Survivor (The Soul Mates Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Morning Cara,” Sam greeted me, as he often did, from under the hood of some old clanker he was stripping down.  “Dusty from the bake shop dropped off her books last night after you’d left.”

“OK, I’ll get onto it, anything you need me to do for you first?”

“Not exactly, but put on a pot of joe and I’ll be through for a mug shortly.”

I did as he asked and got down to business, laying out the contents of the business folder from Dusty.  In the art of keeping up appearances I pulled out all the regular tools that a book keeper would use and made them look... busy.  I didn’t need them, I could do this stuff with my hands tied behind my back.  Every day I had to push down the sick feeling I got from working with numbers, I felt like I was betraying myself getting involved in businesses and books again.  I had wanted Cara to do something different, have a different job for her new chance at life, but it just didn’t make sense and numbers still did.  I loved the mathematical intelligence that numbers enabled, there was a right and wrong answer, simple as that and until I was forced to make the right answers wrong, in an effort to deceive people, I’d carry on.  I had to reason and convince myself often, that my need for self-preservation made total sense and I had to make this work. 

It
had found me, I didn’t go looking for it. 

It meant I didn’t have to interview at some gas station or diner to make ends meet and after living with servants all my life, it was a wonder I could feed myself now, let alone wait tables and deliver service with a smile for others.  I was doing something that was ingrained within every fibre of my being, it came natural to me and by taking that chance I got the opportunity to focus on the things I needed to do to stay alive and in one piece.

An hour or so later I’d worked through the stack of receipts and was filing them in a completed order so I could start the next batch.  I’d remembered to go back and make spurious pencil marks or additions on the ledgers to hide my gift, as Sam appeared.  I placed my pencil down exactly, in the correct place for it and stood up to get him a cup of coffee.  “What do you need me to do?”

“I’m gonna go away for a while.  I’ll be slowing down things here for a while, so I wanted to talk to you about you handling your book keeping customers yourself.”

Panic swept through me instantly.  I’d come to rely on him and I’d learned to think of our friendship fondly, like a life line.  I was terrified about having to deal with more people in town, I may have managed their books, but that was as close as I wanted it to get.  Brief pleasantries at the supermarket checkout were different than handing over books and receipts and collecting my wages.  As my brain sped up to process all of this at once, I began to hear a strange knocking sound.

“Hey, hey! Calm down, stay with me.  Stay here with me and breathe,” soothed Sam as he tried to release the grip my hand had on the coffee pot, I was in danger of injuring myself if I carried on violently shaking it.  “Let it go Cara, put the pot down before it smashes and you burn your damn self.”

Coming to my senses, I did as he asked and then slumped over to the chair at the old desk I used.  “I’m a private person too Cara and I don’t like to pry, but I need to know what about my simple fuckin’ statement freaked you to your core.”

“It... it’s nothing.  I was just thinking how much I’d miss you and that I should probably take a break from the book work, you know, give it up for a while too.”

“Now don’t go gettin’ hasty, the folks in town have come to rely on your mad number skills.”

“What? No!  I don’t have mad number skills!” I protested, they couldn’t find that out about me, ever.  No one here could know that.

“And you’re off on one again, I meant there’s people that can’t afford a decent book keeper any more than they can afford the IRS to come and chase them for not doing their damn books in the first place.”

At the mention of the IRS my vision began to swim, any government body, especially the IRS would kill to get their hands on me, almost as much as my family would.

“Jesus Christ, what in the world...” Sam started, “Here, it looks like you need this rather than a coffee,” he said, slamming a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table.

I took a huge swig straight from the bottle, coughed a lot and then sat still until my body began to function correctly.  “OK, sorry about that, what about if I just took a vacation whilst you’re tending to your business elsewhere?”

“I’d agree, if I actually thought you’d fuckin’ go somewhere.”

“I meant a vacation from the book keeping.  When you come back I’ll carry on.”

Sam eyed me slowly, “I’d feel better if you carried on because I’d know you weren’t becoming a goddamn hermit whilst I was away.”

I looked at him pleadingly, he’d never asked me where I’d come from or why I was here and I’d come to treasure his support, but immersing myself more into the town would only lead to my discovery.  “I promise I’ll be fine, do a bit decorating, or sprucing up at the cabin, maybe plant some veggies.”

“Hmmm, OK.  I’ll leave some contact details in an envelope in your desk drawer.  Take my keys too just in case of emergency,” he told me.

“Sure Sam. When are you leaving?”  I tried to sound like I was on board with being left alone again, but in reality I was anything but.

“Tomorrow, so finish those books up and I’ll head back into town with ‘em, I’ll let the others know you’re on vacation too.”

“Will do, thank you.”  I gave him back his bottle of JD, relieved he’d not pressured me for details when he’d seen my distress at hearing the letters I, R and S. 

Sam made his way to the door as I was pulling out my chair to finish Dusty’s books when he stopped suddenly.   “Oh and one other thing, you need to start the car in the lot once in a while Cara, you can’t make a quick getaway in a car with a dead battery.”

“W...w...what?”

