Chapter 13: Chapter 13
The mountain quiet was a physical weight. It pressed down on the cabin roof, seeped through the chinked logs, filled Joanna’s ears until she could hear the blood moving in her own veins. For three days, they existed in a strange, suspended silence. They slept tangled in the sleeping bags, woke to the indifferent grey light, ate granola bars, and watched the trees sway in the wind. They didn’t speak of the warehouse, of the fire, of the knife. The words sat between them like a third person, taking up space on the rough-hewn chair.
Riley spent hours cleaning the pistol, a meticulous, silent ritual. Disassemble, clean, reassemble. Click, click, click. The sound was a clock ticking in the stillness.
On the fourth morning, Riley stood at the grimy window, staring out at the relentless green. “We can’t live on granola bars and fear,” she said, her voice rough from disuse.
Joanna, wrapped in a thin blanket on the floor, watched her. “What’s out there?”
“A town. Thirty miles. We need real food. Cash. Information.” Riley turned, her face all sharp angles in the weak light. “I know a place there. A quiet place. We can listen. See if the world is looking for us.”
The thought of going back into any version of the world turned Joanna’s stomach to ice. “It’s a risk.”
“Starvation is a certainty.” Riley knelt, her eyes level with Joanna’s. “We go in, we get what we need, we get out. No drawing attention. Just shadows.”
They drove the thirty miles in a tense, shared silence. The truck felt like a tin can hurtling through a tunnel of pine. The town, when it appeared, was a single main street flanked by weary-looking buildings: a hardware store, a diner with a flickering sign, a post office. It was the kind of place that noticed outsiders.
Riley parked behind a closed feed store. “The place is called The Velvet Lounge. Speakeasy rules. Through the alley beside the old cinema. Knock four times.” She handed Joanna a baseball cap. “Pull it low. Keep your head down. You see a camera, you turn away.”
The alley was dank, smelling of wet brick and garbage. The back door was unmarked, heavy steel. Riley knocked four times—a staccato rhythm. A slit opened at eye level, then closed. A series of bolts clanked back.
The door swung inward onto a wall of sound—low, thrumming bass and the murmur of voices—and a wave of warm, perfumed air. It was like stepping into another century, or a dream. The light was the color of old gold, cast by low-hanging chandeliers draped in crystal teardrops. The walls were draped in deep, burgundy velvet that swallowed sound. Plush armchairs and low couches were arranged in intimate clusters, shrouded in shadow. The air hummed with vanilla and something else, muskier, a base note of expensive perfume and skin.
A large woman in a sharply tailored tuxedo nodded at Riley. “Riley. Long time.” Her eyes flicked to Joanna, assessing, before she gestured with her chin. “Your usual booth in the back is open.”
They wound their way through the room. Eyes followed them—mostly subtle, a few less so. This was a place for people who preferred shadows, for transactions that required discretion. Joanna felt exposed, her height and frame suddenly conspicuous despite the cap. She felt the old, familiar prickle of being watched, appraised. The gaze of the porn set. The gaze of a thousand nameless, hungry eyes. It was different now. It felt like a searchlight.
The booth was a curved, high-backed thing of dark leather, tucked into a corner where the velvet drapes met. It offered a view of the room while hiding its occupants. Riley slid in, her back to the wall, eyes scanning. Joanna sat opposite, trying to shrink into herself.
A waiter appeared, silent as a ghost. Riley ordered a bourbon, neat. Joanna asked for water.
“You should drink,” Riley said quietly, her eyes never still, tracing the movements of a group of men at the bar. “Loosen up. You look like a cornered animal.”
“I feel like one.”
The bourbon arrived. Riley downed half in one swallow. “We’re safe here. For now. This is neutral ground. There are rules.”
“Whose rules?”
“Hers.” Riley nodded almost imperceptibly toward the woman in the tuxedo, who was now speaking softly to a patron by the door. “Marta. Nothing happens here without her say-so. No business, no trouble. Just drinks and… conversation.”
Joanna took a sip of water. The room’s opulence was a stark, jarring contrast to the bare cabin, to the grimy warehouse, to the feeling of filth that seemed ingrained in her pores. She watched a couple in a nearby alcove, their heads close together, one hand stroking the other’s thigh under the table. It was a scene of illicit comfort, of secret pleasures. A sharp, unexpected pang of longing hit her. Not for the act, but for the normalcy of a hidden touch, a secret that wasn’t mortal.
