Breakaway

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this fic!

Chapter Nine

Tapping his fingers to the beat of the classic rock song blaring out from the radio, while warm air blew in through the open windows to counteract the overwhelming humidity, Jim made the turn onto Glen Road to start the last leg on his way back home from Sleepyside. With the promise of the evening looming ahead, he was doing everything possible to help time move faster than it was going. When his mother had mentioned after lunch that she had forgotten to mail a letter to an acquaintance, he had jumped at the chance to drive into town and complete the small task for her. He had welcomed the task since he had run out of other ways to keep himself busy. So far during the day, he had already exercised Jupiter, checked and responded to all of his emails, had eaten a long lunch with his parents and had surfed the internet for awhile. No matter what he did, time still dragged by on very slow and almost unmoving feet. The drive into town had served as a wonderful distraction for him and had killed a good thirty minutes. Maybe more, he noted after studying the digital numbers on his clock.

Only half-paying attention to the scenery that rolled past him, completely ignorant of the bright green leaves of the trees or the vivid sunlight filtering through the branches that left long, extended shadows across the road, Jim envisioned the evening before him, planning out what he wanted to say to Trixie. Lost in thought, the appearance of the sleepy little country store on the side of the road almost didn't register. When it did, he smiled in anticipation. Visiting the store seemed like a good way to spend a few more minutes. Even though he knew that Trixie would have left the store by now and that his sister would have taken her place at the counter, he competently pulled into the small parking lot. The fact that it was empty didn't come as a shock. It usually was. Mr. Lytell never had a steady stream of customers going through his doors. Seconds later, he was out of his Jeep and strolling towards the small front porch, eager to talk to his sister. Honey would help keep his nerves at bay. She would give him the pep-talk that he needed.

Whistling the tune to the last song he had heard under his breath, he made it to the porch and automatically pulled open the screen door and then came to a complete halt, puzzled. Staring at the closed front door, Jim felt a frown work its way across his face. Why on earth would Honey close the door? he wondered to himself, unable to come up with any plausible reason. It was too hot outside not to have the door open. Trixie complained enough about the heat for him to know that the store didn't have air conditioning. It didn't make any sense, unless she had to leave for some reason. When he saw that the windows were still open, he realized that couldn't be the reason. Honey was trustworthy, almost to a fault. She wouldn't have left the premises without closing up the building. Slowly it began to dawn on him that something wasn't quite right. Something was off. When he tried to open the door, he was stunned further to find out that it was locked. Through narrowed eyes, he scanned the doorway but couldn't see anything past the thin Venetian blinds obscuring his view. He couldn't help but notice the sign in the window. Closed, it read. Closed? His mind screamed. Why the hell was the store closed? No answers were forthcoming. At least, none that were good. Rooted to the spot, he didn't know what his next move should be.

When a small, aborted cry of pain came from inside the store, his lagging senses propelled him into immediate action and proved to him that his suspicions were regrettably correct. Moving stealthily off the porch, keeping his steps as light and as sure as he could and moving soundlessly, Jim found his way to the back of the building, doing his best not to think or imagine what could be happening inside. The sight of the bike leaning up against the building made his fear triple and forced himself to take a deep, jagged breath. It belonged to his girlfriend. She could be involved, too. Its presence meant that either Trixie, Honey or both could be inside. He didn't know who, he didn't know what, and he didn't know why. Basically, he didn't know a blessed thing other than the fact that his heart was practically pounding out of his chest and that he was afraid, more so than he had ever been before.

Reaching the large amount of shade cast by the building, he pulled out his cell phone and wasted no time in dialing an extremely helpful number. When the dispatcher answered dispassionately, he barked lowly into the phone, forgetting to give his name, "Mr. Lytell's store on Glen Road. Now!" Before the dispatcher could ask him a million relevant questions, most of which he wouldn't be able to answer, he disconnected the call and turned off his cell phone, unwilling to have his phone ring and alert whoever was inside that he was there to help. He couldn't give away his presence. The only weapon he carried was surprise.

