Post by Lantlas on Oct 2, 2006 18:48:52 GMT -5
Curled up in the passenger seat of a tiny four-seater car, my cell phone began to glow and vibrate. Dawn was approaching, and the lights outside were barely visible through the pouring rain and the condensation on the window. My long blue coat was my only protection from the unseasonably cold weather, and my legs had begun to go numb from sitting in that position too long. Long bodies were not made to cram into that small of a space. Holding the phone in front of my blurry eyes, I didn’t recognize the number that was calling me. Perhaps she had run away to a different place… Perhaps she was using someone else’s phone… Or… it wasn’t her at all.
…
I awoke to an empty space next to me where she would usually lie. My heart instantly skipped a beat, wondering if she’d gone through with what she said she was going to do in her letter, and then that paranoid feeling came over me. The one that always snuck its way through my stomach whenever I feared something really bad was about to happen, and I couldn’t help but fear the worst. It was not unlike my life for something seriously bad to happen to the ones I loved, so I would definitely take every precaution necessary.
The crumbled white sheets left no indication that she’d left in a hurry. Her purse was still there, and her phone was still charging while plugged into the outlet with the one lamp in our room. Pulling my legs around to the floor, trying to wake up enough that my vision was clear, I noticed that even the front door was unlocked. Quietly stepping through the bedroom door and dropping to my knees to investigate the door handle, I observed that it wouldn’t have locked if she’d tried. The center where the key would go was completely drilled through, and the door was left there hanging. Someone was either planning something, or it had already happened.
I ran back to the room and held in the number 1 button on my phone. After two rings, I heard Katelyn’s very tired voice on the receiving end. “Hello,” she groaned through the haze of her own exhaustion.
“Katelyn, it’s Lantlas.”
“Lantlas,” she groaned again. “What time is it?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s an emergency.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“I need to know if I can drop Emerald off with you,” I explained. “There’s been a break-in, and Jade is missing. I need to figure out what’s going on, and I can’t leave Emerald asleep here by herself.”
“Whatever you need to do, Lantlas,” she yawned. “She’ll sleep in our room, and no harm will come to her.”
“Thank you, Katelyn… You’re a lifesaver.”
…
I’d never had to drive a long distance before. Having just gotten my license a few months ago, there’d never really been much of a reason to even leave South Carolina. But there I was, in the middle of the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania on Interstate 84, frantically attempting to reach the given location that I needed to be. I’d recently passed by Wilkes-Barre, which I recognized as a frequent stop for Hardcore Hell Wrestling back when it was in full swing. The arena there was tiny, but the fans were always extremely hot and anticipating the action that HHW would deliver.
My paranoia had gotten the best of me, and I knew I was doing well over 85 in the 55 zone. It was near four in the morning, and only a few occasional twin beacons of light would disturb my vision of the endless road of darkness unfolding before my tired eyes. The miles just didn’t seem to pass any faster. No matter how hard I shifted and pressed in the gas pedal, it only seemed like five miles would pass at a time. Perhaps it was just my mind playing tricks on me with the distance I’d already traveled, but the unchanging clock definitely proved my lack of progression.
Though I knew by heart exactly where I was going, I again glanced down at the directions I’d printed out from the computer. Getting to this point from South Carolina had taken up five pages by itself, so the fact that 187 miles on this section of road still seemed big in comparison said something about the mass panic my mind had really undertaken after quite a few hours for it to build up while trying to get to this location as fast as I could. The odometer showed that I’d only made it 22 miles since taking exit 187 off of Interstate 81 near Scranton, PA, and I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. My frustration was building, as was the growing void in my stomach, fearing that something was going horribly wrong at the place I was going. Just then, the glow in my pocket shifted my attention from the road to my blue dress pants. The caller ID read “private call”, but I was in no position to possibly ignore a call of desperation.
…
As I walked down the sidewalk from the Anderson residence nearby, I unlocked the doors of my new car and relaxed in the front seat for a few seconds, trying to collect myself. The lack of sleep had already begun to take its toll on my focus, so it was time to re-gather and made an effort to figure out what was going on. As I shifted into reverse, I felt a vibration in my pocket. Without glancing at the caller ID, I brought it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Listen here, and listen close,” an obviously modified voice responded on the other end.
