Foxy held the binoculars to her eyes, scanning the road behind them that dropped down into a narrow valley.
She looked beautiful in her white parka with the faux fur lining, like a dame from one of those old-time movies.
“I see something,” she said. “Oh my God!”
“What? What is it?” implored Mickey. “Let me see.”
“I think it’s a bald eagle!”
“A bald eagle?”
“Yeah, but I can’t tell for sure. I’m not an Or—Orn-thing-a-ma-bobber.”
“An ornithologist?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You’re so smart, Mickey.” She smacked her strawberry bubble gum.
He put his hand on her thigh and let out a lusty sigh. How beautiful this thing was. “Baby, do you see any cars following us?”
“Oh! Yeppers, I see one. But I don’t know. It’s way, way back there.”
He took the glasses and spied down the road. Far out there with dozens of possible turnoffs, a set of lights gleamed in the fading day.
On either side of the road, the pine forest closed in, and giant trees looked down on them with grim faces of evergreen poking through their masks of snow.
“Let’s go,” he said, and they got back in the car and drove on.
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The previous day, after receiving Alan’s email about the guitar, he and Foxy had devised a fly-at-night plan to give the surveillance team the slip and get down to Billings by taking the northern route up through Glacier National Park and then down along the east side of the mountains, hopefully avoiding Comstock’s jurisdiction and the brunt of the manhunt.
The rental car was the easy part. Foxy put it under her late mother’s name with cash and a small bribe to keep it off the books for a few days. She had specifically asked for a vehicle that wasn’t connected to the self-drive grid—her excuse being that her man was as much a control freak on the road as he was under the sheets and liked to take matters into his own hands.
The voyeur in him wished he could have been at the rental agency when she’d played out that little scene.
The hard part was getting the guitar and himself out of the house without being seen. There was a short window between shifts at 3PM when the relief guy, a one Agent Miller and want-to-be foodie (Mickey had found his mukbang profile online with all of twenty-two subs), drove off to China Gate—Polson’s only Chinese restaurant—to load up on sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken, Kung Pao beef, Moo Goo Gai Pan, and, most important, imitation crabmeat wontons.
It was during this window of roughly thirty minutes that Mickey anxiously waited for Foxy to show up with the car, and now, fifteen minutes of that thirty was gone.
He went back through the house and double-checked the smart lights. In one hour, the porch light would turn on until 7 PM, then go out, and the living room TV would start playing the Rocky Horror Picture Show, followed by The Thief of Baghdad. At midnight, the TV would go off, and the porch light would come on momentarily, then the living room light on and off, the kitchen light on and off, the stair light on and off, his upstairs bedroom light on, bathroom light on for a few minutes then off, bedroom light off, and the reading light on.
By the time the reading light blinked out at five the next morning, Mickey and Foxy should be seeing the beckoning flame stacks of Billings’s refineries and the glittering LEDs of the BAT, the largest refugee settlement project in the United States.
He had taken the liberty and booked, via an untraceable crypto agent, a rather romantic suite overlooking a corner of flower shops and Vietnamese coffee houses. To boot, a glittering walk from their hotel was the best hand-cut noodle and mandu restaurant in the world. Relatively unknown, it was open 24-7, played a mix of nostalgic jazz and lo-fi hip hop, and after midnight, Korean refugees drank Soju and sang songs of a washed-away homeland. He knew Foxy would love it.
Where the hell was she? Five more minutes passed. He flipped his new burner phone in his hand and looked at his messages. Nothing. But then, she would only call if there was an emergency. They’d decided on complete radio silence for their escape. After being bugged, tailed, and watched for the last ten days, he wasn’t going to take any chances.
It was all in the timing. If Agent Miller broke form and brought his own lunch, or came back early, Foxy could simply drive by, and they would try again in twenty-four hours. But he did leave, now for twenty-five minutes.
“Hurry, Foxy.” Tonight was going to be another cold one. He was worried about the roads. “Come on, Foxy.”
He checked his watch. That was it. Thirty minutes full.
Headlights down the road. The agent coming back with his gourmet Chinese food, but when the white BMW pulled up and Foxy started shouting and waving him over, he grabbed his bag and the box containing the smashed guitar and locked the door. He was careful not to leave tracks by walking over the old ones.
Damn, what if they were watching with a drone? He looked up. The sky was dark with a low cover of clouds. His knee hurt. Snow was in the cards. They would have to be watching with infrared. They wouldn’t do that for him, Mickey Verona, small-town ambulance chaser of no importance.
“Get in, Mickey,” said Foxy. She was going to drive up to Kalispell where he would take over for the long run through the passes and down to Billings.
Mickey opened the back door. The seat was covered with cartons of Chinese food.
“Put it in the back, honey buns,” she said in her sultry voice.