“You heard me girl, it don’t matter which run you do it on, mornin’ or night, but you need to do it because I ain’t gonna be here to do it for you.”  Sam didn’t hang around after he made his point.

I slumped into the chair feeling like the stupidest ass hole on the planet.  All that planning and the training, the counting and questioning my super brain, run after run during the early morning and scaring myself silly after dark had been for nothing. 

I’d fucked up.

Huge.

In all of my meticulous safe getaway scenario’s I’d overlooked one simple thing.  I could escape down the hillside and through the forest path but be left dead and buried because I was stupid enough to think that an old junker, which had been sitting idle for close to a year, would start on the first turn of the key.  In all my preparations I’d overlooked something a wiley old guy had figured out, more importantly, I didn’t even realize he’d been paying that much attention.

*****

Jake

My old man and I rarely spoke, that was just the way it was.  His history was now the life I embraced.  It was amazing how things had changed, especially since he’d left the service and gone back to what he knew best and I was running headlong into it at a shocking speed, enough to make my fucking head spin.  We didn’t purposely avoid speaking, it was just too easy to get caught up in other shit.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the cantankerous old bastard, but when he finally retired I didn’t expect him to become a hillbilly overnight.  There was stuff behind his eyes that scared even me and in the end I just let him get on with it, whatever helped him sleep at night was fine with me. 

He’d been alone without my mom for years, but that’s what happens, life passes you by when you choose this stuff over the apparent love of your life.  The only thing he was left with was a pile of big fucking regrets and he’ll never really recover from that.  In his case, hindsight comes with the realization that you can’t cuddle a fucking case file or identity legend at night.

This was the only thing that kept him from sleeping at night now, me, the fact that I was racing full speed ahead along the same path and he couldn’t make me see that.  If I stopped and thought about it for too long, it made me shiver, did I want to end up a reclusive red neck tinkering with scrap metal? Fuck no.

That would just be a waste of… everything.

I’d been working nights for a while and was too exhausted to return his messages when I did get back to wherever I was sleeping.  I needed my fucking sleep otherwise I’d be off my game and being off my game in my job bordered dangerous.  The kind of
get you dead
, dangerous.

I showered as soon as I entered the apartment, it was rule one.  I needed to rid myself of the filth that clung to me from working with such scum, as well as cleaning up my body’s natural sweat, wear and tear.   I could hear my cell phone ringing from the nightstand in my bedroom, whoever it was could fucking wait.  Brushing my teeth, I heard it stop and start again immediately, “For fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, realizing that they weren’t going away until I actually answered it.  Frustration clouded my mood when I saw it was my old man’s number, “Dad, I’ve just come off the night shift, can we speak later?”

“We could…”

“OK then,” I butted in.

“But we won’t because you won’t call me back, so we’re talking now son,” he said stubbornly, it wasn’t improving my disposition at all. 

I resisted the urge to curse obscenely down the line, he had the ability to get what he wants via a few different methods, it was part of his skill and why he was so successful during his time with the agency.  Today he was going for passive aggressive, “OK, shoot.”

“I need some help son, I’ve got my annual trip and I need you to come take care of something here.  I need you to keep an eye on things.”

“Shit Dad, you know I can’t just drop stuff like that.”

“How often do I call you and ask for stuff?  This is important to me,” and just like that he’d moved into the guilt trip phase.

“Your redneck junkyard isn’t important enough for me to pull out of my current job.”

“I’ll repeat, how often do I call and ask for your help?”  I couldn’t answer, I was struggling to remember the last time he’d asked me outright for something.  “Well?”

“I’ll have to call my supervisor, see if I can schedule some time off. Can your trip wait?”

“Fuck, no son.  I figured you’d act all put out, so I’ve already made the call.  Had to call in one of my markers mind you, you’re on vacation as of tomorrow.”

I saw red instantly.  The shit he was pulling now was the stuff my mom put up with for years, she referred to it as
eliminating the need for a discussion or decision
, and she was right.  “Jesus, that was not your call to make,” this was also the reason we got on better when there was a healthy chunk of miles between us.

“I figured you’d whine.  Listen son, the keys are where they usually are.  You’ll need to get some groceries on route and there’s just one other thing.”

“Isn’t there always, what’s the pet project this time?” I grumbled loud enough for him to hear.

“There’s a young woman working for me, name’s Cara, mousey little thing that gets spooked real easy.  I need you to keep an eye on her, I’ve got this feelin’…”

There it was, the junkyard would still be a rusty pile of shit metal, no matter how long he was gone.  His real request was babysitting some fucking lost cause.  As stubborn as my old man was, he was always a sucker for a lost cause.  “Whatever Dad, what’s her deal?”

“That boy, is the million dollar question.  Getting’ it out of her is going to take somethin’ you’ve probably not used in a while.”

“Which is?”

“Tact and fuckin’ diplomacy,” he laughed, hanging up because there was nothing more to be said.

Looks like I was going on vacation.

I didn’t sleep a wink the night Old Sam dropped the car bombshell, I thought about everything over and over.  I was trying to see the flaws in my planning and it was no good, I just couldn’t calm down enough to focus.  For the first time in months I didn’t do my night time freedom run, I sat outside in the moonlight, looking at Rockton’s lights twinkling at the bottom of the hillside.