Trying not to count down the rapidly dissolving seconds since he had heard the scream and came to the back of the building, he tried the back door. Locked, of course, not that he had expected anything different. Short of breaking it down, which would tell the people inside that he was there, he scooted away and zeroed in on the open window. Lips pulled down at the corner, he nodded his head, decision made. It was the only way inside. Grabbing a forgotten crate stacked up neatly against the building, Jim moved it to the window and climbed on top of it. The screen carried a bit of dust and grime on it. It was old and rickety looking. It moved easily when he gave a good hard push. The screen fell inside and clattered, landing on something within the store. He held his breath and hoped that the slight sound it made hadn't warned anyone inside. Knowing he didn't have a choice, that it didn't matter if the noise had brought the perpetrators running into the back room, he wiggled himself through the window with a speed and dexterity that would have impressed Trixie and landed squarely on Mr. Lytell's desk. Papers scattered in all directions but he was able to prevent the mug of pens and pencils from spilling over. Crouching on top of the desk, he cocked an ear to the side, listening to the sound of the muted voices coming from the front of the store and decided that no one had heard him break into the store. Not knowing what he would find, he cautiously made his way towards the doorway that separated the two rooms, his footsteps light and sure in direct contrast to the rapid beating of his heart. He had already recognized one of the voices. Honey was inside. He couldn't tell if Trixie was here or not. Slowly, hoping not to give away his position, he pressed his body up against the wall and risked a quick glance into the other room. He saw her immediately. He found Honey, who stood at the counter with a terrified expression on her face, as well as the back of the man threatening her. Everything froze within him when he saw the gun.

Unaware that help was near, Honey gripped the edge of the counter, straining to hear the sound of a siren coming their way, even though she knew it was a stupid thing to do. She had only just pressed the help button a few seconds ago. There was simply no way anyone would be able to get there to help her that quickly. No way at all. She was on her own. "Why are you doing this?" she asked aloud, scrambling to try and keep him occupied while giving the police the time they needed to arrive.

He flashed his gun in the air and arched an eyebrow. A hint of excitement flashed briefly in his dark eyes, turning him into something that looked less than human. "I've already told you. I want revenge, pure and simple. After the way you and your friends sent me back to prison, I deserve it. Don't delude yourself, sweetheart. There is no other motivation."

The term of endearment made cold sweat pop out all over her. She hated it. "What are you planning on doing with that gun?" She wet her lips, doing her best to think of any questions to prolong whatever he had in store for her, even if they were brainless and obtuse. She had to give the police a chance to get to the store.

"Are you really that dense, my dear, or are you simply foolish? Haven't you figured it out yet?" He studied her closely, the way a scientist would study a smear under a microscope, and shrugged at what he considered her blatant stupidity. "I bet this is why you own the position of sidekick and are not the one in charge. You are not the brains the operation, are you?"

Honey ignored the sarcastic question. "I…I want to hear you say it." She didn't. She most certainly did not want to hear anything that he had to say, anything at all. She would rather not know what he intended to do but her brain was starting to shut down. She couldn't think of anything else relevant to ask him. Not a damn thing. Panic was starting to fray the edges of her mind, to turn her brain into mush and disable her ability to think. Breathing harshly, she forced herself to look at anything but the menacing gun he held much too competently in his hand.

"If you insist. Far be it for me to ignore a request from you." He didn't see the harm in humoring her, especially if there was the potential for him to brag about his plan. Her nearly palatable fear was stroking his ego, making him feel strong and powerful, and building him up until he truly believed nothing and no one could bring him down. "But you already know who my intended target was. What else is there to know? I appear to be stuck with you, even though I didn't want you. I wanted Belden."

"Yes. Right. You did tell me that." Honey nodded dumbly. "Tr…Trixie left earlier," she shared, feeling as though she was betraying her friend by simply stating her name. "I'm covering her shift today."

"Your bad luck." He hung his head in mock sympathy and sighed for good measure. "It is a shame, though. I would have loved to have seen the look on her face when my well-placed bullets slammed into her. I planned on emptying every last one into some part of her body, you know," he shared easily, as if he was conversing with someone about the heat wave or the potential winner of the upcoming New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox baseball game. He didn't sound like he was discussing cold-blooded murder, which only made him seem even more diabolical, frightening and less like an actual living, breathing person.

"I'm glad she's not here," Honey rasped out. She meant it. At least Trixie was home, safe and sound, and away from the terror that he was easily creating. She wouldn't have wanted her friend to experience the hell at his hands.

