Hammer: A Dark Romance Page 5

  “I really gotta go,” I say, squeezing my knees together. The urgency in my voice is real, even if the need to urinate is not. Jake pulls over into the rest stop, thank god. The second the car stops moving, I throw the door open and tumble out. I run toward the toilet block first, but I slip past that and into the overgrown area beyond where trees swallow me up almost instantly.

  “Jazz!”

  I hear him shout my name behind me, but I have a head start because he didn’t see this coming. His voice is full of confusion and real anger, and that just makes me freak the fuck out. I saw what he did the first time someone pissed him off. Is he going to break my neck? Kick my ass? I’d like to think he wouldn’t, but I don’t know, not really. I don’t know anything anymore, except for men are dangerous and every time I’m near them, bad things happen.

  I plunge through the undergrowth, not sure of where I am or where I’m going, but knowing that I need to be away. Away from everything. The whole fucking world is too much right now.

  A hand clasps my arm from behind. I let out a shriek of panic and try to pull it out of Jake’s grasp, but there’s no chance of that happening. His hand is like a huge steel manacle around my arm.

  “Quiet!” he growls, his aggression only serving to ignite my panic. This is where he kills me. People get killed at rest stops all the time. I should have had him stop at a mall. Malls are safer.

  I scream again and he slaps his other hand over my mouth, cutting off the sound as he swings me off my feet and drags me even further into the bushes.

  That’s when I really panic. I knew this was bad. I knew he was going to hurt me. This is the part where I die. I start to flail, all the fear and adrenaline of the day exploding now, against his massive masculine form, where it is entirely useless.

  “Cut it out,” he growls down at me as I kick and flail, my heels finding his shins more than once. “I’m not going to hurt you, but I’m not going to let you run either. What’s going on with you?”

  “You’re going to kill me,” I squeal when he pulls his hand away to let me reply.

  “What?” He looks completely confused. “That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m doing.”

  “What are you doing? What are we doing? We’re just driving! And you’re wanted! And you killed Rodney. You just killed him. And...”

  “Okay. Stop,” he says. “I thought we were on the same page here.”

  “You dragged me out of my house!”

  “You have corrupt cops trying to hurt you, Jazz. Have you forgotten that? You wanted me to leave you there? For them to find you?”

  “I mean, no... but. You didn’t give me a choice.”

  “You could have said something. You didn’t seem to have a problem at the gas station, or any time up until now, suddenly you’re freaking out... why?”

  “Because I’m just... Just realizing what is happening. We’re on the run, Jake. We’re total fucking strangers and... I can’t handle this. I just can’t. You should drop me in the next town.”

  “You want me to leave you alone in the middle of some random town?” He looks at me, his handsome face contorted with confusion. “What do you think is happening here, Jazz? You think I’m kidnapping you?”

  “Aren’t you? You made me come with you...”

  “Because you’re in danger, girl,” he growls. “Because three cops just tried to kill you, and I figured you were better off not there.”

  “So I’m not kidnapped.”

  “No.”

  “So I can leave.”

  “You want to leave? You want to do this alone?”

  He puts his hands on his hips and looks at me with an expression that makes me feel stupid and ungrateful and... ugh. This is my fault. I got him into this, not the other way around. My mood swings wildly back into shame and recrimination. What the hell am I saying? What am I doing? I’m pushing the one person away who can help me. The one man who wants to help me.

  “I guess not... I’m just freaked out, okay. I’m sorry! I don’t know how to handle this. I never thought it would come to this. And you... I don’t know you. You don’t owe me anything. My experience tells me, you must want something from me if you’re willing to help me this much.”

  “You want to know what I want from you?”

  “What?” I’m almost scared to hear the answer.

  “Just a little bit of trust, and the chance to show you that not every guy is an asshole who will hurt you. You don’t need to run from me, Jazz. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You hurt my ass...”

  The words come out in almost a whisper as my hands go back to cover my bottom with the memory of what he did to me. That has left more of a mark on my mind than it has on my flesh. It doesn’t even hurt anymore, but I can’t get it out of my head. Jake is a hard man to read. It’s part of the reason it took me so long to even talk to him. He has this hard air about him, this military fighter exterior that tells everyone and everything to keep away. Right now, even though I know he’s trying not to look scary, he looks terrifying.

  “You think that’s the same thing?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. It isn’t. I did that for a reason.”

  “You killed Rodney for a reason, too.”

  He sighs and turns around, his hands on his hips, his head bowed. I know I’m stressing him out, but I’m stressed too. It isn’t like we know each other well. We talked once and then we fucked. That’s not exactly a strong basis for this kind of undertaking.

  “Listen,” he says. “You want me to drop you somewhere, I’ll drop you somewhere. But odds are, you’ll be arrested.”

  “They didn’t have my name up on that news report.”

  “Do you think they didn’t have your name up on that report because they don’t suspect you?”

  “Well. Yeah?”

  “You weren’t listening to the report very well, were you?”

  “What? I mean, yes, I was!”

  “Come back to the car. It’s almost on the hour. Let’s see if we can catch the news report on the radio.”