He chuckled and opened the back. “Hey, baby, I don’t think it’s gonna fit.” That’s what he hated about luxury cars, so impractical.
“It’ll fit, sweetie pie. You’ve just got to move it around a bit.” And it did fit.
He could not repress the grin on his face. God, she was such a nice piece. He jumped in shotgun, and they were off.
“What’s with the food?”
“Oh, just some road snacks?” She giggled. “The garage was late getting the tires on—those jerks—so I know Agent Miller likes that Chinese place. I just went down and bought up all the food.”
“Jesus, baby, I like your style.” He went to kiss her cheek, but she blocked him.
“Not while driving! You’re just gonna have to wait, tiger. Grrrrrr.”
He sat back and contemplated if he was too old to jack off in the car next to his girlfriend. As if reading his mind, Foxy reached over and started stroking his cock through his jeans. He sighed.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
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They eased through the back roads up to Kalispell and stopped at a gas station just beyond city limits. Through the large front windows, he noted the establishment was empty except for a large man with broad arms working the counter.
“I’m going on the keto diet,” he declared. He had consumed at least half of the Chinese food.
Foxy focused on a black SUV prowling into the parking lot. Its windows were much darker than legally allowed under Montana law.
“We’re just on holiday,” she whispered into his ear and pecked him on the lips.
“Right, just on holiday,” he repeated. He ran his hand up her thigh and stroked the curve of her ass, then ushered her into the store.
The clerk, a large, blond muscle man—probably steroids, probably one of Pastor Tony’s Boys—greeted Foxy and him with a curt nod. Foxy went straight to powder her nose, while Mickey took a basket and got some energy drinks for the road. Considering he wasn’t going to start ketosis immediately, he threw in a bag of chips and a double pack of vanilla Zingers.
Several times, he caught the store clerk watching him intently, and when he moved from aisle to aisle, the man shifted his position on the counter to keep him in sight.
His heart started pounding in his chest. Maybe they knew what he looked like. Maybe there was a picture of him behind the counter. For a moment, he awkwardly met the gaze of the clerk, then looked away and chose a his-and-her set of travel toiletries.
He read the back label, still conscious of the eyes. For him and her. Great if you packed in haste. Great if you’re on the run.
The door chimed. An external chill entered with two indistinguishable young ladies all in black. One stopped to speak with the clerk, and the other made a round of the store. She glanced at Mickey as she passed, then turned her attention to the conversation at the front.
They didn’t appear to be cops or FBI, but he couldn’t be sure. For all he knew, they were part of John Taylor’s private security force, an apparatus that exceeded the reach and capability of the feds.
He lingered in the aisle of spare socks until they finished their muted conversation. The door opened, and one left, sending in another cold gust. Her companion headed to the restroom. The clerk resumed his surveillance of Mickey.
“Is that everything for you today?” asked the clerk, his tone terse.
“That’ll be it,” Mickey said.
“Cash or credit?”
“Cash.” Mickey handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
The clerk took the money as if Mickey had sneezed on it. He felt the paper carefully and held it up to the light.
Mickey rolled his eyes.
Next, he opened his cash drawer and took out a counterfeit pen, marked the bill, blew on it, and inspected it.
The man was a hulk, he was probably roid-raging. On closer inspection, Mickey noted he was dressed in a white polo shirt and army-green khaki pants, the unofficial street uniform adopted by the High Mountain Ranger militia. The man pulled it off well, a clean-cut capitalist but ready to be mobilized should an unfortunate caravan of climate refugees drift into town. He probably had a semi-auto under the counter. It was an unwritten rule that the farther north you got in Montana, the more extreme the politics became. Kalispell, in particular, was a hotbed for right-wing nutcases.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
The man grunted. “Can I see some ID?”
“ID for what? It’s just a hundred.”
He squinted at Mickey as if trying to shoot lasers through Mickey’s skull. His square jaw and buzzcut made him look like a comic book thug.
“A lot of foreign influence on the road these days,” the clerk said.
Mickey stifled a sarcastic laugh. He took back his hundred and dug in his pocket until he found the exact change. He turned toward the restroom.
“No merchandise in the restroom,” the clerk said. His terseness level elevated.
“I need to brush my teeth,” said Mickey, repressing the urge to lawyer-lecture the man.
“You can do that. Just leave your bag up here.”
Mickey dropped the bag on the counter and dug out a toothbrush and miniature tube of paste.
“You got to leave the tube too.”
“Seriously? Do you think I’d steal something I just bought?”
“Policy,” said the man, crossing his massive arms.
Policy, the last refuge of convenience store tyrants. With great theatrics, he opened the paste, dolloped the brush, and tossed the tube into the bag while the clerk smirked from his elevated platform.