“Who is this?”
“You know damn well who it is, and if you don’t, you’re a bigger fool than I remember.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Vengeance,” the voice replied. “For what you’ve done to my life… For how you’ve taken everything I held dear and destroyed it in the blink of an eye.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Emily… I loved her, in a way that I know your inferior brain is incapable of. She was my life, Mr. Anduril. Everything that I’ve ever done in my life, I did to build towards the future we were going to have together. I need her; she was my motivation for waking up and going to work everyday, and now that someone has taken that away from me, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“I didn’t take anything away from you!”
“Oh, but you did,” the voice continued. “Once you came into the picture, once she started with this whole PCW bullshit, her attention suddenly shifted to you. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the conversations between her friends, it was this blue-haired freak known as Lantlas. Suddenly, she wasn’t calling me every night, but your phone number appeared on her phone statement repeatedly. Then, before I knew it, she left me behind to pursue something with you. After everything that’s happened, you do absolutely nothing and win over the love of my life? NO! It doesn’t work that way, and I will have my vengeance. I’ve already taken her away, and now the time has come to hunt you down. You’ve destroyed my life, so I’m going to end yours. Then, Emily will be mine once again.”
“You son of a bitch, you better not touch her!”
“Oh, but I already have, Mr. Anduril. That’s what you took away from me, and now if you want it so bad, you’re going to have to come and get her. I know it’s an awfully long drive to Longmeadow, Massachusetts from there, but I guess that all depends on how much Emily really means to you. Make no mistake about it though, if you contact the authorities, you die. If you get anyone else involved, you die. If you don’t follow my exact demands, you die.”
“What do you want?”
“You will come here to Longmeadow, Massachusetts. You have sixteen hours. Go, now.”
The line went dead, and I instantly pushed the gas to the floor to head back to my locker room. I didn’t have the slightest idea where Longmeadow was, and I had to get the quickest directions possible.
…
“Welcome to North Carolina,” the sign in front of me read. It marked the first time I’d left the state in almost a year, since HHW had come to its close. Back in those days, we were on the road every single week, heading to a different place in the northeast. Pennsylvania, the home of founder Al Laiman, was where most of the events had taken place, so I knew once I made it a little further north, some of the surroundings would begin to look familiar again.
Driving without a radio in the car had already begun to take its toll. Usually, the harmonies of classical music can bring focus back to my mind and let me figure everything out. However, with the redundant hum of the engine being the only soundtrack to my unintentional road trip, my thoughts were in places they shouldn’t have been at the time. Events on the horizon for my career in PCW… Why was I worrying about that at this point? Seemed to me like it should’ve been really low on my priorities list, but at the same time, this trip would have a profound effect on my performance at the next Trauma… and who knows, maybe at Deadly Intentions as well.
Things were getting hot between Grimm and the Prophet, two of PCW’s elite who had never faced each other before. Between Sean Hunter and I, there was really just kind of a mild neglect, for the man really had never impressed me. Our paths had crossed once in a six-man tag match, and I was on the winning side of that confrontation. How he ended up in the mix with the champion and two very worthy competitors was a mystery to me, but then again, so were a lot of things in PCW. His record was mediocre, his performances as of late were nothing too extraordinary, but I somehow had the feeling that he felt himself to be superior to me, as all of my challengers seem to these days, and that his epic encounter with the Elven Warrior would go in his favor. I laughed as I looked back at the long list of humans who believed their self-righteous falsehoods, and I knew I would have no trouble not only earning my thirtieth victory, but in crushing the hopes of yet another arrogant and foolish challenger.
