Chosen Girls

Chapter 6

6

Alice handed Axl over to her tiny elderly neighbor, Mrs. Chen. She stroked him and told him it wouldn't be forever, before tearing herself away and down the stairs. She climbed in her '83 Honda Civic hatch. A small, green box on wheels she'd bought from a scrap dealer.

Following her early morning eviction, Alice had spent the day stuffing her car with all her worldly possessions. They were the sum total of her thirty-one years. The car itself sat on a dark, deserted street to the rear of the apartment block, where alleys overflowed with drunks and dirty water.

The rain came down like nails, hammering against the roof of the Honda. Alice sat in the only space left, behind the wheel, and attempted to sleep.

But sleep was pointless; her mind was a whirlwind. Her senses turned all the way up. Every off sound or fleeting shadow brought a tighter squeeze on the butt of the revolver she rested on her lap. Just one of an array of weapons she had stashed in strategic locations around her.

After a while, the patter of rain lulled her into a half-sleep. She woke with a start, looking around, flicking on the interior light.

She reached inside a jeans pocket and pulled out the flyer Kilbride had handed to her the previous day.

She stared at Brooke.

Brooke stared back. All smiles.

"Damn you," Alice said to her. She slid the flyer on the dash and tucked the revolver inside a front pocket on her dark-blue running jacket. She zipped up the jacket and pushed the car door open. She stepped out into a torrent of cold rain, locking the door shut behind her. Alice ran head-down around the front of the apartment building, splashing through giant puddles. The streets were clear, but city sirens wailed back and forth on the wind.

Alice reached a payphone across the street and dug inside her jeans pocket for change. She found a single quarter and jammed it in the coin slot. She picked up the receiver, punched in the number on Kilbride's card and waited. "Oh, hi. Mr. Kilbride? It's Alice Parks. Just to be clear, I get expenses, right? No guarantees on results. And how soon can I get the advance?"

Alice was half-hoping Kilbride would say no to her demands, but he said yes to every last one. She hung up the receiver, closed her eyes and knocked her head against the glass door of the telephone box.

"s**t," she said to herself.

After three turns of the ignition and two stamps on the accelerator, the Honda coughed into life. But for the Kilbride case, Alice pulled onto the main streets, homeless, jobless, and penniless. It was a thirteen-hour drive to the small county of Mayflower, southwest of Kansas City, along Interstate 70. A further twenty minutes into the even smaller town that bore the same name. It was a historical aberration. The town had come first. The county had grown around it, fed on a steady diet of agriculture.

Gas and food were covered by an advance transferred into Alice's account by Kilbride. Yet she wasn't about to waste precious funds on a roadside motel. Instead, she slept a few hours in the parking lot of a truck stop, a chipped wooden baseball bat in hand, just in case.

Following an endless churn of asphalt under tires, Alice's hit the main highway into town, confirmed by a Welcome to Mayflower sign.

Alice felt as if the sign was for her. Not as a welcome, but as a warning. It might as well have said Mayflower. Population 800. Are You Goddamned Sure?