t panic, even though she knew they were in trouble, and put a gentle hand on Hal’s arm. “If it’s just the driver, I might be able to distract him,” she said, though her tone said she doubted it would be just the driver. “If I’d know it was you, I would have warned you,” she admitted, because she would have done. In the end, she couldn’t do anything but look out the passenger’s window where the Buick had come into view, familiar in its darkness. “He has armed security,” she admitted reluctantly. “I didn’t think they’d follow.”
He gave her a second sharp look. “Charlie, dere anything comin’ after dat Buick?” There was a short pause. The truck was swaying and rattling as Hal accelerated slowly up the road. The Buick fell back, just out of sight, but one could almost feel it looming. Hal’s mouth tightened as he heard Charlie’s answer, then shook his head as he replied. “We comin’ back up Route T’ree. Buy me some time.” To Wren he said, “Honey, we beyond distractin’. Ah don’ think it likely you can hide dis truck under yo’ shirt.” The truck bellowed and jumped, and Hal took a hard turn. The pine box slid over the back and slammed into one wall and there was a squeak from the girl hidden inside. He took another turn and came to a hard stop, and the truck shivered behind a fast food restaurant with a bright, distracting neon light. “Get out,” he barked at Wren. “Get de girl, move!” Hal was already spilling out of the driver’s side.
Wren bit her lip when the car jumped, when the box made a sound against the walls of the bed, when Amanda squeaked loudly enough to hear in the cabin. When He stopped the truck she was already reaching for the door handle. She’d already figured, in all of that, that staying in this truck wasn’t going to be an option. She had no idea what they would do once they got out, and she understood that he wasn’t responsible for them, that he hadn’t signed up for this. “I’ll pay you double,” she said, even as she closed the truck door, because she felt like she had to do something. She cursed the sensible (read uncomfortable) heels she wore, and she ran around to the back, grabbing the door and raising it. She was inside the truck’s back before the door raised more than a few inches, and she was kicking at the perfunctory nails that had been nailed in the coffin’s lid to avoid casual eyes if it came to that. Amanda, who was a tiny blonde thing, small and meek and almost mute for all her quietness, grabbed her and hugged her. She was crying, and she was scared, and Wren looked up to see where Hal was.
Hal was at the back. Somewhere in this distance there was a screech of rubber on gravel. “Move now,” he shouted at both of them, without hesitating. “Allez-vous,” he said, snapping a hand in a long sweeping movement to hurry them out of the truck. “Dey comin’. Move.” More acceleration just out of sight, and a very strange popping sound. A powerful gun at a long distance.
Move she did. Wren grabbed Amanda’s hand and she pulled her from the truck bed. She stopped in front of Hal, kissed him once in case they both died, and then she ran. She was practically dragging Amanda along, and she didn’t look back. She could hear the guns, could hear footfalls, but this was all about getting one scared girl out of a bad situation, and she wasn’t going to have made all this be for nothing by letting fear take her over. The alleys narrowed and tightened, and the world around them became darker, and the footfalls became quieter and more distant. In her pocket, she had her cell and a blade, and if Hal didn’t catch up them she’d text him. For now, she just ran.
He was right on her heels. Charlie may have been saying something in his ear, but he also might not. Hal moved the same regardless; he and Charlie were part of a functional whole, particularly when situations became as bad as this. He herded the two girls down the back alley that smelled of burgers and fry grease, and he yanked on Wren’s elbow and swung her into a back door. The tile was slippery but he pushed them through past startled cooks and teenagers in paper hats. They spilled out the front door past the chewing tables and finally they were in a front parking lot. “Gray car in de back. Got de bigger wheels on it. Move.”
Amanda was a blubbering mess of tears and weak knees that didn’t work right, but Wren kept her moving. She stopped at the car Hal had indicated, and she tried for the back door, hoping to get Amanda inside before her shock-fear kept her from moving at all. The door was locked, however, and she waited.
Hal got in the front trusting either of the other two to deal with the back door, hauling his shoulder over and releasing the lock.
