Disclaimer: I stole Seth and Ritchie. Since they're thieves, too, they really don't mind, but I'm sure I'm going to have to give them back. So really just borrowing. No money for me, dammit.

Fourteen: It All Goes Wrong Again

"What is so fucking funny?" Augusta demanded, her anger getting riled up by Seth's sudden attitude switch.

He looked at her. It was different than any other look he'd ever given her. For the first time, it felt like he was actually seeing her for exactly what she was. He glanced from her to Xanny again, still smiling.

"Fucking brilliant," he said. "Just brilliant. So, does the family know, too?"

Xanny just glared at him.

"Well, in that case," he said smugly, "if I can get ten million for one, I can get twenty-million for two."

It was at that moment that Xanny chose to strike. Her fist came up and she clobbered Seth right in the chin. He reeled, but recovered, his gun flying up. Xanny caught it quickly, pushing his arm straight up and knocking him hard into Ritchie, who was approaching fast.

"Door!" Xanny screamed. Augusta ran for it. Ritchie fired, missed, put a hole in the door even as Augusta opened it. To her credit, she didn't shriek.

Xanny let go, causing Seth and Ritchie to crash on top of each other and slump against the wall. She spun on her heel and took off out the door.

Outside in the lot was her motorcycle. Augusta was standing beside it, not sure what to do.

"Get on!" Xanny howled, throwing her leg over. She shoved the helmet back and Augusta grabbed it, pulling it on with one hand and frantically grasping around Xanny's waist with the other as she revved up the motorcycle. Seth and Ritchie were almost in the doorway, having recovered too quickly.

Xanny gunned the entine. The wheel spun even as she turned, knocking a very large and ugly cloud of gravel up and into the hotel room. She had the distinct pleasure of hearing Ritchie and Seth both get painfully splattered as she tore off across the parking lot.

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"FUCK!!!"

The cry was loud enough for everyone in the hotel to hear it. Their cover was shot. "Get the briefcase!" Seth ordered. Ritchie obeyed, came back as Seth was starting up the car and turning to scream out of the lot. Ritchie barely had the door closed before Seth was gone.

Women. Women were the bane of his existence. With the universe as his witness, he would never, as long as he lived, ever get involved with one again. They were good for pussy and then out the door. Nothing else.

"Seth, you sure you don't want me to drive?" Ritchie asked calmly.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

He made a hard right out into the main street, causing the honking and wailing of several horns. The tires screeched, but it was worth it---he saw a head of bright blue hair in front of a head of bright blonde hair. They weren't too far ahead.

It was a different sort of chase. No matter how hard he pressed the accelerator, he couldn't get the car to go fast enough. Their chase a few days ago must have done something to the car. She, on the other hand, was obviously riding some piece of machinery that was well oiled and able to take on the world.

Question was, where the fuck was she going?

She made a wide circle around the town---she didn't dare go into the woods, knowing perfectly well that it was a useless tactic, as off-road driving was one of Ritchie's favorite things to do. Seth had spent too long watching Ritchie do it not to pick up his tricks.

Then, in a moment of intuition, Seth turned off onto a side road.

"Where are you going?" Ritchie asked.

"Patience, brother," Seth said, cutting down the residential area as if it were a deserted road.

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"He isn't behind us anymore!"

"What?!"

Leaning closer, Augusta yelled in Xanny's ear, "He's not behind us anymore!"

Xanny looked back. It wasn't the first time in her life she'd had to drive helmetless, but at this high speed it was starting to screw with her vision. Sure enough, there wasn't anyone behind them.

This wasn't good.

Carefully, Xanny slowed down. She glanced around, checking up the sidestreets. This was an incredibly stupid move, in some sense, making this kind of commotion in this small town, knowing it was going to get everyone's attention. The smart thing to do would be to make for the nearest way out, and not the highway. The highway would be too easy for them to track her.

Xanny caught herself. She wasn't thinking like a person on the right side of the law, she realized. She was thinking like a criminal. Getaways, hiding, taking back roads, those were things that honest people didn't have to do. She wanted a commotion, she wanted attention, she wanted protection from the Geckos.

