“Do you?” she asks, her emerald greens intently scanning his steel blues. “Always get the girl?”
He leans closer to her, as close as the cell bars will allow, his gaze steadfast. “Maybe you should let me take you dancing sometime, and we’ll find out.”
Turning her head away from him and clearing her throat, she removes the uncomfortable lump surfacing there with his sentiment. “I like your mama,” her voice trails off at the latter term, reminded she will no longer be privy to personalizing the affectionate moniker.
“She likes you too, Brie.” He maintains his fix on her. “You can stay with us, you know. Mama would like that. I’d like that.”
Brianna shrugs. “Might be kinda weird. Wouldn’t that make us like brother and sister?”
He shakes his head. “I have a lot of thoughts about you. Rest assured, none of them are
sisterly
in nature.”
She turns back to him, momentarily caught up in his familiar, handsome features, wishing she could turn back the clock of her life over the past week. Wishing she was still that sheltered, protected, unaffected girl who could allow herself to live and breathe in this moment, further prodding into his
unsisterly
thoughts of her.
Lon reaches through the steel bars, his hand gently caressing the side of her face. “Brie,” he whispers, reading the growing concern in her expression.
Again, she turns her head away from him, releasing his hand, unwilling to give in to the emotion. Looking straight ahead, she redirects their conversation to a more pressing matter. “What time do you meet with the judge in the morning?”
“Eight,” he answers, disappointment in his tone at her aversion. “You think he’ll believe me? Brie, you believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she answers definitively. “I know you didn’t cut the brake lines on my parents’ car.”
He stands, pacing inside his cell. “If only there was a way to prove that.”
“Oh, there’s a way to prove it,” she concedes.
“Brie?” he questions, the tone of her voice confident with intent. “Don’t go do something crazy. You just hold on and let me talk to the judge.”
“I’m not going to do anything
crazy.”
She stands, brushing off her all-black duds from their contact with the concrete floor.
Clink!
The sound of the barred barrier rings from behind them. A deputy enters. “Miss Bentley, your ride is here,” the deputy speaks in a hardened tone. “Just in time. Visiting hours are over.”
“Pop,” Lon calls, assuming his father has come to escort Brianna home. He grows alarmed at the unsuitable figure entering the holding area with the deputy, absolutely not Alonzo Sr.
“You ready?” asks a young man, dressed in all black from head to toe, carrying a motorcycle helmet tucked beneath his arm. That same arm sporting intricate tattoo art.
“Johnny Vito?” Lon expels, identifying the infamous
bad boy
from their soon-to-be senior class.
Johnny ignores Lon completely, addressing Brianna, a grin on his face at her ability to follow direction by wearing all black clothing. “You ready?” he reiterates.
Brianna nods, maintaining her position in front of Lon’s cell.
“Call my father,” Lon pleads with the deputy.
Tapping on his wristwatch, the deputy rejects entertaining such a request. “Alright kids. Wrap it up.”
Lon latches his hands around the bars to his cell, shaking them vehemently. “Brie, you’re not going anywhere with this guy.”
“What’s the matter, Castille, still haven’t sealed the deal?” Johnny taunts, his smug smirk laced with sexual innuendo.
“How about I seal your mouth shut with my fist,” Lon challenges.
Johnny laughs. “Easy to talk trash when you’re protected by steel bars.”
“Alright. Out you go.” The deputy latches his hand around Johnny’s arm, escorting him out of the holding cell area. “You’ve got one minute,
Red,”
he refers to Brianna by her hair color, “or you, too, can have your very own box.” The deputy warns on his way through the barrier.
“Brie, what are you doing?” Lon pulls her to him, his hands wound around the waistline of her black jeans. Their frames now in full contact, with the exception of where the cold, steel vertical bars intercept.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do for me,” Brianna answers, her breathing labored with anxiety, her rapid expiration blows warm and intoxicating against Lon’s face.
He presses his hand over her heart, its cadence nervously bounding. “Don’t do this, Brie. Look at you.” His eyes dart between hers, taking note of the impending trepidation reflecting in her emerald greens. “You’re scared out of your mind.”
She gulps. “Fear is a luxury I can no longer afford.” Winding her hands around the steel bars, bearing down on them, her teeth gritting, tears begin to well in her eyes. “My parents are dead. You’re locked up in here. I have to do something.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he pleads, his forehead nudging against hers through the bars, their breath pushing one off the other, lips mere inches apart. “Please, Brie.”