That was all the help Wren needed, she opened the door, and she coaxed Amanda in. “Go,” she told Hal in French, before she’d even managed to crawl in and close the door herself. She reached for her cellphone, and she texted Amanda’s love, who was meant to be at the drop-off point, and she stared at the screen, fearful that he wasn’t going to answer, that they’d connected it all to him somehow. Amanda, for her part, was curled in on herself, and Wren sighed thoughtfully as she looked at her. “Change of plans on drop off,” she said, meeting Hal’s gaze in the rearview. “He isn’t answering, and the original place might be compromised.”
“We lose dem, then we talk about where we dropping.” Hal pulled out ahead and spoke rapidly to Charlie in Cajun so thick that meaning was completely obscured. His mouth went completely flat and he drove. There was something blocking traffic to their six o’clock, but Hal didn’t look back at the sound of sirens. “Get her head down,” he said, in English made round and thick by the previous stream of words.
Wren did, she pressed Amanda down until Amanda’s head was in her lap, and she pet the girl’s hair soothingly, listening to her quiet gasps of fear subsided and her breathing evened. She looked at Hal through the rearview mirror, but she didn’t interrupt him. She considered reaching out to touch him, but she didn’t do that either. She looked over her shoulder when the sirens sounded, and then she stared down at the cellphone which did not ring. Wren generally did controlled things to help people; she found out who had hurt someone, and she marked them so they wouldn’t hurt anyone else. It was simple, basic, and the only person at risk was her. This plan, ill-concocted as it was, had risked multiple people and she knew, even as she knew she was sitting in that car, that she’d let her emotions get in the way of making an informed choice about the success level of the job. She admitted that to herself, and her eyes admitted it to Hal in the rearview, and the fingers dragging through Amanda’s hair made the same apology. She’d gotten in over her head, and she knew it.
Hal drove. No one pursued. They got on a freeway, drove for a while, dropped off of it in a bad neighborhood. They kept going, and then they were in a good neighborhood. They went along this way for some time, until it became apparent that Hal wasn’t watching the rearview; he was glancing at the car’s digital clock. Minutes rolled by, until finally the car was abruptly eclipsed by a long line of cool shade, and they rolled into a gas station oil garage. It was empty.
Amanda had dozed off in the interim, and when they pulled into the garage Wren carefully slipped away from the girl and leaned on the backrest of the front seat. “Where are we?” she asked from close to his ear. The silence was calming; it meant nothing had found them, and Wren did have a back up for Amanda if something had happened to her young man. The girl was asleep though, and it was quiet now.
He killed the engine. “We safe. We waiting here for Charlie.” Hal was grim, more grim than he’d ever sounded in her presence before. He got out of the car and pulled the rolling door of the garage closed, and they were left with a silent car and the sleeping girl. He wished he could smoke.
She followed him out of the car, and she closed the door softly on Amanda. She didn’t say anything as she waited for him to close the garage door. She just went to a work table, and she slid up on it quietly as she watched him. Once he was done, once it was dark and safe inside, she tipped her head to the side and looked at him. “I got in over my head,” she admitted.
“Oui, dat you did,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her. He still had the earpiece in his ear and he was watching the garage door, not the girl in the back of the car or the one one the table. He got out a cigarette from his jacket pocket, the one that didn’t have the money in it, and he put it between his lips, but he didn’t light it. “Charlie say he got a small army. Before he go dark, anyway.” He lifted one finger and tapped his earpiece.
“You’re worried about him?” she asked quietly, and she slipped off the table when he didn’t look at her. She closed the distance carefully, carefully and slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said earnestly, because she was. Not that Amanda was out, not that, but for all of this. She laid a soft hand on his chest.
“Charlie can take care of himself,” Hal said, in a rather careful, enunciated voice. Yes, he was worried. He looked down at her and did not react to the contact. “Who’s de girl?”
The careful enunciation let her know something was wrong, and it wasn’t a far leap from something being wrong to him being worried. Normally his speech, which she listened to with the care of a concerto, was lazy, his accent thicker the more at ease he was. Now, it was all crisp consonants. He was worried. His lack of reaction to her hand didn’t make her withdraw it. She spread her fingers to their full length, getting as much of the fabric of his shirt under her fingers as she could, the touch grounding her somehow in the moment, in the garage, the smell of mechanic’s oil and temporary safety. “Her name’s Amanda,” she said openly. “The man that owns her is a sadist. Her father sold her.” She said is plainly, because there was no point in doing otherwise. “She’s young, and she still thinks there can be a happy ending for her. I wanted to get her out, and I got too emotionally invested.” She said it in a way that said she did that a lot, get invested in things that needed saving to her own detriment.
