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Her heart thudded against her sternum as the blood rushed to her ears. The sound of the fear she currently experienced was alive and sitting in the pit of her stomach, trying to be birthed into the nightmare that had camped out overnight in their backseat. Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. Oh God! I’m freaking out.
“Cabrina, don’t freak out on me. I need you in the moment. I need your head clear and thinking with me,” Gabriel said calmly.
He didn’t feel calm in the least. He too was freaking out internally, but the agent in him kicked in. I must remain calm. She needs to talk to me. Talk this through.
“Talk to me, Cabrina,” he said to his wife.
“You have a gun! You stuck a gun in that man’s mouth,” she yelled, gripping onto the oh shit bar in the car.
“I have a gun, yes. I am a government operative, so yes, I have a gun,” he repeated.
“You have it in the car under the seat! Was it under the seat while I was driving?”
“Cabrina, I have two weapons. One I keep in the car under the seat just in case such an emergency arrives like today or there are any other weird happenstances,” he said.
“Two? You are telling me you have another one,” she wanted to know, trying desperately to control her breathing.
“The other one is in my bag,” he said, watching his rear-view mirror.
“I’m not okay with guns, Gabriel,” she said to him.
“Well, you need to be,” he said. “Being my wife comes with a few issues and fears you are going to have to approach, deal with, and be prepared to handle.”
“I’m not handling this well. I am not handling this well at all,” she said, feeling herself start to hyperventilate. “I don’t understand. Why was he in our car?”
To Gabriel, that was the winning question. She was thinking. He liked that. Her words also made him think as well. Why was he in our vehicle?
Spotting a well-lit gas station up the road, he pressed his foot on the gas pedal, speeding up. Signaling with the blinker, he maneuvered the car into the fueling station, coming to a slow stop. Why was he in the vehicle?
“Cabrina, get out,” he said. “Look under the seats, in between the seat, under the mats and everywhere in between. We have to see if he left anything in here.”
She flung open the door, searching in the seat warmed by her butt, then the sides of the door and under her seat.
“I found your iPad mini,” she said to him. “It must have fallen out of your bag.”
Gabriel froze. His eyes wide as he forced his legs to move, coming around the car. He took the device from her hand, checking to see if it was on.
“Gabe?” she asked, concerned over the expression on his face.
“I don’t have an iPad mini,” he said.
Cabrina’s breath caught in her throat, causing her to choke on her own saliva. It didn’t make any sense. This can’t be happening. She watched his finger slide over the screen, looking for the app which would explain why the device was in the car.
“This device has a ‘find me’ function on it,” he said. “The person on the other end can activate the app and determine the precise location of the mini. This is how they planned to track us to where we are going.”
“Why, Gabe?”
He had answers but all of them would only scare the crap out of her. He was nervous enough himself about the intentions of the kooky couple. Luckily, the device wasn’t password protected and he opened the settings function to locate the name of the owner. Judith Wright.
“I need to make a phone call,” he said. “Get in and drive. Watch the speed limit as you go, okay?”
“I’m shaking like a leaf and you want me behind the wheel,” she said in amazement.
“Yes. If you are driving, you can’t freak out, plus I need my hands,” he told her. “Let’s move.”
Cabrina slid behind the wheel as Gabriel secured his safety belt in the passenger seat. He needed help. Punching in the number one on his speed dial, he called his father, who was a notoriously early riser. The phone rang nearly five times before Josiah Neary picked up.
“This better be good, Gabe. You scared the BeJeezus out of me and your Mom,” Josiah said into the line.
“Dad, I got a bogie on my tail. Two as a matter of fact, and both are crazier than a wet hen,” he told his father.
Josiah Neary was all ears. “Talk to me, son,” he said, touching his wife’s leg, trying to make her go back to sleep. He stood up, easing into his heavy coat and heading outside onto the front porch of the old hunting cabin he used for recreation, but now his eldest son and wife called home.
“I picked them up in Amarillo. They seemed off, but when I went into Oklahoma City with the couple, we shared the same hotel and then some dinner, but after that, things got weird,” he told his father.