I knew quite well that most of the roster hadn’t been around long enough to see the path I’d traveled in order to get where I was. No, most of them probably viewed me as I had the first time I witnessed an appearance by Ace Anderson. I was proven wrong of my initial impression, but the first time I saw him, I believed him to be an arrogant, over-rated prick. Granted, at the time he was quite arrogant, as he was dubbed “Greatness in the Flesh”, and there was no doubt about him being a prick, but over-rated he was not. I learned that the hard way, and though I managed to overcome it, I learned that lesson. The Sean Hunters, and perhaps the Kaden Keenes and the Andreas Lasiewiczs of PCW, likely viewed me to be the same joke of a champion that I believed Ace was, no matter how many times I left that ring with the championship belt in my hands and the win under my belt. Hell, even after I’d defeated Grimm in the title defense, not to mention for the third time in a row, people still believed that he would be the one to take the belt from me. I was constantly fighting an uphill battle with these people, but it always made it that much sweeter to know they lost all their money by betting against me once again.
As I crunched the can of the twelfth Coke I’d gone through since getting on the highway, I realized it was time for a quick rest stop. Pulling into the small station, I pulled the Lane Darin facial gear over my face. Walking up near the front doors of the building, there was a map of the United States, with a red pin pushed through the cork to indicate exactly where we were currently located. Finding Charleston, then drawing my finger the whole way up to the Massachusetts border, I groaned slightly. I’d traveled about two inches, but still had at least a foot to go. Looking at the clock on my cell phone, I had thirteen more hours to get there. After taking care of business, I immediately sped the car out of the rest area and back on the open road. There wasn’t a second to waste.
…
“Listen to me, Lantlas,” her voice quietly shrieked on the other end. “He wants to kill you.”
My heart broke to hear my Jade’s voice in such pain. “I have to do what’s necessary, Jade.”
“Do you think he’s serious about what he said?”
“Do you really think I’m about to take that chance?”
A small gasp of fright escaped through her mouth, and I heard a rustling sound. “Lantlas, please hurry,” I made out just before the click ended the call. I slipped my cell phone back in my pocket, and looked down at the speedometer. 75. Not quite fast enough. Who knew how much time I really had before something bad happened?
…
Interstate 84 was the final long stretch of road before a small veer onto Interstate 91 to reach Longmeadow. Simple math led me to estimate that the final 200 miles of the trip would take me about three hours tops. I hadn’t glanced at the time recently, and as I did, I realized that I had about six hours to get there. I supposed I had the speed at which I was going to blame for that, but it was a sigh of relief to know that I didn’t have to keep going at that dangerous pace. It was the middle of the night, so the possibility of running into traffic was slim to none.
…
“This is the Massachusetts State Police,” the voice on the other end introduced. “Is this Mr. Lantlas Anduril?”
“It is,” I retorted.
“We’re calling to verify a report filed by one Emily ‘Jade’ DuPrae. Her transcript reads that a death threat was made both on her life and yours, is this correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“I do not,” I responded. “The number was blocked, and I don’t know enough about her past to make a guess on which jealous ex-boyfriend it might be.”
“All right, well we are going to have a track placed on your cell phone, so that any incoming calls made will be traced and verified. For now, I suggest you stay at your home in South Carolina and don’t try to be the hero.”
As the sign indicating that there were about fifteen miles to go until I crossed into New York passed by, I smiled a little bit. “Not a problem, officer.”
…
Given the extra time I’d obtained by making the journey much faster than anticipated, I decided to take a small nap break. The road had started to look like outer space, and I thought for a second that I saw Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast”; only it turned out to be a tree. That was an indication that it was time to rest a little bit before I continued operating this vehicle. Curled up in the passenger seat of a tiny four-seater car, my cell phone began to glow and vibrate. Dawn was approaching, and the lights outside were barely visible through the pouring rain and the condensation on the window. My long blue coat was my only protection from the unseasonably cold weather, and my legs had begun to go numb from sitting in that position too long. Long bodies were not made to cram into that small of a space. Holding the phone in front of my blurry eyes, I didn’t recognize the number that was calling me. However, with the trace on the cell that I knew would be there, my worries were slightly less than they would’ve been had I not received that call.
“Hello?”