Hal inhaled around the unlit cigarette and then exhaled as if it did him the same amount of good as a lungful of nicotine. He watched her face as she spoke, but not her body. It was a distinct change. “Risky,” was all he said. But at least he did indeed look over his shoulder and into the backseat at the girl. She was young. Hal took the stale cigarette from his mouth, held it in two fingers, and scratched his forehead between his eyes with his thumb.
She watched him glance in the car, watched his face as he looked at Amanda, and then she smiled when he scratched his forehead, her gaze following the path of his fingers. “You’re angrier than you were before you didn’t take me home,” she said candidly, though she wondered if this was all anger, all worry or a combination of the two. “I wouldn’t have gotten you involved if I’d known it would be you,” she said just as candidly.
He chose not to respond at the comment about his anger, which he preferred to put aside for a time after Charlie came back in one piece. “And why is dat?” A curious tilt of his head.
“Because I wouldn’t want you to think you needed to do it just because I was the one asking,” she told him. She would do precisely that if asked, help someone just because she knew them and they had asked. She knew he wasn’t addressing the anger, and she took it as an agreement, which he was entitled to. She had dragged him into something, and his friend was missing, and he had every right to be angry. She slipped her hand from where it was on his chest, the movement slow as she pulled her fingers from his body. She was still close enough to smell and touch, however, and she gave him an honestly apologetic smile that she knew wouldn’t count for anything until Charlie showed up safe and sound.
“Ah,” he said, on a tobacco breath, with understanding. Hal reflected. He probably would have done it, but then he wouldn’t have wanted to see her again. Charlie and Hal didn’t do a lot of favors. That was no way to make a living. He figured she knew that. He wasn’t as angry as she might think, at least not now. This was why they got paid, for things like this. Otherwise you’d rent a U-Haul and that would be the end of it. High-paying jobs were dangerous, and in this partnership Hal took point and Charlie was ground support, that was just how it worked.
He still really wanted a smoke. He focused on her. “You always run around savin’ people from themselves in your profession?” He was doing a lot of enunciating.
“Just in the last six months,” she said truthfully. “I’m good at it, and it makes me feel like I’m helping.” She could have lied, but after putting him in this position she didn’t want to. She touched his cheek when he focused on her, and then she slipped back onto the table with a glance to Amanda’s sleeping form. She fished through her pocket, pulled out another roll of money, and she placed it beside her hip on the table without comment. “Why do you do what you do?” she asked plainly. She knew plenty of people that did plenty of dangerous things, and the questions wasn’t judgemental or criticizing. It was dangerous, and it was outside of the law, but she wouldn’t criticize that in anyone; she wasn’t that hypocritical. And he could take care of himself, that was supremely and immediately evident.
“Dis business is what you call a ‘niche market,’ cher. Not a lot of people real good at movin’ things dat some people may not want moved, non?” He indicated her friend with a little tip of his head, though his eyes didn’t move away from her. He wasn’t responding to any of her little touches of affection, but his voice was not hard and he wasn’t drawing away. “You run a li’l bit more expensive than dat bar Ah meet you at,” he said, keenly.
“Amanda is a man’s mistress,” she explained frankly. “At times, men like that buy add-on services for an evening. I’m between clients,” she reminded him, and then she nodded toward Amanda. “I’ve never done this before, which is why I did such a bad job of it.” It was candid in a way she probably shouldn’t be, but there it was. She placed her palms flat beside her hips on the table, and her fingers flexed against the worn metal as she regarded him. “Do you really want to know what I do, Hal? It’s safer not to,” she added in French. Her open expression said she didn’t expect him to want to know, and it said she wouldn’t hold it against him. She let her gaze drift to Amanda again. “Someone saved me once,” she said quietly, almost to herself, thoughtful.
