I surge forward and eliminate the distance between us, stopping so close that I can smell the sweet mint of his breath above the scent of the lake water. My expression is nothing short of lethal as I glare into his masked face. “Would this be a good time to remind you that I am your client? Or later? This is your job, remember?”
“No, it’s not.”
“But I thought you were a fucking cleaner.”
“You thought wrong, Blunder Barbie.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I have no feckin’ choice.”
Batman gives me his back as he bends to pick up Jamie’s slack arm, hoisting the corpse onto his shoulder with a grunt. When he draws close to me with a glare, I don’t flinch, though my heart etches my bones with every hammered beat.
“You don’t know me,” I hiss.
His glare sears my skin. “And I don’t want to,” he says.
I watch him walk to the tow truck with the body slung across his shoulder. My eyes never stray from his form as it slips into shadow, not even when Conor stops at my side.
“I’m sorry about him,” Conor says, his voice low and quiet as he clutches the back of his neck with a gloved hand. “He’s just … yeah. It’s not been a good night for him. I know it’s probably hard to believe, but it’s nothing personal. And he’s just been doing this too long, I guess.”
I nod and peel my gaze away from the tow truck where Batman is busy wrapping the body in plastic and then a blanket. Though I hear his labored grunt as he hoists Merrick into the back of the vehicle, I keep my attention on the forest. The trees beckon me to find a quiet place where I can sit with my thoughts. Maybe I could find some peace, if the world fell silent, just for a little while—
“We’ll come back with the boom truck tomorrow night and get the car out of the lake. I’ll clean up anything left on the road tonight,” Conor says, interrupting my fleeting fantasy. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face, but I don’t look his way. “Batman there … he can be rough around the edges, but he’s as solid as they come. We’ll get it done. We’ll make sure nothing links you to this place. No records. No evidence. Soon it will be like the whole accident never even happened.”
“Right,” I whisper, but my smile is fleeting. If it was supposed to reassure him that I’m totally fine, it failed. When I glance in Conor’s direction, I can see the concern flicker in his eyes, even though the rest of his features are obscured by his mask. I try a little harder with that smile of mine. “What accident, right?”
“That’s right,” he says with a laugh. He probably thinks it’s just a half-hearted, lame joke when he walks away to help the disgruntled Dark Knight fetch his scuba gear from the rocks and place it in the car. And though a faint trace of a smile lingers on my face, waiting for when they both pass by, I feel more alone than ever beneath it.
Budget Batman tosses the wet suit into the open trunk of his vintage Dodge Charger. He’s gotten changed into a pair of black jeans that hug his muscular thighs, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a fresh ski mask. He pulls on a fresh set of leather gloves and strides toward me as I resist the urge to clutch the gun that hides in the confines of my bag.
“Time to go,” he grits out as he draws close to where I plant my feet in the center of the road.
I cross my arms. “How about, ‘Time to go, please.’ Or, ‘Shall we depart? My Batmobile awaits, fair maiden.’”
There’s a steady rumble on the cool breeze. For a moment I think it’s a distant vehicle approaching. Maybe one with a shitty muffler.
But no.
It’s him. Growling.
I back away but he plows into me. In a nausea-inducing flash of movement, he tosses me over his shoulder and spins, and then my guts are bouncing against his bone and muscle as he stalks toward the vehicles. I catch my belongings before they fall, and the urge to shoot him in the ass is nearly as irresistible as the one to vomit down his back.
“Let me the fuck down.” My efforts to whack him are just as futile as everything else I try, from squirming to swearing to attempting to trip him with my giant bag.
“Sure thing, you feckin’ catastrophe.”
In one swift motion, I’m plopped down hard on my ass with my legs dangling out of the trunk of his car.
“Absolutely not,” I snarl. I try to shimmy out of the trunk but it feels like my brain has been sucked out of my head and replaced with soup. Everything sloshes. My thoughts. The world. The contents of my stomach. It takes too long to remember how to make my limbs work. By the time I do, Batman has me caged, his gloved hands braced against the base of the trunk on either side of my legs. The edges of his thumbs touch my thighs. He takes up all the space around me, and even though I close my eyes, his presence is everywhere. I smell him, mint and lake water. I feel the warmth of his breath on my face. When I meet his gaze his marine-blue eyes are the first thing I lock on to, their intensity amplified by the black ski mask that frames them.
A lump lodges in my throat. The tremor starts in my arms and creeps toward my hands. “Please, you don’t understand,” I say.
“In.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“Please,” I whisper. “Not in here. I’ll go with the tow truck.”
