ALL NOVEL Chapter 36
“Where have you been!?” her mother yelled the instant the call connected.
Ashe winced, then settled for another half-truth. “Crystal and I were on our way back when a bunch of cops blew past us and I saw the choppers in the air. I figured it would be safer to divert to Crystal’s and wait out whatever it was.”
She could hear several controlled breaths from the other end. “A good story, so tell me, why was your phone off?”
“Had it on silent after the movie, then got caught up with… stuff,” she said, wincing.
“Ashe,” her mother said sharply. “I normally would allow the lie, but given everything going on, just tell me you were fooling around with Crystal and be done with it.”
Ashe blushed and even Crystal snickered, Ashe’s return glare lacked heat but Crystal at least had the decency to glance away, not that it hid her smile. Shaking her head, Ashe decided to play along.
“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll discuss that later, but your mom and I are both staying late over this mess. I’m sure you’ll see it all over the news over the next few days.”
“I can see the smoke from here,” Ashe admitted, though a bit untruthfully given they were still in the drains. “Looks like a proper cluster-fuck.”
“That’s an understatement,” she muttered. “Your mom’s pissed too. Apparently she had a line on one of the suspects but they ducked into a storm drain before she could get the shot off.”
A chill ran down Ashe’s spine, because she knew better than most how good of a shot her mom could be. Without a word, she wrapped an arm and pulled Crystal close, gripping her tightly. One of them would have died if they took even a second longer to get out of the killbox that was set up ahead of them. So many times she should have died, packed so closely together, it was enough to make her rethink a great many things.
Crystal had started to shake as well, and Ashe squeezed her in solidarity. How would her parents have reacted to her body being recovered from that water filled trench? Would the gators have gotten to her first before she actually died of her wounds? Bile rose in her throat once more, the image of the man shed shot dead just thirty minutes earlier clear in her mind.
“At least she claimed the course record,” Ashe said, trying to deflect. “Do you still want me to come home once things calm down, or should I stay with Crystal until morning?”
“Stay with her,” her mother said after a moment. “We’re likely to be at this for a few more hours and I don’t want to wake you on a school night. Just call us to let us know you made it to school safely.”
“Will do,” Ashe said softly. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Ashe hung up the phone, staring down at where it rested limply in her numb hand. Two warm hands soon wrapped around her own, plucking the phone away before she could drop it into the shit infested water at her feet. She was staring down when she saw the first tears drop into the murk below.
Those same hands that had held her own wrapped around her and pulled her in close, and she openly wept against Crystal’s supportive shoulder. Strong arms clutched her protectively, and Ashe relished how safe they made her feel. She knew Crystal was someone dangerous, someone that was going to lead her into ruin.
Ashe didn’t care. She wanted nothing more than to reach up and pull Crystal into a deep kiss, to let her know how much she meant to her. She didn’t dare, however, because Crystal had set boundaries and Ashe wouldn’t cross them without express permission. When she did pull back, a warm smile greeted her along with shimmering forest green eyes.
“Come on, let’s get home and properly decompress,” Crystal said, giving her hand another squeeze.
Ashe smiled, squeezing back as tightly as her weakened hand allowed. “Okay.”
“Of course I don’t know how to skin a fucking gator,” Crystal said a bit too loudly as she opened her front door just before midnight.
Ashe struggled to keep her balance, helping carry the several hundred pound beast inside. As much as the situation had been harrowing, now she could only find amusement in hindsight. Crystal swore her to secrecy immediately after it happened, which was a shame, because it would make for one hell of a story.
“Well, we’ve got one and I happen to really like gator tail, so I’ll look up a damn tutorial,” Ashe said, grinning. “Maybe we can find someone to process the leather too.”
“Process the leather she says,” Crystal grumbled. “Just, where are we even putting the damn thing?”
“Bathtub,” Ashe said. “You have two of them, right?”