Her stomach went cold when she realized that nobody here had the power to protect either one of them from the Geckos. Maybe thinking like a criminal was the right thing to do.

She pulled over to a curb---neat little houses had started to appear, dotted with some not-so-neat ones. Stopping the bike, she fumbled in her pocket for her cel-phone and pressed the speed dial. She had to at least tell Carl and Marcos where they were---if they hadn't already followed the commotion.

"Xanny!" Augusta screamed. Xanny looked up to see the dirt-colored car come screaming around a corner, Seth leaning out of the driver's side. She had never in her life seen him look so angry. He raised his gun and he fired at her.

Both girls ducked. Xanny gunned the motor, heard a terrible noise, and slipped past Seth as he went past her, unable to maneuver the car as slickly as she was able to maneuver her bike. But he was still fast, able to turn around eventually, still firing wildly.

Xanny couldn't get the bike to hit a high enough speed to get her a decent distance from Seth. Within a few seconds she felt a horrible jolt from behind, and Augusta shrieked.

Seth was ramming them, trying to knock them over.

By the third hit, Xanny nearly lost control of the handlebars. She leaned heavily to the left, going off-road, catching sight of a set of railroad tracks. If she could get on the tracks, for even a short way, Seth would have a hell of a time following her. She might even be able to get away before a train came by and wrecked the plan. Unfortunately, she did not see the deep ditch between her and the tracks until it was too late to pick up enough speed to jump it.

"Ritchie! Tires!"

Boy, was he pissed. He was screaming loud enough for her to hear him over two angry engines. It wasn't so much that that scared her, as the fact that she heard Ritchie shoot off two perfectly aimed bullets, and felt the bike go out from under her.

Augusta was knocked off and flipped to the side. Xanny held on a little longer, more out of panic than instinct, as Augusta was the smart one who didn't get pinned. Seth had made a sharp break, causing the car to turn 90 degrees, so that his driver's side was only feet away from her falling bike.

She felt her leg get caught underneath, dimly felt the tearing and piecing of her flesh, even though the leather chaps. It was minimal, if painful, damage. She could still run.

Her shoulder hit the ground. The bike kept going. She managed to grab hold of something---it was a rock, she realized later---to use it to anchor her weight out from under the bike. Something caught in the leather of her chaps, pulling harder. The bike was not going to let her go! With its engine still growling, like a wounded animal, it kept its momentum until it reached the edge of the ditch.

And then it disappeared, Xanny barely getting her leg out from under it as it went. But it was too late. The edge of the ditch had allowed gravity to have its way with her. Her other shoulder hit the soft dirt wall of the ravine, and she realized that it wasn't too deep, she wouldn't die---

Something smacked her on the head, hard. She had hit the bottom before she'd known it, and at her speed, it had been too fast. The world turned different colors, and lost its solidity.

Xanny looked up, saw Seth coming toward her. She struggled to get to her feet, found that all she could do was flip to her tummy and try to crawl away. He grabbed her by the back of her jacket, up by the cowl, and pulled.

She fell limp against him.

"Get up." His voice wasn't even human anymore.

She slumped at his feet, the world spinning. She was going to barf.

He yanked again. This time with enough strength to pull her to her knees. Her hands fell against his legs, her head lolling against his abdomen. The buckle of his belt scratched her cheek, leaving a thick red mark and a trickle of blood.

"I said get up!" He pulled her back so he could look down at her. Her eyes wouldn't focus. Her head slumped forward, her mouth worked to talk, but she couldn't say anything.

Then she felt herself being roughly lifted---more like dragged---back up the side of the ravine. When she reached the top, she nearly lost consciousness as she was unceremoniously flopped over the edge.

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Seth was so angry, at that moment, he pictured pinning her to the bottom of the ditch floor and strangling her with his own bare hands. But no, he wasn't going to let her bring him down like that. And she was obviously hurt, by the way she couldn't seem to get back on her feet, pathetically attempting to crawl away from him.