I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I’d fled one prison only to force myself into another one, only this one didn’t have the comfort of a five star lifestyle.  I was forcing myself into a life of seclusion because I couldn’t see another way to keep myself safe.

The next morning was a different one, I wasn’t looking forward to it.  My routine was messed up and with no work to go to, I began to panic.  If I didn’t have something to distract my brain it would over think everything and cause my head to go into melt down.  Activity was the only way I could ever stop my head from an internal explosion and activity was the one thing seclusion denied me.

I didn’t have to rush to do my morning freedom run, so I walked it trying not to count out steps and directions, but instead I stopped at all the relevant points and did a situational assessment.  I was calculating and completing a mental risk assessment of each point in my plan trying to foresee flaws or possible failure points.  I forced myself to remain at each station until I could come up with a work around because this stuff was life and death dependant.  Despite the seriousness of what I was trying to do, I couldn’t shut my fucked up brain down and stop it from whizzing through the step numbers.  I mentally kicked myself each and every time I realized I was counting, I knew deep down though it wouldn’t really matter, even though I hadn’t physically said the numbers, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t remember them.  They had already been committed to the memory banks.

My gift was great… until it wasn’t.

I was later than normal by the time I got to the bottom, I glanced to the side, as was my usual habit to look for Old Sam and felt disappointed at the reminder that he was away.  Even though I knew it was dangerous to have attachments or friends, I couldn’t help but feel the hole I would miss from his companionship.  I’d learned to trust him because he’d shown me endless compassion and generosity.  In my experience it was rare to find that in anyone, people usually expected a return favor or they banked a marker.  The code by which I was used to living my life was vastly different.

I carried on walking to the parking lot, heading in the direction of my car, this was the most crucial part of my plan and the thing I was running towards.  It was also the one thing I’d overlooked.  Trusting that mechanics and technology wouldn’t fail me was a massive error.  I walked countless loops around the vehicle’s exterior, wondering what had prompted Sam to check it out.  The keys were always were I had left them, exactly where they should be and laid out how I needed them to be.  It was parked facing forwards for optimum escape potential.  I couldn’t see anything obvious wrong so I grabbed the keys and started the engine, driving the car forwards a few feet and then reversing it, unsure whether that would be enough to keep it mechanically sound.

And this activity was added to my routine for the next few days. 

I walked instead of ran, taking everything in and I walked a little faster at night, because sometimes my own shadow was enough to freak me out.  I ate the simple food which I cooked, I did my on line safety searches and I slept.

Until today, because today when I arrived at my parked car, I realized I hadn’t factored in the one thing that was totally out of my control. 

Other people, random coincidences and the general public.

Today the parking lot entrance was partially blocked by a huge Ford F150 truck.  It was shiny, brand new and I knew people in Rockton didn’t drive trucks that were shiny and brand new like this one.  The owner of this vehicle was an outsider.

Fear and panic crawled through my body, which made my head pivot Exorcist style across the landscape looking for the owner.  My first and only reaction was to hide, I couldn’t be discovered here, so I turned and walked quickly back along the track leading to the hillside when a massively rugged and perfect example of an athlete ran across the road and jumped in the cab.  I resisted all the base instincts urging me to sprint for safety, I needed to have faith in my make over and be sure he wasn’t a threat.  With that in mind I faked an easy gait and continued to amble up the footpath, into the hillside.

Hearing the F150 engine roar to life and the tires chewing up the hardcore, I made my way to the first available view point and crouched low behind a bush to watch the mystery man.  Without needing to think about it, I committed all the details to memory, the registration plate of the truck, the dealer’s sticker in the window and the man’s features and body type.  At breakneck speed, I saw the truck dodge a vehicle at a stop sign and then pull up outside the locked junkyard gates.  The man mountain leaped out of the truck and removed the pad locked chain like it weighed no more than a shoelace.

“What the hell…” Why did he have keys to Sam’s place and who the hell was he?  I carried on watching with fascination as this person moved around the property with ease.  He checked the water tank and electricity box before finally retreating round the back, I assumed, to go inside.

I forced myself up out of the bush vantage spot and went with more speed back to my cabin.  My brain power was exquisitely divided, these were the challenges it thrived on and half of it was working on trying to solve the parking lot problem.  I needed to figure out how I could stop myself from getting blocked in and scouting out possible solutions in the day, could draw too much attention, I couldn’t take the chance that a local became nosey.  Whilst the other half of my head was desperate to understand the stranger at home in Old Sam’s Junkyard and for the first time I realized something, I’d been distracted and felt excited.  A mystery had presented itself enough to side track me from the shitty problems that swirled around me and my life.  My life’s mission of stay safe, ensure a viable escape option and leave no trail in Rockton was now not the only thing I had to think about.

The intrigue felt good, it felt normal and to top it all off the stranger was the first person I’d seen in over a year that had set my pulse racing.  He was attractive enough to get my heart beating just that little bit faster.