  I follow him back and I stand outside the car while he turns the stereo up just loud enough to hear. Sure enough, we’re first on the news.

  “A woman was killed today in an incident that left three officers fighting for their lives. The suspect is named Jake Lister. He is of fair complexion, large build, and should be considered dangerous.”

  “A woman was killed?” I stare at him. “What woman was killed?”

  Jake looks at me. “You.”

  “What? I’m not dead.”

  “No. But you’re being reported as if you are. When they find me, they might kill me. Probably will. But they are definitely going to kill you, Jazz. In the eyes of the world, you’re already dead. And I’m the one they’ve decided to pin your impending murder on.”

  I keep staring at him, a sick feeling of horror washing over me. And then I realize what else was said in the report. Three officers fighting for their lives. No dead officers.

  “I thought Rodney was dead.”

  “Apparently he got better,” Jake shrugs. “I didn’t feel a pulse when I checked, but I wasn’t trying to kill him. I didn’t make sure he was dead.”

  “So we ran for no reason?” I groan.

  “Oh, no, we ran for a great fucking reason. They want us dead.”

  So many terrible things have happened today, it is hard to process them all. Jake is way ahead of me on this. He’s cool and collected. It’s me that’s bringing this to us. Me who is too scared, too stupid to work out what needs to be done, and who my allies are.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, my god. Oh fuck.” I sink down onto the gravel and put my face in my hands.

  “We’re both loose ends they’re going to try to tie up,” Jake adds, just in case I still don’t get it.

  I let out a little whimper. I can’t take this. I was supposed to go to work tonight. I was supposed to keep living my grotty little existence in the hopes that one day, I mi
ght finally be able to, I don’t know, move to a better neighborhood, meet a nice guy, find a way to live life the way it’s supposed to be lived.

  Now it’s over. Now I’m dead. It’s just a matter of time before someone with a shiny badge and no fucking soul makes that true.

  “Come on,” Jake says. “Back in the car. I want to make the mountains before it gets dark.”

  I more or less crawl back up and into the seat, broken. I thought Jake might be a danger to me. He might still be, I don’t know. There’s a lot you can do with a dead woman. I am entirely at his mercy now. But he’s also my only hope.

  * * *

  Jake

  I get the car going again before anyone else can pull into the rest stop and see a tearful woman on the ground. I was wondering when she was going to break. Most people do, eventually. The shock of a thing wears off and then they’re left with nothing but falling apart.

  “Hey,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  I want to lean over and touch her, reassure her. But I know she’s freaked out. The way she reacted to me grabbing her in the parking lot back there told me she’s genuinely considering me a threat right now. Touching her might just make it all that much worse.

  I could be offended, I guess. I could be pissed at her, but the truth is, I don’t blame her for not trusting me. It’s pretty obvious she’s had a hard life and an even harder time with men. It’s difficult to be open again after the first time someone betrays you badly, and when I look at Jazz, betrayal and cruelty are written all over her.

  Last night was hot as hell though. There’s something about the way she locked on to me, her body so fucking desperate for release, welcoming every rough thrust. I tried to start out soft, feel her out, but I couldn’t contain myself and in the end it was as hard a fuck as I’ve had in a very long time.

  She’s tougher than she thinks she is. She’s made for the rough stuff, in bed and out. I know she doesn’t think so right now, I can see the defeat written on her face. But she’s going to make it through. This is a bad situation, but I was raised in bad situations, and after I joined the military, bad situations became my bread and butter. There’s something a hard life does to you; it can break you down, or it can make you ready for almost anything. I think Jazz and I share that, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

  “You get the need to run again, you tell me,” I say.

  “Doesn’t that, uhm, kind of defeat the purpose?”

  “Not if the purpose is keeping you alive. I’m guessing you’re pretty good at running. Probably have some practice at it.”

  “Yeah,” she admits ruefully. “I used to run all the time. Never worked though.”

  “What were you running from?”

  “Just stuff.”

  “Stuff, huh. Maybe you’ll tell me about some of that stuff one day.”

  “Maybe,” she says with a little smirk.

  Maybe I’ll tell her some stories about my life too one of these days. Some of those stories are going to come naturally when we get where we’re going.

  Fortunately, I have backup. Not an entire police force of backup like those crooked cops have, but enough. I left the military unexpectedly and unpleasantly. The guys in my old unit have since gotten out as well. They live up in the mountains now, a long way from any kind of civilization. One by one, they came back, saw what they’d been fighting for, and dropped the fuck out. I don’t blame them. It’s hard to come back from war and pretend that the everyday makes sense anymore, because it really doesn’t. Everything seems fake, like you’re a ghost walking around in a world that doesn’t apply to you.

  I heard some guys describe it like being unplugged from the Matrix. Once you’ve seen the real world, the one where brutality reigns, and innocence is something to be traded, exploited, and then destroyed, mainstream life is way too much and also, not nearly enough.

