The inside of the cab had been silent for almost two hours.
Duke drove a truck. Big surprise. One that I practically needed a ladder to get into. I bet Duke got immense satisfaction from seeing me scramble into the passenger’s seat without an ounce of grace. He, of course, wasn’t about to help me up. Which was good, since my skin had still been tingling after envisioning Duke throwing me over his shoulder.
The goodbye with Andre had not been emotional. We didn’t do that kind of thing. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.
As it was, I still couldn’t handle it, since I’d spent the last hour trying to hold my shit together and not let Duke see any weakness.
He’d seemed more than happy with the silence. Well, he hadn’t seemed happy. At all. But he’d not been radiating menace like he had in my foyer, so that was something.
But I would not mute myself to quell his macho-man fury. I was not one to silence myself because a man was more comfortable with the quiet.
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
I should’ve asked this a little earlier, like before I got in the car, considering the answer.
“Montana,” Duke said, eyes on the road, jaw hard.
When he’d worked for me before, he hadn’t tried to pretend that he liked me. But he’d also held onto a thin veil of professionalism that I’d prodded at because I was darkly fascinated with him. Because I was obsessed with him. I’d wanted a response, hadn’t I? And he was giving me one. Just not the one I wanted. Not the one I craved.
He was not here to give in to my fantasies. He was here to protect me. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“Montana?” I repeated.
He nodded once.
I quickly calculated the distance from LA to Montana. Granted, without the location of where in the state we were going, this wasn’t going to give me an accurate number but the ballpark was bad enough.
“That’s like twenty hours of driving.”
Duke didn’t look at me. He kept his gaze on the road as if he was taking a test on it. “Ah, the superstar can also calculate distances.”
I glared at him. “Pull over, I’m not driving for twenty hours with you.” Even though I put all my authority into the tone, he didn’t look like he was going to obey.
This was not a man that obeyed.
“Not doin’ that.”
I sucked in a breath. Tried to calm my rapid heart rate. My past made it so that it was integral for me to be able to control almost every moment of my life. My present made that possible. That’s what I’d wanted, the second I turned eighteen, the second I could escape. I hadn’t wanted to be famous, be in movies. I’d wanted to be in control. And I knew enough about life to understand that poor people had no control. So my singular goal had always been to accumulate enough wealth to control everything.
I’d sacrificed so much to get that control, and it was stolen from me with that gunshot. I lost it even further when I got into this truck with a man who made it obvious he didn’t care about my feelings and was prepared to drag me kicking and screaming to the state of his choice.
I was having a panic attack. The rapid heartbeat. The fact I was sure that doom was on my horizon, inescapable and fatal, my lungs unable to suck in enough air.
I was not about to hyperventilate in the cab. Cry. Pass out. Throw up. Though I did feel like doing all of those things. I wouldn’t give that to this man who was certain I was nothing but a damsel in distress. But not one he wanted to save, one he was getting paid to keep alive. I got the impression that if he had a choice in the matter, he would leave me on the road and not lose a second of sleep over it.
“Well then, why aren’t we flying?” I said, careful to keep the hitch from my voice.
He glanced toward me. A quick glance. It managed to scathe like it was intended to. “You fly, you go into all sorts of systems, caught on hundreds of CCTV cameras. Something that’ll be picked up by the multiple men and women looking for you. Not only that, you’re gonna get about a thousand star-struck assholes recording you, uploading to shit. Easiest way to get yourself killed.”
Well shit. I hadn’t exactly thought of that.
It was rare I forgot who I was. Forgot that there was no such thing as anonymous with me. I couldn’t go to the fucking drugstore without a handful of cars trailing me, waiting to get a photo of me that might hint I’m pregnant, fat, or on drugs.
“Why are we going to Montana?” I asked, furious at myself. At this situation.
He didn’t look at me this time. I was pissing him off with the questions, but his anger birthed some of my own. I welcomed it. It was easier to deal with than fear or panic.
“Because it’s off grid. Fucker has a lot of power at his disposal. Can’t scour the whole country.”
I bit my lip. They had taken my phone from me, obviously so I couldn’t contact people, or book flights to New Zealand once reality set in. And so I couldn’t Google this man, who would apparently kill me once he found out I was testifying against him.
It should’ve filled me with panic, the loss of something almost permanently attached to my hand. But it was the one part of this whole scenario that didn’t fill me with anxiety. It was almost peaceful being untethered from the constant stream of calls, messages, emails, and demands from people who wanted to suck me dry.
“Where in Montana are we going?”
He still didn’t look at me.
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cuss at him. Worse, I wanted to cry. Sob and beg him to be kinder, to treat me with more care, pretend like I was a warm woman.
Instead, I stayed silent.
Silent like death.
“Can you tell me a little more about this safe house, at the very least the quality of the beds?” I asked Duke, trying to roll the kink from my neck.
It was the first time we’d spoken today apart from bathroom requests. And let me tell you, having to ask the hostile, tight-lipped man protecting you from murder to stop so you could pee at a filthy gas station was not fun.
Nor were the accommodations the night prior.
Now, I was well practiced at sleeping in squalor. Especially in those shitty, roadside motels that either charged by the hour or by the month. Half my childhood was spent in one or the other, where I’d never known Egyptian-cotton, new clothes—or clothes that fit—a clean bathroom, or full stomach.
When I turned eighteen, I vowed to myself that I would never stay in one of those places again. That I’d never try to wash myself in a shower that only made me feel a little less dirty. That I’d sleep in sheets made for royalty.
I’d managed it for over a decade.
And when Duke pulled into the motel outside of Utah, I knew my promise to myself would be broken. I couldn’t exactly request the nearest Four Seasons. No, I would not cement his opinion of me.
So I sucked it up—the greasy food that I barely touched and he didn’t comment on, the room I shared with him with scratchy sheets and a dirty bathroom. I didn’t sleep a wink with the TV blaring and knowing he was right there in the other bed, quietly seething.
We spoke as little as possible. It made me uncomfortable, which I was sure was his goal, so I did my best not to let it show.
I didn’t like talking to strangers, as a rule. I especially should not like talking to the man who was only little more than a stranger, was macho as fuck, and somehow fascinating to me, despite the fact that macho man was so not my type.