“Lantlas, where are you?” It was Jade. “I woke up in the hospital with a gash on my head,” she explained. “I was out for a walk last night and I was attacked.”
“Which hospital?”
“Charleston General, why?”
I lifted the blue coat from my body and immediately reclined the seat back to its upright position. The sunlight had started to creep over the mountaintops, but with the heavy rain, visibility was still quite low. “No reason,” I lied, “just glad to know you’re all right.”
“Are you going to be home when I get back?”
“No,” I replied, looking down at all the miles I’d have to reverse to get back in time for Trauma. “I probably won’t get back ‘til a couple hours before Trauma.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but in case I don’t get to see you before then, good luck in your match with Hunter. I love you.”
“I love you,” I concurred as I clicked off the phone. Something really didn’t seem right about this situation, considering I’d received a frantic call from her hours before, and now all of the sudden she was back in Charleston…
As I jumped over to the driver’s seat, my phone began to vibrate one more time. Feeling relief over the last call, I didn’t think twice about picking it up a second time. “Hello?”
“You really would do anything for that girl, wouldn’t you?”
It was he again. Here and I thought this thing was over… Silly me. “What do you want?”
“Nothing, I got exactly what I wanted. You were stupid enough to drive nine hundred miles away, and now there’s no possible way you can get back in time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You actually believed I would take her the whole way up to Massachusetts, and then actually TELL you where I was? Why would I do that? I told you that to get you as far away from that area as I could… Longmeadow being the first thing I could think of because I believe that’s where Jade went to college… Bay Path, or something like that… Now, she’s without her protector for at least twelve hours, and she already knows she’s getting what she deserves… The same treatment her parents got ever so long ago. I don’t need to kill you, because I know that ending her will make you hurt much worse than putting you out of your own misery ever could.”
“You leave her alone!”
“Such idle threats from someone so far away,” he teased. “Guess you better hope she’s smart enough to stay out of sight for the next half-day or so.”
The line went dead, and I couldn’t believe I was so gullible. I tore away from the rest area in the direction from which I came, while I dialed Jade’s number over and over again, attempting to warn her. Of all times to not pick up the phone, but then I remembered… It was back at our place, and she probably hadn’t even gotten home yet. Who knew what could happen between now and then, or if she’d even make it? The miles started rolling by again painfully slow, as this feeling of helplessness overtook me, deathly afraid of what I’d find when I arrived back in Charleston.
…
I awoke to an empty space next to me where she would usually lie. My heart instantly skipped a beat, wondering if she’d gone through with what she said she was going to do in her letter, and then that paranoid feeling came over me. The one that always snuck its way through my stomach whenever I feared something really bad was about to happen, and I couldn’t help but fear the worst. It was not unlike my life for something seriously bad to happen to the ones I loved, so I would definitely take every precaution necessary.
The crumbled white sheets left no indication that she’d left in a hurry. Her purse was still there, and her phone was still charging while plugged into the outlet with the one lamp in our room. Pulling my legs around to the floor, trying to wake up enough that my vision was clear, I noticed that even the front door was unlocked. Quietly stepping through the bedroom door and dropping to my knees to investigate the door handle, I observed that it wouldn’t have locked if she’d tried. The center where the key would go was completely drilled through, and the door was left there hanging. Someone was either planning something, or it had already happened.
I ran back to the room and held in the number 1 button on my phone. After two rings, I heard Katelyn’s very tired voice on the receiving end. “Hello,” she groaned through the haze of her own exhaustion.
“Katelyn, it’s Lantlas.”
“Lantlas,” she groaned again. “What time is it?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s an emergency.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“I need to know if I can drop Emerald off with you,” I explained. “There’s been a break-in, and Jade is missing. I need to figure out what’s going on, and I can’t leave Emerald asleep here by herself.”
“Whatever you need to do, Lantlas,” she yawned. “She’ll sleep in our room, and no harm will come to her.”
“Thank you, Katelyn… You’re a lifesaver.”
