I was halfway back to the compound, stuck behind a fender bender for long enough for me to cut the engine to wait it out.
It was then that everything went to hell.
Because out front of Chaz's bar was something I never could have thought to imagine, no matter how much my brain tended to run toward paranoid.
There, baking in the summer heat, was Moose.
I didn't imagine he just hightailed it out of Navesink Bank after his shameful booting, and being insulated at the compound, I had very little cause to ever come across him.
But it wasn't Moose that had me feeling very much like I might ruin the really nice leather interior of Reign's SUV with vomit. It was who he was with.
He was with Viktor.
Viktor who, despite it being close to a hundred degrees outside, was in one of his expensive suits and looked completely unaffected by the heat.
I slipped low into my seat, reaching up to quickly tie up my distinctive purple hair, hoping if they happened to look over that it would be less noticeable if it was pulled back. My heart was slamming hard in my chest, my stomach churning painfully as I fumbled for my burner.
"K.C.E Boxing Emporium," the chipper receptionist said into the phone by the second ring.
"Vermont. Bugging out," I declared, hanging up and wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. She knew what that meant. She would relay it to K.
Bugging out meant getting out. It meant shit hit the fan and I needed to run.
It meant K would have to get on top of figuring out the next move for me.
I felt sick as the cops finally started to wave the line of traffic forward. I turned my head to the side, looking away despite everything in me screaming to keep an eye on them, to see if they noticed me, to see if they were going to follow me. I turned off the main drag that would lead to the compound, hitting the side street that would take me to the train station.
See, that was part of my training too. I learned the streets of Navesink Bank. I studied the maps. I learned where I could escape into to disappear if I was being chased. I found out where the ferry, bus, and train stations were. I memorized the numbers for two cab companies. When I first arrived in Navesink Bank, I was forced to walk, then run the streets with K on the phone, quizzing me on what the next street was, what the cross streets were, until he was convinced I could navigate them even in a life-or-death situation.
So I drove to the train station on mental auto-pilot, parking in the lot, paying the fee, then going over to the automatic ticket machine and getting the first train out that would take me to the station that would, from there, take me to Philly where my bag would be situated. I reached into my pocket, grabbing the burner phone, wiping it clean of prints, smashing it under my boot, then throwing it away.
The burners were dangerous for multiple reasons. One because, despite common misconception, they totally could be zeroed in on if someone found out the number. And two, because of the call log that led back to K.
So for the next two legs of my journey, I would be doing it totally alone.
I had nothing. Literally nothing but the money Reign had given me. I stole a bottle of water out of the trunk and a couple power bars, then locked the car with the keys inside. They would find it. When they came looking for me. I figured I had maybe two hours until that happened.
The twisting in my gut was enough to make me bend forward for a second, sucking in a breath. Repo would worry. He would wonder what it all meant. He would help look for me. What would he think of the SUV parked in the lot at the train station with all the groceries still inside, along with the keys, with the parking fee paid so it wouldn't be towed?
Would he think I had just... willingly walked away?
Would he know better?
I exhaled hard as the train pulled up beside me, willing myself to push those thoughts away, to bury them deep to be dealt with later. It wouldn't help to harp on that. So I boarded the train and I sat down beside a window, watching with a sick rolling sensation inside as I left Navesink Bank behind.
I got off that train two hours later, sitting in an outside train station in an unfamiliar and seedy area because there was some sort of delay with the train that would take me to Philly where I had a bag stashed with money, clothes, new IDs, and a phone to call K.