Hard Bastard(38)

“I’m sorry.” I walked toward him.

He laughed. “It’s not the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me. Good for you though, I’m proud of you for being ready to do what you had to do.”

“How did it go?”

He walked inside and opened the refrigerator. He grabbed a beer, popped it open, and chugged down half. “It went like shit,” he said finally.

I sat down at the table. He finished the beer and got another, sipping this one.

“What are we going to do?” I asked him.

“We need to get the fuck away from here, first of all.”

“We’re going to run?”

“Not exactly.”

“Gage. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

He sat down across from me, face drawn and stressed. “My boss wasn’t happy with what happened, obviously. I’m pretty sure they’ll come hard for us now. We need to get out of this place and find some shitty motel where they won’t find us.”

“There are a lot of those around here.”

He nodded. “I have a pretty good spot a few miles outside of town. We’ll lay low there until we figure out our next move.”

“What can our next move be? They’re going to keep coming for me.”

He sighed. “We’ll figure it out.”

“No, Gage. No. We won’t.” I could feel the anger coming back. “You don’t need to do this with me.”

“I already killed a man for you. I’m already deep in this whether you want me to be or not.”

“I don’t want to destroy your life just because I got sucked into this.”

“You didn’t choose shit. I chose and I did what I had to do. Now we’re in this together.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t make you do that.”

He grinned at me. “You’re not making me do shit. Now go get your stuff. We have to go.”

I stared at him for a second longer, then got up and went into the bedroom. I grabbed my bag and went back into the living room while he packed his things. A few minutes later, he was standing next to me, arms crossed.

“Ready?”

“Ready.” I bit my lip. I didn’t want to make him leave his home, but I knew that we didn’t have any other choice. It was either this or get killed by the mob.

We went outside. He ignored his new car and we got into his old convertible. He tossed our things inside, put the top up, and then we climbed in. He started the engine and we pulled out together.

We drove in silence. I was too busy thinking about how I almost shot Gage, and how out of control I felt, and the horrors of what was coming, and everything was piling up. I had to keep myself calm, breathing deeply, trying to stay centered. Gage seemed totally at ease and relaxed as we drove, and I had to admit that his confidence was a little infectious.

Without him, I would probably be dead.

The motel we finally stopped at was a real shithole. It was about ten miles south of Ashertown, not too close or too far away. I’d never noticed it before, since it was tucked back from a road that didn’t get a lot of traffic, but clearly a lot of truckers stayed there considering the number of semi rigs in the lot. Gage parked and looked at me. “Stay here,” he said.

He got out and went into the main office. A few minutes later, he came back with a key. We carried our luggage upstairs and went into one of the grimiest hotel rooms I had ever seen.

It smelled like mildew and it hadn’t been updated since the day it was built back in the ‘60s. The TV was black and white and only got three channels. There was some hot water in the shower, but really it was more lukewarm than hot. I even thought I caught sight of a roach running away when I turned on the light.

“It’s not much,” Gage said, “but it’ll do for now.”

“It’s disgusting.”

He laughed. “Yeah. It really is.”

“How does this place exist?”

“It’s cheap and the owners don’t ask questions. Truckers like to stay here, especially the ones hauling shit that isn’t necessarily legal. Lots of guy coming up from the south, heading north pass through here.”

“How did you find it?”

“A junkie told me about this place once. I stayed here a few times when I had to lay low from the heat.”

“You’ve had to run from the police?”

“Until the right bribes could be placed in the right hands, sure.”

I sat down on the bed, crossing my legs. “What did you do for the mob, exactly?”

“I was in collections.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I hurt people that owed us money.”

“Did you kill people?”