The reviews have been awesome and I have put my other stories on simmer while I work out the plot and story to this one. I hope you continue to like it.
The tires squealed as they tried to bite into the pavement, centrifugal force trying to pull the car into a fishtailing spin as the ass end of the police cruiser slid into the turn and Aitch was pressed against the passenger door handle.
Sam spun the wheel to exit the turn and stomped the gas pedal, making the cruiser lurch forward and accelerate out of the hard right turn and speed off down the side road, through parked cars lining the narrow street and around sparse traffic, Sam screaming at people to get the hell out of her way, even though they really were not able to hear her.
Aitch casually leaned over and switched on the roof rack. Flashing lights and a wailing siren erupted from above them. People began to take notice of the careening squad car. He patted her arm and sat back in his seat, picking up the folded open booklet from the seat between them.
"Steady on, Blonderella," he said just loud enough to be heard. "No need to kill anybody...particularly me..."
Sam grunted and spun through another turn, this time to the left, onto a wider street. She stole a glance at Aitch and saw him focused on the page of a puzzle book as if he was enjoying a long country drive. "What the hell? What are you doing?"
"Hmm?" Aitch looked up at Sam, confused for a moment, then smiled. "Soduku."
"You don't have a pen," Sam yelled at him, frustrated by his calmness and the distance between her and Carly.
Aitch tapped his head. "In my mind..."
She had said nothing from when they liberated the police cruiser at the hospital to now as they took corners like a stunt driver. She had been unable to reach Carly by phone. She had taken Aitch's phone when he was brought to hospital, so it wasn't the fact Sam's Caller ID was coming up on Carly's phone and she just didn't want to talk to her. But she had been dialing Carly's phone over and over, her house phone at Bushwell Plaza, and even Freddie's phone. Nobody was answering and both Sam and Aitch had sickening feelings about it.
Sam was frantic to get to Carly. Even if the brunette had no desire to ever see her again, she just had to know that Carly was safe. That she was alive. And there was nothing that would stop Sam from getting to her.
"Seriously?" Sam growled. "You're doing brain work now? Now!"
Aitch looked at the frantic blond and blinked. "Yeah. Why? You want me to drive?"
Sam gave him a sharp look. "No!"
He returned to solving his soduku puzzle in his mind while Sam tried not to destroy anything on their way to Bushwell Towers.
Sam shot worried glances at Aitch. "Call her again!"
"Hey! Yeah!" Aitch said with much enthusiasm. "Because I'm sure Carly never received the other 50 calls...and text messages...and voice mails..."
Sam growled again because she was frustrated and worried and knows that Aitch is right and why the hell won't these people get out of her way! " It's a cop car, you idiots! With lights and noise and...get outta my way!"
"You like to yell a lot," Aitch observed, his voice even, despite being tossed around in his seat from all the swerves and turns. "I forgot to ask if you even have a driver's license."
Sam shot him a quick look and snapped: "Yes...kind of..." She kept her eyes on the road for a few moments. "Well...I have a license..."
Aitch raised an eyebrow and drew out: "Yours...?"
"Sure," Sam answered ambiguously. "My name's on it..."
A few more moments went by. Aitch casually looked at Sam. "Valid?"
"Yeah...let's go with that..." Sam grumbled, but seeming a bit calmer with the distacting dialogue.
She focused on driving the cruiser with the rooftop light and sound show through dense traffic and toward quieter street that led to the rear parking area of Bushwell Towers. She glanced sideways at Aitch. "Are you sure Carly'll be there?" Sam asked...again.
"Sam," Aitch groaned. "I don't know. Probably. Maybe. It's a place to start. Her brother might be able to help us." He watched the road for a moment. "It might be nothing," he admitted with a certain lack of sincerity. He really didn't believe himself. This was starting to get really personal. Going after Sam, now. That didn't make sense.
"Yeah...," Sam replied, with little belief in it, as well. She had already been in a place that she hoped Carly would never experience. Three days of lonliness and hell and fear and regrets and dispair. Sam would rather do it again than have Carly experience one moment of it. In her mind was an image of Carly strapped to a bomb in a lonely room, terrified and crying and losing her mind.
"Benson!" Sam screamed like an eruption of surprise and anger, slamming on the brakes and skidding the cruiser sideways into the curb to a jarring stop.
Aitch looked up, having braced himself with a hand on the laptop mount on the dash and the other on the roof. He was face on to a young brown haired teen who he recognized as Carly's neighbor. The young man was gripping his chest and staring with eyes as big as saucers and watching the blond tigress bound out of the driver side door and fly around the nose of the police cruiser, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him back into the chain link fence behind him, shouting in his face.