Crystal paused for a moment, biting her lip while looking down the hall. “You know we can buy gator at the supermarket.”
“I told you I’m not wasting good meat,” Ashe insisted. “You killed it, so the least you can do is make use of it.”
Crystal groaned. “Fuck it.”
Ashe grinned, and helped haul the beast down the way, she might not know how to get the meat off of it, but she was sure there would be a how to video somewhere online. She was going to school in the morning and she would be the envy of the lunchroom if she had fresh gator. The only question was if she wanted to grill it, pan sear, or fry them bitches up.
“You are way too excited about this,” Crystal said, dumping the animal in the tub.
Ashe chuckled, the pain in her leg largely forgotten in favor of the rush that came from killing the animal after it surprised them. Even with a flashlight, just a few inches of water was enough to conceal the seven foot long critter far better than it had any right to be. She promised Crystal she wouldn’t tell anyone how loudly she’d screamed.
Her friend had a reputation to maintain and Ashe wasn’t about to spoil it.
Ashe had pulled up a tutorial she found on a hunting site and was looking over how to harvest the tail meat before they filled the tub with ice and preserved it until they could get it down to a taxidermist to get it rendered down. Ashe wanted so badly to get the head done up to one of those singing fish things and do something that would totally get her smacked.
She was still going to try, of course.
Ashe hit her first roadblock when reading over the dangers of wild caught gator, from parasites to other infections. She would need to ensure it was cleaned and cooked thoroughly, and even that wasn’t a guarantee given how many chemicals wound up dumped in the rivers these days. Fucking corporate dick suckers ruining one of Florida’s few redeeming features for a few dollars.
While Ashe was reading up on all of that, Crystal was redressing her leg, applying copious amounts of disinfectant to the wound and ensuring it was clean. Seeing it under proper lighting, Ashe knew she had been incredibly lucky to not have been hit worse. A quarter inch of skin and muscle was missing in a line across her thigh, and now that she could see it, and the adrenaline had faded, there was no denial that it hurt like a mother fucker.
She’d be taking something for the pain before bed, that was for sure, and again in the morning before she left to check up on the girls, then went back to school. She wished she could be a fly on the wall when the organizers of that shit show heard all about their little raid. Surely someone would be suffering some consequences for that.
After Crystal redressed her wound, she left Ashe alone with the gator while she ran down to the nearest convenience store for some bags of ice. It probably wasn’t the best idea to be left alone after everything, but she didn’t think there was a risk of self harm. Unlike that first kill, those she did tonight were all done out of necessity.
She could justify them after the fact.
Somehow, that made things easier to process. She could see the man’s face clearly, feel the resistance of the trigger as she pulled it and ended his life. She knew she killed others, but that was the one to stand out in her mind, more so than Jack did, which was a bit of a surprise. She ran over the events of the night as she worked to carve up the tail meat, she wasn’t doing the best of jobs, but it was serviceable.
The phantom sensation of the trigger, the exact resistance as she pulled it back, the recoil as she ended a man who even when injured, wanted to kill her. Jack’s blank expression, staring into nothing. Ashe wasn’t sure who killed him in that mess, but it probably wasn’t her. She was oddly calm about things, and she somehow knew, none of the lives she took would weigh on her when she slept.
Ashe wasn’t sure what that said about her.
Crystal returned not long after that, tossing three big bags of ice into the tub with a huff.
“Thanks,” Ashe said, setting the strips of meat aside. “Hopefully this is enough to keep it fresh until morning.”
“You’re cleaning this all up tomorrow after school,” Crystal said before sitting down beside her. “Are you doing alight?”
“Better than I probably should be after the day we just had,” Ashe admitted. “I think the only nightmare I’ll have of today’s events is the thought of Mom shooting you off the bike.”
“You and me both,” Crystal admitted with a heavy sigh. “Knowing that woman had me in her sights, it’s sobering to think about.”