“Dere’s a lot of folk gettin’ saved lately,” Hal said grumpily, frowning at the end of his unlit cigarette. “An’ I guess dat I don’t want to know any more than you plan on tellin’ me.” More grim flattening of the accent. “Unless it’s got to do wit’ dis job right here.” He never forgot they were on a job, not even standing there having a nice chat about occupations.
She smiled at the grumpy statement, a warm-fond sweet thing that said she’d expected him to voice that very feeling, that said she was starting to suspect there was more beneath the gruff exterior. Something that knew he could have set them out of that white truck miles back, but he didn’t. Something that knew Amanda was as safe asleep in this man’s garage as anywhere the world over. She didn’t say a word about it, but the certainty of it was in her gaze, more woman than child despite the youthful appearance of her clothes and styling that evening. “If there was any other danger in this job, I would have have told you,” she said, and she would have. There was, as always, a sense of honesty in her words. She took the rolled bills, and she nudged them toward him, closer to the end of the table. “Are we confessing things right now?” she asked.
He eyed the money appreciatively, but he didn’t take it. “You wan’ give Charlie a tip when he show up, dat fine, but you already paid for yo’ ride.” He shrugged a regretful shoulder, as he would have very much liked to take that himself, yes, but they’d had a deal. He was pretty sure Charlie wouldn’t take any extra, but maybe that depended on whether or not he was bleeding when he showed up. Professional honesty was a bitch, but if it got out you were milking people at the end of the road, they’d quickly stop calling. There were no people on earth that Hal had a greater disdain for than those that smuggled people into this country with no morals; the ones that left them in the middle of the ocean or the desert, or demanded money or services before they would continue the crossing. Vultures, the lot of them. “We waitin’. Confessin’ sometimes happen’ when yore waitin’.”
She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t take the money; it was like her own refusal to take Cassidy’s, and knew both situations wouldn’t make even a bit of sense to someone on the outside. Honor among thieves, the saying went, and it counted for more in the underworld than it did in the light of day. There was something about the desperation and need of people who didn’t live shining and law-abiding lives that was hard to understand, especially since criminals were lumped together as a negative whole. Wren knew no one was part of a whole like that, despite the statistics. This man in front of her was nothing like the men she went after, and yet they would both be considered criminals by the mainstream. She said nothing about it, but she didn’t take the money back either - perhaps Charlie would be easier to convince. “I live above you,” she admitted, no, confessed.
Well, she surprised him. He almost dropped the cigarette, and his eyebrows jumped comically. “Dat a fact? You see me before Ah see you?” There might have been quite a lot of honor (buried very, very deep) in this thief, but there was also a good amount of suspicion, too. You didn’t stay in business long if you cheated everyone, and you didn’t live very long if you trusted everyone. Hal wasn’t exactly sure what he would do if this little girl was, in fact, stalking him. He thought he might be disturbed but then he thought he might be flattered. Better to find out if it was true first.
The question made her grin widen, but she shook her head. “No,” she told him honestly. “I just moved in a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t seen you. I didn’t know until you took me home,” she said, then she leaned forward, ponytail slipping up over her shoulder. “But if I had, I might have come knocking before you had a chance to run into me in the bar.” That was honest too, but it was a fact, and she liked this man’s pride. There was no harm in letting him know she found him interesting. Wren didn’t have any vanity to her; she didn’t expect anything from him or anyone else, and so she gave compliments away if they were earned without any reserve or coyness.
He blinked a little through his suspicion and then he laughed at her. “You sure know how to grease a man’s bones, cher,” he said, laughing still and not at all disturbed by the thought that she may not be entirely serious. He actually gave the cigarette a little flick, as if it was lit and ashes might come tumbling down, though they did not and he wasn’t paying any attention at all. He turned his wrist over to look at his watch, but that was the only further mention of Charlie’s absence.
“Try him again,” she suggested quietly. She would explain to him the difference between greasing a man’s bones and honestly finding a man attractive some other time when there wasn’t all this quiet worry between them. Amanda’s love hadn’t texted her back, and she had decided the worst had happened. Guilt would come later, when she’d verified her mistakes, when all the little chess pieces had fallen where they would. Now, there was still a girl to save and a friend to find, and the fact that his shoulders shifted strongly, appealingly as he flicked the cigarette was neither here nor there.
