TEMPTATION - A Bad Boy Romance (81 page)

“Polyphasic sleep patterns are for geniuses,” she had told me once, in a teasing tone.

Indeed
, I thought to myself, recalling the memory as I stood up and stretched.

I wasn’t sure how she could have achieved an entire sleep cycle, and fucked as we did, but I didn’t bother to spend too much time thinking about it. I had gotten some rest, and that was important.

I walked down the stairs once more to the basement, figuring that she was at work on some project in her lab. When I got there, she was hard at work analyzing data from the search query.

“Already done?” I asked, noticing how attentive she was toward the information present on the screen.

I could tell that she was looking through results because the process on the screen was different than before. There was no appearance of endless database scrubbing, only a series of about two hundred single lines of text. Each of the text was time stamped less than thirty minutes apart, though some were as brief as a few seconds. Next to each time stamp was another number, which indicated the source patrol car or badge number.

I looked over from the screen to Angela’s face, taking note her eyes staring wide in disbelief over the information present on the screen.

“This guy’s a fucking legend,” was all she said.

I waited for more information, but she was too absorbed in her reading to pay me any mind. Angela had trained herself to read eighty percent faster than most other literate people — a feat she had achieved by a process she called ‘line absorption’.

For the next several minutes, I watched her stare with eyes wide at the screen before the two of us. The screen scrolled down at a rate that was too quick for me to pay attention, but she had already done the work for me.

“Looks like the last place he was spotted was on the west side, about a mile outside of your Dad’s house. Police already stopped by your father’s place, with an expedited warrant, but your man wasn’t there. I’m betting that they have that place on surveillance right now. From the looks of it, that guy has got a set of balls on him.”

She turned to me after she had reached the end of the document.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Without pausing, I knew the answer.

I had always thought my father’s concept of a safe house was a bit of a joke, but I knew that if the police had in fact gone to visit him, that he would hold to that plan as a matter of course.

“I’d like to spend the night here,” I replied. “I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow morning before dawn. Does that work for you?”

Angela nodded easily and offered a smile.

“C’mon,” she said. “Let’s grab a bite to eat, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I raised my eyebrow suggestively, meeting her gaze, and offering a non-verbal question as to the nature of her ‘surprise’.

“You’re such a whore,” she grinned, and then slapped me in the ass and kissed my cheek. “We might get to some of that too, but this is something different; something special that I’d like you to take with you when you go.”

I smiled at her, and she returned the smile with the deepest sense of authenticity that two friends can offer one another.

“Besides,” she said, breaking the spell, “I’m pretty sure we’ve got Avocado sandwiches, which is fucking awesome. I love that stuff.”

Chapter 14 - Tyler

Crashing through the window wasn’t something that I had planned on doing.

Frankly, I was a bit surprised that she didn’t shoot me on the spot. The woman looked so dangerous initially, and I was most definitely calling her bluff. Then she proved that she wasn’t really a killer at all. She was just a regular person, and there was no reason to believe that she would attack me.

I made the decision and made my exit.

What ended up pushing me in the direction I chose was the realization that a lot more death would probably happen if I didn’t get out quick. For some reason, all of this violence was getting on my nerves. I reasoned that I would be better off if I ran.

The other side of the window was a planter, which eased my fall. I put my shoulder into the frame of the window, so I didn’t take too much damage from the broken glass; it was better than getting hit by another bullet. I knew that as soon as I landed, I had to make a break for safety because the patrol cars were fast en route. I could hear the sirens echoing down the narrow streets of Venice, and I reasoned that I had a maximum of two minutes before every police car in the area was on my tail.

Let’s just say that my estimates were a bit off.

The echo of the sirens was displaced by the buildings, but things became clearer for me once the nearest car in pursuit turned the corner and began speeding down the street toward the apartment complex. Hazarding a glance behind me as I ran down the street, I noticed that two motorcycle police were on their way toward me, and approaching fast.

I sprinted down the alleyway and noticed a dumpster leading to a fire escape on my right-hand side. With an assisted jump, I found my feet on the top of the dumpster. Without pausing, I maintained speed and leaped in the air to reach out toward the lower rail of the fire escape balcony. My training assisted me in being able to pull up on the fire escape, and place my feet firmly on the metal frame of the landing. Knowing that I was vulnerable on the side of the building, I began sprinting up the end of the fire escape. By the time I reached the top, three floors later, bullets were already ricocheting off of the rails beneath my feet.

“Damn,” I swore as I nearly escaped getting hit.

I wasn’t sure what was happening lately, but I seemed to be a magnet for bullets, and to be perfectly honest, it was getting a bit tiresome.

I made my way toward the center of the rooftop, and began to sprint toward the far end of the building. I passed a group of kids sitting on the rooftop smoking, and a flock of birds flew away from my approaching footsteps as I reached the edge of the building. There was about an eight to ten foot gap between this building and the next, as the building was located adjacent to a narrow alleyway. I had to jump, because if I didn’t then there was no way that I would reach the bottom of the building in time to evade the motorcycles.

Knowing that I needed full speed to make it across the gap, and knowing that the consequence of missing the jump was death or imprisonment, I made the commitment.

My body soared through the air, and my feet slammed down on the rubber tar cover of the adjacent rooftop. I was a bit off in my estimations, though the next roof was slightly lower than the one that I had departed, so I didn’t suffer too greatly for my miscalculation. I landed with a hell of a lot of momentum, and had to force my body down into a shoulder roll.

The backpack had a couple of items that didn’t sit well, and they dug into the muscles of my back. The pain was more of a slight inconvenience than anything else. As soon as my roll was complete, I was back on my feet, and resuming my sprint.