“How weird?”
“The woman, one Judith Wright, was found hiding in the bushes at 5:00 in the morning weird. She was waiting, thinking I was going to try to sneak out on them. As a second measure, her husband, whom she calls Paunch because of his belly, was hiding out in the car kind of weird,” he said.
“Oh shit,” Josiah said.
“Language, Dad. Intelligent people don’t use profanity to express themselves,” Gabriel said.
“Fuck me, but those don’t sound like intelligent people,” Josiah said. “They sound dangerous.”
“The first two words you just used is what they want. I found an iPad mini in the rental I’m driving. They are using it as a tracker,” he said to his father.
“Where ya headed?”
“Coming your way. Should be there Tuesday afternoon,” he said. “Right now, I am making a beeline for Little Rock, then aiming for Memphis tonight.
“Memphis is where they are going to make their move,” he told his son. “Do they know your intended destination?”
“No. They think I am headed to Kentucky,” Gabe said.
“Good. I’m going to book you a room at the Lorraine. It is a National site now and if they do anything stupid, we can get them locked up nice and tidy for acts on Federal property,” Josiah told him.
“Dad, I have a really bad feeling about these two,” Gabe said.
“Regular bad feeling or did your Neary senses start to tingle?”
“Neary senses are in overdrive, since the first night,” he said. “I am making another call and stopping for breakfast in a crowded place, and then I will call you from Memphis.”
“I will have the cavalry on standby,” Josiah said. “Do you know where they are from or heading?”
Gabriel breathed deeply, closing his eyes to replay the conversation from Amarillo in his head. Wine. His folks. Kentucky.
“Nashville. They are headed to Nashville, coming up from Odessa, Texas where he said they had a family. Judy, that’s what she called herself, said they made a stop in Abilene as well,” Gabriel said to his father.
“Good to know. Be safe and see you tomorrow afternoon,” Josiah told him.
Up until this point, Gabriel had not mentioned a very important detail, which Cabrina took note of, but she kept her eyes on the road. The sleepiness was gone, and she was wide awake and wired for sound.
“Dad, I have a surprise for you and Mom,” he said.
“Sounds good. I am also interested to hear how things went in Vegas,” Josiah said exhaling a loud sigh. “Gabe, it is going to be hard to leave here. Your mother is trying to steal this woman’s child and take it with us back to Virginia.”
“Don’t leave until I get there, okay?”
“You just skirted me being nosey. I can’t wait to hear how things went. I haven’t heard from Bleu, so I’m going to wait to hear it all first hand,” he said.
“Good enough. Love you, Dad,” Gabriel said.
“Right back at you,” Josiah said, hanging up the phone.
Inside the cabin in Georgia, Mary was preparing a bottle for Michelle, the baby which had stolen her heart. However, a call from Gabe so early in the morning meant something was askew, especially if her husband took the call outside away from listening ears. All her sons were accomplished men, but a five-a.m. call was never a good way to start any day.
“Everything alright, Joe?” Ahe asked her husband of 45 years.
“Yeah, Gabe’s on his way here. He should be arriving tomorrow afternoon,” Josiah said, leaving out a great number of details. If he told his wife that Gabriel said he had a surprise for them, she wouldn’t give the boy any peace. The last thing his son needed was to explain himself over the phone to his Mother.
“That’s nice,” Mary said. “We haven’t heard from Isiah. I hope things went well in Las Vegas.”
By Josiah Neary’s calculations, they must have gone really well if a couple was now stalking his boy. Years of FBI training had taught him a couple is not going to go after a single man. Gabriel had someone with him. Why didn’t he make mention of her? I have a surprise.
Josiah just bet he did. His Neary intuition kicked in as well. Knowing his second son like the back of the knots on his knuckles, he just he did have a surprise.