“It don’ work like that. He come back to it when he can.” Ordinarily, he would have left to go find him by now, probably with one or two more guns, but his job was to stay with the cargo just at the moment, and that was exactly what he was doing. He pushed away from the table and paced one or two steps with the cigarette in his mouth, thinking, and then he said, abruptly, “Where you wanna get dropped off?”
“We can stay here,” she offered, because if it was her partner out there she would want to go. “Hal,” she said softly, attempting to still him with your voice. “We’re fine here, go.” She meant it. She didn’t add that it wasn’t as if she was a normal job, because she assumed he wouldn’t like that line blur at all, but it was the truth; she wasn’t just a normal job. “If someone comes, I can take care of us.” She meant that too, and it was clear in her gaze that she wasn’t saying it just to say it. They could worry about drop-off points later.
He shook his head hard. “Can’t leave you here.” It wasn’t necessarily about safety; the garage was a safe place, and if anybody knew they were hear they already would have showed up with guns blazing. “Dat is part of the job.” He came closer, leaned nearer, and concentrated on her face. “Where do you want to go?” He said each word distinctly.
She didn’t pull back when he neared, and she didn’t retreat when he said each word like it was a crisp command. His attention to her face was intense, and her blue eyes looked back at him with open interest and an equal amount of respect. She filed all of this away for later, meant to use all of it to take the measure of the man. She reached out a hand before she spoke, and she touched his knuckles in passing, an almost nothing touch, and then she nodded, understanding settling in.
She gave him the address of the safe house she’d contacted about Amanda earlier that day, and she slid off the table with a grace she couldn’t hide (because she didn’t realize it existed). “Do we go?”
Deep nod, solid. “We go.” He jerked his head toward the car again. All aboard. He started hauling on the garage door again, eyes serious.
She didn’t hesitate, and by the time he was jerking his head she was already climbing into the car’s front seat. She watched him haul the garage door open, this man who was more worried than he was willing to show. She filed that away too, filed it away with all the little bits of him she was learning, and she looked back at the sleeping Amanda a moment later. They’d get her somewhere safe, and then Charlie would get in touch. Wren didn’t particularly believe in god or religion, despite her mother’s old beliefs and ways, but she unfailingly hoped for good things for good people - these men fell into that category.
The car eased out of the garage and down the road again, the radio silent and the engine humming in just the growl Hal hoped for in his cars. He was distracted, driving with the heel of one hand and glancing out the window while scratching behind the silent earpiece. He had pulled into the drive of the safehouse and was turning to talk with Wren when he cut himself off in mid-sentence and jerked his head up at the ceiling, listening. “Charlie?” Blink. Listening again, frowning, then letting his head loose on his neck in silent relief. “Fils de putain,” he responded, apparently in agreement. “Oui.” He pulled the earpiece out, nerves unwinding. “He goin’ back.”
She had just opened the door when he spoke, and the smile that lit up her features the moment after was unguarded brilliance. There was no doubt she was thrilled to hear that this man she’d never met was safe and sound. She got out of the car, and she handed a sleepy Amanda off to a woman who made it her business to help free girls who had ended up in bad relationships.
Wren didn’t close the driver’s door. Instead, she leaned inside and looked at Hal. “Do I stay here?” she asked with no expectation of a negative response. She could get home from here, of course, and if it hadn’t been Hal she would have automatically done just that. Still, she hesitated, expression calm as she waited.
Hal looked at her with some surprise. “Ah dunno, you need a ride somewheres else?” Then he blinked and remembered what she’d told him. “Oh, yeah, you livin’ over my head.” He smiled easy. “Ah take you home, if you like.” Yes, he would. However she liked, really. He’d heard from Charlie, and though Charlie was in a foul mood, he was fine, and Hal was fine--and five thousand richer. He settled into the driver’s seat a little deeper and rolled up his window, waiting.
She waited for that smile, and she returned it with one of her own, something sweet and promising. “Only if you want. Nothing to do with the job,” she said, making that clear for him. She didn’t want him to mistake the job (and her needing a ride home from it) with wanting to sit in the car with him instead of someone else. “I want,” she added, that same giving smile on her lips.
“Den get in,” he said, doing that little tip of his head toward the interior of the car.