“What are we listening for?” Joanna asked.
“Names. ‘Marcus.’ ‘Levin.’ Any talk of fires, of missing persons.” Riley’s gaze settled on her. “Your old world ever touch a place like this?”
Joanna thought of the producers, the club owners, the wealthy collectors. “Maybe. The money did. The taste for… exclusivity.”
Riley grunted, a sound of confirmation. “Then keep your head down.”
Another hour passed. The bourbon warmed Riley’s edges, made her lean back slightly, though her eyes remained chips of flint. Joanna learned the rhythm of the place. The soft clink of glass, the murmur of deals being brokered in low tones, the occasional low, genuine laugh from a dark corner. It was a symphony of concealed intentions.
Then he walked in.
Joanna saw Riley’s posture change infinitesimally—a tightening of the shoulders. The man was mid-fifties, expensively casual, with the tan of someone who wintered elsewhere. He was greeted by Marta with a familiar, respectful nod and directed to a plush chair near the center of the room. He wasn’t alone. A younger man followed, beautiful in a sharp, polished way. And behind them, a face Joanna knew.
Leo. A photographer. Not from the mainstream sets, but from the darker, private circuit. A man who specialized in “candid” shots for discreet clientele. He had once offered her a staggering sum for a weekend in Malibu. She’d refused. He’d smiled with all his teeth and said, “Everyone has a price, darling. Even you.”
Her breath hitched. She looked down quickly at the polished tabletop, her heart hammering against her ribs. “Riley.”
“I see him.”
“He knows me.”
“Does he see you?”
Joanna dared a glance. Leo was scanning the room with a predator’s lazy interest. His gaze swept over their darkened booth, paused for a fraction of a second, and moved on. Did he see? Or had the cap, the shadows, the drastic change in context disguised her?
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Finish your water. We’re leaving in five. Slow and calm.” Riley’s voice was steel wrapped in velvet.
But leaving required crossing the room. And as they stood, adjusting their coats, Leo’s head turned. His eyes locked onto Joanna. There was a slow blink, a tilt of the head. Recognition dawned, not as a specific person in a specific place, but as a category. A spectacular piece, his look said. What’s one like you doing in a hole like this?
He whispered something to the polished young man, who glanced their way with cool appraisal.
Riley’s hand found Joanna’s elbow, grip firm. “Walk. Don’t look back.”
They moved toward the door. The room felt hotter, the air thicker. The velvet drapes seemed to lean in. Joanna could feel Leo’s gaze on her back, a physical pressure between her shoulder blades.
They made it to the alley, the cold night air a slap. The heavy door thudded shut behind them, muffling the jazz.
“Fuck,” Riley spat, kicking a trash can. The clang echoed down the narrow space. “Fuck! Did he make you?”
“I don’t think so. Not as me. Just as… a type.”
“That’s enough.” Riley started walking fast toward the truck. “We can’t go back to the cabin. Not tonight. They might follow.”
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through Joanna. “Where?”
“There’s a motel. On the other side of the ridge. Pay by the hour, no questions.” Riley’s mind was racing, planning. “We’ll loop around, make sure we’re clean, then hole up there for the night. Move again at dawn.”
The motel was called The Alpine Rest. It rested in a dip in the land, a faded, L-shaped building with rusted ice machines and a flickering vacancy sign. The room was what Joanna expected: thin floral carpet, stiff chenille bedspreads, the smell of bleach and mildew. It was a tomb.
Riley locked the door, bolted it, dragged the scarred dresser in front of it. She checked the window latch, the flimsy bathroom door. Her movements were efficient, violent. The fear from the lounge had curdled into a jangling, dangerous energy.
Joanna stood in the center of the room, hugging herself. The encounter had stripped her bare again. She wasn’t Joanna Levin, a woman trying to outrun her past. She was a type, a commodity, recognizable even here, at the end of the world. The carefully constructed anonymity of the last few days shattered.
Riley finished her inspection and turned. She saw Joanna shaking. Not from cold. From a deep, cellular terror.
