Crash Into You (2 page)

             
It was empty.

             
“Bitch!”  His livid voice filled the empty room.  Fury rose up in his gullet, obliterating every thought.   In a black rage, he grabbed the box and threw it against the wall.   It landed with a soft crack and slide to the floor.  That was unsatisfying, so he punched a hole through the sheetrock.

             
“Fuck,” he muttered, holding his smarting fist.   There were too many clamoring emotions screaming at him for attention, too much rage to absorb.

             
This was catastrophically, epically bad.    That money didn’t even belong to him.  Carlos’s guys would be coming for him; they expected it at eleven o’clock tomorrow, and there was no way to put them off.   He had to find Aimee.   He needed that money.

He felt out of control, wanting to beat her to a bloody pulp for leaving him, for walking away like she didn’t a give a damn.  The desire to destroy was so strong, he didn’t know how he would ever get it out of his system.

              His looked at his bloody knuckles, seething.  Passing a mirror in the hallway, he saw that his face was a magenta shade of Pissed Off and he knew he had to calm down because he had to think.  He had to find six hundred thousand dollars.  

             
He had to find Aimee.  He had less than twenty-four hours.             

Three

Aimee
Baxter was afraid of flying, but she was coping – sort of – with the help of a Bloody Mary.   She took a long last sip, tongued an ice cube in her mouth, and put the empty cup in the seat pocket in front of her.  The alcohol had not done much to sooth her jagged nerves; it had only made her feel a little dizzy.  

The
man assigned to the middle seat had moved to the aisle to give them both a little breathing space.  The coach cabin was quiet and soothingly dark, with most of the overhead lights out.

             
Still, her neck was crawling weirdly.  She couldn’t settle down.   She tried to convince herself it was just nerves – excitement even – because she was embarking on a new phase of her life.   Think of the positive things, she told herself.  Imagine Portland – green and fresh as Spring itself.  How nice it was going to be to see her sister Kimberly and her hubby, Rob.

             
That line of thinking distracted her for about four seconds before she felt the plane bounce subtly on the currents of air.  She swallowed a gasp, knowing she was being ridiculous.  Of course the plane bounced a little bit– it was completely normal.  

As she
forced herself to loosen the white-knuckle death-grip on the armrest, she knew she was being irrational.  Heck, she was scared of her own shadow these days.  She jumped at loud noises, startled when the phone rang, and dreaded the creaks and pops of the house settling at night.  She was hyper-alert and watchful, always afraid Seth would catch her off guard and either find something to criticize, or blow up without provocation.

Flying was safe!  Statistics said so.  Certainly it was safer than living with a sociopath.

Despite her lifelong phobia of all things winged, Aimee chose to board Flight 134 because Seth would be much more likely to catch her if she attempted to drive cross-country.  He was a police officer; he could have reported the car missing, or her missing, and every cop between Washington D.C. and Portland, Oregon would be on the lookout for a petite blue-eyed brunette in a 1999 Volvo.

How she hated his constant surveillance.  Sometimes it was overt, like the police cruiser that was often at the end of her street.   Sometimes it was a little more subtle.    Just a feeling that she was being watched.

No more of that.  No more diminishing herself by pretending that kind of life was normal, even as she was suffocating.   She was so close to being free. 

She was eager to be wheels-down in Portland.  Once she was safe at Kimberly and Rob’s house where
Seth and his police power couldn’t touch her, she would finally exhale.

Kimberly and Rob
were letting her stay with them for a while until she got settled.  She should be able to get a job pretty quickly.  Not that she really needed one with all that cash in her suitcases, but she craved work and the daily interaction of office life.   She thought of what she might put on a resume in order to get a graphic design job in Portland.  Though, she might not even bother with graphic design.  There were lots of paths she could take once she was safely out of Seth’s reach.

She had been in a discovery phase when she met Seth.   Teaching yoga and pilates, picking up some MBA credits at night and even considering becoming a veterinarian.  That one was unlikely, but it didn’t matter.  It was a
possibility
.

She was enjoying the process of exploring options for her future
when Seth encouraged her to drop school and yoga so she could work from home, doing freelance design.

She had capitulated – holy merlot,
she was so stupid – and ended up creating web designs from the comfort and safety of her own living room, Photoshopping for strangers.

             
Then, two days ago, she’d discovered the money.   The magnificent, life-changing money.   Enough to buy her freedom.

             
She was going to mail a letter to Kimberly and needed a stamp.  Seth didn’t like her in his office, but that was where he kept the stamps.  She found them in his roll-top desk.  She tore one out of the book, then carefully replaced it exactly where she found it, praying Seth wouldn’t confront her about it later.

As she turned to leave, she no
ticed a plain white bankers box on the floor.  She paused, curious and a little nervous.   Had she accidentally placed it there?  In the next second, she realized that was ridiculous; she’d never seen that box before in her life.  Seth was obsessively neat.  Everything had a place it belonged and he expected it to be there at all times.  But the box clearly did not belong on the floor of Seth’s office.  Aimee crossed the room to the out-of-place box.   She hesitated, sensing it might be a trap of some kind.   Seth wasn’t above playing stupid tricks on her, testing her to make sure she followed all the rules that he’d set out for her.  But her natural curiosity was in overdrive, too powerful to deny.  She bent down and with her fingertip, lifted the lid.

             
Aimee jumped back, stunned.  She stood over the box, pressing her hands to her rapidly pounding heart.  
What the hell was that?

