Chapter 13

Lucca flew north along the highway, high enough to be safe, but low enough that the cars they passed on the highway were easy to make out. There weren’t very many— the roads out there that early in the morning were the next best thing to deserted.

The series of tracking pings from Dana’s software let them know their quarry was driving just a hair under the speed limit. The last position gave them a location and a time— it had been more than an hour ago, but there was only one direction available; estimating the car’s position from there was trivial.

“There!” Dana pointed down at the highway through the plane’s windshield, a mile or two up the road. She could just make out a light-colored car; in the still-dim morning light, the pool of the car’s headlights was easy to locate.

“Right where it should be,” she continued, “and there aren’t any other cars for miles.”

“Are you sure?” Lucca spoke evenly; they weren’t challenging Dana, just asking the woman to be certain.

Dana paused for a moment before answering.

“It has to be.. Right place, right kind of vehicle, nobody else around..”

Lucca frowned at this.

“I’ll loop back around and cross behind them. Grab the binoculars out of the bag in the back— get as good a look as you can.”

While Lucca flew the plane in a large loop, Dana carefully rooted around in the duffel bag— it was hard to get to, and she was terrified of accidentally kicking some important control or avionic in the process.

She found the binoculars in the bag— along with a pile of road flares and a few firearms. She blanched— she wasn’t a fan of guns, of violence; but there was a reason that she wanted Lucca at her side for this.

“Ok, ready.” Her tone was a little more subdued. She had been caught up in the game of things, and the glimpse of the weapons brought her back to the seriousness of the situation.

“You’ll only have a second, but I can make another pass if we need to. Here goes..” Lucca banked the plane around a large, gentle curve. As promised, they crossed perpendicular to the highway about a half-mile behind the car.

“It’s.. a sedan.. about the right color..” Dana squinted, trying to steady the binoculars. “Maybe that’s a bumper sticker?”

“Good enough for me,” Lucca said.

The highway divided into separate north and south tracks as it wound around the terrain, and Lucca was able to easily set down on a straight stretch on the northbound side, roughly twenty miles ahead of the car. The plane’s thirty-six foot wingspan was wider than both driving lanes, hanging over well into the median on either side. They had a mile or two of straight road in front of them to take off again.

Dana estimated from her tracking data that the car would reach them in about fifteen minutes, and they didn’t waste the time. Lucca retrieved the duffel bag she’d stowed behind the rear passenger seats, and started pulling gear out. The first item was a compact black pistol in a thigh holster. She removed the trigger lock, and handed the ensemble over to Dana.

Lucca was adamant that trans women should be armed, and they had insisted that Dana train with them, at least enough to learn the basics. The weapon was, therefore, familiar to Dana, but she fervently hoped not to need it. She didn’t suspect she would be able to pull the trigger, if it came to that kind of violence. She did not want to find out.

Dana checked the magazine, made sure she knew where the safety was, and holstered it.

Lucca, for their part, had chosen a matte black pump-action shotgun with a folding stock. A brutal and blunt weapon, which they handled like an extension of themself. Dana had shot trap and skeet out in the desert with them and that very weapon, and knew they had deadly aim.

They slung the shotgun over their back and grabbed a double handful of road flares, which they proceeded to light and drop in a line across the highway about thirty feet south of the aircraft. They returned to the plane and opened one of the maintenance panels, feigning to investigate some kind of mechanical failure. The shotgun leaned against the fuselage, within easy reach, but obscured from sight behind their legs.

The minutes were interminable, and Dana’s heart hammered in her chest. She crossed and un-crossed her arms, pacing, occasionally re-checking the pistol Lucca had given her.

“Damn it, girl, sit your ass down and stop looking so suspicious,” Lucca snapped at Dana the third time she re-checked the pistol.

She had been aiming down the sights of it toward the brush at the side of the highway, and she winced at her embarassed recognition that Lucca was right. She tried not to think about what would have happened if the car had arrived at just that moment and the driver had seen her pointing a gun around.

