It’s entirely possible that Kyle planned to use that gun he had aimed at my head once the goods were safely tucked away inside me.
I’m going to be sick.
Too bad it won’t help expel whatever the fuck is in my stomach. If it is drugs, a forcible expulsion coupled with those sharp corners might rupture the bag. I’m not sure how much liquid fentanyl it would take to kill me, but Iamsure I don’t want to find out.
“What did he make you swallow?” Dimitri asks, like he can hear my thoughts. Or maybe it’s that I can’t stop rubbing my chest where it feels like it’s still lodged.
The blood drains from my face. Given when he’d shown up in the maze, I wasn’t sure if Dimitri had heard Kyle force the thing down my throat or not. “I don’t know,” I say. It’s an honest answer, but it’s also a stalling tactic until I’m more sure of his involvement—or lack thereof. “He didn’t say.”
“A pill?”
He’s so gruff, and the depth of his voice sends more shivers up my spine that dissolve in the warmth of the dry heat blasting towards me. My nipples prickle from the contrasting temperature sensations, and it makes me shiver harder. I cross my arms to hide it and sink lower into my seat.
“I don’t know,” I repeat, softer this time, a little unnerved by Dimitri’s sudden shift away from stoic and silent to caring about my welfare.
I’m not sure I trust it. I’m not sure I trusthim.
But what choice do I have?
I still have the old-ass cell phone they gave me at the hospital—thank God I didn’t give Dimitri both when he asked—but I don’t have any money, and I’d be too scared to leave a digital footprint that Kyle could use to find me. If he’s alive, I can’t go home. And after Dimitri’s reaction, I’m afraid to go to the police. Mafia men pretty famously have cops “in their pockets.” I don’t really know anyone locally other than extended family, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring this shit to them. They wouldn’t know what to do either, so I’d only be putting more innocent people in danger.
So, I’m fucked. I don’t have anywhere to go.
Then again, everything is still in the U-Haul. That piece of shit landlord would probably keep my deposit, but $2500 isn’t worth my life. I could break my lease, get in the van, and pick a city at random, somewhere far away from Ulysses. Start over. Again.
I’m good at it by now.
Though that’s assuming Dimitri even plans to let me go.
If Kyle’s alive, he’ll come after what he made me swallow and probably kill me. If Kyle’s dead, I’m an accessory, and I’m in a car headed for God-knows-where with his murderer.
A murderer who saved me, who hasn’t threatened me with violence once, and who—despite the fear coiled low in my belly—I don’t actually think wants to hurt me.
Generally speaking, I’ve learned to trust my intuition. It took a while to get here, but I have a finely tuned gut instinct from a decade of seeing and treating all the worst kinds of people in the ER. And right now, my instincts are telling me that despite all evidence to the contrary, Dimitri isn’t my worst option. I’m also oddly comforted by the fact that some of the questions he’s asked made me feel like he doesn’t trust me either, like when he demanded to know why I wasn’t asking to go home.
Plus, if it is drugs, it might rupture inside of me. I need someone nearby who can drive me to the hospital in case I overdose. Bonus if he’s calm in an emergency.
“A sedative would have affected you by now,” Dimitri continues, almost to himself, still puzzling out the mystery in my gut.
“No… it was, um… hard. Maybe about this big?” I hold up two fingers about an inch apart. “Kind of sharp. And based on how Kyle was acting in that maze, I think he might have been on something.”
His eyes cut to me briefly, like the rush of honesty is unexpected.
“I get that we’re, like, on the run, but can we stop somewhere for Narcan? Just in case it’s drugs and I need to prevent an OD.”
“I have some in my first-aid kit.”
I feel my brows lift in surprise. “Because you’ve got the best-stocked first aid kit in existence or something?”
This time, when he looks at me, it’s the same look he gave me when I asked if we were going to the police.Don’t ask dumb questions you won’t like the answer to, Nicole.
So, I turn my attention back outside.
We’ve been in the car for roughly an hour so far, and I don’t recognize these rural roads. The further we get from the estate, the more it feels like being able to take a deeper breath, but the air is thinning—the relief of a satisfying lung fill, countered by the panic of not getting enough oxygen from it.
“Where are we going?” I ask to distract myself. My voice is low enough to almost be drowned out by the road noise, but somehow still much too loud in the thick quiet of the cab. But that could just be the breaking-the-silence effect.
Screaming it at him might feel a little more cathartic.
