9 Seconds of Freedom, Original Suspense, Part Twenty-Nine, links to first 28 parts.
I lay on the stage, panting. I heard three vehicles leave the lot.
Dammit. I’d almost escaped this crazy place. Now the one person I wanted to see least in the world was my only chance at getting out of this. I had no doubts about the mayor’s sincerity. She would do every single thing she’d threatened, and then some.
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I sat up. I walked over to the cage wire and leaned my dislocated shoulder into it. I rotated against it hard. It popped, I screamed and almost blacked out, but it worked. I could move my arm again.
I went into Vern’s house. There was a small first aid kit in his office. I found a mirror in the bathroom. I used tweezers to remove the grass burr from my nose. I was starting to feel better.
Vern was starting to smell. So, I vacated the shop as quickly as possible. I climbed into the Chevy, wincing and looked at myself in the mirror. I had bruises on my throat from Leeanne’s attack. I dried blood on my upper lip from kissing the sheriff’s hood, but otherwise, I was intact.
I decided to drive back to Bedman’s. It was the only place I thought I might be welcome. I was right. Ben and Fred sat down with me in the apartment.
“We’ve known a lot of this for a very long time,” Fred said.
“It’s kind of my job,” Ben said.
He pulled out a black wallet and flipped it open. Inside was an FBI badge and ID with his picture on it.
I picked it up. It looked legit, but what did I know?
“Seriously? Then why haven’t you stopped this?” I asked.
“Because, until Leeanne came back to town a month ago, no one had ever escaped to tell us anything. She only showed me the location of The Farm two weeks ago,” Ben said. “Now, we know where the fight ring was too. She only found the farm by driving back roads day after day until she found it.”
“How did you know to look for it?” I asked.
“Local legends. People went missing. Girls like Leeanne. Then there was the gambling money,” Ben said. “These areas don’t come back from the grave without a cash infusion. River Grove has done well. We leaned on a few of the smaller players and they cracked. But they still didn’t know where, or who was in control.”
Great. They’d said no cops, and here I was talking to the FBI. Good move, West. I wondered. Were they as invisible as they thought? I had no idea how any of this worked.
“So, what can we do for you?” Fred asked.
“Nothing. Give me forty-eight hours before you call anybody,” I said.
“Okay, but that’s as long as I can wait. The longer we wait the more likelihood they’ll destroy the evidence and move their whole operation,” Ben said. “But, if you think I’m not going to help you, that’s where you’re wrong.”
I sighed. “They said no cops,” I said.
Fred laughed. “They don’t know he’s a cop,” he said. “We’ve been here twenty years, they don’t suspect a thing, or he’d already have been called out.”
“When did this start?” I asked.
“As near as I can tell, about ten years ago,” Ben said. “There have been other operations doing the same thing for decades. I started seeing signs about five years ago and I got assigned to work the case three years back, about the same time Leeanne went missing.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. I was in too much pain to think this through now. I was barely lucid enough to know that telling them everything was a bad idea. I’d left out any mention of Leeanne’s forced abortion.
“Guys, I have to get a shower and some food, then at least a couple hours sleep. I feel like death warmed over,” I said.
When I got out of the shower, I found a tray on my bed. There were pain killers, and a bottle of lavender oil. “For your bruises” a note on the tray said. It helped.
In the kitchen, there was a fresh pot of coffee and a huge ham sandwich. FBI or not, they had a big heart, that was for sure. I finished the sandwich, then crawled into bed and sank into a deep sleep.
“Get up, get dressed,” a voice whispered.
I opened my eyes. I was in the apartment bedroom, so that was good. But, it was pitch black. I hadn’t expected to wake up this early. What a weird dream. I rolled over.
“What the hell?” I said.
A shadowy figure stood beside the bed. I jumped to a standing position on the bed. I rubbed my eyes. I looked at the clock on the side table. It was 4:30. I looked closer at my uninvited guest. I’d seen her somewhere recently. But where?
“Shh, get down from there and get dressed,” she said.
The girl wore dark jeans, a long sleeved black T shirt and a motor cycle jacket.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Boots,” she said.