He dragged her back. She was like a rag-doll, unable to control herself. And then he saw her eyes. Something was wrong with her eyes. Was she concussed? He'd never seen a concussion before, he had no idea what it looked like. He managed to get her high enough so that his arm could get under hers, and he could pull her up toward the edge. The ravine was actually rather shallow, in the whole scheme of things, and he didn't have a hard time climbing it, although he was pretty filthy by the time he reached the top. He dumped her, and then felt himself being swatted, rather harder than he expected, by a furious Augusta.

"You killed her, you son of a bitch!" she railed, pushing him away from her. "You killed her!"

"She's not dead, she's concussed," Seth said, the energy drained from his voice. He caught one of her wrists, tried to drag her away. She fought herself free, went to Xanny again, shielding her body with her own.

"Xanny, wake up...you can't fall asleep, you can't! Wake up!"

"Ritchie," Seth growled, "trunk."

Ritchie approached, his gun in hand. He didn't like having to get too near Xanny if he didn't have to. He nudged her with his foot, saw that she had no fight in her, and holstered his weapon. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of beans, and took her to the trunk, where he dumped her inside and slammed the hood closed.

Seth dragged Augusta, nearly crying, back to the car and managed to shove her into the back seat. He practically had to sit on her to get her to calm down, and he was far too exhausted to drive. Ritchie took them a few towns over, Seth wasn't paying attention. At long as the police hadn't shown up, that was good enough for him.

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When Xanny opened her eyes, she was staring down at her lap. Her neck was cramped, and any movement sent blaring pain down her spine. But she moved anyway, only to find that her wrists and ankles were bound with something....

She looked to the side, ignoring the pain. Duct tape. That was Ritchie's thing, as it was with most psychos. Duct tape was so useful. The brief flickering thought of how Marcos had initially made her think of Christian Bale from American Psycho---he had used duct tape---was nearly amusing.

She blinked hard, shaking her head. There was a huge, throbbing bruise somewhere, she didn't know where, but she could feel the tender area. If she was concussed, she was lucky. In the trunk of the car, she had struggled to stay awake, using the jarring rocking of the car as in incentive. She thought about the cel-phone in her pocket, wanted to pull it out, but couldn't get through the fog of her head to do it. She knew the worst thing for a concussed person to do was go to sleep. It would have been better if they'd knocked her out entirely. Although the effort it took to render a human being unconscious just by using physical force was just a shred below the power needed to kill him---or her, in this case. Somewhere as the car began to slow down, and the weaving began as Ritchie, no doubt, was searching for someplace to stay that was safe, she lost the battle and the world went black for a little bit.

Now she was awake, and duct taped to a chair. As she drew in a deep, cleansing breath, she realized that something was constricting her chest, too. She glanced down again, caught the dull glint of silver-gray. Holy crap, they had duct taped her to the chair around her chest AND her waist!

The realization made her smile. They think I'm dangerous.

She was vaguely aware of the sound of running water. She turned her head, was met with more blazing pain. She shut her eyes, winced, wondered if they would be gracious enough to clean her up if she barfed all over herself. Then again, as the flickering memory of Seth's furious face danced through her memory, letting her rot in her own filth would be the kind of vicious thing they'd do, unless the smell bothered them too much.

The sound of running water stopped. Someone was in the shower. She glanced around, trying not to move her head too much. She was sitting, tucked in the corner, safely out of the view of the windows, but had a clear sight through the adjoining rooms. Two rooms again, either Seth was getting extravagant, or he'd wanted her in a room by herself for a reason.

The thought made her stomach do a slow flip-flop. No, Seth wouldn't...

A sudden muscle spasm made her tug against the tape. Nerves, she told herself. Nerves. She had to calm down. No, she was calm, she just had to stay calm, no matter what happened.

A/N: I've got about seventeen chapters currently done on this, and this is #14, so I have three more chapters ready to go. But I hesitate to post them all at once---feedback would be a good way to help me regulate it, if anybody's out there reading. Hey, a1iciaxoxo, your reviews were so great, where did you go? Come back! :)