A Place Where There Is No Darkness

Eleven

„What, never stolen a car before?” I teased Mitchell, looking around for the best fit. Hannah had led us out of her house in the early hours of the morning and we had walked to the nearest parking lot in town. The streets were empty, the sun had just climbed over the horizon. Still, the parking lot was more than half full, granting us the chance to pick according to our preferences.

“No,” Mitchell said back pointedly, “and I don’t see why that would be surprising.”

I laughed. “Well, now that you mention it, neither do I. Doesn’t matter. There’s a first for everything.”

I heard him sigh even over the distance between us. I wanted to look at him, learn more about his face, burn every line into my memory, but I held back. No use encouraging my subconscious.

I went another round around the parking lot, taking in the goods. The vehicles weren’t quite the cream of the car community, but they would do. I compared – tires, colour, size. In the end I strode determinedly towards a black little Hyundai. Mitchell noticed and came closer.

“That the best you can do?” he complained without any real heat behind his words and I knew that he was just out for another bickering. I was very willing to comply.

“What, something against Hyundai?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Just thought since we were stealing anyway, we could go for something a little more … you know … classy.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Well, you’ll learn to hate classy once you get used to cops chasing you around all the time. Nah, I take sleek and ordinary over classy every day of the week.”

He rolled his eyes. “So get on with it, then.”

I did. It wasn’t really my first rodeo – I’d stolen cars for the Elite from time to time and even before that, I’d sometimes broken into vehicles in search of certain necessities. I hadn’t done it in more than three years, though, so it was a little less graceful and took a little more time than usually.

Time we by no means had to give.

I was just about to go around to the passenger side and let Mitchell take the wheel when someone behind me shouted, “Hey! What the hell are you doing?” I whipped around. A man was running towards us, searching for something in his backpack. My blood ran cold. I knew exactly what was coming.

“Get in!” I screamed at Mitchell. Without looking back at him, I started running towards the passenger side of the car. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the man yelling (“I’ll shoot! I will! Stop or I’ll shoot!”), but I didn’t let it register. I only fought my way forward, on and on, around the back of the car …

Boom.

The shot echoed. I yelped. Funny, I hadn’t really taken the guy for someone who would actually act – rather, I’d had him pegged as a barking dog. Though I really hadn’t spent enough quality time with him to be able to say something like that.

Boom.

And then someone screamed.

I turned, my ears ringing, my hand frozen on the door handle. Looking over the roof of the car, I saw Mitchell stumble back against the vehicle, clutching his shoulder. The seconds ticked away slowly, I saw every shift, felt my every breath. Only I couldn’t really move. Not the way I wanted to.

I knew another shot was coming. No if about it. Someone who had fired a handgun from such a distance twice and hit the mark once had to have training of some sort. What I didn’t know – didn’t understand, not in the slightest, not even on the surface – was how my body decided to react. My head screamed, in in in in, inside the car I would be at least a tiny bit safer. But it didn’t happen, the door didn’t open and before I knew it, I was on the driver’s side of the car again, next to Mitchell. No idea where I found the precious seconds to look at his wound, but I did and I was happy when he looked at me, waved my worries away and said, “It’s just a graze. I’m fine.”

I didn’t waste any more time. Another shot sounded and I felt the need to duck, so I did, but I was instantly standing back up, opening the door, pushing Mitchell inside. A glance over my shoulder told me that the man was still running in our direction and that he was getting close. Another shot, the bullet whizzed right past my head. I looked at Mitchell, screamed, “Start the car!”, but he probably didn’t hear, because the door between us was already closing. I ran to the other side, but just as I wanted to get in, the final shot rang out over the god-forsaken parking lot.

And it burned.

I ripped the door open and threw myself into the car, but it took a few moments for the pain to fully register. By then, Mitchell was already speeding away, looking frantically into his rear-view mirror. Fortunately, his worries were unfounded, because the man had – judging by the way he held the gun in his slack left hand – clearly run out of bullets and was, understandably, short a ride. He had no way of following us.