"You interrupted," he chastised her. "Don't do that again. I don't like it." Reaching out, he smoothed a hand over her head, reveling in the sleekness of her hair. "Here I thought you wanted to hear my entire plan. You're going to need to be a better audience." His hand trailed down to her shoulder.

It took every ounce of will not to shake away his touch. Keeping perfectly still, she answered unsteadily, "Of course." Her voice trembled. Her knees knocked together. She found it hard to believe that he was touching her and hoped that if she didn't respond, he would stop. "I won't interrupt you anymore. Please. Continue."

The 'please' appeased him. He dropped his hand and stared off into the distance, almost as if he was visualizing what he had expected to happen that day in the store instead of what had actually occurred. "I would have started off easy, of course. I wouldn't have wanted to kill that Belden girl right off, as I'm sure you can understand."

Honey bit back an angry retort, remembering her promise not to interrupt again in the nick of time. She hated standing by, almost as if she was urging him to continue, but she did it because there wasn't any other option available to her.

He missed the look of anger that crossed over her face. Voicing his fantasy, he continued, "First, I would have given her one bullet of pain, maybe to a knee or an elbow, you know, somewhere where the pain would have been debilitating but not deadly. We would have conversed a little, kind of like you and I are doing right now. Maybe I would have let her beg for mercy. You know her well. Would she have pleaded for her life?"

"No, never. She wouldn't have begged," Honey inserted, shivering with disgust at the portrait he was painting with his mean and malevolent words. "Not Trixie. She wouldn't. She would have overlooked the pain and thought of a way to get out of here."

"A person never knows what they would do, should they find themselves in a life or death situation," he snapped back, eyes slitted with annoyance at her interpretation. She would have begged. He would have made certain of it. "Then I would have pumped another one into her. Again, in a not-so-essential spot on her body. It would have been a beautiful sight to see. I would have taken the time to enjoy her pain and would have continued with my course of action until there was only one bullet left. That one would have been saved for right here." He touched his gun to the middle of his forehead. "With such a shot, she would have died on impact."

What little color had been left in her face drained away. He spoke of Trixie's 'death' with such indifference. It made her feel beyond cold. "Oh, good Lord," Honey mumbled out, clutching the counter with two hands now to keep from tumbling into a heap at that hated man's feet.

"It would have been magnificent. A charming scene," he murmured softly, almost reverently. "She would have been lying in a pool of her own blood, painfully taking her last breaths, while I looked on. Beautiful," he repeated his earlier words, sighing for what could have been. A frown settled on his face. He stared at the girl who had unwittingly taken his prey's place. He wasn't quite as satisfied with his new victim, not after remembering his plans. She didn't appear to have the spunk to satisfy his need for domination. The satisfaction wouldn't be the same.

Honey cleared her throat, doubting if she would ever be able to forget the scene he had given her if she managed to get out of the precarious situation she found herself in, and made one last effort to continue the nauseating conversation. "Now? What are your plans now?" She watched him out of fear-filled eyes.

"I don't have the same hatred for you that I have for her," he answered with charming yet disarming ease. A twisted smile crossed his face. It was a dreadful sight. "Don't misunderstand me. It's not to say that I don't hate you, as well as the rest of that group of yours, because I do. I can't stand the lot of you. I simply don't want to make you suffer in the same way as I wanted that other one to. She would have been exquisite in her death. I would have made sure of it."

His words didn't make her feel any better. In fact, they only seemed to terrorize her even further. "All right," Honey muttered harshly, the black pupils almost swallowing the hazel of her eyes. "I understand. There isn't much I can do, is there?" Her short, choppy laugh was edged with hysteria. Caught between him and the counter, she didn't have any place to go. Frantically, she glanced towards the front door but there was no one coming through it to help. She was still on her own.

"You can hand me the money out of the register," he offered helpfully, appreciating the sudden idea. The cash would come in handy, would help him pay his rent and buy a few necessary supplies for the rest of the week. "That way when your body is found, the police will think it was a routine robbery along a quiet country road. They won't know the true motivation behind it. They won't have any other reason to suspect anything else, will they?"

"No," she answered when he appeared to be waiting for her to respond. It sickened her. The police wouldn't see it any other way. "No, they won't."

"The money," he reminded her with a push when she didn't make a move to get it. "I would like it very much."

