“Lucas. Lucas.”
I came to the end of a row of shelves, the boxes gone yellow with age. Lucas had a nest of wires and a mini replica of his upstairs office built on top of a functional post-war slab-of-oak reading table. I thought fire hazard when I saw all his equipment plugged into a single two-prong wall socket with extensions and plug trees daisy chained together.
Lucas sat still, as if maybe I wouldn’t see him. I looked up. I had no choice. She would see but she couldn’t know where in the stacks we were.
The look in his eyes frightened me. He didn’t know if I had come to save him or kill him. He honestly didn’t know who stood before him.
“Lucas, it’s me,” I said in my calmest voice.
He sucked in a breath to say something, but held it in.
“She’s here too,” I said. “We need to go.”
He didn’t move. “My sister?” he asked.
“At the hospital. She’s going to be okay,” I said. Guess my brain found it okay to lie these days. I might have wanted to believe it, but wouldn’t swear to it on anyone’s life.
“And you’re…?” he squinted his eyes, trying to look deeper into me. To decide if I could be trusted. If I was the one he used to love.
“It’s me,” I said.
I heard a footfall behind me. I didn’t have time for Lucas to make an impossible decision. I stepped forward to the table. He backed away a single step. It broke my heart.
“Get down. She’s coming.” I put a hand on his arm and pulled him down with me under the table. The thick wood would serve us well in an earthquake or a tornado. Against the unnatural disaster I called Sam? Not a chance. We needed to get out, to loop around this crazy corn maze and beat her out of here.
“Can you get us out of here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but the look in his eye still waited for a knife in his back.
“Can you lead me if I close my eyes? She’ll see if I don’t.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” I put my hand over his. His skin pressed into mine, cold and clammy. The tiny hairs all stood on end. Something about me touching him, though, he softened. The small act of kindness gave him peace. Lucas exhaled and a thick cloud of stress went with it.
“Samantha,” he said and put his other hand over mine.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I smiled. God that felt good. Not as good as when he hugged me. I almost forgot what it felt like. He held on tight, like we were floating in a raft away from a sinking ship. All we had was each other. He kissed me. I didn’t expect it. He came in hard and we knocked teeth, found trouble lining up our lips. He seemed desperate for more touch, more contact as if my skin held the only proof of my identity.
I held on, kissed him back. Took strength from him. Also, in the back of my head I thought if this is how I go, not a bad way to end it all.
We broke our embrace and I looked him in the eye. “We gotta go.”
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
“It can wait.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. You need to lead me out of here like I’m blind. You need to be quiet as you can. Wait,” I said.
I reached up over my head and felt along the table top until I found the note pad and pen next to his keyboard. I brought them down under the table and kept my eyes straight ahead as I wrote. I’m sure my penmanship looked like a first grader when I wrote:
Play music. Distraction. Lure her.
I had no idea if it would work. She might be reading my thoughts now to know it is a fake, she might be simply smarter than to fall for an old trope like that one. Even if it got us a split second of distraction it would be worth it.
I couldn’t feel her inside my head. Hopefully she got frustrated with my eyes-down approach and decided to hold off on the headache and search on her own. She also might be waiting at the end of the table with her gun out waiting for us to pop or heads up like gophers ready for target practice.
I’d learned to stop guessing.
Lucas nodded to my notepad plan. “I do need to tell you something though.”
“Fine, what?” I said, a hint of bitchiness in my voice. I’d never been so proud of my bad attitude.
“I knew.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“I knew about you. About Calder and Rizzo. I knew.”
Another Daddy-ism came to mind: Could have knocked me over by blowing a kiss.
“You knew?” My brain, taxed enough over the last few days, did not compute.
“Not when we met, but a few months after. I knew you were working with them. We had guys, investigators, watching them. They saw you.”
If I’d had anything in my stomach I would have thrown up.
He saw me starting to reel and sped up his explanation. “I knew you had to have your reasons and Blake finally explained yesterday. They were gonna kill you. I knew it had to be something like that. But then I knew you would be my star witness. I knew you’d testify against them. I knew you’d do the right thing.”
“Jesus Christ, Lucas…”
“I know. I just want you to know I still love you. I stayed with you, I still loved you, even after I knew. I want you to know in case we…”
Die in here, is what he left off. My God, if we did, how long until somebody found us?
I CAN’T GO FOR THAT (NO CAN DO)
I know it sounds irrational—but his confession pissed me off.
I don’t know exactly why. I hadn’t been as good of a cover up girl as I thought? He kept a secret from me? He didn’t immediately offer to help? He planned on using me for his case?
Answer: D) all of the above.
Sure, I’m still the one who done wrong. This evened the score a tiny bit. Right?
Well, we sure would have something to talk about on cold nights while speaking through bullet proof glass during visiting hours at the penitentiary.
If he could get us out of here, that is.
“Lucas,” I said. “We really have to go.”
He poked his head up, moved his mouse and found his music player on the computer, clicked the mouse and it sounded like a shotgun. Too late for being subtle now.
He spun the volume on his speakers and took my hand and we bolted down a row of metal shelves.
I shut my eyes and kept my head down, let myself be led to the blaring Hall and Oates soundtrack. Oh Lucas, you sweet little nerd. So out of touch. Hall and Oates? For a daring escape?
Being blind was terribly disorienting. Turns came unexpectedly, We made more of them than I remember coming in. He weaved a haphazard trail out. Good.
I searched for her eyes, found them moving fast down indistinguishable rows of file shelving. We could turn a corner at any second and come face to face with her. I needed to trust Lucas.