****
CABRINA DROVE NONSTOP into Little Rock. Her stomach growled in adamant protest that it required food, but she needed a minute to process a vast number of things. One being that her husband failed to mention her existence to his parents, leaving her to sit upright in a tense position that was causing her back to ache. She leaned her head left and right to reduce the tightness in her neck and shoulders. Gabriel sensed her tension.
“I didn’t tell them about you because you don’t know my mother,” he said. “She would start calling every hour, asking a million questions, then she would want to go shopping to get you gifts. After that, she would call back six more times for your dress, shoe, and bra size, all leading up to the winning jackpot question of when are we going to give her grandchildren.”
“I understand,” she said. “I will be a surprise for certain. Does Tameka know I’m coming?”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said. “My hopes were that would be a welcomed treat for your friend as well.”
Her quietness was concerning him. They would enter the outskirts of Little Rock soon and she was too quiet for his liking. He needed to get her mind onto something else.
“Let’s stop for breakfast and call your parents, you know, to touch base,” he said. “We’ve been on the road since Friday and now we are on Monday, not getting back to Ohio until the weekend. Just to be safe, let’s give them an update.”
He said it with a smile, but she didn’t feel like smiling. They were being stalked by two crazy people who wanted to have sex with them and maybe dismember their bodies and keep their ears for souvenirs or worse. A man had been hiding in the back seat of their car. Judy was staked out in the bushes like some animal ready to pounce on her prey and to make matters worse, those two numbskulls were tracking them with a simple device. The world was coming to an end.
Fear of the unknown hit her as she thought about Aisha. Tameka. Whatever the fuck her name is now, went through something worse being held captive by some man. I’m terrified to hear what she’d gone through. I can’t be strong for her when I’m barely holding my shit together now.
The five-hour drive seemed like nothing as she courted the wayward thoughts floating in her grey matter.
“Let’s stop at the Purple Cow for breakfast,” Gabriel said. “You can get a purple milkshake and call your folks, and we can get a purple tee. That is my favorite color.”
“Purple?”
“Yeah, I think the color is majestic,” he said. “Plus, we need gas.”
“What about the iPad?”
“We will leave it in the car under the seat. We will roll into Memphis, check into the Lorraine, and then it will be over,” he said confidently.
“The Lorraine Motel? Where MLK was shot.”
“Yes, but I don’t plan to stay the night. We will stop in Murfreesboro and then in the morning, head on into Georgia,” he said.
“Okay,” she said softly, exiting the freeway and following his verbal directions.
The car was fueled up first before heading to the most purple place she’d ever seen in her life. The tables, booths, chairs, and everything else looked as if Prince had walked in and decided to have a restaurant themed in his royal honor. Gabriel, excited, purchased two tee shirts for their arrival in Georgia in the morning, looking like two matching Americans on vacation in Paris.
He was currently wearing the ugly Christmas tee shirt, so it was a compromise. Marriage is a compromise. Her husband carrying two guns and her being okay with it was a compromise. I need to call my parents. Dreading the moment, she took out her phone and activated Siri to call Mom who picked up on the second ring.
“Hello, there ‘Brina,” Courtney Robinson said into the line. “How are you, sweetie?”
“I’m good Mom, still on vacation,” she said.
“Are you really on vacation or traipsing around Georgia looking for Aisha? I hope not. We tried to warn that foolish girl about chasing rainbows, but she wouldn’t listen,” Courtney said to her daughter.
“Mom, I didn’t call to talk about her. I called to touch base and let you know I was doing well.”
“Well, nothing. I miss you. When are you coming home? I planned a girl’s night for us. and I am getting Jake to come over and give us massages,” her mom said.
“That sounds nice,” Cabrina responded. “I could use a massage. My shoulders are tight from sitting in a car for almost three days.”
Constance asked her daughter, “In a car. Where are you?”
“Currently in Little Rock and headed towards Memphis,” she said, looking at Gabe.
“Memphis? What in the world?” Courtney said, rising from her desk to walk to the other side of the building to share the call with Nelson, her husband. Cabrina could tell her mother was moving by the sound of her voice. Next, she would put the phone on speaker so her father could hear everything being said.
