Reckless (Wrecked) (22 page)

“I’d hate to see what she’d do if you pointed a real gun at her,” said Candi, bending down to pet her behind the ears.  “Good girl to come and heel.  Good girl.  Please don’t eat my stupid boyfriend, even if he does point little boy finger guns in your face.  He shouldn’t have to die for being a fool.”

“Hey!  How about a little understanding over here!  I almost died, you know. 
With pain.”

“You probably would have sustained a pretty serious injury, but I’m not sure you would have died,” said Jonathan, going down the stairs to join Kevin in the yard.  “I think you’d better call her to you and make peace, though.  I don’t want there to be any bad vibes with her and you out here.  She’s a pretty powerful canine.  If she decides to lock those jaws on someone I’m not sure how we’d get her to open them without hurting her.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”  Kevin bent down on one knee, putting his hands up in the air in front of him with fingers splayed, making it perfectly clear they weren’t shaped like guns anymore.  “Come here, Xena.”

Candi nudged Xena with her knee, and the dog obeyed, ambling down the stairs and trotting over to join Kevin.  Candi was seriously impressed with Kevin’s nerve.  He didn’t look nearly as afraid as she would have been in his shoes.

“Sit,” he said, when she got close.

She sat down, panting with her tongue out.

Kevin leaned forward and patted her on the head.  “Good girl.  Good girl to attack guys with guns.”

Candi smiled, really glad Kevin got the situation so clearly and wasn’t holding what Xena had done against her.  Especially since she was like a gift from the heavens.  Somehow they’d managed to get not only a free dog, but one that had come complete with the instinct or training to attack a guy with a weapon pointed at her.  Candi didn’t know if she had it in herself to train a dog to do that, but she sure wasn’t going to disregard its value.  She laughed as she watched Xena roll over onto her back begging for a scratching, and Kevin trying to comply without actually touching any of her boobs.  No matter where he put his hand, there was another one in the way.

“Man, when are these things gonna dry up and go away?”  His hand kept popping up and moving out of the way as she wiggled around.

“They’re already smaller than they were,” said Sarah, going down to join Kevin.

“Coulda fooled me,” he said, standing up and rubbing his hands off on his new jeans.  “So, pancakes?  I hope?”

Candi waved him in.  “Yes, I have pancakes for you, but they’re probably cold by now.”

Kevin jogged over and took the stairs two at a time.  “Just show me to the stack, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

They went inside, and Candi watched him descend on the plate of pancakes, practically inhaling them, stopping only to add more syrup and take gulps of water from a nearby bottle.

“Just seeing him eat makes me sick to my stomach,” said Sarah from the doorway.

“Don’t watch,” said Jonathan.  “Come with me to find some firewood.”

“Firewood?” Sarah said, following him back out the door.  “What do we need firewood for?  It’s summertime.”

“Just humor me, would you?”

Candi listened to their voices fading off in the distance, no longer able to hear what they were saying.

“These … are awesome,” said Kevin, waving his fork at the dogs who were sitting just at his feet, hoping he’d drop something.  “No!  No pancakes for dogs.  I’m eating every last crumb.  Maybe if you hadn’t tried to kill me, I might have given you a bite, but no deal now.”

“Don’t be mean.  She was being a good girl today.”  Candi bent down and rubbed both dogs’ heads.  Then she stood and put more dry dog food in the two bowls that were on the floor.  “Here you go, Xena and James.  Doggy pancakes.  Get ‘em while they’re hot.”

The dogs happily complied, not seeming to care that they were getting kibble and not the sugary sweetness that was filling Kevin’s bottomless pit of a stomach.

“Girl, all I can say is you can cook.  Even my mom can’t do these.”

“I just used pancake mix; don’t get too excited.”

“Whatever.  It’s better than the restaurant.  I could eat another stack.”  He gave her the look he knew had powerful heart-melting properties.

“Don’t look at me like that.  If I make you another one, there won’t be any for another day.”

“Fine,” he said, dropping the sexy eyes.  “Got any eggs?  Sausage?”

“Now you’re just fantasizing out loud.  You know we don’t have any of that stuff.  We have to go to a real grocery store.  Maybe we can do a run today.”

“I was thinking about that.  I couldn’t decide if we should risk doing a bunch of stuff all at once right away like grocery shopping, Internet search, and all that … or wait and do a bunch of stuff like a week from now, or just do little things here and there.”