Without a word, Riley crossed the room. There was no gentleness in her touch. She grabbed Joanna’s face, her fingers digging into her jaw. “Look at me.” Joanna’s eyes, wide and frightened, focused on hers. “He didn’t take you. I didn’t let him. No one takes you.” Her voice was low, a feral growl. “You’re mine. Say it.”
It was a command born of possession, of a shared crime, of a desperate, snarling need for control in a world that had spun into chaos. “I’m yours,” Joanna breathed, the words a surrender and a truth.
Riley kissed her. It was nothing like the kiss in the speakeasy booth. This was a claim staked with teeth and tongue. It was dirty, frantic, a war against the fear. She walked Joanna backward until her legs hit the edge of the hard motel bed. She pushed her down.
“Clothes off. Now.” Riley yanked her own shirt over her head, her movements jerky with adrenaline.
They undressed in a frantic, clumsy tangle of limbs and fabric, pushing it all to the scratchy carpet. Naked, they were two animals backed into the same corner. Riley looked at her, at the curves and the softness and the hardness, all of it laid bare under the cruel green glow of the digital clock. “On your hands and knees.”
Joanna obeyed, her body thrumming with a terrified excitement. The chenille bedspread was abrasive against her knees. She heard Riley spit into her palm, the wet sound obscene in the quiet room. Then Riley’s hand was on her hip, holding her in place, and the blunt, slick head of her cock was pressing against her.
There was no preparation, no gentle stretch. Riley shoved in, a single, deep, burning thrust that buried her to the hilt. Joanna cried out, her fingers clawing at the bedspread, her back arching. The pain was bright, cleansing, a white-hot wire that chased the fear out of her veins.
“This is what you are,” Riley gritted out, pulling back and slamming in again, harder. “Mine. Fucking mine. Not his. Not anyone’s from that life.” Each word was punctuated by a brutal drive of her hips. “You’re here. With me. In this shitty room. This is your world now.”
Joanna could only gasp, taking it, the fullness a brutal anchor. “Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against Riley, meeting each thrust. “Yours.”
Riley’s hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. The angle changed, went deeper. Joanna saw stars. “I own this,” Riley snarled, the words from the warehouse now a fucked-out mantra. “I own every inch of you. I own the dirt under your skin. I own the fucking fear.” She was pounding into her now, a relentless, piston rhythm that shook the cheap bedframe, that made the headboard knock against the wall in a sick, rhythmic taunt.
The pain had melted into a searing, overwhelming friction. Joanna’s own cock, hard and aching, swung beneath her. She reached for it, but Riley’s hand slapped hers away. “No. You come from this. From me fucking you. Nothing else.”
The denial, the domination, the raw physicality of it, tipped Joanna over an edge she didn’t know she was approaching. Her climax wasn’t a wave; it was a detonation. It ripped through her silent and vicious, a convulsive tightening that milked Riley deep inside her. Her release spilled onto the bedspread beneath her in hot, helpless pulses.
Riley snarled, her rhythm breaking. She let go of Joanna’s hair and wrapped both arms around her waist, holding her impossibly tight as she drove in one final, shuddering time. Joanna felt her swell, pulse, and then the hot rush as Riley came inside her with a guttural, broken sound.
They collapsed together onto the ruined bed, a slick, panting heap of limbs. Riley stayed atop her, inside her, their sweat-slick skin glued together. The room stank of sex and bleach and fear. The only sound was their ragged breathing and the muffled thump of bass from a room down the way.
Slowly, Riley softened and slipped out. She rolled onto her back, one arm thrown over her eyes.
Joanna lay on her stomach, her face pressed into the scratchy fabric. The ghost of Leo’s gaze was gone, burned away in the violent claiming. All that was left was the sting, the ache, the salt taste of sweat on her lips, and the solid, breathing weight of the woman beside her.
After a long time, Riley spoke to the ceiling. “We leave before first light. Head north. Further. Into Canada.”
“Okay,” Joanna whispered, her voice hoarse.
“We’ll need new names. New stories.”
“Okay.”
Riley turned her head on the pillow. In the green dark, her eyes were black pools. “This doesn’t end,” she said. It wasn’t a threat. It was the bleakest of promises.
Joanna reached across the chasm of sheets. Her fingers found Riley’s, lacing with them, holding on with a grip that was both desperate and final. Outside, a truck rumbled past on the highway, its headlights briefly painting a streak of yellow across the wall before vanishing, leaving them in the dark again.
