I told myself later that I had made up my mind to let her go. But the goddamn truth is, I didn't have a choice. She had set her jaw.
We had finished a few minutes before and were lying on the floor next to the bed. She propped herself up against the wall and tried to listen to the outside world. If there was anyone there. If the kid in the next room had heard. Or cared. She looked at me looking at her, us both fully aware how stupid having sex in a house you just broke into, in a foreign country, with no way of telling who might show up was. Us also both laughing because it was fantastic. Knowing it would likely never happen again, and we would never be able to tell anyone.
She listened hard. Heard nothing conclusive, then stared at something without form in the middle of her own space for a minute. That's when I saw the look and knew she was gone.
I put my jeans on. Looked around in the dark for my black t-shirt. I had it on backwards and inside out by the time she was ready.
"I'm taking the money. And the gun. And the kid."
I gave her the look I had given every single woman who had left me. It didn't phase her. It never seems to. Must be in the handbook. I wasn't about to give it a second go. I checked the mag. Told her there were only three left. I didn't hand it to her, I left it on the floor. If she was going to undertake the world on her own, she could well stoop down that far too.
I went to say goodbye to the kid. I still had no idea if she was in too much shock to speak, or didn't understand English, or had simply stopped caring for the hollow words of men. I did my best, but what the hell do you say.
She scoured the house for supplies. Found a child's backpack, some shotgun shells but no shotgun, a bottle of water, half a roll of pink duct tape, a 9v battery still in the package, and three bags of almonds. She tried to find some clothes in the woman's closet, but the woman must have been flat chested and never been hiking in her life. She threw lots of things on the floor and left the bedroom wearing a black rock festival t-shirt braless and a dark green hoodie with a black crow print on the back. The kid was half awake and walking into walls as she dragged her down the hallway.
"You're a dangerous man. That I've seen. You'll be fine." She was about to tell me not to follow her. She thought better. She didn't kiss me. Didn't look me in the face. She paused at the back door and I was waiting for her to say something. Anything. About us, or the stupidity of there being an us. She held out her hand and told me to give her the rest of the money. How she knew I had split it beforehand I have no idea. Perhaps she had that experience before. Men do that. We take money from women. Money and love, and hate, and reality, and we give back isolation. It wasn't worth the words, and I could always find more.
I ransacked the house. Found a lot of papers that looked suspiciously important, but in a language I can't read and not why I was there anyway. The guy had a decent pair of hiking boots that fit well with two pairs of socks. I laced them only to the ankle for now, as there was a fairly steep rise starting just beyond the back of the lot. I found an old half empty can of petrol in the garage.
I started the fire in the kid's bedroom but spread most of the fuel around in the kitchen leading up to the closet under the counter where there was an LPG bottle to feed the burner set, to which I had made a small cut in the hose. By the time I was halfway up the hill I heard and felt the explosion. Flames can play tricks on your mind in the dark. It sounded like muffled screams coming from the house, but that was impossible.
I found a trail, stayed on it til it crested the ridge, but it looked far too used for my taste at the moment so I shadowed it off to the right as most hikers tend to look left as they go uphill. There was a field at the top opening onto the plateau. At the other edge I could see the shape of a person. I made my way around the edge just inside the treeline. turned out to be a man. He didn't seem random, more likely a woodsman or a shepherd on his way to work. He didn't see me. Lucky him. He didn't seem to have anything I could use, and at that moment I didn't feel like taking whatever it might be. I watched him for a few minutes as he made his way. He knew the path even in the half light of early morning and I couldn't tell if he was bored or contented. I both felt sorry for him and envied him at the same time, then I realized it was myself I was looking at like a mirage long after he had since passed.
I found their footprints eventually. Followed them for an hour. The ground was wet enough to make the task easy, which means she wasn't being careful, she was trying to make time. The kid's prints were getting shorter together and had stumbled a few times badly, then disappeared as the bigger set got deeper. She was slowing having to carry the child. She was a strong women but carrying another human for very far is a fucking task. Two sets again and some walking around in the same place, and a meter off to the side a small pile of unnecessary stuff just thrown on the ground. Kids toys, a glass jar of some homemade fruit preserves, a plastic bag, a jacket that it was too warm to use. Back to one set of deep slow prints on the trail. I followed for a few meters and then went back and hid the pile of castoffs correctly and covered the mess of footprints where the interaction had been.