As I moved forward I heard sirens coming from all around me, but what was most interesting to me was that I heard the actual motor of the bike that had been chasing me going down the alleyway behind me. Either they had not seen me jump, or they didn’t anticipate it; regardless I had to slow my pace when I reached the end of the second building, because the ledge for the next building in line was a solid twenty feet above me, and the space between one building and the next provided nothing in the way of climbing except for a sheer drop.

I silently offered a prayer of thanks to the zoning commissioners who had permitted this next building only had about five feet of space between this building and the next. With a philosophy more closely resembling folly than anything worth advocating to others, I quickly turned around and lowered myself onto the ledge of the building with only one hand still clinging to the edge to anchor my weight.

My feet were firmly planted on the wall, and when I looked down below, I got a head rush and realized that while the brickwork would provide a bit of grip on the way down, there were no sizable objects, railings, or window inlets to aid me in my descent. I was thirty feet above the ground, and a five-foot gap had been placed between myself and the adjacent wall. With a firm breath for resolve, I planted my feet as firmly apart as they would manage and pushed my hands across the gap. 

Making my way down the building was not an easy process, but it was possible. There was enough space so that it made things a bit strenuous, but not so much that I didn’t have enough leverage with my knees and elbows to firmly press into the adjacent building.

In a consciously repeated pattern, I worked my way down toward the walking path below. My heart was beating fast, but I felt momentarily secure in my efforts.

Just like basic…
I tried to remind myself, taking care to keep my eyes on my hands and not on the ground below.

Look down once from a spot like that, and you can recover. Look down twice, and you might end up committing to a fall that you weren’t entirely prepared for; some people claim they can do it, but I’ve always found it to be easier for me if I focus on the placement of my hands and feet. One step at a time.

My concentration was disturbed when I heard the loud boom of a motorcycle turn the corner into the narrow walkway below. The sound reverberated through my body as it echoed up between the two brick walls.

Hazarding a look, I turned my head down and made eye contact with the officer. I was only about 10 feet down, and the cop was already radioing my position into everyone else in the area.

I was fucked, and I knew it.

Knowing it was now or never, I pushed one leg toward the opposing wall, and allowed my body fall at an angle, into the other building. 10 feet passed before my eyes, and I kicked off that wall, turning around in a rapid 180-degree rotation toward the other wall. Just before hitting the ground, I kicked off with my right leg, thrusting myself backward toward the end of the alleyway that wasn’t yet occupied by a police officer.

Seeing my descent, the cop revved the engine of his motorcycle and closed the distance between his body and mine. I came into a backward roll, still losing momentum from my fall. Another pain in my muscles from that fucking pack jarred my consciousness, but I got through relatively unscathed. When I rose up from the roll, I saw the police officer headed toward me on his bike with his baton out like some kind of hellish, urban knight.

I didn’t think.

I was operating strictly on kinesthetic intuition at that moment, and I decided to jump. My body still had a slight bit of backward momentum from popping out of the roll, and with the jump, I was essentially leaping backward through the air in the same direction as the approaching officer. I arched my back and stuck out both legs toward the cop’s midsection. He tried to swerve out of the way of my body, but his eagerness to move in for the capture was too strong.

His helmet connected solidly with both feet, and the bike skidded against the wall passing between the two of us. The officer’s momentum pushed his body into mine, and he got laid out underneath me. When I fell, I came down on his midsection hard with my elbows. A satisfying crack informed me that his ribs were now broken, and he would be officially out of the hunt.

Getting up quickly, I stomped down on his wrist causing him to release his grip on the baton. I swooped the baton up with one hand and turned it in the air. Dipping down, I slammed him in the crotch with the nightstick and then dipped down to undo his pistol from his holster. The officer rolled over on the ground, a broken heap of nerves and pain, while I sprinted to right the fallen bike.

Only moments had passed since the fall, but both ends of the alleyway were now cornered by officers in patrol cars.

As they got out of the cars, and laid their sights on me, I squatted over the bike and held on tight. The baton was dropped behind me, and the firearm secure in my pants with the handle of the weapon raising up into the small of my back. I revved the throttle and shifted the bike into gear.

Zooming down the final forty yards of the alleyway, I kicked the bike into the highest gear and flooded the engine with gas. The bike’s front tire lifted, and I pushed off the bike, launching the damn thing straight at the police car. Both of my feet hit the ground running, but only for a moment. As soon as I hit the ground, I fell into the movement with my legs and then bounced up once more to leap after the bike.

The move was risky, but I had no other choice.

I watched from the air while the back tire of the motorcycle crashed the window, hooked the police car on the side, and lifted the vehicle sideways. The officers in the car screamed in shock, and I hit the ground just as the car had reached its peak, almost perpendicular to the ground.

Almost.

The car began to sink back toward me, while the bike flew over the top. I darted to the side, and escaped the path of the vehicle just before it fell back down onto the ground; its axles bottoming out below it. The car was sunk, and I was sprinting as fast as possible toward the northeast. I wove through streets and narrow alleyways until I was completely out of breath, and had reached the point of adrenal exhaustion.

All throughout the night, I heard the patrol cars swarming around me. They only let up at about midnight, though I swore I could feel them circling like sharks; silent in the water.

I ended up coming to a place of rest somewhere along the water in commercial boat repair warehouse. The owner didn’t lock the windows on the second floor of his building, and I found a place to pass the night in the rafters above the projects below. There was a sense of safety in that place. I knew I had been lucky, more times than not lately.

As I drifted off to sleep, I could only hope that my luck had not yet run out.

Chapter 15 - Tyler

I was sure to be up before dawn because I didn’t want to get caught in the repair shop.

I was out without a trace while the mist still hung low to the ground on the bank. My estimation, I was somewhere just north of the fisherman’s shack. I had a feeling that he too would be up early, and I wanted to get down to where his boat was before dawn had a chance to fully come into being.