Dana sheepishly holstered the pistol, muttered something inaudible in reply, and sat in the open hatchway to the cockpit. She spent the last few agonizing minutes simply waiting, hoping that the tracking software had led them to the right place.

A pair of headlights appeared around the bend; the car’s driver— exhausted, no doubt, after hours of dull late night highway driving— took a few moments too many to react, but braked hard to a stop just shy of the line of flares. He rolled the driver-side window down and stuck his head out, trying to get a better look than the dirt— and bug-splattered windshield would allow.

After a few seconds of slack-jawed amazement, he pushed the driver’s side door open and climbed out. His ill-fitting jeans and white polo shirt matched the glimpses Dana had seen in the video footage.

He slammed the car door shut behind him, leaving the window down and the engine running, and walked toward the plane. He yelled a greeting— his tone neutral, even curious and a bit chipper.

“Well what in the god-blessed-” he started.

Lucca rapidly turned, brandishing the shotgun— held diagonally across her body at the ready, finger next to but not on the trigger. They took several rapid steps closer to the man.

Lucca stood a head taller than the driver, and he wasn’t small man in the first place.

“Hands.” Lucca didn’t shout, didn’t point the weapon, but their voice carried a tone of authority.

“Hey, what the fuck?” The man shouted, no longer neutral or chipper.

Nevertheless, he raised open hands, and took half a step back toward the car. He recognized well enough the danger of a shotgun from fifteen feet away, and seemed anxious to put more distance between Lucca and himself.

“No. Away from the car.” Lucca gestured toward the shoulder with the barrel of the shotgun. “Move.”

“Who the heck are you? I got places to be, what the fuck is going on here?” He shouted, anger all too evident in his tone.

Dana hopped down from the plane, and started for the car.

“Go behind me,” Lucca told her, before the woman could cross the firing line between them and the driver. They kept their eyes on the man in the polo short, and didn’t see Dana’s embarassed expression. She diverted around behind Lucca.

“Ain’t nothing in there worth stealing..” the man protested as Dana closed in on the driver’s side door.

Dana ignored him, and Lucca just repeated their command to move onto the shoulder.

He took a few steps off the highway, eyeing Lucca. They stepped forward as the man stepped back, keeping the distance between them even. A few of these steps brought Lucca into the cone of the car’s headlights, and gave the driver his first good look at them.

“Oh, you’re one of them fucking queers,” the man spat. “Shoulda known you faggots couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

Lucca showed no sign that she had even heard the man speak, though Dana flinched at the slur. She also wondered at the stupidity of someone that would provoke an angry Lucca holding a shotgun.

“She’s not here,” Dana stared down into the empty car.

The passenger seat was a mess of fast food wrappers and empty five-hour energy bottles, and the back seat was much the same, with the addition of what looked like a few days’ worth of rumpled clothing. She looked back over at Lucca, her chest fluttering as panic started to creep in.

“Grab the keys— check the trunk.” Lucca’s voice was calm, but Dana caught the undercurrent of rage they were holding in that moment— not at her, but at the man, and the situation.

Dana reached in through the open driver-side door and pulled the keys from the ignition, killing the engine in the process. The man had fallen silent, perhaps thinking better of further insulting people with guns pointed at him. Dana wanted to scream to disrupt the intensely uncomfortable quiet that prevailed as the car’s engine ceased rumbling.

She walked around to the back of the car and fumbled with the key fob.

Her hands were unaccountably clumsy with the car’s remote— part of her didn’t want to press the button for fear that her guess had been wrong, and the trunk held nothing— or, worse, only Valerie’s body. She couldn’t be certain about what the man had intended.

The car emitted a chirp, and Dana jerked in surprise. The trunk lid released, springing open just a hand’s breadth. Dana could see only bare, carpeted trunk floor through the gap.

Her chest felt tight with fear and she realized her hand was shaking as she reached forward and lifted the trunk lid.

