Love and Gravity by Olivia Connery Read Free Book Online Page B

There’s someone at the door. Don’t touch the lights.” Jack got out of
the bed, grabbing his gun and walking towards the bathroom.
     Margot followed him there,
feeling around in her shopping bag by the bathroom door until she grabbed her
boots and purse. She put the boots on her feet hurriedly while Jack opened the
small window above the toilet for them to escape from.
    Jack shut the toilet lid after
opening the window.
    “Step up and crawl through,” he
told her.
    She did as she was told. The
window was small and it was a tight squeeze as she wriggled through it. When
she’d gotten her waist through she grabbed at the grass outside and pulled
herself the rest of the way out by it. She moved to the side and let Jack
through the window behind her. He quickly got to his feet and grabbed her arm.
    “We’ve got to get a different
car,” he said.
     The parking lot was on the other
side of the building, with whoever was trying to break into their room. They
couldn’t go that way. In front of them was an empty grass lot that faded into
darkness away from the hotel lights. Jack knew they didn’t have any other
choice and began leading Margot off into the darkness.
    Once they were away from the hotel
Jack’s eyes began to adjust to the dark. It was still hard to see, but not
impossible. Away in the distance he could see more street lamps. It looked like
a residential area. He kept pulling Margot along as fast as he could. The
darkness would help cover them from sight, but they still needed to hurry.
    Eventually they got to the street
lights, hovering above a street full of parked cars. Jack looked for one that
didn’t have an obvious alarm system. He found a beat up Volkswagen Beetle that
had the windows rolled down. He opened the door and started hotwiring it.
Margot got into the passenger’s seat as the car coughed itself back to life and
Jack put it in drive. Jack could see there was no way off the street that
didn’t take them back past the hotel.
    “Margot, you need to keep your
head down, okay?”
    “Okay,” Margot said, hunkering
down as far as she could in her seat. She could feel her stomach cramping with
anxiety. She looked over to see Jack with one hand on the wheel and another
still holding his gun. He was looking hawkishly over the dashboard and speeding
the Beetle up as quickly as it would allow.
    Jack rounded a corner and reached
the straight road that would take them past the hotel parking lot and back onto
the highway north. As he began to pass the parking lot he could see two guys
with guns in hand, arguing animatedly under the parking lot lights. He
continued picking up speed. He almost began to think they wouldn’t see him,
until he began to drive past them. One of the men stopped arguing, his head
craning around to follow the Beetle. Jack saw him hit the other guy on the
shoulder and point to their car. He knew they were made.
    Jack already had the pedal down to
the floor but the old car wasn't as fast as he could have wanted. They were
barely hitting sixty as they reached the on ramp to the empty highway. It was
still early enough that there were no other cars on the road.
    "Are we okay," Margot
asked from her balled up position beneath the dashboard?
    "No, they saw us. We need to
get as far away as we can, as fast as possible. They're probably going to
follow us. Just stay down."
    A few minutes later, as the small
Beetle barreled ahead on the road, Jack saw the car from the hotel parking lot
appear in their rear-view mirror.
    "Damn it," he said. He
watched as the car gained on them. The Beetle was giving its all already. There
was no avoiding them. Jack heard gunshots, and a metallic ping as one of the
bullets made contact with the back of the Beetle.
    "Margot, take the
wheel!" Jack took his gun off safety. Margot popped out from her seat and
grabbed the wheel, trying to orient her eyes on the road. She felt a horrible
mixture of fear and adrenaline begin surging through her.
    As soon as