…
I’d never had to drive a long distance before. Having just gotten my license a few months ago, there’d never really been much of a reason to even leave South Carolina. But there I was, in the middle of the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania on Interstate 84, frantically attempting to reach the given location that I needed to be. I’d recently passed by Wilkes-Barre, which I recognized as a frequent stop for Hardcore Hell Wrestling back when it was in full swing. The arena there was tiny, but the fans were always extremely hot and anticipating the action that HHW would deliver.
My paranoia had gotten the best of me, and I knew I was doing well over 85 in the 55 zone. It was near four in the morning, and only a few occasional twin beacons of light would disturb my vision of the endless road of darkness unfolding before my tired eyes. The miles just didn’t seem to pass any faster. No matter how hard I shifted and pressed in the gas pedal, it only seemed like five miles would pass at a time. Perhaps it was just my mind playing tricks on me with the distance I’d already traveled, but the unchanging clock definitely proved my lack of progression.
Though I knew by heart exactly where I was going, I again glanced down at the directions I’d printed out from the computer. Getting to this point from South Carolina had taken up five pages by itself, so the fact that 187 miles on this section of road still seemed big in comparison said something about the mass panic my mind had really undertaken after quite a few hours for it to build up while trying to get to this location as fast as I could. The odometer showed that I’d only made it 22 miles since taking exit 187 off of Interstate 81 near Scranton, PA, and I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. My frustration was building, as was the growing void in my stomach, fearing that something was going horribly wrong at the place I was going. Just then, the glow in my pocket shifted my attention from the road to my blue dress pants. The caller ID read “private call”, but I was in no position to possibly ignore a call of desperation.
…
As I walked down the sidewalk from the Anderson residence nearby, I unlocked the doors of my new car and relaxed in the front seat for a few seconds, trying to collect myself. The lack of sleep had already begun to take its toll on my focus, so it was time to re-gather and made an effort to figure out what was going on. As I shifted into reverse, I felt a vibration in my pocket. Without glancing at the caller ID, I brought it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Listen here, and listen close,” an obviously modified voice responded on the other end.
“Who is this?”
“You know damn well who it is, and if you don’t, you’re a bigger fool than I remember.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Vengeance,” the voice replied. “For what you’ve done to my life… For how you’ve taken everything I held dear and destroyed it in the blink of an eye.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Emily… I loved her, in a way that I know your inferior brain is incapable of. She was my life, Mr. Anduril. Everything that I’ve ever done in my life, I did to build towards the future we were going to have together. I need her; she was my motivation for waking up and going to work everyday, and now that someone has taken that away from me, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“I didn’t take anything away from you!”
“Oh, but you did,” the voice continued. “Once you came into the picture, once she started with this whole PCW bullshit, her attention suddenly shifted to you. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the conversations between her friends, it was this blue-haired freak known as Lantlas. Suddenly, she wasn’t calling me every night, but your phone number appeared on her phone statement repeatedly. Then, before I knew it, she left me behind to pursue something with you. After everything that’s happened, you do absolutely nothing and win over the love of my life? NO! It doesn’t work that way, and I will have my vengeance. I’ve already taken her away, and now the time has come to hunt you down. You’ve destroyed my life, so I’m going to end yours. Then, Emily will be mine once again.”
“You son of a bitch, you better not touch her!”
“Oh, but I already have, Mr. Anduril. That’s what you took away from me, and now if you want it so bad, you’re going to have to come and get her. I know it’s an awfully long drive to Longmeadow, Massachusetts from there, but I guess that all depends on how much Emily really means to you. Make no mistake about it though, if you contact the authorities, you die. If you get anyone else involved, you die. If you don’t follow my exact demands, you die.”
“What do you want?”
“You will come here to Longmeadow, Massachusetts. You have sixteen hours. Go, now.”
The line went dead, and I instantly pushed the gas to the floor to head back to my locker room. I didn’t have the slightest idea where Longmeadow was, and I had to get the quickest directions possible.
…
“Welcome to North Carolina,” the sign in front of me read. It marked the first time I’d left the state in almost a year, since HHW had come to its close. Back in those days, we were on the road every single week, heading to a different place in the northeast. Pennsylvania, the home of founder Al Laiman, was where most of the events had taken place, so I knew once I made it a little further north, some of the surroundings would begin to look familiar again.