“No, you won’t. Not with the mountain of evidence my colleague will be taking out of here. And I’m not going to risk you being seen sitting up front,” Batman grits out.
“That sounds extreme and more like you just don’t want to sit next to me.”
Batman shrugs and leans an inch closer. There’s barely a thread of space between us. His eyes drop to my lips, which are smeared with thick makeup, painted crimson and black. “I guess you’ll never know,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “But there is no other option.”
My nose stings but I refuse the sudden temptation of frustrated tears. I’m not going to cry, not in front of this asshole. If he feels my knees shaking, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He just leans closer, his eyes hooked to mine. I know he won’t back down. And he can see it too, the moment the realization truly settles in my veins.
My shoulders drop. “I’m begging you,” I whisper.
“You’re not doing a very good job of it, I’m afraid.”
“You really are a dick.”
“And you want to get out of here as much as I do. This is your only ride out, so you’d better keep quiet,” he says, and then his hand is on my head, pushing me down with gentle pressure as the other guides the lid down behind me, forcing me into darkness until I squeeze my eyes shut. “When we get to Providence, I’ll let you out and you can cause havoc on your own time. Until then, try to behave yourself.”
The trunk clicks closed. My eyes open to the total darkness. My heartbeat thunders in my ears. The tears I hid from him come full force now as I curl my body into a tight ball and hug my bag to my chest, Batman’s discarded wet suit damp against the top of my head. I pull the arm of it down to rest across my forehead where a film of congealed blood and white makeup and sweat begs to be scraped from my skin.
You’re okay. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay. You know what to do.
I repeat my mantra until my panicking breaths slow just enough to pick up the sound of the muffled words exchanged between Batman and Conor. It’s a clipped and pragmatic conversation. My hope that Conor will talk some sense into his friend is a fleeting one, because a moment later the driver’s door creaks open and slams shut. The engine starts with a growl, and then we’re rolling away.
I need a new plan.
I harness my fury to stay focused as we maneuver around a couple of gentle turns and settle into a steady speed. When I’m sure Batman must feel confident that I’ll behave myself, I bang my fist on the roof of the trunk in a riot of flesh against metal.
“Not sure if you’ve heard this before, but you’re a total asshole,” I yell, tears still leaking from my eyes. My banging becomes a percussion to punctuate my chant. “Ass-hole, ass-hole, ass-hole.”
“Pipe down,” he snarls before applying more pressure on the accelerator.
“Come make me, I fucking dare you.” I bang again, and he finally turns the music up to drown me out. The moment it’s on, I soften my blows and protests, and then I let them fade away.
When I’m satisfied he thinks he’s won this round, I turn on my phone’s flashlight and rummage in my bag.
My maniacal cackle is drowned out by the engine and music as I pull out the screw-in whammy bar for my Jackson guitar with my sweaty, shaking hand. I may have been born a Montague, which comes with its own set of batshit-crazy history, but I’m a Covaci too, and my stepdad taught me all kinds of useful tricks, like how to break free of cable ties. How to tie a hangman’s knot. How to load a gun.
And how to escape the trunk of a vehicle.
The vintage latch is a little tricky, but on the plus side there’s probably no warning light on the mechanical dashboard to tip my crusty chauffeur off when I manage to pop it free on the third try. I hold on to the mechanism to keep the trunk’s lid open just enough that I can watch the road fall away behind us. We’re still in the middle of nowhere—no traffic, no pedestrians, hardly any houses. It’s just the forest. Me and the dark and the red taillights that bleed into the black night.
The car slows. The driveshaft disengages as Batman shifts gears and brakes. The taillights brighten. One blinks, signaling a right-hand turn.
I pop the lid just enough to slip free of the trunk before we’ve rolled to a stop. It’s not a graceful dismount. I smash a knee on the asphalt and tear a hole in my sweats. The exhaust fumes spill across my face when I kneel behind the bumper. I gently hold the lid down so that he won’t notice it in the rearview. The old hinges are stiff enough that it doesn’t spring open when I lessen the pressure. I can’t close it completely, but if Batman doesn’t spot me as he turns, I might have enough time to disappear.
The lights dim as he takes his foot off the brake. With a growl and a puff of gray smoke, the engine revs. The car coasts around the turn and rolls away.
I linger for just a breath of time, crouched on the empty road. And then I rise, wipe the cooling tears off my face, and walk away in the opposite direction.
You don’t know me, I think when I cast a final glance to the car before it disappears around a bend.
And he’s right.
He doesn’t want to.