Page 14 of Exit Strategy
“I thought you two were trying,” I said. She snorted indelicately.
“Hewas trying. I don’t want any kids. I was getting contraceptives from the clinic specificallynotto be their broodmare. That’s why he was so mad.”
“Oh fuck.” I whistled.
“Yeah, and if I go back, I’m pretty sure he’ll kill me.”
“I won’t take you back to him,” I vowed. “I have this pesky conscience that won’t let me do things like that, no matter how much I get paid.”
“I appreciate that, but where will you take me?” she finally asked.
“I have a place, it’s completely off the grid,” I said. “A cabin, outside Indigo City.”
“Completely off the grid? What are you, some sort of militia nut?” she asked, her eyes focusing better than they had been.
“No, Afghan war veteran, and I found that I really liked living alone and not relying on anyone for anything,” I said. “My last job, it paid really well, but there were some problems with HR, and I didn’t agree with some of their business practices.”
“I need a shower, and my clothes are ruined,” she said, distracted again.
“You do, and I do too. How’s your head?”
“Feels like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“I can get us a motel room and get you some clean clothes. You can shower and make sure you don’t need medical treatment.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “My head just hurts, and I feel disgusting and sticky.”
“It will be slumming compared to what you’re used to, but it is a start to something better,” I promised, and I think part of that was for myself. Once again, I had fucked up a job. I fucked up working for the Escadrille Cartel, and for the Royal Marines before that, and college before that. It was my own personal fucking MO, get involved with the wrong person, the wrong group, and then rather than make the smart decision? Ruin everything.
Strike an officer.
Sign on with a heroin cartel.
Abduct the wife of an A-list celeb.
Could this get better? I was sure it could.
It was close to nightfall when I picked a small town off the side of the interstate and noted the historic Route 66 marker as we left the new pavement for a road that seemed like it hadn’t seen a department of transportation truck in decades. I cruised another fifteen miles down the access road before finding the first town. It wasn’t much, but they had everything that I was hoping to find. There was a motel, sunburned and rundown, a thrift store, and a place that looked like it might serve food.
We pulled into the parking lot of the proudly namedMotel. That was it, just Motel. If it had been closer to the interstate, it would have fit the bill for a no-tell motel that rented rooms by the hour. Out here, no. This was still a seedy-as-fuck place, maybe somewhere drug deals went down and coyotes made their deliveries.
Callie seemed to take the place in stride as I used an actual metal key to open the faded door and let her into a room that had cost us thirty dollars for the night. The clerk hadn’t blinked as he told me the pool was closed, the shower might or might not work, and there was no breakfast service. It was obvious the pool was closed, due to fact that there was no water in it, and rather than being covered with a tarp, it was closed off with overlapping sheets of chain-link fencing.
It reminded me of a prison, from a post-apoc movie.
I bolted the door and started checking the room. I looked at Callie who was at that point staring at me. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t trust the place. Making sure there aren’t any false doors, no recording devices, nothing like that,” I said. I felt paranoid as shit, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the events of the day, from the vibe of the place, or just the amount of blood I saw every time I looked in a mirror, or at her. “Why don’t you take a shower, get cleaned up. Then I can make sure none of those injuries is more serious.”
“I don’t have any clothes to wear,” she said, looking at me, and then her feet.
“Don’t worry about it. I have a few things you can borrow in my bug-out, until we can get you something else,” I said.
“Do you have women’s clothing in your bag?” she asked.
“Well, no,” I said. “You can wear one of my undershirts and a pair of sweatpants. We can run those clothes through the wash. There should be a laundromat somewhere, and thereisa thrift store here. You can get some different clothes there.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure this is Fenty and has to be dry cleaned,” she said. “And the rest of that, I’m not really fluent in… that.”