Her eyes
devoured the stacks of hundred dollar bills, green and creamy-white and Ben Franklin stared back at her with his mild, bemused, chubby face. 
Stacks and stacks of money
.  She had never seen so much money in one place.  It looked unreal. 

             
For one astonished moment, the house was silent as death. Ringing, clamoring silence, full of energy.   There did not seem to be any thoughts in her head at all.  

             
She stepped to the box again and reached inside, letting her fingernails touch the cash.  
Holy cow.
   It was not a dream.  She picked up a thick stack of cash, surprised by the weight of it.  The bills were brand new, with that particular new money smell.  Stiff and fresh in her hands.

             
“Oh my God,” she whispered aloud to the empty room.  The first dizzy rays of happiness began to blaze through her.   She wanted to laugh – but then realized this was a huge secret.  Seth hadn’t told her about this and she had no idea where he got it.   Maybe he embezzled it.  Or robbed a bank.    She certainly wouldn’t put it past him.

             
The twist of Seth’s key in the lock jumpstarted her out of the fugue.  She put the money back, covered the box, and quickly ran out of the office, down the hall, into the bedroom.  The front door opened and Seth called out for her.   From the doorway of the bedroom where she was trying to calm her racing her heart and get her breath under control, she noticed the postage stamp still in her hand.   She slipped it into the pocket of her shorts.  Pasting a pleasant smile on her face, she stepped out of the bedroom and hurried down the stairs to greet Seth, the way he liked.  

             
“Where you been?”  He seemed to be in a good mood, relatively speaking.   Even so, she loathed the sight of him.   She’d begun to despise him years ago, but that money had unleashed something inside her.  She suddenly saw all the possibilities of the world, all the things he’d kept from her.   He was now an obstacle that must be overcome, a barrier to her real life and happiness.

             
“Bathroom,” she answered. “I have a terrible headache.  I’m going to take a hot bath.”

             
“I just got home,” he groused.   He started taking off his gun from his hip, checked it, then tossed it carelessly onto the sofa.

             
She rubbed her temples in exaggerated pain.  “I know, but I really feel bad.  I’m going to soak.  You don’t mind, do you?”  She offered a pathetic smile.  

             
“Whatever.”

             
She walked into the bathroom and locked the door, thankful for the privacy.   The bathroom was one of the few places Seth didn’t go ballistic at the sight of a closed door.  
As long as it didn’t stay closed for too long
. 

With shaking hands, she undressed.   A glimpse at herself in the mirror revealed a pale face with splotchy red cheeks.  She did look ill, like she was suffering from a headache.   Her world had suddenly cracked and the first whiff of fresh opportunity was teasing her.   Such a thing tended to play havoc on the appearance, she supposed.

Turning away from the reflection, she climbed into the tub and began to mull her options.

That money in the box in the box dangled before her like a
passkey to freedom.  Seth controlled the household finances, so she had very limited access to cash – one reason she’d not been able to escape before now.   Or, rather, it was one reason she’d allowed herself to remain a prisoner in her own home.  It was her own choice to put herself in this position, she reminded herself sternly.   Her actions led her here, to this prison.   It was vital to take responsibility for her role in this fiasco.  If she didn’t, she would forever be a victim.

             
Over the years, Kimberly, had offered to send cash, plane tickets, and other resources.  Aimee refused the help every time it was offered.    Shame and the belief that she had to leave on her own terms always prevented her from accepting Kimberly’s lifeline, no matter how tempting it was.

             
Over the last month or so, Seth began acting very strange.  His mood swings were wilder than usual.   Some days he’d show flickers of the person he had been in the beginning.   Charming, polite.  Other days, he was angry, obsessively monitoring her so closely she could barely breathe.  Life was becoming unbearable, until the night he came home and said they should think about getting married and having a kid.

             
That had been the jumpstart she needed to start planning her escape.   No way was she going to legally tie herself to him – or, more importantly, subject an innocent child to this madness.  She’d begun to reconsider Kimberly’s offer, her own pride be damned.   Then she found the box of mysterious money.

She would have to move fast because she didn’t know what that money was for.  Surely Seth wouldn’t leave it in the house indefinitely.  She had to construct a plan for her future, and she had to do it tonight.
 

The next morning after Seth went to work, Aimee called her sister and told her she was leaving Seth.  Kimberly’s gleeful shriek forced her to pull the phone away to preserve her eardrums.

“Can I come to Portland?” She asked when Kimberly quieted down.

“Oh shut up,” Kimberly replied, and Aimee cracked a smile.  “It’s about damn time.   Yes, come, absolutely.”

“I need your help,” she said.  “I need you to call an airline, make a reservation for me.   When he discovers I’m missing, the first thing he’s going to do is check my phone and I don’t want him to see any airlines listed.” 

“Correction: the first thing he’s going to do is call me, demanding to know where you are.”

“Deny, deny, deny.   Say you have no idea what’s going on.”

Kimberly was quiet for a moment, maybe coming to the same realization that Aimee was: that it was absurd to need subterfuge to operate in your normal life.   Escape was necessary.

“Okay, I’ll make your reservation. Call you right back.”

              That evening, with cash packed into suitcases, a backpack,  and her purse, Aimee boarded a plane at Dulles International.  Because the bulk of the money was in suitcases that were checked, it was never scanned.  A couple thousand was stuffed in her purse, and the backpack at her feet was crammed full of cash.   She hadn’t bothered to count it, reasoning that she could do that once she was in Portland.