His sweet concern propels her to press her mouth against his, drawing the moisture from his bottom lip, cradling it between hers. Lon moans with the pleasing, torturous contact. Brianna quenches a reciprocal cry. Forcing herself off the steel bars, and off of him, she quickly heads for the exit.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Lon calls after her, hopefully.
Thirty minutes later, Johnny Vito decelerates his powder black Triumph Bonneville motorcycle as he and his discontented passenger, Brianna, near the gates of the massive compound where her father worked. Brianna angrily swats him about his back, now that she can actually release her death grip from around his waist. Johnny catapults the high-powered machine into a slide, stirring up the gravel along the unbeaten path, coming to a halt.
Brianna jumps off, pulling the helmet from her head. “You stupid, stupid boy! What is wrong with you?” She spins circles in the gravel, scared witless. “You’re a maniac!”
Johnny powers down the engine, pulling off his helmet, accompanied by a pleasurable laugh. “Hey, you hired me, remember?”
She fans her shirt over her heart, convinced the life-sustaining organ is only seconds away from beating out of her chest. “Don’t you think what we’re about to do is dangerous enough? Let alone trying to kill me on the ride over.”
“Just trying to show you a good time.” He shifts his bike into neutral, pushing it in stealth mode up to the large metal gate surrounding the compound. “The girls I run with love that.”
Brianna follows after him. “Do I look like a girl who would
run
with you?”
Johnny looks back at her, scanning her up and down, contemplating the edginess of her new hairdo, but ultimately shakes his head. “No.”
She can’t help but ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
“Too rich for my blood.” He props his bike up on its kickstand, pulling a pair of heavy duty bolt cutters from his saddlebag. “That’s the problem with you rich girls. Always used to getting what you want.”
“Having standards, you mean.” She accompanies him to the massive wire-framed gate.
“No. I mean, you’re pampered. Soft. You don’t have to do anything for yourself.” He finagles the bolt cutters around a link in the hulking chain locking all trespassers out. Bearing down on the cutters, his voice grows disgruntled, “You live in a fairytale. You think you’re the prettiest, and that you deserve the best, because that’s what your daddy tells you.”
The link and Brianna’s confidence break at the same time with the mention of her father. The chain drops from the gate, mirroring Brianna’s chin as it drops to her chest.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that,” Johnny speaks gently, out of character.
She shakes her head, biting at the inside of her lip, fending off tears. “No. You’re right.” Diverting her eyes to the wooden sign hanging from atop the gate, she quickly deciphers,
ETNA Laboratories. NO TRESPASSING.
“I have been privileged all my life. Even now, I had to buy you to help me help Lon,” she spews at the pathetic thought, digging into her pocket. Pulling from it a wad of cash, she hands it to Johnny. “You can go. I shouldn’t drag you into this.”
He pushes her hand away, refusing to take the cash. “I don’t want the money. I’m here for the experience.” He grins. “Who am I kidding? I’m no better than you. I use my less than stellar childhood as an excuse to put your kind down. Take whatever I want, at everybody else’s expense. Truth is, I’d give anything to have your life, your parents,” his voice trails off with the mention of them. The burdensome steel gate to the compound creaks as he pushes his weight into it. “Seems to me, we make a pretty good team. You in?” He holds his hand out to her.
Brianna takes a deep breath, exhaling, placing her hand in his. “Let’s do this before I talk myself out of it.”
Pulling her onto the back of his bike, he coaches, “Stick to the plan. Like you mean it, now.”
She apprehensively nods her head, tightly wrapping her arms around him as he fires up the engine. His back tire spins, pelting gravel up around them as he lets off the brake, speeding into the compound.
“Hold on!” he yells, headed straight for the wooden arm of the security booth. The power of the engine catapults the bike onto its back wheel, the underbelly connecting and crashing through the wooden lever, sending its splinters spiraling about the gravel.
The calamity awakes a portly security guard from his slumber inside the booth. Jolting to attention, he clumsily arranges his sidearm as he makes his way out of the booth and into his golf cart in hot pursuit of Johnny and Brianna.