Even so, the place would probably be crawling with cops in a matter of minutes.

We sped down the street, turned left and lost sight of the parking lot.

“How’s your shoulder?” I asked quietly, mentally preparing myself for what I knew I needed to do.

“Fine. Just a graze.”

I stayed quiet, feeling blood trickle down my belly. I was going to have to start doing something. Assessing the damage, if nothing else. Finding a cloth, pressing it against the wound.

“I told you,” Mitchell said.

“What?” I found my way back out of my head, but I was confused.

“I told you it was nothing. You didn’t have to come running like you did.”

I really wasn’t up for a debate, or for a quarrel, or for any kind of exchange, really. My mouth tasted foul and I didn’t want to waste additional energy on forming words. Still, I had to prove yet again how irrational I truly was. I had to let my sarcastic side make a reappearance, as it always did when a situation turned direr than I would have liked.

“Awww, are you offended because you’ve been rescued by a girl?” I tried to keep the shaking out of my voice as I slowly peeled out of my jacket, wincing every time a movement pulled on my wound. Mitchell was too worked up to notice.

“You didn’t rescue me!” he protested vehemently, gripping the wheel tighter. “And it’s not that, not at all, it’s just … It was really–“ he looked in my direction, noticed what I was doing and looked closer. I quite literally saw his jaw drop. The last word, “… dangerous.”, slipped from his mouth more as an afterthought, right before he said, “Ella, you’re bleeding.”

I grunted, slapping the jacket onto my lap and slowly moving to peel back my bloodied T-shirt. My hands were shaking as the fabric tried to stick to the skin but came off with a slight tug. “Right. I did not know that.”

Mitchell’s eyes turned back to the road, then to me, back again, and repeated the motion a few times. His eyebrows spoke volumes – volumes I would have understood as worry on any other day, but not when I was preoccupied with a hole in my own damn body. I cursed, even though I was fairly sure that the wound could have been worse. Like, a lot.

“Stop fussing, I’m fine,” I grumbled, not bothering to look away from my work. I took my jacket, tried to fold it as best as I could and pushed down on the wound with it. Hard. I had to close my eyes and a muttered curse escaped me under my breath.

“Not fussing,” Mitchell ground out, glancing at me and back at the road.

“So keep your eyes on the road, where they’re supposed to be, genius.”

He didn’t reply and I didn’t say anything, either. Silence. Quite a disappointing silence, seeing as I now had nothing to concentrate on but the pain. It wasn’t that I liked talking to Mitchell, it was just – I kind of liked knowing that I was not alone.

Over time, my grip on the jacket lost a lot of its strength and I started drifting off, giving in to my heavy eyelids.

This, Mitchell noticed.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to stay awake.”

I sighed, but I opened my eyes anyway, if only to roll them. “And I’m pretty sure it’s none of your business.”

“The hell it isn’t. Whatever happens in this car is my business.”

“It’s not even your car.”

He shrugged. “Finders, keepers.”

And I had to laugh, despite everything. It hurt, it hurt badly, but it felt weirdly comforting all the same. “Well, we didn’t exactly find it. I’d say we more like bought it. And it wasn’t cheap.”

He glimpsed at my wound worriedly, frowning. “You know, we could stop somewhere, get it checked out.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I refused immediately. “We’re not that far from the Elite. They’ll help us there.” Because there was no way we were going to be late for this.

Shaking his head, Mitchell turned back to the road. “That guy just shot you!” he yelled out of the blue. “No questions asked. How could he be such an i***t?”

“Well, he shot you too. And besides, we were stealing his car, so technically, he had the right to.”

“You never have the right to shoot anyone.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That coming from an FBI agent,” I laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you guys kind of shoot criminals for a living.”

“But we’re not criminals.”

I looked at him sceptically. “And he’s supposed to know that how?”

