The Devil Doesn't Want Me by Eric Beetner

Author:Eric Beetner [Beetner, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

32

Shaine slept, but Lars pressed on driving. The awkwardness of the previous night’s stay soured him on making too many stops with her in tow. Out here in the high desert there wasn’t much but truck stops and wayside motels that would give Norman Bates the creeps.

Plus, the night was beautiful. One of those pitch-black new moon nights where the landscape is as dark as the sky, so the stars begin on a blurred horizon then get thicker as they go up and over your head, making you dizzy.

Lars usually loved night driving. The slightly unnerving sensation of black all around you. Lars figured it must be what it’s like to drive at the bottom of the ocean.

But now the sensation felt unnatural. He’d known exactly what his day was going to look like for so long that the black, the unknown, stretching before him filled him with half freedom and half fear. He grasped for the word to describe how he felt. Untethered.

Fuck the bottom of the ocean, he felt like an astronaut out on a spacewalk who suddenly realizes the cable connecting him to the ship is broken and he’s floating away.

Christ, I’m talking myself in to a mini panic attack. Mitch is dead. My purpose for being is over.

The knowledge that he could go anywhere and do anything frightened him. It had been so damn long since he’d been a free man, the tingling feeling was foreign. Lars forced himself to do yoga breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

He’d known some guys over the years who’d done long stretches in prison. All of them got used to the regimen of prison life quickly. Even the guys on a two-month stretch had an adjustment period when they got out. But the guys who went longer—years, a decade or more—they had it hardest back on the street. The worst part of all was being in charge of your own free time.

Driving through the ink of an Arizona night, Lars didn’t have to worry about getting back to the apartment, didn’t have to think about where the next lead on Mitch the Bitch would come from, didn’t have to make time for target practice to keep his skills up. All he cared about was getting to the bank in Sedona during regular business hours, a quick stop in Vegas for more cash, and then making it to Burbank to dump Shaine.

Lars started to want a little more structure.

He took stock of the moment: On the 40 headed west. He had a destination and a time table; they would make Burbank day after tomorrow. It seemed vaguely like a plan. A purpose. He didn’t have a job anymore, though. That part was messing with his head.

Then he thought of it.

Wait. Her. Keep her alive. No collateral damage. That’s a job. That’s a goal.

I can work with that.

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