“Honey, I’m with your father. Nelson, our baby is in Little Rock,” she told him.
“Doing what?” His booming voice came through the line. Gabriel was able to hear it loud and clear as the man spoke. In his estimation, based on the voice, Nelson Robinson sounded really big.
“I’m on vacation, Daddy,” she said, looking at the purple milkshake which had just arrived. She sucked on the straw, expecting it to taste grapey, but it was vanilla. Vanilla, saturated with purple food coloring. She began to wonder if her poop would be purple as well. Focus.
“You are driving! That is not safe, Cabrina, for a young woman to travel alone anymore. There are crazies out there constantly scouting for their next victim,” Nelson said with emphasis.
“I’m not alone, Daddy,” she said, trying to find a means to move the conversation forward because it was currently going sideways.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are you with that horny numbskull DeShondra? I hope not. That girl would hump a horse if it smiled at her long enough,” Nelson said with dismay.
“Daddy, that is not a nice thing to say about my friend, and no, I am not with DeShondra,” she said with a pause, looking across the table at Gabriel. “I’m with my...man.”
“What man? When did you get a man? Why are you traveling with a man who hasn’t given me the courtesy of coming to this house to meet me and look me in the eyes? He’s a no count man if you ask me,” Nelson said. “I want to meet him.”
“You will meet him, Daddy. I think you are going to like him,” she said.
Gabriel gave her an assuring smile, mouthing the word “Sunday.”
“Daddy, I will be home for Sunday dinner. You can meet him then,” she said to her father.
“On the road, my ass. I hope he has good intentions and not taking advantage of my baby,” Nelson said. “If you walk in this door telling me you are in love and about to have his baby, I’m going to sock him in the nose and then shoot him in his wiener!”
Gabriel’s eyes got wide and he took off his glasses. What did I ever do to him? I think that is a little drastic if you ask me.
“Stop it, Daddy,” she said, frustrated. “See, this is why I never bring anyone home to meet you two. This is so silly. You trust me with millions of dollars in annuities, yet you doubt my judgment when it comes to men.”
“George Brimmer,” Nelson said flatly. The young man Cabrina threatened to run off with in high school. Thankfully, the young man went off to the military after finding out six young women ended up expecting his children after prom night. He was grateful his daughter had not become number seven.
“I was 17, Daddy, and thought I was in love,” she said in her own defense.
“Ricardo Montoya,” Courtney said, adding to the bad decisions her daughter had made about men. Cabrina didn’t know the man was married but became suspicious when a woman kept calling her phone and hanging up. After a date one night with Ricardo, she followed him to a suburban home where he was greeted by a woman and three children.
It hurt that her parents kept a tally of her bad romantic choices. Any other people she dated over the years, she kept quiet. The past three years she focused more on her Etsy shop and making enough to leave the family-run company. Her parents were indeed loving and supportive people, and in her heart, she knew she’d married Gabriel to escape the monotony of her life. Cabrina was also trying to escape her parents. Loving and controlling were synonymous with her father. Being a good girl meant obeying his every word and allowing her mother to fawn over her like she was a baby doll. It panged her, but she needed to get away from them and live a life of her own.
“Conversation is over. Love you both. Goodbye,” she said, clicking off the line.
Gabriel was grinning. “I can’t wait to meet them,” he said with his eyebrows slightly lifted. He knew how insufferable his mother could be when something happened to one of them. Zeke being shot was a prime example. The idea of Mary Neary only having one child to care for nearly made him laugh.
“This milkshake is going to mess with my stomach. My nerves are on edge and I really, really want to strangle someone right now, and most of all, I wanted to visit the Clinton Library,” she said frowning.
“Why would you want to do that?” He asked incredulously.
“Because he was the first President I ever voted for when I turned 18,” she said.
“I think we can work it into our schedule since we are here,” Gabriel said.
“Thank you,” Cabrina said softly. The distraction would be a welcome change after he spoke with and prepared her for the night’s sting operation of Paunch and Judy, but first, he needed to make a call to his boss.