Driving without a radio in the car had already begun to take its toll. Usually, the harmonies of classical music can bring focus back to my mind and let me figure everything out. However, with the redundant hum of the engine being the only soundtrack to my unintentional road trip, my thoughts were in places they shouldn’t have been at the time. Events on the horizon for my career in PCW… Why was I worrying about that at this point? Seemed to me like it should’ve been really low on my priorities list, but at the same time, this trip would have a profound effect on my performance at the next Trauma… and who knows, maybe at Deadly Intentions as well.
Things were getting hot between Grimm and the Prophet, two of PCW’s elite who had never faced each other before. Between Sean Hunter and I, there was really just kind of a mild neglect, for the man really had never impressed me. Our paths had crossed once in a six-man tag match, and I was on the winning side of that confrontation. How he ended up in the mix with the champion and two very worthy competitors was a mystery to me, but then again, so were a lot of things in PCW. His record was mediocre, his performances as of late were nothing too extraordinary, but I somehow had the feeling that he felt himself to be superior to me, as all of my challengers seem to these days, and that his epic encounter with the Elven Warrior would go in his favor. I laughed as I looked back at the long list of humans who believed their self-righteous falsehoods, and I knew I would have no trouble not only earning my thirtieth victory, but in crushing the hopes of yet another arrogant and foolish challenger.
I knew quite well that most of the roster hadn’t been around long enough to see the path I’d traveled in order to get where I was. No, most of them probably viewed me as I had the first time I witnessed an appearance by Ace Anderson. I was proven wrong of my initial impression, but the first time I saw him, I believed him to be an arrogant, over-rated prick. Granted, at the time he was quite arrogant, as he was dubbed “Greatness in the Flesh”, and there was no doubt about him being a prick, but over-rated he was not. I learned that the hard way, and though I managed to overcome it, I learned that lesson. The Sean Hunters, and perhaps the Kaden Keenes and the Andreas Lasiewiczs of PCW, likely viewed me to be the same joke of a champion that I believed Ace was, no matter how many times I left that ring with the championship belt in my hands and the win under my belt. Hell, even after I’d defeated Grimm in the title defense, not to mention for the third time in a row, people still believed that he would be the one to take the belt from me. I was constantly fighting an uphill battle with these people, but it always made it that much sweeter to know they lost all their money by betting against me once again.
As I crunched the can of the twelfth Coke I’d gone through since getting on the highway, I realized it was time for a quick rest stop. Pulling into the small station, I pulled the Lane Darin facial gear over my face. Walking up near the front doors of the building, there was a map of the United States, with a red pin pushed through the cork to indicate exactly where we were currently located. Finding Charleston, then drawing my finger the whole way up to the Massachusetts border, I groaned slightly. I’d traveled about two inches, but still had at least a foot to go. Looking at the clock on my cell phone, I had thirteen more hours to get there. After taking care of business, I immediately sped the car out of the rest area and back on the open road. There wasn’t a second to waste.
…
“Listen to me, Lantlas,” her voice quietly shrieked on the other end. “He wants to kill you.”
My heart broke to hear my Jade’s voice in such pain. “I have to do what’s necessary, Jade.”
“Do you think he’s serious about what he said?”
“Do you really think I’m about to take that chance?”
A small gasp of fright escaped through her mouth, and I heard a rustling sound. “Lantlas, please hurry,” I made out just before the click ended the call. I slipped my cell phone back in my pocket, and looked down at the speedometer. 75. Not quite fast enough. Who knew how much time I really had before something bad happened?
…
Interstate 84 was the final long stretch of road before a small veer onto Interstate 91 to reach Longmeadow. Simple math led me to estimate that the final 200 miles of the trip would take me about three hours tops. I hadn’t glanced at the time recently, and as I did, I realized that I had about six hours to get there. I supposed I had the speed at which I was going to blame for that, but it was a sigh of relief to know that I didn’t have to keep going at that dangerous pace. It was the middle of the night, so the possibility of running into traffic was slim to none.