“I know.  I was trying to figure that out, too.  I’m so worried a cop is going to check the license plates of the car and find out it’s stolen.  If that happens, any of us in the car will be done.  Like arrested and then killed … dead.  We can’t risk that.  But we can’t stay out here without fresh food, so at some point we have to go in.”

“The solution is to have a car or vehicle that isn’t stolen.”

“Yeah,” said Candi, bitterly.  “All we need is another ten thousand dollars so we can buy one, and we’ll be all set.”

“We don’t need that much.  Maybe a grand.”

“A car that’s worth a grand isn’t going to run.”

“Maybe not a car, but a motorcycle or even a scooter would.”

Candi thought about that for a minute before responding.  “Jonathan has a scooter at home, and he uses it to go everywhere.  It gets great gas mileage, too.”

“Exactly.  And we don’t all need to go places together - just one at a time to the store and stuff.  And we have that duffle bag, so we could put groceries in it, no problem.  A trunk is just optional.”

Candi smiled, walking over and hugging Kevin hard before letting him go.  “I think you just came up with the perfect solution.  Low expense, only one person is seen at a time, and it can get in and out of places that cars can’t.”

He reached over and smacked her butt before taking his last bite of pancakes, talking the whole time.  “Which would come in handy if we were being chased by a dude in a car.”

“How much money do we have left?” Candi asked, unable to remember what they’d spent.

“Not sure.”  He put his fork down, using his fingers to calculate.  “Hmmm … let’s see … we paid fifteen hundred for the cabin, so that dropped us to eighty-five hundred.  We’ve spent about three hundred more on clothes and our food run.  Maybe another fifty on other food.  That leaves … what?  Eighty-one fifty or so?”

“Ha, I can’t do math in my head like that.  But I think no matter what, we could spare a thousand for transportation.   The question is, what do we do about driver licenses and stuff like that?”

“Pray we don’t get pulled over.  And if we do, refuse to give our names until after the trial is over.  We’ll either get a ticket and the bike will get towed, or worst case, we’ll be in jail as John or Jane Does; but we won’t get ourselves killed by a mole, and that’s the most important thing.”

“But what if someone recognized us at the police station?”

“First of all, we tell them we’re eighteen, so they won’t think we’re kids and runaways and look through those missing persons files or whatever.  And we should tell them we’re from another state, like California or something, so they’re thinking we’re from really far away.  We’re already two states over.  I doubt very highly we’re going to be on the national news, so why would they even know about us being on the run?”

“I’m not sure if I could just lie and lie and lie like that and not totally give in and tell them everything.  Besides, not telling them would make them look harder, don’t you think?”

Kevin abandoned the scraping of the last drop of syrup onto his fork and stepped over to stand in front of Candi, holding onto her upper arms and staring intensely into her eyes.  “Listen, Gumdrop … you would have to lie.  Lie your ass off.  If by some weird fluke you get caught, you
cannot
under
any
circumstances, tell them who you are.  It would be as good as just walking up to the assassin and giving him your throat.  They.  Will. 
Kill
you.  Do you get that?”  He shook her gently for effect.  “I can’t have you dying on me.  I’d never ever get over that.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Candi nodded, fully sobered by the idea of being murdered or knowing that Kevin or Sarah or Jonathan would be, merely because she or one of them had given up their names.  She knew exactly what Kevin was trying to say.  They’d been through too much to not be together anymore or to have to try and survive this crazy world alone.  “I get it.  I understand.  Mum’s the word.  If I’m ever caught, I’ll tell them my name is Cathy Redwood and I’m from California.”

Kevin nodded at first, but his agreement quickly morphed into a frown.  “Cathy Redwood?”  He laughed, letting go of her arms to go back to his syrup-scraping.  “Oh, yeah, they’ll totally buy that one.  Good plan.  I’m going to tell them my name is Sponge Bob Square Pants.  First name SpongeBob, last name Squarepants.  From Pineapple, California.”

 Candi play-smacked him.  “Shut up.  It’s the name I used for this rental, and she totally went for it.”

“Yeah, well, she was a hundred years old, so she doesn’t count.  I think you’d better come up with something else.  Don’t even use the same initials, like
C
for Candi.”

“Okay, fine.  I’ll work on it, Spongebob.”