I sat on the bed and pulled on my jeans. Boots? Where had I heard that before? The bar, the first night in town.
“Oh, right, I got arrested in your parking lot,” I said.
“Right,” she said.
I finished dressing and headed down the hall toward the living area, she threw an arm across my chest.
“Not that way,” she hissed.
Boots turned to the other end of the hall. She opened a door I hadn’t noticed before. A narrow flight of stairs ran up into the dark.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Since I didn’t know who to trust, I needed to start asking more questions.
“The attic,” she said.
I shrugged. I followed her up the stairs, sleep fading from my brain as we went. The attic was cold. She walked to a dormer window in the back wall, overlooking the alley and the freight ramp. She opened the window and dropped out of it.
Was I still dreaming? I went to the window. Boots was crouching on a fire escape outside the window. Black iron. It ran down in two flights, to the alley below. A car was waiting with its lights off.
I climbed out the window and followed her down. Boots crept down the alley to the car. She climbed into the driver’s side door and I slid in on the passenger side.
She put the car in drive and rolled out of the alley, across the street, and followed the alley down for another block. She stopped the car.
“Give me your phone,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“How do you think they found you yesterday?” she asked.
I thought about it. It was a cheap burner and all the pictures and video were ‘in the cloud’ whatever that meant. I pulled it out. I ran my thumb over the screen to bring the phone to life. One last check, Leeanne could have texted. I had a text.
As the text opened up, I recognized the picture from The Sisters of the Frozen Rosary.
“What’s that?” Boots asked.
“Picture we took,” I said.
As the screen became clear, I noticed something. The fireplace background gave a perfect view to the top of the ridge leading down to the old barn. A figure was standing on that ridge, watching us. A photobomber. Weird.
I thumbed the button to add the photo to my Insta feed and handed Boots the phone. I could study that later.
She rolled down the window and tossed the phone into the bed of a truck parked at the curb.
“That should keep them busy,” she said.
Boots drove out of town about a quarter mile before she turned her lights on. I began to relax a little. I didn’t think I needed to add her to the list of people that needed me dead.
“So, where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Too Leeanne,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
That was easy. I hadn’t even started looking and already I was being taken to her. Better yet, Ben and Fred were safely at a distance, where this couldn’t hurt them.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” I said.
“She told you that?” Boots asked.
I raised my chin, so she could see my darkening neck bruises in the light from the dash. “Uh, you might say that. She tried to kill me,” I said.
Boots sucked her teeth. “Shoot, honey, if Leeanne wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” she said. “The fact she left you alive, probably means she loves you, or something. She doesn’t have a lot of compassion for bit players.”
“Bit players?” I asked.
“Yeah, bit players, side characters, people that don’t have much impact on you,” she said. “Chill, you and Leeanne are going to be just fine.”
As we cruised through one small town after another, I played it out on a map in my head. After the fourth town, I had it.
“The Whippoorwill,” I said.
“What about it?” Boots asked.
“That’s where you’re taking me,” I said.
Boots smiled. “She’s right, you are quick,” she said. “Home away from home for Leeanne. The people there were real good to her right after she got off The Farm. I wasn’t that lucky.”
“You? You escaped The Farm too?” I asked.
“Yeah, ended up being a Lot Lizard for about a year,” She said.
“Lot Lizard?” I asked.
“Yeah, but it sounds dirtier when you say it. A tramp, I kept truckers company,” she said.
I gave her a blank look. I had no idea what she meant by that.
“Portable prostitution,” she said. “Oldest profession in the world, lady of the evening, a hooker!”
I felt stupid. Now that she’d said it, it seemed obvious.
She shook her head. “Maybe you’re not so bright,” she said. “Tell you what, no more twenty questions. You just go to sleep, you look like you need it. Here. This will help.”
She handed me a half empty bottle of moonshine. I shrugged. Why not? I took a swig and gasped. I had a warm feeling, almost immediately followed by a cloud of drowsiness. The car seat suddenly felt like the most comfortable bed in the world.