He turned and came face to face with the woman from the black car. “Excuse me,” he muttered, executing an awkward side shuffle. “Sorry.”
She stared at him with a sharp, discerning glare, as though he were a bug—she pushed past him and walked out to the waiting car.
The brief encounter erased his anger at the arrogant clerk and replaced it with a trilling alarm in his solar plexus. He felt like he’d just avoided a bear or a head-on collision. Those women, he was almost certain, were looking for him.
Entering the restroom, he shoved the toothbrush into his mouth. The room stank of piss.
“Ah!” He jumped back in shock.
In the mirror above the sink, a tall Black man stared back at him. Mickey lifted his arm, and so did the Black guy. He backed up, and so did the Black guy. He removed his toothbrush, and the man mimicked him. He looked behind him, but he was alone. He stepped forward, and so did the man. He’d seen this uncanny gag played out on the internet. He touched the mirror. It was real, and his hand was big, strong, and African American.
“Foxy,” he whispered.
He approached the sink and leaned into the mirror, inspecting the handsome reflection. A face of full, pouting lips, a broad nose, a neatly trimmed goatee, and thin, wire-framed bifocals had replaced his thick ones held together by a wrap of electrical tape.
“That sexy little witch.”
It all made sense now: the clerk keeping an eye on him, the issue with the money, not letting him take the toothpaste into the restroom—dude was a goddamn racist. A ball of outrage started to turn in his gut, but then he caught himself. He wasn’t really African American, or was he? Wasn’t this just an illusion, Foxy’s special gift?
He finished brushing his teeth and went to take a piss. Now, the real Mickey Verona might be a short, tubby, balding lawyer, but he wasn’t shortchanged in the gear department. But what he pulled forth from his pants as he prepared to empty his bladder was a semi-hard seven-point-five inches uncut that filled his hand like a hefty steak. “Fuck!” His golden stream hit the stainless-steel bowl with a steady drum that was almost musical. A fantasy of this horse cock nuzzling its way into Foxy’s tight pussy seared through his mind like HD porn. He squeezed out the rest of his piss with a raging hard-on that took him a minute to conceal back into his pants.
Those two women, they had come into the store looking for him; he was sure of it. And Foxy had been aware of it, her words: “We’re just on holiday,” and her kiss of transformation. That was how it worked, through a kiss, through the saliva. The magic. What a girl he had!
He exited the restroom to see a petite Black woman standing by the counter in skin-tight, red leather pants. She wore white heels, a waistcoat lined with fur, and she had beautiful copper hair that fell back in braids to brush across the lush bump of her ass.
“Hey, honey,” the woman said when she saw him.
“Hey, sugar,” he responded with unbridled machismo, his voice a deep, velvety baritone. He sauntered up behind her and reached around, running his hand up her taut tummy.
“You guys need to leave.” The clerk’s face turned the color of a strawberry, and his lower lip took on a tremble.
Mickey resisted an overwhelming urge to strip Foxy’s pants down below her booty and start tongue-fucking her ripe pussy as the racist militia tool watched in distress.
At that moment, the sound of Pastor Tony’s breathy voice came over the radio station: “Sinners, you can be free…”
“You people need to go now,” the clerk insisted, his voice cracking.
“Relax, man. We’re on our way,” said Mickey.
“Baby, I’m tired,” said Foxy with a horny pout. She scratched at her naked midriff with long, sparkling fingernails.
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Mickey drove deeper into the mountains while Foxy slept. The enchantment at the gas station had left her exhausted.
The way that clerk had watched him as he shopped, not letting him out of his sight, forbidding him to take the toothpaste into the restroom. His tone of voice when he had ordered them out of the store. The dumb ass had watched them get out of an upscale luxury car!
He looked in the mirror, but that chocolate Casanova was gone. He was again short, fat, bald Mickey Verona. Yes, the magic had passed, but a spark lingered, the feeling that he had experienced a form of discrimination unique to another race.
He felt a twinge of guilt. Was turning a Jewish-Italian into an African American some form of culturally appropriative magic? He cruised through West Glacier and started to ascend the mountain pass as road thoughts drifted through his mind. Road thoughts. Maybe that would make a good book. Just the random shit he thought about when he was driving. Uncensored, of course. He wondered if that was one of Foxy’s fantasies. Maybe she liked Black guys. Damn! Could she pull that trick anytime she wanted?
He needed to focus. Get to Billings, get to the hotel, lay Foxy over that emperor bed and make her shake, get the guitar fixed, and meet up with Alan, Francis, and Deputy Wolf. He wondered if Alan had made any headway with her. He hoped so. The man needed to get laid.
He looked over at the sleeping woman. God, she was beautiful. Night had fallen thick and murky. The road was snow-packed and icy. Big, white flakes were falling. Behind them, he saw headlights, far back but coming fast.