It was too light. The trail started to fall off downhill towards some city lights in the distance. I looked around trying to get my bearings, see if I could remember from the map where I was and what that city might be, and failed all around.
In the far distance ahead I could hear the occasional car pass by left to right on a road that I could not yet see. Coming up from the valley ahead there must be a two lane highway lightly use by people going to work in the city very early in the morning. Live in the village, work in the town, burn a lot of petrol, be happy, feel your kids are safe, the dream. The sound of one of those commuters slowing their car and stopping along the road. In the middle of nowhere, where no one else would stop. Two minutes, nothing. The sound of a gunshot.
I began running. Twenty seconds later I was at the road. Off to the right in the distance, red tail lights moving fast.
The sun was starting to come up but there was a deep shadow in the valley still and I couldn't see shit, which is what lead me to tripping over the driver and twisting my ankle badly. She had left him on the side of the road with his wallet still in his pocket. She either knew I was following and would take care of this, or she just didn't fucking care. Wasn't much point in pondering the answer at the moment. I dragged the body down into the ditch, covered it with branches, threw some dirt and gravel onto the pool of blood on the asphalt. His ID picture looked like a mugshot of your average child molestor and he had hardly any cash on him. He smelled like beer and piss at 6am and his leather jacket must have been from 1975. It was the only cool thing about him and I would have taken it save for the big wet hole in the left breast pocket and a stain that would never wash out.
So she killed a the drop of a hat when it was necessary, but she was also a good judge of character. good to know. Having just fucked her it was clear she liked to get fucked, but not to be leered at, and trying to pick her up with the intention of raping her was not something men got away with evidently.
I walked in the other direction.
Dinko was a classic weird ectomorph, very tall, super skinny, with long curly black hair that needed washing, and smudged John Lennon glasses. He was perfect too, in this case, since he was also a drug addict, and a moron. The kind of moron who thinks they are very intelligent. Thinks that they have a righteous path in life. He was a vegan. He cared about animals more than people, would happily tell you so, and he thought guns were cool. He would be their patsy. The perfect poster boy for Eco-Terrorism gone wild. They had given him the USB stick with the virus on it. Carrying it was an important job and they made sure to tell him that at least once a day during training. They had given me the backup one. Just in case. Just in case they were lying to him, didn't trust him to enter a few simple commands into a terminal screen, or perhaps in case they had put a deliberately corrupt file in his memory stick, so I would be forced to take over with the actual file.
This was pretty decent planning I have to admit, except things never go to plan, especially when you break into a nuclear power plant in Eastern Europe. Things went to shit. She and I were watching the doors to the control room. Dinko was failing desperately at his unsurmountable task as expected. I was giving it a 20 count before going to see if I could "help" him. He must have heard the kid playing with her doll. Or some noise. Dinko got up and went to check it out. Again, stupid, as he should have sent one of us.
Now what kind of parent brings their daughter to work at a power plant, leaves her sitting in the big corner chair of his office playing while he has the safe open? Wrong on several levels. In walks Dinko, sees the guy bent over behind the desk, says "Hey". Plant manager scared shitless, grabs his revolver from the open safe and spins on Dinko gun in hand. Dinko was a useless moron, but he was a crack shot, and with drug enhanced reflexes he put a bullet right through the plan manager's throat. That's an ugly, messy, violent, way to die, it made the girl scream. Dinko supn around, now scared shitless himself, and was about to shoot the girl out of sheer stupid reaction when the back of his head exploded all over the plant managers desk. She was fast. She had reached the office before I did, saw the girl about to die, saw Dinko breathing hard from the utter exhilaration of just killing a man, and she did all the right things. She blew Dinkos fucking head off.
This isn't the weird part. These things happen. I expect them to. List a conflict zone in the world, anywhere, anytime, men with guns or knives, or stones, throw in a cause, or money, people get hurt. People get dead. In odd ways. At the wrong time. The wrong people usually. Most people try to solve that with the killing of the right people shortly thereafter. Doesn't work. Not ever. But it makes for good TV later. So my adrenaline was up true, but I was not shocked by events. The weird part was the open safe. The 200k in Euro cash. The loaded revolver with the safety off, and the plant manager there at the wrong time with his fucking daughter in the room for christsakes.
The girl was still screaming. She kneeled in front of her and did what I did not expect, which was to hold the girl's head in her hand, stare her dead in the eye, and say with the sternest voice I have ever heard simply: "Stop". Which the girl did. Never said a word after that in fact.