…
“This is the Massachusetts State Police,” the voice on the other end introduced. “Is this Mr. Lantlas Anduril?”
“It is,” I retorted.
“We’re calling to verify a report filed by one Emily ‘Jade’ DuPrae. Her transcript reads that a death threat was made both on her life and yours, is this correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“I do not,” I responded. “The number was blocked, and I don’t know enough about her past to make a guess on which jealous ex-boyfriend it might be.”
“All right, well we are going to have a track placed on your cell phone, so that any incoming calls made will be traced and verified. For now, I suggest you stay at your home in South Carolina and don’t try to be the hero.”
As the sign indicating that there were about fifteen miles to go until I crossed into New York passed by, I smiled a little bit. “Not a problem, officer.”
…
Given the extra time I’d obtained by making the journey much faster than anticipated, I decided to take a small nap break. The road had started to look like outer space, and I thought for a second that I saw Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast”; only it turned out to be a tree. That was an indication that it was time to rest a little bit before I continued operating this vehicle. Curled up in the passenger seat of a tiny four-seater car, my cell phone began to glow and vibrate. Dawn was approaching, and the lights outside were barely visible through the pouring rain and the condensation on the window. My long blue coat was my only protection from the unseasonably cold weather, and my legs had begun to go numb from sitting in that position too long. Long bodies were not made to cram into that small of a space. Holding the phone in front of my blurry eyes, I didn’t recognize the number that was calling me. However, with the trace on the cell that I knew would be there, my worries were slightly less than they would’ve been had I not received that call.
“Hello?”
“Lantlas, where are you?” It was Jade. “I woke up in the hospital with a gash on my head,” she explained. “I was out for a walk last night and I was attacked.”
“Which hospital?”
“Charleston General, why?”
I lifted the blue coat from my body and immediately reclined the seat back to its upright position. The sunlight had started to creep over the mountaintops, but with the heavy rain, visibility was still quite low. “No reason,” I lied, “just glad to know you’re all right.”
“Are you going to be home when I get back?”
“No,” I replied, looking down at all the miles I’d have to reverse to get back in time for Trauma. “I probably won’t get back ‘til a couple hours before Trauma.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but in case I don’t get to see you before then, good luck in your match with Hunter. I love you.”
“I love you,” I concurred as I clicked off the phone. Something really didn’t seem right about this situation, considering I’d received a frantic call from her hours before, and now all of the sudden she was back in Charleston…
As I jumped over to the driver’s seat, my phone began to vibrate one more time. Feeling relief over the last call, I didn’t think twice about picking it up a second time. “Hello?”
“You really would do anything for that girl, wouldn’t you?”
It was he again. Here and I thought this thing was over… Silly me. “What do you want?”
“Nothing, I got exactly what I wanted. You were stupid enough to drive nine hundred miles away, and now there’s no possible way you can get back in time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You actually believed I would take her the whole way up to Massachusetts, and then actually TELL you where I was? Why would I do that? I told you that to get you as far away from that area as I could… Longmeadow being the first thing I could think of because I believe that’s where Jade went to college… Bay Path, or something like that… Now, she’s without her protector for at least twelve hours, and she already knows she’s getting what she deserves… The same treatment her parents got ever so long ago. I don’t need to kill you, because I know that ending her will make you hurt much worse than putting you out of your own misery ever could.”
“You leave her alone!”
“Such idle threats from someone so far away,” he teased. “Guess you better hope she’s smart enough to stay out of sight for the next half-day or so.”
The line went dead, and I couldn’t believe I was so gullible. I tore away from the rest area in the direction from which I came, while I dialed Jade’s number over and over again, attempting to warn her. Of all times to not pick up the phone, but then I remembered… It was back at our place, and she probably hadn’t even gotten home yet. Who knew what could happen between now and then, or if she’d even make it? The miles started rolling by again painfully slow, as this feeling of helplessness overtook me, deathly afraid of what I’d find when I arrived back in Charleston.