Almost like a robot, overlooking the prod to the chest he had given her, she turned to the cash register. Nervous, frightened, her fingers were clumsy and she fumbled with the buttons. She forgot how to work the damn thing. When she was finally able to get it open, with his coarse words of discouragement propelling her on and making her more tense than she had been before, she took out the bills and laid them on the counter with hands that shook. "Here's the money," she announced needlessly. "It's not much. We haven't had many customers today."

"It's enough." He swept it up and tucked it into the front pocket of his shorts. Rapping the barrel of his gun against the counter, he remarked in a curious tone of voice, "I seem to remember hearing that old man Lytell kept a safe in the back room. Many of my cronies talked about it a few years back. We were contemplating a run on this place before I was sent back to prison. Supposedly it's stuffed with money, thousands and thousands of dollars worth."

Her throat was dry. The act of taking in air seemed to be nearly impossible. She fleetingly wondered if this is what it felt like to suffocate. "You're wrong," she found the courage to say. "It's not there anymore. He got rid of the safe and put the money into the bank. There were a couple of con artists who tried to get it out of him. They didn't succeed."

"Of course not. I suppose you and your friend caught the would-be thieves," he guessed astutely. Her guilty expression was all the answer he needed while he nodded curtly. "You've already proven yourself to be a liar once today. I won't believe you until I see it for myself. You're going to have to show me that the safe is no longer there." He stepped off to the side and gestured towards her to lead the way into the back room. "You'll notice that I am still a gentleman. Ladies first, my dear."

He wasn't. He wasn't anything close to resembling human. Honey didn't voice her thoughts. She reluctantly obeyed on legs that were threatening to turn into jelly. When she walked past him, his hand snaked out and curled around her waist. She recoiled back from the despised warmth of his hand and felt chills explode throughout her. "Don't touch me," she ordered him with as much force as she could muster.

"You're in no position to give orders," he told her, in case she hadn't been able to figure it out by now. His gun rested against her stomach. "I'm in charge."

She cringed when he pushed the gun up against her ribcage, an effective exclamation point to his statement. "Ri…right," she stuttered out. Where were the police? she wondered frantically. Did they even know about her call for assistance? Would they ever come?

An odd light flickered in his eyes. It grew, scaring her even before he started speaking. "I happen to appreciate pretty things. You, my dear, are a very, very pretty thing, indeed. I find you much more attractive than your good friend. She's not my type." He took a finger and traced the side of her face, chuckling when she flinched away from his touch. Unfortunately for her, she had nowhere to go but to burrow further against his chest. Eyes roving over her face and down her body, he mused softly, considering a move he had never taken into account before, "There might be just enough time for something I hadn't planned on with that other one. There just might be. I have a feeling you're going to be a better stand-in for her than I had anticipated."

Her knees buckled. It was strange that she needed his body to support her from landing in a boneless heap on the floor. What he meant was as clear as the bright light of day and made her more scared than the promise of a speedy, if painful, death. "Oh, no," she denied fiercely, infusing as much strength into her voice as she could. She couldn't seem to say anything but 'no' to him. "No, not that!"

"Oh, yes," he shot back smoothly, the decision made and an ugly excitement coming over his face, distorting it and turning him into a caricature of pure evil. "But I can't afford to stay here much longer. Time, you know. It's working against me. It's too bad we spent too much of it talking out here. It'll have to be quick." When she tried to dig the heels of her sandals into the worn floorboards, he propelled her forward, starting to feel an exhilaration build within him that he hadn't expected or planned on. As he had stated, he liked pretty things. Staring down at her profile, he decided that he more than liked this girl. She was prettier than he had remembered. He would reminisce about her with fond memories.

Green eyes glowing with anticipation and the same intense amount of hatred he could only remembering experiencing for his stepfather, Jim witnessed it all. With hands that were figuratively tied, he waited. They were coming his way. Infuriated by the terrifying and deadly plans the man had made for his Trixie, incensed by his new and ugly intentions towards his sister, Jim stood beside the doorway, keeping his presence unknown. Only one shot was available to him. That man was going down. The fury poured through his veins like molten lava, firing him up and spurring him into action. Stony face wiped clean of all emotion, Jim stood by, ready to spring into action as Honey's last and only hope, and wondered where the hell the police were.