Kevin grinned as he tipped his head down towards her, looking for a kiss.  “How about a hike out into the deep dark forest, miz Redwood?”

Candi backed away.  “Who are you now, first name Bigbad, last name Wolf?  No, thanks.  I have cleaning to do.”

“Cleaning, smeaning.  We have plenty of time to clean.  Let’s go have some fun.”

Candi sauntered back towards him as sexily as she knew how.  “I’ll tell you what.  How about … you help me clean for an hour … and then I’ll run through the woods with you afterwards for an hour.  Deal?”

Kevin grabbed her into a bear hug.  “You drive a hard bargain, but I’m not afraid of you
or
your cleaning rags.  It’s a deal.”

Candi fell into a deep kiss with him, only managing to pull herself out of it when she heard Jonathan and Sarah coming back.  She turned to face the door, but then yelped a second later when the tip of a wet rag snapped against her butt cheek.  “Hey!”

Kevin stood behind her, acting like he was busy cleaning off the counter.  “What?  What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, walking casually over to the other counter to grab the rag that was sitting on its edge.  “Nothing at all …”

Kevin saw her coming and took off running out of the cabin.  Candi and James followed hot on his heels - Candi whooping out her war cry and James barking his fool terrier head off.  Jonathan and Sarah just stood to the side with Xena at their feet, giving the crazy ones room to get by.

***

Sarah stared at the food on her plate that just didn’t look or smell appetizing, even though she knew normally she’d love it.  Macaroni and cheese had been her guilty pleasure since she was old enough to eat solid food - or so her mother had always quipped when she would plop a big gooey spoonful of it down on a lunch plate for her.

Candi hadn’t done anything wrong when she cooked it; it looked fine.  But the smell was about to send Sarah into the bathroom.  She buried her nose in her water glass, inhaling the non-smell of the clear liquid in an effort to calm her stomach.  Whoever had named this kind of nausea morning sickness was a real jerk.  A better name would have been
all-day-sickness
.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Jonathan.  “I’m in favor of either the scooter or motorcycle.  I’m kind of partial to scooters in my normal life, but I’m might actually prefer a motorcycle for our current situation.”

“Why?” asked Sarah, her face still in her glass.  She was just going to keep using it like a gas mask for as long as it worked like one.

“Scooters are more rare in the United States, first of all.  Did you know that of all the developed countries, we have the lowest per capita ownership of these eco-friendly forms of transportation?  It’s shameful, really.  Anyway, we’d stick out using one.  And they’re not as fast, so if we ever had to engage in evasive maneuvers, we’d be better off with more horsepower.”

“Motorcycles are more expensive, though,” said Candi.  “And I’d be nervous about riding one.”

“I’ll teach ya,” said Kevin, shoveling another scoop of pasta into his mouth.  “It’s easy.”  A noodle dropped from his mouth back to his plate.

Sarah had to look away.  She was getting angry at him for being so carefree about satisfying his hunger and for being such a slob about it.  There was nothing she’d like more than to eat like he was doing right now, enjoying every bite of that gooey, buttery-tasting cheesy mess, but for some really stupid reason Jonathan had tried to explain to her, everything smelled like something rotten and totally unappetizing now.

“I think we could find something for around a thousand dollars, maybe a little more.  And if we get an older model, it could be easy to fix or not very expensive to repair, at least,” said Jonathan.  “The question is, how do we find it?”

“We’ve gotta go online,” said Kevin.  “One or two of us have to go to the grocery store, too.”

“And we need a budget,” said Candi.  “This money isn’t going to last forever.  Plus, we need to keep money aside for another month of rental if it comes to that.”

Sarah raised her finger.  “I can do the budget.”

Everyone at the table looked at each other, saying nothing.

“What?  You think I can’t?”

“You spend a minimum of three hundred dollars anytime you shop,” said Candi.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ve seen you, Sarah.  Yes, you do.”

“Okay, fine … so I have done that in the past.  But not every time; and when I did, there was no need for a budget.  Now there is.”  She shot warning looks at everyone.  “I’m doing it, so just keep your comments to yourself.  You’ll see.”  She was going to show these dorks who could make a budget and stick to it.  Just because she had taste and liked to spend money, it didn’t mean she couldn’t simplify and live with the bare essentials.  “Just tell me what you like to eat and what you can’t live without, and I’ll make it happen.”