Aitch slowly leaned over and switched off the siren and lights. Then, he removed his seat belt, opened his door and climbed out of the cruiser, making his way over to the two friends or whatever they were to each other at the moment. "Don't break him, Sam," he said to the blond, with a hand to her shoulder, guiding her back and away from the brunette. He smiled to Freddie: "Hello."
"Ah!" Freddie ah'ed. "Sam! What the hell?"
"Where's Carly?" Sam hissed.
"What?" Freddie's voice hit a high note. "You stole a police car to race through the streets to find Carly?"
"Shut. It. Fredwad!" Sam seethed, glaring at him with narrow eyes.
Aitch moved closer between the two before Sam did Freddie harm that was more than psychological. That damage had already been done.
"Sam," Aitch began in a low voice. "Easy... Freddie, we need to find Carly. She's not answering her phone..."
Freddie looked from Sam to Aitch. "Um...she switched it off and left it behind..." He eyed Sam when she flinched.
"Behind?" Sam cut in, confused. "What do you mean she left it behind? Where did she go?"
"Um...," Freddie said, after a moment of hesitation. "Not sure if she would...I mean, she told me not to..." he stammered, then his face got mad. "Look! Sam, you rattled Carly pretty bad. Whatever you said to her shook her up. A lot. She's all messed up. And to top it off, when she tried to call you, you avoided her like the plague. You just vanished. Poof! Three days, Sam...Three days! Do you know what hell you put Carly through? Do you! She was worried sick about you until she couldn't take it anymore and fled..."
Very calmly, very quietly, very evening, and very tightly, Sam glared daggers from hooded eyed beneath golden bangs. "Where...is...Carly...?"
Freddie had never seen quite that look from Sam directed at him. His blood stopped moving and a chill that came from the Grim Reaper's bony hand gripping his chest. It chilled him to the core. Her eyes were steel grey and the pupils were barely pin pricks. Her face was absolutely expressionless and cold, as if his own existance meant nothing to her. And her voice was very...very...dark.
He swallowed hard.
Aitch frowned at the change in the young man. "Better tell her, Freddie. I think Sam's been pushed to her limit..."
Freddie nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off of the dead eyes of the blond for fear that she would rip out his soul. "She...um...went to Yakima...to her grandfather's for a couple of weeks," Freddie said quietly. "She said that she needed time to think things out..."
Sam slowly nodded, as if she had begun to understand and Freddie was sure that he saw pain and hurt in Sam's eyes.
"Between you two..." Sam acknowledged with a hint of sadness.
Freddie frowned as Sam turned away and went back to the cruiser, head down, shoulders slumped and he thought that he had never seen such body language from the blond. It was the body language that said only one thing: defeated.
"Sam," he called out, partially against his better judgement. Let sleeping dog be so they don't bite of your head... "What are you talking about? It's not me Carly's confused about. It's... I mean, why would she be confused over me?"
Sam never looked up when she reached the driver side door and was about to climb into the car. "She kissed you, Freddie..." she said, as if this was explanation enough.
Freddie's eyebrows leapt off his head. "Wha-? That? Of course she kissed me. Carly told me...um...well, she didn't want you to know she was -" He stopped himself from saying anything more and pissing off both of the women in his life.
Sam half eyed the nub with suspicion. "Carly didn't want me to know what?"
"Look, Sam," Freddie said, quietly, casting a side long look at Aitch.
Aith put his palms up in defense. "Hey! Pretend I'm not here...ignore me...I'll just stand here not being here..."
"Ye-ah..." Freddie focused on Sam again. "Carly and I aren't together, if that's what you are getting at. It's not...it's not me that she wants, Sam." He paused, knowing that Carly was gonna kill him for this...maybe...but, Sam definitely may kill him if he said nothing... "Carly's in love...with someone else. She told me all about it after she kissed me. She didn't want me to get the wrong idea. I was more...um...convenient for her at the time..."
Sam nodded again, not feeling any better by this revelation. So, Carly didn't want the nub. She could live with that. It hurt that she had someone else taking the Sam place in Carly's heart, though. "Who?" she heard herself ask, though she really did not want to know.
Freddie blinked and his mouth fell open slightly. "Um...wow...you can be really obtuse."
"I am not," Sam growled, glaring at Freddie. She hated being insulted, especially when she had no idea what the insult meant. She saw Aitch and Freddie both staring at her calmly and patiently. "Okay," she admitted with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I don't know what that is..."
"Why don't you go sit in the car, Sam, and give it a think...I'll explain it to you in a moment," Aitch smiled and watched as Sam gave them both a look of confusion and slowly sagged into the cruiser and held onto the wheel.
While Sam appeared to be lost in thought, Freddie and Aitch remained standing on the sidewalk. Freddie looked down at Aitch's bandaged hand with the missing finger. "What happened to your finger?"
Aitch regarded his injured hand and gave a deadpan look to Freddie.
"Word of warning...Do not point your finger at Sam..."