Guilt hit Bayley once again when she walked back into the motel room. Seeing poor Becky handcuffed and taped up like that was awful at this point, and she hated herself for having done it, when all Becky had been doing was trying her best to express her feelings. By now, Bayley had convinced herself that those feelings were genuine, not part of some crazy escape attempt.
"Mmmmmph!" Becky pleaded into her gag as soon as she saw Bayley walk in and close the door.
Bayley set the bag which contained their breakfasts aside and dashed over to the bed. "I'm sorry, Becky. I shouldn't have handcuffed you again. I panicked. But I thought it all over while I was out, and I came to the conclusion that we want the same thing."
"Tmmph mm ommph," Becky mumbled.
"I'll do it now," Bayley said, then leaned down and worked on freeing the several layers of tape that she'd used for the particularly effective gag. Taking care to make the process as painless as possible, she took her time over it. It took her nearly a minute before she pulled the last of the tape from Becky's lips.
"What do you mean when you say we want the same thing?" Becky asked as soon as she was able to. "I thought we did, but then you taped me up again."
"I really am sorry. You wouldn't believe how much I regret doing that now. Here, let me get the cuffs off you."
"What did you decide?" Becky asked as Bayley set about freeing her wrists.
Bayley took a deep breath before speaking. She was apprehensive that once she told Becky what she'd been thinking, there would be no turning back. She would be committed to running away from her family, which would be a heart-wrenching thing to have to do. It was necessary though, to avoid jail or death at the hands of Charlotte and Ronda. "I think we have to run," she announced, voice barely above a whisper.
"We?" Becky asked, rubbing her wrists as she sat up. "You mean, we'll run together?"
"You kissed me earlier," Bayley said, sitting down beside her on the bed. "At the time, it made me panic. But now, I want to believe that you meant what you said before that kiss, that you want to be with me."
Becky looked her in the eyes, making sure to convey how serious she was as she said, "I did mean it. I meant every word. It might be crazy given the circumstances we're in, but I'm falling for you, Bayley. I think you're the cutest, sexiest girl I've ever seen, and I don't want to leave you, ever."
Taking Becky's hand, Bayley leaned in and gave her a soft kiss on the lips. "I don't want to leave you either. I don't care how crazy it is, I can't deny what I feel for you, Becky. There's something about you that drives me crazy. It has done since the first time I saw you up close back at the cabin. After thinking over our situation, I came to the conclusion that the only real option we have is to flee the country. It means I have to leave my family behind, and you have to leave your invention behind, but I think it's the only realistic way to guarantee we stay alive at this point. We need false identities, and we need to get out of the country. If we don't, Ronda and Charlotte will not stop looking for us until they've tracked us down and killed us both."
Becky had already arrived at a very similar conclusion while Bayley had been out. It would have been ideal if Bayley had killed her two so-called partners back at the cabin, but Bayley wasn't a killer. That much was crystal clear by now. The truth was that aside from the BL-04 chip and her family, Becky wasn't running away from all that much. Sure, the chip would have been worth a lot of money when it was fully developed, and her family were, obviously, her family. However, she had never been in the least bit materialistic, and she had never been all that close to her family either, especially since she had moved to America. They were both sacrifices that she was prepared to make to stay with Bayley and escape the two killers who were sure to be hunting them even as they spoke.
"I've thought it all through," Becky said, taking Bayley's hand. "I only want to stay with you. I don't give a damn about the chip I invented, and I rarely speak to my family. If it means staying with you, I'll run to wherever we have to go to get away from Charlotte and Ronda."
Bayley squeezed Becky's hand. "Then we know what we're going to do." She leaned in and kissed Becky on the lips. The kiss was enthusiastically returned, and within moments they were lying on the bed, still kissing, frantically trying to remove each other's clothes. During the next half hour, all of the tension that had built up in them over the last few days was released as they made passionate love to each other.
"Oh, Becky," Bayley panted when it was over, sweat pouring down her face. Becky really could do incredible things with her tongue. In some ways, it was a truly crazy set of circumstances to be in, having just made love to the woman she'd kidnapped only a few days earlier, but it just felt right in every way. Love couldn't be denied, she told herself, wondering even as she thought it if she was being ridiculous or not.
"I really do need that shower now," Becky said coyly. "Care to join me?"
"Of course," Bayley said, allowing Becky to take her hand and pull her up off the bed.
A couple of minutes later, they were standing in the plastic bathtub, under the lukewarm water, not caring in the least about the abysmal conditions as they took great care and pleasure in washing each other with the soapy water, in between passionate kisses.
