Chapter One: A Collision of Planets
Gina followed Wyatt from room to room as he filled several duffle bags with drugs, cooking supplies, thick, banded stacks of cash, several handguns, and some clothes.
He gave Gina the keys to his second car as she begged to go with him.
Wyatt easily shook free of her grip on his muscular forearm as he pulled a photograph of Layla and his sons from the refrigerator. He blew out a sharp breath as he tucked the photo in his wallet, nearly three years to the day that Layla had driven high with the kids, leaving them unrestrained.
Layla had overdosed behind the wheel, the car crossed the median line, was hit by an oncoming big rig, rolled, and came to a stop against a power pole.
All three were pronounced dead at the scene.
"I don't want you Gina," Wyatt roared as he pushed her away, her body smacking hard against the wall, making her land heavily on the threadbare carpet.
Gina crawled to the bathroom and stayed there until Wyatt finished packing and left in his van, never looking back.
As he drove to a crowded shopping mall parking lot, intent on swapping license plates before heading north, across town Maureen Hightower stepped up into the driver's seat of her bulky rental SUV after checking out of the four-star average hotel.
She adjusted the rearview mirror as she began driving to the airport.
Her growling stomach compelled her to pull into the same strip mall that was also Wyatt's destination.
As Maureen put the SUV in park, pulled the emergency brake and reached for her purse, a few cars over, Wyatt scanned the people milling about the sprawling parking lot.
He narrowed his eyes at a young mom holding a screaming toddler. Despite the mom's distraction with the wailing child, Wyatt felt a twist in his gut at the idea of hurting the young woman in front of her child.
He squinted before flipping down the sun visor as an elderly man emerged from the mall, walking at a snail's pace.
Wyatt began pushing open the heavy van door before the man approached a luxurious Cadillac in a handicapped parking spot. He pulled the door closed, the feeble man too close to the mall's security cameras and the handicap plates could present an issue.
Wyatt glanced to the right when he heard a car door slam shut. He blinked slowly when his eyes fell on Maureen Hightower.
His eyes traced up and down her body before his gaze alighted on the nationwide rental car sticker in the side window and the murkiest view of her luggage stacked in the third-row seating.
Maureen wasn't aware of how close to danger she'd parked, didn't know the chain of events that would unfold, the collapse of everything she'd known that would begin when Wyatt's deep voice rang out from behind her as she fumbled for the key fob to lock the bulky vehicle.
"I heard there was a Nemo's Pizza around here, do you know if it's on this side of the mall?" Wyatt called to Maureen's back.
She turned, smoothing down her burgundy pencil skirt to find the face behind the voice.
Wyatt felt his chest tighten when his eyes landed on Maureen's face, his gaze following the line of her sharp cheekbones and striking features.
Wyatt forgot what he had just spoken for a second as their eyes locked. His pupils dilated, dormant wants and needs exploded in his hazel orbs with pyroclastic energy.
Maureen and Wyatt's DNA sequencing recognized each other in primitive remembrance, from a time before words were used for communication. Something inside sparked, stimulated them down to their bone's skeletal system.
Unbeknownst to Maureen, in that moment, from the second their eyes met, Wyatt quickly changed course from looking at her like a target, something disposable, someone he'd inevitably kill and dump on the side of the road, to something more than he could ever hope to articulate.
Maureen felt a shiver at the unnamed man's easy smile before she spoke.
"I don't know the area very well; I'm lost without the car's directions," she called to him.
"Thanks anyway," Wyatt called after a long pause, raising his hand in a casual wave.
Maureen parroted his wave before she turned and walked towards the popular chain coffee shop, feeling the weight of his gaze from the crown of her head to the red soles of her heels.
Maureen was gone for just over fifteen minutes, picking up a latte, packaged chicken salad sandwich and bottle of lime sparkling water. She had no idea that in the just over 900 seconds that had passed, that Wyatt had jimmied open her rental car, tossed his bags in the back to land on hers and crouched low in the second-row seating.
As she returned to the rental car, glancing at her watch, trying to calculate when she'd reach the airport, Wyatt drew up a syringe full of potency, enough to potentially cause her heart to stop.
The near-hemorrhaging syringe was just going to be a prop, but he'd wield it as though it was a viable weapon.
Maureen glanced over at the now empty van the man had called to her from, it now stood empty, the windows all rolled up and a reflective, accordion shade over the dashboard.
Wyatt slowed his breathing until the rate was nearly undetectable and waited until Maureen navigated the bulky vehicle from the bustling lot and had merged onto the mall's frontage road.
As soon as Maureen slowed to a stop at an intersection, he sat up and pointed the titanium .45 handgun towards her, pulling back the hammer, the click was deafening inside the plush interior.
Maureen's eyes flew to the rearview mirror, blinking rapidly in recognition of the man from the parking lot.
She squeezed her hands on the steering wheel until her knuckles turn white as Wyatt spoke lowly and quickly.
"Keep driving straight until you reach the northbound exit 87, don't do anything foolish," Wyatt added in a rasp and waved the loaded needle in her line of sight in the rearview mirror, where she'd never dropped her eyes.
The light turned green, but Maureen didn't notice. All of her attention was on Wyatt's face in the rectangular rearview mirror.
She flinched when a series of short, angry honks sounded from behind her and nearly fishtailed as she stomped on the accelerator, the large engine roaring to life and pulling her through the intersection, double-digit miles until the northern exit he'd referenced.
Maureen practiced her learned breathing exercises and concentrated on the road in front of her, feeling his eyes boring into the base of her skull.