The girl stopped crying, the alarms started. I looked at my watch, mark 82 seconds from now the guards will be here, we need to not be. She knew the timeline as well as I. She pointed at the safe. I grabbed the cash, left the revolver, wiped the blood on the bottom of my boots off on the part of the carpet that was still clean. She grabbed the girl. She ignored the look I gave her that would have deterred anyone else alive, and we got the fuck out of there just as quickly and quietly as we had come, which still I don't think they have figured out.
It was the 200k I was thinking about as I hiked out of the valley. Why? Why does a plant manager have 200k in his safe? Not for anything good. Not for anything legal, or moral, now honestly I don't give a shit about legal, as laws are all written by the most immoral fucks on the planet, but still something was rotten.
She was capable of acting without emotion. This was a skill her mother taught her when she was a small child. Analyze, act, move on. Feel all twisted up inside later. Her training later as an adult had reinforced this. She'd killed some men in the last 12 hours, but that didn't bother her. 'Men' was a loose term for what those creatures were and she wasn't going to waste her limited energy on morning them. That was something else her mother taught her, that her energy was limited, so use it wisely.
She loved to drive, especially in the mountains on long sweeping highways, it suited her personality, gave her time to think. To be all twisted up inside. As she drove she wasted time thinking wasteful thoughts. She should have been planning farther ahead, what to do, where to go, how to stay safe, alive. How to protect the kid. She was instead thinking about the cum inside her. He was a decent fuck, came hard, knew how not to be too gentle, his cock tasted good, and she wished that right now his seed in her was working on making her pregnant. She had been fucked by a lot of men. Lots of cum inside her in the past. She hated condoms, wanted a child, was not careful, and she was old, late thirties. Still no man's virility had done the trick. She didn't need to see a doctor to know she was infertile. Basic math told her that.
She had the plant managers money, most of it anyway, and she had his child. Did he deserve that child? Immaterial as he was dead. The girl's mother. Did she deserve the child? Letting her fool husband take her to work while he played with guns and ill gotten gains, perhaps not. Children are not fragile glass menagerie pieces that needed bicycle helmets and organized play dates, but you didn't drag them along to a place where radioactive isotopes were juggled around. No fucking common sense. No one had any fucking common sense anymore. It had been replaced by dogma, religion, laws, process, and enforced by the wearers. The wearers of hats, of brightly colored safety vests. The wearers of badges. She had a badge once years ago, but she never wore it anywhere, couldn't show it to anyone, and if she had, they would have taken it away. It was more of a license. To do bad things in the name of good. It took her years to figure out that 'good' was owned. Bought and paid for by people with shitty intentions. She had left that badge in her apartment that she didn't own. Along with the clothes that were not hers, and the car that she drove which had been registered to someone who was also not her. Her mother had never gone back for anything. Not her father. Not a job. Not even her when she had done all she could do. At age 63 her mother wrote her a note. Left it in the typewrite on the kitchen table. She didn't find it for a week. She had been away on assignment and had not the time to check on her. There was a vase of still fresh flowers on the table next to the typewriter, so it could have been just a few days. It was matter of fact. She had cancer. A year to live. She was going to go live it. "Remember". Remember me? Remember what I taught you? Remember not to be a stupid girl? Remember not to fuck strange men on the floor and go dragging children you don't have rights to around on wild goose chases for the truth? Remember there are only 3 bullets left in the gun? What exactly the fuck was she supposed to remember? Thanks Ma.
He would make a good father. She had no idea of that in fact. She didn't know him. They had spent two weeks together training for the power plant raid. They had not talked at meals. Not over coffee. He didn't seem interesting. She was not interested. She was busy. Task at hand. So was he, and that she did like. He wasn't terribly good looking, or tall. He didn't have a six-pack or tattoos. But that look in his eye. He had that. He didn't panic. He had not hesitated to push her aside and take the bullet that was meant for her on the boat. He was smart enough not to shoot a traitor wearing a bulletproof vest, in the vest, but in the groin where he knew it would kill him slowly and painfully and he would live long enough for the two of them to force him to talk. The fact that the boat captain slash getaway driver only muttered "Cleo" no matter how many times he hit him in the face with the butt of his pistol, well that she could not blame on him. He had analyzed, acted, and moved on. That must have been it. Body in the Danube, M4s too. Vests and fake passports as well. He drove the boat till it ran out of fuel and then beached it on the bank. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. They knew what to do.