The yellow streak of light died, swallowed by the dark and the cheap motel curtain. Silence pooled back into the room, thicker now, choked with the smell of their bodies and the fading adrenaline. Joanna’s heartbeat slowed from a frantic drum to a dull, aching thud. Every muscle felt liquid, spent. Riley’s hand was still locked with hers, a grounding wire.
“We’ll need passports,” Riley said into the darkness. Her voice was flat, practical. The shift was jarring. “Real ones, not the bullshit novelties. That takes money.”
“How much?” Joanna’s own voice sounded foreign, raspy from being muffled in the bedspread.
“More than we have.” Riley sat up, the mattress springs groaning. She fumbled for her jeans, pulled a wrinkled pack of cigarettes from the pocket. The scrape of the lighter was a violent spark in the dark. She lit one, inhaled deeply, the ember casting a brief glow on her sharp features. “T.J. might front us. For a price.”
“The gun guy.”
“He does other things. For people who don’t exist.” Riley exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted toward the stained ceiling. “We see him tomorrow. Then we cross.”
Joanna pushed herself up on her elbows. The movement made her aware of the soreness between her legs, a raw, tender ache that was a map of Riley’s possession. She found a strange comfort in it. A receipt. “And if he recognizes me too?”
Riley took another drag. “T.J. doesn’t give a fuck about porn. He cares about money and not getting caught. Your face is just another product to him.” She said it without malice, a simple transaction. “Sleep. A few hours.”
Sleep was a fractured, shallow thing. Joanna drifted in a haze of half-dreams where Leo’s smiling face morphed into Marcus’s waxen, plastic-wrapped one. She’d jerk awake to the sound of Riley’s steady breathing, or the groan of plumbing in the walls. The digital clock bled green numbers into the room: 3:17 AM. 4:02 AM. Each time she woke, Riley’s hand would find hers again under the thin sheet, a silent reassurance.
Dawn came as a grey smear behind the curtains. They moved in a wordless, efficient tandem born from these brutal days. They showered separately in the cramped, dripping stall, washing the motel and the night from their skin. They dressed in the same clothes, now carrying the scent of cheap soap and dread.
T.J.’s wasn’t a shop. It was a double-wide trailer slumped at the end of a long, muddy driveway deep in the woods, surrounded by skeletal vehicles on blocks. A hand-painted sign reading “T.J.’s Custom Machining” hung crookedly by the door. The air smelled of wet pine, oil, and distant decay.
Riley knocked a specific pattern: two quick, three slow. The door opened a crack, then wider. A man squinted out, thin and greying, with eyes the color of old dishwater. He wore stained coveralls. “Riley.” His gaze slid past her to Joanna, lingered without a flicker of recognition beyond basic assessment. “Who’s the tall drink of water?”
“She’s with me. We need to talk, T.J.”
He grunted, stepped back. The interior of the trailer was a cave of metal parts, gunsmithing tools, and the acrid tang of solvents. A single bare bulb hung over a cluttered workbench. “Talk’s cheap. Everything else costs.”
Riley laid it out bluntly. “Two passports. Canadian. Quality. We need to disappear.”
T.J. wiped his hands on a rag, his expression unmoved. “That’s a ten-thousand-dollar conversation. Each.”
“We have four. We need credit.”
The man’s laugh was a dry cough. “I’m not a bank, girl. I’m a craftsman. Cash upfront. Or collateral.” His dishwater eyes drifted to Joanna again, slower this time. “You vouch for her?”
“With my life,” Riley said, the words dropping like stones.
“Pretty words. I deal in pretty things.” He leaned against his workbench, crossing his arms. “I might know a guy needing a driver. A discreet one. For a single trip across the line. Pays five. You do that, you’re halfway there.”
“What’s the cargo?” Riley’s voice was tight.
T.J. smiled, showing teeth stained brown from tobacco. “Does it matter? You’re not being asked to taste it. Just move it from point A to point B. A closed van. No questions. You get the keys, the route, the crossing papers for the van. You deliver, you get paid, you walk away.”
Joanna felt the trap in the offer. It was too easy. “What’s the catch?” she asked, her voice cutting through the trailer’s thick air.