"Where do we go from here?" Becky asked after they had gotten out of the shower. She was gently toweling Bayley down, enjoying every second of it. From her point of view, she was ready to go, no matter where Bayley decided their destination should be. All that mattered was putting distance between themselves and Charlotte and Ronda before they somehow managed to track them down.
"I think what we should do is go out and get some supplies that we might need on the road, then we get the hell out of here. I know someone who can get us some false ID's, passports and such. We need to go see him. It won't be cheap, but I probably have just enough money to cover it. We might need you to access your account to get us some cash to buy plane tickets. That's not ideal by any means as they'll be looking for your account being used, as you're a missing person. It is what it is though, we need the money."
"Okay," Becky agreed easily. "I'll do that here then, before we leave. At least when they come looking, they'll be behind the game. We'd better get something to eat, too. We somehow forgot about the breakfast you brought back."
"I wonder how that happened?" Bayley grinned.
With the rough plan of action agreed, they dressed and left the motel room shortly afterwards, to make the short drive into the centre of town. It was nice for Becky to simply have the freedom to walk around outside, savouring the fresh air and the exercise after several days in captivity. The fact that she didn't consider running even once was testament to how deep her feelings for Bayley already were.
They spent over an hour in the town, starting by eating a quick meal at the diner, then calling at several stores to purchase travel supplies, new outfits and luggage. They then visited a bank, where Becky was able to withdraw a large cash sum from her account.
"Okay, let's go back to the room, get ourselves organised, then we can hit the road," Bayley said when they returned to the van. "I think we should make it a priority to steal a car from somewhere, too. I don't really like the idea of continuing to drive around in this thing, and we've got a lot of driving to do if we're going to go and see my guy about false ID's, and then head for the airport."
"Sounds like a plan," Becky said. "I mean, you've said you're a good thief. I assume you know how to steal cars?"
Bayley gave her a mischievous grin as she started the van's engine. "I do."
Ten minutes later, they were parked back at the motel, unloading their supplies into the motel room so they could get everything organised, ready to move out. Little did they know, a passer-by had been studying them carefully from across the street for the past couple of minutes.
Michael Cole was standing on the sidewalk, thinking that the redhead who had gotten out of the white van looked a lot like the missing woman whose picture had been on the news the past couple of days. True, this woman certainly didn't seem like a kidnap victim - unloading plastic bags full of shopping from the van of her own free will and enjoying a conversation with the driver in the process, but Michael had a good memory for faces. As the two women walked into the room for the final time and closed the door, he told himself it would be better to call the police and play on the safe side. After all, he would have almost been willing to make a bet that it was the same woman. He would do the right thing and call the cops. They could investigate from there. Noting the number of the room that the women had just gone into, he took out his phone as he turned and walked away.
"This is going to be a waste of time," John Cena complained as he drove the patrol car towards the motel.
"You never know," Nikki Bella, his partner for the day, replied. Her voice contained no real enthusiasm, however. The two officers had been ordered to head over to the local motel to check out a possible sighting of the missing girl Becky Lynch which had been phoned in to the station an hour or so earlier. However, judging by the way the witness had reported seeing the woman he'd insisted was Becky unloading shopping bags with another woman, neither officer was the least bit confident of their investigation actually leading anywhere.
"I don't even buy the story that it was a kidnapping to start with," Cena grumbled. "She was some computer scientist or something, right? For all we know, the stress of her job got too much for her and she decided to run. Or maybe, if this woman the witness saw even is Becky, she's been dating this other girl for a while and they decided to go start a new life together?"
Nikki glanced at him and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "In this town?"
"Good point," Cena conceded. "Well, we'll soon find out," he added as he pulled the patrol car into the motel's parking lot.
"Yep," Nikki agreed. "There's the white van the witness described, down at the far end."
Cena drove the patrol car slowly across the lot and parked up next to the van. "No signs of life," he observed, looking at the room number they'd been given to investigate. "But then, the curtain's drawn."
"Let's go check it out," Nikki said. Checking her gun was in its holster as she climbed out of the patrol car was an automatic gesture, rather than something she actually needed to do.
As the two officers approached the motel room's door, a black saloon car pulled into the other end of the parking lot, with Ronda behind the wheel.
"Shit!" Charlotte exclaimed in the passenger seat, pounding her fist on the dash in anger. "We're too fucking late. There's the van right there. Those cops are going to bust in and arrest Bayley, and rescue that bitch Becky. We're fucked!"
Ronda looked at her, eyes as cold as ice. She made a point of pulling her gun out from the waistband of her jeans. "Not yet we're not."