Young Writers Society

Viggo, a disgraced cop, has just escaped from jail. Nyssa, an old friend is helping him. But they've lost what little lead they had on the manhunt.

To know more, read Chapter 6.1.

They came upon the first road-block within the first hour. Nyssa was driving slow and steady. She knew that Viggo was frustrated at the snail-pace. In the small confines of the car, she couldn't really miss the fact that he was seething. But he didn't say a thing. It didn’t make for a pleasant ride.

The road stretched straight ahead of them into more urban areas, a straight gray line on the flat horizon. When they noticed the police lights in the distance, they had nowhere to run to.

“U-turn,” Viggo ordered.

Her hands tightened on the wheel. “No.”

“Nyssa!”

“Call me Flora!”

“U-turn, now,” he hissed.

“I'm not turning around.”

He reached for the wheel. She slapped his hand away. “What the hell?!”

“Shut up and get ready. We're not turning around!”

He muttered, “You're crazy.”

She didn't contradict him. She was on the run with a convicted killer after all. “Slouch.”

He had drawn up at the first sign of danger. Instincts. She understood. He swore at her, but he slouched. With the too big shirt she had provided, it didn't just camouflage his height: it made him look a little softer in the middle. Thanks to a timely shot of epinephrine, the swelling didn’t look too bad. His lips weren’t thin anymore, his cheeks weren’t hollow anymore and only his lips were a bit puffy. Not so attractive now, especially since Nyssa had made artistic use of a razor to give him a receding hairline. She had also replaced the bandages around his head with butterfly strips and a long adhesive bandage.

As they came closer, she saw that the officers were from the sheriff office. There were two of them. One was a thickset woman in her late forties. No makeup. A plain brown ponytail. A no-nonsense stance. One was a younger man with very light brown hair. They flagged her to the side of the road.

“Try smiling,” she told Viggo.

He grunted in answer, and she didn't want to even imagine the look on his face. The woman was the one to knock none too lightly on the window. Her right hand hovered near the service weapon on her belt – Viggo had no doubt noticed that too – but her eyes were kind, a dark gray, with a gruff form of motherliness.

Nyssa knew exactly how to play her. She slapped an apologetic smile on her face and she rolled down the window. “Can we help you, officers?”

“Identification, ma'am?”

“Sure.” Nyssa fished her license out of her purse and handed it over along with Viggo’s. “There you go.”

“Please, step out of the car, ma'am, sir.”

Viggo leaned forward, as if to protest – or maybe reaching for his gun. She grabbed his hand and gave him a stern look – just enough so that the officers would notice and that it would appear wifely. “Of course, officers.”

She gave one last tug to his hand and stepped out of the car. So did he. She crossed her arms against the chill, shoulders hunched against the wind. The woman's eyes warmed up. “It'll only take a minute, ma'am,” she promised. “We've got to check every car.”

She thrust her chin out, brusque and commanding. The other officer gave her a sullen look before he started searching their car. Nyssa just hoped that her favorite escapee hadn't hidden the gun somewhere the police could find it.

“We understand,” she said with a weak smile. “We heard all about the evasion on the news.”

Viggo walked around the car and the female officer’s attention automatically turned to him. For a second, Nyssa was afraid that she would recognize him. The woman’s sharp eyes probably didn’t miss much. Her colleague was no problem, he had been too busy checking out Nyssa's butt.

Nyssa leaned right into her face to distract her too. “That's why we're headed back home, as a matter of fact. We were down at the Swans' lodge. Very nice place. I just couldn't…”

She paused dramatically and shivered. She felt Viggo come to stand behind her, but he didn't touch her, which earned him a dirty look from Ms. Hard-ass. The woman checked out Nyssa's hand and frowned a men-are-jerks frown.

“Where's home?” she asked.

“San Francisco,” Nyssa replied, “but first, we've got to make a pit-stop in Oakland to get our boy from his grandma's.” Viggo stiffened at the mention of children. Tongue in cheek now, she lowered her voice, “Don't mind Ron. He's sulking. First weekend away since we’ve had the baby.”

The woman checked out Nyssa's flat belly. So flat a belly. It felt barren, like there was something rotten in her. She told herself not to agonize over it now. Still, years of daydreaming helped keep up the pretense.

“Kenny’s four months old.” She winked at the female officer. “In case you were wondering.”

“Wow, you got back in shape already?”

“Hm, yeah. I've been starving myself, that's what Ron says. But really…” She rolled her eyes. “Who is in the mood to eat breakfast after spending half the night tending to a colicky newborn?”

“Officers,” Viggo said softly, finally stepping up to put a hand on Nyssa's waist. She pressed herself against his warm body. She felt so cold and exposed in those clothes. “We understand that you've got your priorities, but my wife woke me up at six and I just want to drive back home now. We both need our sleep.”

Nyssa cursed him for taking the initiative. The female officer’s eyes switched back to his face and immediately narrowed down on his bandage. Her hand crept just a little bit closer to her gun.

Shit.

Voice distrustful, she remarked, “That's an impressive gash you’ve got there, Mr. Ridgeway.”

“I had an accident,” was Viggo's unimpressive reply.

At least, the allergic reaction was slurring his words, drowning his clipped, brisk speech-patterns. Feeling that a distraction was much needed, Nyssa lifted a hand to her mouth and let out a barely stifled giggle. “An accident,” she choked out. “If that’s what you call falling head first on the lawnmower.”

Officer Hard-ass looked at her, looked at Viggo and relaxed noticeably, obviously chalking his coldness down to simple male pique. Officer Sleaze must have given her the all-clear too because she went so far as to smile. She handed the IDs back to Nyssa, who dropped them in her bag.