T.J.’s gaze snapped to her, sharpening. “The catch is the border guards have dogs that can smell guilt a mile away. The catch is my associate is… particular. He doesn’t like complications. He sees a complication, he solves it. Permanently.” He looked back at Riley. “It’s a one-time errand. Clears your debt to me for the passports. You’ll have the rest to pay me when you return.”
Riley was silent for a long minute. The hum of a fly bouncing against the window was the only sound. “When?”
“Tonight. Midnight. I’ll give you the location.” T.J. pushed off the bench. “You in or out?”
Joanna watched the calculation happen behind Riley’s eyes. The risk, the necessity, the sheer fucking desperation of it all. They had no other play. The cabin was compromised. Their cash was scant. This was a thread, rotten and thin, but the only one dangling in the dark.
“We’re in,” Riley said.
Back in the truck, rattling down the dirt road, the tension was a live wire between them. The sky had opened into a cold, hard blue. “It’s a shit deal,” Riley finally said, gripping the wheel.
“It’s the only deal,” Joanna replied, staring out at the passing pines. “What do you think is in the van?”
“Nothing good. Guns. Drugs. People.” Riley’s knuckles were white. “Doesn’t matter. We drive. We don’t look. We get the money. We get the fuck out.”
“And his ‘associate’?”
“We make sure he has no reason to solve us.”
They spent the day in a different motel, a cleaner, emptier one off a silent highway. Time stretched, taut and endless. They ate vending machine chips. They watched static-riddled news with the sound off. No reports of a fire in an old warehouse. No missing persons bulletins for a man named Marcus. The silence from the world was more unnerving than an alarm.
As dusk bled into night, a different kind of tension built. It was in the way Riley paced the length of the room, a caged animal. It was in the way Joanna’s skin felt too tight, every nerve ending exposed. The proximity to unknown violence, to a door closing behind them forever, thrummed in the air.
Riley stopped pacing. She looked at Joanna, really looked at her, in the sterile light of the lamp. “However this goes tonight…” she started, then trailed off.
“I know,” Joanna said.
“No. You don’t.” Riley walked over, stood before her. Her fingers, calloused and strong, traced the line of Joanna’s jaw. “That fucking photographer. In the lounge. He looked at you like you were a thing on a shelf. Something to acquire.” Her thumb brushed Joanna’s lower lip. “It made me want to put him through a wall.”
The possessiveness in her tone wasn’t like the harsh claim in the motel. It was hotter, deeper, a slow-burning coal. It sparked something low in Joanna’s belly.
“He’s not here,” Joanna whispered, leaning into the touch.
“No.” Riley’s hand slid down, over Joanna’s throat, feeling the pulse hammering there. “But I am.” Her other hand cupped Joanna through her jeans, a firm, deliberate pressure. “And you’re wound so tight you’re gonna break before we even get to that van.”
Joanna’s breath hitched. The fear and the anticipation and the sheer naked need coalesced into a single, sharp point. “Then unwind me.”
Riley kissed her, a deep, consuming slide of tongue that tasted of coffee and resolve. There was no violence in it this time, only a profound and deliberate claiming. She guided Joanna backwards until her knees hit the bed. “On your back,” she murmured against her mouth.
Joanna lay back, the coarse bedspread scratching her shoulders. Riley undressed her slowly, each button of her shirt a tiny revelation, each inch of skin exposed met with a lingering touch. When Joanna was naked, Riley knelt between her legs, pushing them apart. The cool air of the room kissed her wetness.
Riley didn’t enter her. Instead, she leaned down, her breath hot on Joanna’s inner thigh. “You smell like us,” she said, her voice a rough vibration against Joanna’s skin. “Like me. That’s what you’ll remember tonight. Not the fear. This.”
Her mouth descended, not with gentle kisses, but with a hungry, open-mouthed voraciousness. Her tongue flattened against Joanna, licking a slow, broad stripe from her entrance to her clit. Joanna gasped, her hips lifting off the bed. Riley held her down with a firm hand on her stomach.
“Stay still,” Riley commanded, her voice muffled against her. “You take what I give you.”
She proceeded to feast. Her tongue delved deep, fucking her with it, before circling her clit with a focused, ruthless pressure. She used her lips, her teeth in gentle nips, her entire face wet with Joanna. The sensation was overwhelming, a direct line to every frayed nerve. Joanna’s hands twisted in the covers, a moan trapped in her throat.