He wanted to say something, wanted to have an answer at the ready to justify his feelings, but nothing came out. Because there was nothing to say. Because he knew I was right.

“Why are you defending the i***t that shot you?” he asked finally.

I shrugged and looked up to the ceiling of the car. I was so, so tired. But I knew that if I wanted to stay awake, I had to keep talking. “I’m not defending him, per se. Just saying that a person has to know when they’re in the wrong. You of all people should have that sorted out.”

He frowned and glared at me, a funny look in his wild eyes. His back muscles were suddenly tense, his hands holding the wheel in a white-knuckled grip. “Why do you say that?”

I raised my eyebrows, showing my surprise openly. I guessed he deserved at least that.

“Well, I thought since you were with the FBI and all that, but now I sense another story here. Do tell.”

“Oh. Right.” He shook his head curtly. “No story. I was just confused.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I know that you’re lying.”

“You don’t know that,” he groused. “And I’m not lying.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

Another silence followed, this one longer and tenser than the last. I quite literally felt my strength flowing out of my body with all the blood that was escaping from under my jacket. The wound was pulsing against my hand in sync with the beat of my heart, the pain getting more intense and then relenting, more and less, more, less. It was getting to a point where I considered letting go of the jacket completely in favour of some relief from the pain, and allowing blood to flow as it pleased. No idea if Mitchell could read thoughts or if he could just read me, but he let a heavy, yet gentle, hand rest on mine, helping me push down harder again. It wasn’t as much physical help as it was a statement – and I knew he was right. Of course he was. I had to keep doing this, I had to keep the blood in my body, because I had to live.

I looked at him, found his eyes, and nodded ever so slightly. He flashed me a quick shadow of a smile – more than I would have expected from him – and turned back to the road.

I fought to stay conscious, knowing that giving in to the darkness could very well lead me somewhere I had no interest in going, at least not until I had saved Danny. But it was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. At some point, I leaned my achy head against the cool, soothing window and watched the landscape drift by – forests, houses, roads. It was slowly getting bright outside, but the reddish light of the sunrise didn't help my tiredness any.

Apparently, I drifted off, because the next thing I knew was someone – Mitchell – shaking my shoulder, blabbering on about staying awake and whatnot. I took a deep breath in and let the air rush out, felt the flare of pain in my belly, felt it ebb away and come again.

“Talk to me,” Mitchell said.

“About what?” I muttered.

“I don’t care. Just talk. So that I know that you’re awake.”

I rolled my eyes. “Concerned much?”

“I’m not–“ He gripped the wheel tighter, maybe to release some of his anger into the hard material under his hands. “You know what? Whatever. You’re right. Why should I care what happens to you? Just die right there on your seat, fine with me.”

I sighed, feeling guilty. Because no proper human being wanted to se another human being – or another being, period – die before their eyes, no matter if the dying person meant anything to them or not. Mitchell’s care wasn’t a matter of affection but a matter of simple human decency. I had no right to question that.

I didn’t have the energy to say sorry, though.

“I don’t have anything to talk about,” I said quietly.

Mitchell understood this as the flawed apology that it was, which I was grateful for. I could see in his eyes that he felt a little guilty, too. He nodded curtly. “I have an idea. How about I tell you something about me and in turn, you tell me something about you. Does that sound okay?”

I shrugged. It did sound interesting, as long as we wouldn’t dive in too deep, which I doubted Mitchell had any intention of doing.

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

“But you start.”

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

I looked at him expectantly, waiting for his story.

He stared at the road, probably trying to thinks of a story to tell. Or making one up. I would definitely have to figure out how truthful he was being before it was my turn.

“Oh, and for the record?” he said, apparently steeling himself for the stupid game that had been his idea in the first place.

“Yeah?”

“I’d care if you died. Not only in this car. I’d care if you died, period.”

I thought my heart got a bit bigger and the pain a bit smaller with those words.