Their taillight barely visible through the cloud of dust, the security guard mutters through coughs, “Don’t they teach you kids how to read in school? That sign says no trespassing!”
“Woo-hoo-hoo!” Johnny yells, reveling in the chase.
Far exceeding the security guard’s speed in this race of tortoise and hare, Johnny halts as he reaches the backside of the compound. Releasing a well-placed crowbar from the side of his bike, he takes after the rear-entry door to the main lab.
The lock giving him more trouble than he reckoned, Brianna shoos him away. “Go!” she says.
“You sure?” he questions, hesitant to leave her.
Nodding her head, she digs the chiseled end of the crowbar in between the door and its casing. “Just keep him off our tail.”
Johnny smiles at her, pride and titillation in his inflection. “Didn’t know you had it in you,
rich girl.”
“Go!” she growls, breaking the lock loose from its casing.
“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckles. “I’ll circle back for ya.”
With an exaggerated pull on the handlebar accelerator, Johnny speeds off, passing back by the security guard in his golf cart.
“Geez-us!” the security guard mutters, his neck craning after Johnny. “Damn kids.”
“You’re going the wrong way,
Barney,”
Johnny jabs, his daring eyes twinkle as he likens the guard’s lack of skills to that of
Mayberry’s
bumbling deputy—Barney Fife.
The security guard jerks on the wheel of his golf cart and punches the gas pedal, attempting to pull off a doughnut. The meek engine on four wheels refuses to heed his direction, simply turning a gradual, wide semicircle.
“I told them. I told them. I told them,” he mutters, banging his fist up and down off the steering wheel of the docile vehicle. “I need a real cruiser out here!” The back wheels spin up a mediocre cloud of gravel and dust as he takes off after Johnny, severely bringing up the tail.
Meanwhile, inside the lab, Brianna scans office doors with her trusty pocket flashlight, provided by the ever-clever Johnny Vito. Sweat beads roll down the sides of her temples, twofold in their causation—the hot Louisiana summer night and her nerves.
“Ooh!” she stammers, jumping at another unfamiliar sound in the large, stoic warehouse. Momentarily, her nerves idle as her flashlight scans an office door that reads,
Edward Bentley, Astrobiologist.
“Daddy,” the words roll off her tongue at an affectionate whisper.
She turns the door handle, and much to her surprise it opens without reservation. There on his desk are pictures of her and her mother. Tears roll down her cheeks instantaneously.
“This is not the time, Brianna,” she coaches, biting down on her jaw and swiping at the moisture on her face. Eyeing his day planner, she leafs through it intently. “Tell me something, Daddy. Show me the way. Please.” She reads,
Monday—Meeting with Dr. Shaw, Wednesday—Meeting with Dr. Shaw.
Flipping over to the next week, and the week thereafter, the same meetings are scheduled—
Meeting with Dr. Shaw.
Fleeing from her father’s office, her flashlight engaged, she runs from room to room scanning the name plates until she finds the one she’s looking for—
Dr. Bernard Shaw, Director of Astrobiology Science and Technology.
Turning the door handle, this time she is met with resistance.
VROOM! VROOM!
The sound of Johnny’s racing motor blares from outside, followed up by a “Cease and desist!” warning, flooding out of the security guard’s bullhorn.
The scene, a much needed reminder of the severity and urgency of the situation, Brianna jams the crowbar between the lock and the door casing. “Come on. Come on!” she coaches, pushing against the metal bar with all of her weight. With one last effort, the lock gives way. Her body shaking from exertion and pent-up adrenaline, she unsteadily pulls the door open.
“Jackpot,” she mutters, spotting the oblong skull residing on Dr. Bernard Shaw’s desk, the same skull she and Lon pulled from the river the night her parents mysteriously drove off into the swamp. Hoisting the awkward, dense remnant under her arm, she runs for the backdoor.
Johnny meets her at the entry, quickly powering down his motorcycle and hopping off of it. Brianna’s triumphant smile vanishes as the sound of nearby police sirens wail, entering the compound.
“Oh, no…” she laments, looking to Johnny for direction.
He plops his helmet onto her head, securing the strap under her chin. “It’s gonna be okay,” he encourages through rampant breaths. “That guard…he’s gonna lead them right around back. You push that thing,” he points to his bike, “around the other side and straight on out the gate. Don’t start it up until you’re at the end of the road.”