“You can go. Thanks for your patience and be careful on the road. No speeding.”

“No, officer.” Nyssa grinned. “Good luck with the manhunt.”

The woman patted her on the shoulder distractedly, “Don't worry, ma’am, we've got about a hundred searchers out there. We'll get those animals back behind bars before you know it.”

“Good luck,” Nyssa repeated, feeling a little faint now.

It was a struggle not to speed away, but she couldn’t let Viggo down. She focused on breathing calmly, she focused on driving the way sassy Flora Ridgeway would. When the police roadblock disappeared in her rear-view mirror, she glanced at the silent man in the passenger’s seat, but he was looking out the window, his face turned away from her.

Her belly started cramping. It was stress, she knew. Oddly enough, there had been little stress with Russ. With him, things had gone from simple, routine self-hatred to stark, all-out fear. There had been no space in the middle. Now, she was feeling anxiety on top of everything else.

Stop being a sissy.

Viggo asked a question under his breath, “Ever thought about joining a theater company?”

“I was in the drama club in high-school.”

“What did you play?”

“I played Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet because there weren't enough guys. And Miss Marple in a lame adaptation of Murder at the Vicarage.”

“Must have been an instant hit,” he muttered.

She let herself smile, this time, and some of her tension seeped out. Her stomach unclenched. Those plays hadn't been instant hits, no, to her eternal disappointment, which was the reason why she rarely talked about her short time on stage.

“You're a good liar.”

He had said it neither as a compliment nor as an accusation. His eyes were on her face, he was pondering her, studying her like an enemy, like she had Bernard, Linred and even Russ. It shocked her, but then, not really. He had her loyalty, unequivocally. She would protect him with her life. That's exactly what she was doing, even if he didn't realize just how much yet. But she was ready to earn his trust again.

So, she stopped the car to return his stare, to let him peer into her eyes. Let him look his content. She had nothing to hide from him.

A frown furrowed his forehead. “You lie, Nyssa Malik. I never knew that.”

“There was never a call for you to know.”

“Were we on a need-to-know basis? I hadn't realized.”

His voice was silk. Silk was a great material to tie someone down. Silk meant a trap. She sighed. She was sick of traps. The last thing she wanted was to skirt around the truth with him. Good liars had great boundaries. They went crazy if they didn't. You had to know who you didn’t lie to and, for her, it was him, only him.

“It's not like that.”

“Then how is it?” he asked. “You didn't hold back on me?”

He sounded bored. He wasn't looking at her anymore, like she didn't deserve even that.

“Maybe I did,” she admitted. “But not to hurt you. I just…Everybody’s got secrets. I always wanted you to think the best of me.”

He turned the bulk of his attention back to her. He stared, wrinkled his nose, frowned. “What can you have to hide?”

“I never wanted you to see how pathetic I was.”

He looked with more than a little disgruntlement and a sly skepticism. “So you lied?”

“Yes, I suppose. About little things,” she explained, hoping his new-found temper would mellow once he stopped fighting what he knew perfectly already: that she was on his side. “White lies.”

“Like?”

“Ah…I…” She thought about it. It felt like another life already. “Every year, I let everybody think that I was spending Christmas at my mom's.”

She counted in her head. One. Two. Three. She got to one hundred fifty-two before he finally asked, “Where were you really spending Christmas?”

She felt such relief that he had asked. She had feared that he wouldn't even care enough anymore to be curious. “At home. Watching re-runs of CSI. Mom's been dead for a while now.”

He didn't berate her for lying. He didn't ask why she had tried that badly to protect her damn pride. She hadn't been able to tell anyone that she had nobody to spend the holidays with. CSI and a frozen turkey pie, that had been depressing. But thank God she had lied about her mother. It had gotten her away from Russ at times.

“You did good,” Viggo said.

She stiffened, having no idea what he was congratulating her for. Then, she remembered. Getting them both through the roadblock. He was pleased with her for that. She didn't deserve it. She had done what she had as much to protect others from him than to protect him. Looking straight ahead, she replied, “No gratitude necessary. I was only afraid that you'd shoot them.”

“I didn't thank you.”

“I noticed.”

He smiled. It was a straight hit to the guts. It looked more like a cramp than a smile. She turned away from him, feeling like crying.

“Don't,” he said in a rough tone of voice. “Don't get weepy on me.”

But his hand brushed against her own on the wheel. Such a small gesture, but it reminded her that she had no cause to grieve for Viggo. He was right here. He was just a little damaged.

“I'm sorry,” she told him in a strangled voice. “I just wish I could…”

“What?! Turn back the clock? Not happening.”

“And that's it? You can just accept that? All those wasted years!”

He laughed, hoarse and sarcastic. “Oh, honey, but those years made me.” His voice was dark and dangerous, and that's all she saw when she looked into his eyes. Shadows. Danger. Hunger. Frustration. Wrath. Christ, he was so angry. “I’m not the proper, straight-laced policeman you once knew. You know that. I’m a fucking animal. You've got no idea what you’ve let out. What I'm capable of.”

Forget about an animal, she could tell that she had let out a freaking natural disaster, but she didn’t care. She kissed his cheek, giddy. He was out, nothing else mattered – and she wasn’t alone anymore. She started the car.

“I'll fucking take it. I'd take you in any guise at any time.”

His reply was so low and so long in coming that she wasn't quite sure she heard it correctly. It was something like, “Ah, foolish girl…”

To see more of Viggo and Nyssa, read Chapter 7.1.