Ashe nodded mutely, staring at her bloodied hands. “I can only imagine the triumph she would have felt as she killed one or both of us.” She paused, her whole body shuddering. “How she would have broken, seeing me dead at her hand.”
Crystal’s arm snaked around her, pulling her in close. Ashe leaned into the contact, the warmth of the woman beside her bringing comfort with it. She would probably be needing a lot of that warmth over the coming days, and she was okay with that. It wasn’t a weakness to need someone else.
“Come on, let’s get the meat in the fridge and get showered,” Crystal said, nudging her. “We both could use the rest and something tells me tomorrow is going to be stressful.”
“Yeah,” Ashe agreed, getting up with Crystal’s help. “I don’t know what to do about Jessica. Rachel was so worried, but if I tell her anything…”
“Either of them might figure out that it’s you under the bandana,” Crystal finished. “You could just not tell either of them.”
“I hated them,” Ashe admitted. “Sure, I could hold my head high, be better than their petty attempts to break me. It was all hollow, because there were so many nights when I cried myself to sleep because of the shit they pulled. Hell, Jessica encouraged the people that came to kidnap me, karma repaid her for that tenfold.”
“There is nothing wrong with hating someone,” Crystal said, wrapping an arm around Ashe’s waist. “I would gladly kill my father if I didn’t think the consequences weren’t worth it. Jason would suffer the most, and I wouldn’t be there to protect him from those that would come to him with the intention to manipulate him into a figurehead of a worse movement. One with a beloved martyr behind them.”
Ashe could envision such a series of events unfolding with shocking clarity, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened throughout history, and wouldn’t be the last. They couldn’t just remove the man, they would need to wear down his support little by little, chip away at the foundations. That was so far beyond two girls out of their depth.
“If you could just leave, would you?” Ashe asked softly.
“No,” Crystal answered without hesitation. “This is my home, and I’ll be damned if I let that bastard win. I’m through running from him, and I’ll let him think he still has hooks in me right up until I can use them to strangle the man.”
Ashe snorted at the malaphor, poor as it was. It wasn’t much, but she would take it, and she would support Crystal in whatever she felt the need to do. That was far off in the future however, for now she would take things day by day and see what shook out from the day’s actions.
Rachel deserved to know that Jessica was safe, or as safe as a girl could be when her parents had apparently sold her out like that. Ashe would offer each girl an out when she spoke with them, and enough cash to see them on their way. She had a feeling that not all of them would take the offer however.
Some would want to stay, to help fight back against the monsters that sought to enslave them. She could appreciate the sentiment and would let them help however they were able. Even a simple girl on the street could turn the tide with a single overheard secret.
Ashe curled up in Crystal’s bed, freshly showered but still feeling dirty after everything she had been through. When Crystal joined her moments later, she pulled her into a crushing embrace, not wanting to let go of the friend she almost lost. Neither of them pushed things, they knew where they stood with one another. There was no need to rush things on that front, even in the face of their own mortality.
Ashe knew that the coming day was going to be a tipping point for a great many things. She had little doubt the fascists were behind the kidnappings, and her own actions tonight would disrupt them on some level. More so, it would draw official attention to their dealings in the dark. Hopefully her parents would be speaking of leads in the coming days, otherwise Ashe would find another tree to shake and see what came loose.
That didn’t mean she would be resting on her laurels, however. Those girls would know things, and Ashe intended to learn all she could from them. New targets, new people to have watched. It would be a lot of work, but she was willing to see it through, no matter what it took.
She was determined to see it all torn down, because she was invested now. People had died, and she had killed them, and Ashe knew she was far from done. She closed her eyes, the events of the night flashing through her mind, but more than that, she saw the girls they rescued and the relief on their faces when they realized they were safe.
She could only smile then, knowing that despite everything, she had made a difference in other’s lives. She had finally done something that she could be proud of. Ashe drifted off shortly after that, safe in Crystal’s arms, her dreams soft and pleasant for the first time in weeks.