A woman was curled up at the back of the trunk, barefoot and wearing only pajama pants and a tattered and too-large band t-shirt. She was pressed forward in the trunk, away from the opened lid, and her head was buried in the corner formed by the trunk floor and the back seats. Her arms were clutched over her head as some meager form of defense. The steel cuffs around her bruised ankles were visible, even though her legs were drawn up into a fetal position.

Valerie was quivering and sobbing with fear, as silently as she could manage.

Dana’s blood ran cold with rage at the sight; and she thought that, yes, probably she could pull the trigger tonight, if it came to that.

As the trunk opened and the light clicked on, Valerie pulled herself into a tighter ball. An audible, gasping sob escaped despite her efforts to remain quiet. Her every movement telegraphed an abject terror that was almost tangible.

“Hey, Valerie.”

Dana’s voice and the care in it were so out-of-context for Valerie that she didn’t react for a solid thirty seconds. She shakily turned her head to look out of the trunk, her red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes staring uncomprehendingly.

Dana’s heart ached.

“Hey.. let’s get you out of there?”

Dana was the closest thing Valerie had to a safe person in her world— and if she had any amount of cognitive processing available, she would have found that grimly ironic. Dana was the last person she expected to be opening the trunk. A part of her quietly wondered if she had completely lost touch with reality; but her brain was too fried by fear and exhaustion to do anything other than simply react out of pure emotion.

Valerie turned more fully and sprang away from the bulkhead, with more force than she intended. The cuffs bit into her ankles and she stumbled awkwardly as her momentum carried her forward, her thigh hitting the lip of the trunk with enough force to ache and start to instantly bruise.

Heedless of this, she threw her arms around a very surprised Dana. They had only truly met once, but somehow the other woman’s scent already felt familiar to her— it had lingered in the dim corners of her mind ever since that first meeting.

Valerie knelt there and hugged the taller woman around the waist, each hand grasping the opposite wrist and locking Dana into the hug. Valerie buried her face in the flannel-wrapped firmness of Dana’s stomach, and her sobbing redoubled; with no effort to keep the cries silent.

“I know,” Dana whispered to her, and reached a hand up to gingerly stroke the girl’s hair. “I know. You’re okay now. You’re safe.”

It was several minutes before Valerie’s crying subsided and she was able to wrest back control of herself. She shifted to an awkward kneeling position, knees and shins resting on the trunk floor. She steadied herself with one hand against the side of the car, as she looked back at her ankles; her first chance in something like clear light to actually see the steel biting in to her joints.

They were handcuffs; barely large enough in the first place for her ankles. They had ratcheted more tightly closed several times during the trip, and by now her feet were prickling with a staticky tingling sensation she was all too familiar with.

Tears still streamed from her eyes as she looked back at Dana, but she at least was no longer sobbing.

“I.. can’t.. uhm..” she gestured at the cuffs with her free hand. Valerie may have reasserted some measure of control, but complete sentences were still beyond her capabilities.

Dana glanced down at the set of keys in her hand; the handcuff key dangling there was obvious. She unlocked the cuffs, and Valerie gave a pained, shuddering gasp as the blood started flowing properly again; the muted static tingling became an unbearable roar as the nerves began to wake back up. Dana helped her pivot and sit on the edge of the trunk while she regained feeling.

Dana simmered with anger as she eyed the rings of bruised and damaged skin that the cuffs had left behind. The external damage was not significant, but it would take time for the bruises to fade. Cuffing her in that way was careless and dangerous; the steel might already have bruised nerves in Valerie’s ankles, or worse.

Once she could stand, Valerie pressed her entire body against Dana’s, wrapping her in another desperate hug that Dana could, now, reassuringly return. Neither woman was sure how long they embraced, standing there; only that when they separated, it felt like it had not been long enough, for all that Valerie had been through.

Dana wrapped one arm protectively around the girl’s shoulders and led her back toward the plane.