As she drove them straight for a long, quiet stretch of road, back at the level one medical center, Kat's body continued to fight the drug that had infiltrated her system and attacked her kidneys. Her fever spiked as her renal system failed.
As Kat clung to life, her kidneys backing up uric acid into her already struggling body, hours away, growing further away with every passing minutes in the rental SUV, Maureen flicked her eyes down to the gas gauge, noting it was just a hair above a quarter tank.
Maureen cleared her throat, so unaccustomed to struggling to speak to someone with her profession.
Wyatt was already staring at the rearview mirror when she raised her eyes, finding his wordless unblinking gaze, his expression dangerously neutral.
"Um, it's low on gas," she managed under the overwhelming weight of his gaze, feeling like Atlas supporting a whole another world on his broad back after his Achilles tendon was severed.
Wyatt grunted and nodded towards a sign, the battered green metal square indicated there was a fuel center and truck stop in the next fifty miles.
Maureen couldn't help but flinch when Wyatt tossed a couple creased twenty-dollar bills over the seat to land on the passenger seat.
"Thanks," Maureen whispered, reaching for her coffee with how dry and parched her mouth had become.
She was grateful to any of the made-up gods that he remained silent until the rest stop loomed closer.
Maureen snuck micro-glances up into the rearview mirror as Wyatt fumbled through his duffle bags and slipped into a long-sleeved button up shirt and pulled a cap with a bright Lakers logo onto his smoothly shaved head.
Wyatt gestured to the furthest gas pump for Maureen to drive the SUV.
After she put it in park, she inhaled sharply when his large hand landed on the rounded curve of her shoulder.
"Don't do anything foolish, you will suffer the most in every equation," Wyatt murmured, bringing his face closer until his nose nearly touched the warm skin of her throat. "Do you understand?" he added as his lips hovered over her thudding carotid pulse.
Maureen swallowed hard and nodded with the barest movement, he would've missed it had he not been encroaching on her breathing room, inhaling her exhaled fear, pulling it deep into his lungs.
He watched the price climb as the vehicle gulped the premium fuel. As the tank neared its capacity, Wyatt never stopped staring at Maureen through the tinted windows.
She kept her face straight ahead, he enjoyed studying her profile, wondering if people mistook her strong profile to be as that of the Romanov family.
Wyatt smiled to himself, despising most of his education except for the science and especially open lab hours that helped him hone his cooking skills.
He'd fallen in love with his English teacher and struggled with every assignment to seek her praise and a kind word. He would recite Shakespeare as he mixed chemicals in the lab when the school was closed and cloaked in darkness.
Wyatt had one day happened to actually look up when his history teacher across the hall was speaking and caught a glimpse of an antique photo of the Romanov family.
He had felt his chest tighten as it looked like he was seeing a carbon copy of his English teacher Olivia Lourdes. Wyatt had chosen that particular seat in history because it gave him a vantage point through the small square window into Miss Lourdes's class.
The moment he looked away from who he considered his veritable Juliet and soul mate because he was sixteen and would never love again, made him confront the tragedy of the Romanov family, their resilience and traumatic end. He was hypnotized by the wealth they died holding close to their corpses.
Wyatt shook himself to the present moment when the flow of fuel automatically shut off. He didn't want Maureen to use her card for when she was inevitably reported as missing and also didn't trust leaving her for the two minutes it would take to pay.
He replaced the fuel nozzle and depressed the bright red assistance button.
A tired, crackly voice inquired to what was needed.
Wyatt pulled open the passenger side door as he spoke to the square speaker.
"I'm sorry, I just had surgery and can't make it in to pay, can you collect the money out here?"
The clerk's irritated sigh was amplified through the shitty speaker, "just a minute sir," the voice spit with a smile.
After the chubby clerk waddled out and took their cash, Wyatt directed Maureen back towards the inevitable exit for the interstate.
He didn't tell her that their destination was still more than a day's drive away. The place where he first started cooking after his unfortunate trial and error in his family's backyard, involving a tool shed.
Maureen heard the rustling of papers and glanced back briefly when there was no car in front of her to see Wyatt looking through her oversized designer bag.
"Don't read those," she heard herself say. "If I'm dead, I guess it won't matter about violating medical confidentiality," Maureen thought as Wyatt pulled out a stack of patient files for her first day back at the office after her trip to the medical conference out of town.
"You're a doctor?" Wyatt called from the second-row seating when he tugged her laminated badge free from her purse.
Maureen nodded as Wyatt read from her square badge with the photo that caught her winking.
"Maureen Amelia Hightower, Neuroanatomist, Level 4 Clearance at a state pen?" Wyatt asked from behind her, unable to keep astonishment from his tone.
She nodded again, squeezing her hands on the wheel as he continued leafing through the inmate files she was planning on reviewing on the flight home.
"What's this?"
Maureen flicked her eyes over her shoulder to a lined sheet of paper with two columns and her sloppy, looping cursive.
"It's a word association exercise that I use to monitor his baseline," she answered, bringing her eyes back to the road passing under the sturdy tires.
"I'd like to play this game," Wyatt said as his eyes moved over the words and the felony rapist's answers.
Maureen's brow pulled into a frown. "It's not a game," she stated in a clipped tone.
Maureen dropped her eyes from the mirror to the road in front of her when a sea of brake lights lit up.
Wyatt angled himself in the seat to watch Maureen's eyes blink as she signaled to pass a slow-moving semi.
The SUV was filled with silence for a few mile markers before Maureen spoke.
"I need to be at a meeting with the Medical Director in two days."
Her words hung in the air until the traffic smoothed out and everyone was once again moving at an excessive speed.
"You won't be," Wyatt finally said.