  She’d think I was even more fucked up than she already does if she knew that I’m not all that upset by what happened this morning. If anything, I’m thinking my mistake was not killing all three of them outright. Now that they’re alive, they get to control the narrative.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  Her soft voice breaks into my thoughts, and I realize I’ve been staring straight ahead at the road for a good while now, with an expression on my face that’s probably not pleasant. When women have a face like mine, it’s resting bitch face. The guys in my unit used to call mine resting hammer face. My features naturally sit in an expression that makes it look like I want to rip someone’s spine out. Can’t be helped.

  “No, I’m not mad at you, Jazz. I’m just thinking.”

  “Wishing you’d picked up someone else last night?”

  “Nope.”

  “No?” She’s surprised, and probably doesn’t believe me.

  “Not at all. Not much point being a man if you can’t help people who need it. You need it.”

  “That’s really... fucking cool of you,” she says guardedly, like she’s not really sure.

  * * *

  Jazz

  I’m feeling hella guilty right now about that freak-out I had. I think he understands, but god, he must think I am such a fucking mess. I can’t even work out who the good guys are. Truth is, I’m not sure if there are good guys in this world. I hope Jake is. I guess only time will tell.

  It’s hard getting to know a man while running from the law. If we were dating, we’d go for walks and hold hands and talk about our hopes for the future. That’s hard to do when your hopes for the future mostly involve not ending up in a cell. I should ask him some stuff. Try to get to know him a little more.

  “So, uh. Uhm. What made you want to start fighting?”

  He leans back, pushing away from the steering wheel into the car seat to stretch before he answers. The motion makes his shirt pull tighter around his chest and highlights the massive muscle structure he has. I don’t know if I’ve ever been around a guy who is this fucking powerful. He’s massive, in every way.

  “You come back from a war zone, you don’t have the kind of interpersonal skills that translate to the modern workplace. Fighting comes naturally to me. Maybe a little too naturally.”

  I think back to this morning when those three cops came through the door. He dropped them all in less than a minute, and the fact that they’re alive is a stroke of crazy luck for them. I don’t think Jake was trying to kill them. I don’t think his reaction was a conscious choice. It was pure animal instinct, because that is the kind of creature he is.

  Knowing Rodney is alive is both a relief and a concern. He deserved to die this morning. He might still die, I guess. The report said they were critically injured. That means death is very much in the cards. Truth be told, he should have been dead long before now. Turning girls out was the least of Rodney’s failings. Jake did the world a favor when he snapped his neck.

  “What made you start bartending?” Jake interrupts my bloody thoughts with a question of his own.

  “A lack of any other life skill,” I say. “I can get liquid from one bottle into a smaller glass. That’s all you really need to be able to do to tend bar. Oh, and have tits.”

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “What? Serve liquor?”

  “No. Put yourself down.”

  I squirm in the passenger seat. There’s something in his tone that might almost be paternal, if I knew what that was.

  “It’s true though,” I argue. “I don’t even have a GED. I can’t even work in a call center. It’s basically bar work or selling my ass.”

  “Why did you leave school so early?”

  God. Now we’re getting into a series of events I really have a hard time talking about. I don’t usually tell anyone about my past. I don’t want it to define me, and it always does once I tell anyone. But Jake deserves the truth, I guess.

  “Uhm. My mother and my father divorced when I was really small, and then my mother got, I guess you’d call it spiritually married to a man who lived in a yur
t.”

  “Ookkay...”

  “And I guess he had a lot of wives and he played guitar a lot and...”

  I know Jake has no idea what I’m talking about. He’s just looking confused, because right now the story I’m telling doesn’t really sound all that bad.

  “Like it was kind of a group. And they didn’t really believe in schooling. They thought we just needed to be able to read the religious texts he’d prepared and...”

  “So it was a cult.”

  “...yeah.”

  “And you left?”

  “I ran away when I was fourteen. They had a spiritual marriage in mind for me then to the guitar guy. I hitchhiked my way to the nearest town and then begged and stole enough money to get to the city and that’s it. I’ve just been surviving all these years.”

  “You’ve done pretty well for yourself.”

  “Yep. An uneducated bartender with a crooked cop ex who is probably going to spend the rest of her life in prison if the cops don’t kill her first. I’m doing super well. I should have stayed in Majestic Royalty’s yurt.”

  “That’s what the guy called himself? Majestic Royalty?”

  “Yeah. He had a white horse he liked to ride on and all the women were supposed to make flower garlands and put them around his neck and the horse’s neck too. It was weird.”

  “Sounds like a lot to live through and come out the other end normal.”

  “I’m not normal,” I say. “I just seem that way because I wear eyeliner and tight pants. Nobody notices how fucked up you are when your ass is hanging out.”

  He shakes his head curtly, rejecting my self-deprecation. “You’re not fucked up. You had a job and an apartment. You were doing just fine, as good as anyone can be expected to be.”

  “Well, I’m a disappointment to my mother. She’s not allowed to talk to me. I’m pretty sure she got demoted from celestial wife to earthly vessel.”

  “You have brothers and sisters back there?”

  I shake my head. “Something happened when my mother had me and she couldn’t have any more after me.”