at this point i'm pretty sure i'm not making the deadline
but i'm too invested in this story to give up on it
lmk ur thoughts?!?!?

[ 8. A Trick of the Light ]

The last trick-or-treater came around nine o'clock according to the clock on the wall.

Hayes agreed to my smoke request so long as we waited until the kids stopped coming. I wasn't sure why he agreed at all, but I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I waited since that was all I could do. The house was silent and I feared Hayes fell asleep before holding up his end of the deal. My mind raced with ways I could get out of this situation. Would he unbind my wrists so I could smoke or would he hold it for me like spoon-feeding an infant? Would we be going outside where I might be able to make a break for it? Surely, he knew I was a flight risk and couldn't be trusted near an escape route.

Why the fuck was I even here?

That was going to be my first question. He could tell me the truth since it was going to die with me.

I was exhausted. My body was buzzing from sitting in the same position and my ass was numb from the wooden chair offering no comfort. The headache I'd woken up with had faded to a dull ache, surely to be satiated by my coming nicotine fix. The underneath of my eyes was burning and I fought the urge to close them altogether. Sleep threatened to overtake me and it would soon win the battle if Hayes didn't come the fuck back.

"Hayes," I croaked, my throat feeling a bit froggy from the exhaustion.

The response was silence from the depths of the house. I wasn't sure how big the house was or how many floors there were. All I could see in my direct eyeline was the doorway to the kitchen, the TLC living room, and the mysteriously sunny room. I started to call for him again but he emerged from around the corner.

Shirtless.

My mouth clamped shut. He sauntered over. His hair was wet and pushed back from his forehead. There were tattoos on his chest and shoulders. My eyes trailed down the curves of his pectoral muscles, to the dip just above his hips, then down his rippling abdomen. I'd barely registered the trail of hair that beckoned the naysayer in me when he spoke.

"Are you drooling, little thief?"

"No," I said hastily, looking back up to his face.

He didn't stop until he was directly in front of me and dropped to kneel at my feet. I could smell his body wash, musky and clean, invading my senses as he pulled a pocket knife from the pocket of his joggers. Hayes looked up at me and my stomach fell. I swallowed nervously.

The zip-ties tickled my ankles when cut, freeing my legs from their prison against the chair legs. I instantly pushed my legs out and sighed in relief. He stood up and circled around me, grabbing one of my wrists but not slicing the tie. I stood up slowly, his fingers still pressed to the inside of my wrist where my veins ran like streams and my heartbeat thrummed lightly in the current.

"We're going on the back deck," he said. "If you're thinking of screaming, don't forget I have this knife."

I didn't respond, more focused on stretching my legs out. Hayes waited only a moment before he tugged on my wrists from behind. My body swayed as I turned around. He didn't let go of my wrists as he led me towards the sunny room, now dark with moon-lit shadows cast over the tiles.

It turned out to literally be a sort of sunroom. There was a more homely feel to this room, down to the wicker furniture and star-shaped prisms dangling in the windows. I wondered if Hayes spent much time in this room since it was the most personality I'd seen in this house so far.

A door that was more window than wood opened right out to a porch facing the back of the house. It spanned across the entire wall of the house and was wider than my bathroom back home. I stepped out into the brisk autumn air and gasped from the chill that braced my skin.

Hayes shut the door behind him and faced me. I dared to look him in the eye now that we were at equal height. I scoffed to myself. "I'm not even little," I muttered, glaring at the grass a few feet away.

"What?"

"You keep calling me 'little thief' but we're the same height."

I heard him breathe out a half-hearted laugh. He pulled me in the direction of a pair of chairs sitting beside the window to our left. "You admit you're a thief, then?" He pushed me softly by my shoulders into one of the chairs.

It wasn't like I didn't notice how much gentler he was with me. Maybe he was having second thoughts about what was supposed to happen tomorrow. Or he really was just a sadist.

"You already know the answer to that," I said warily, biting down on my tongue. "Otherwise we wouldn't be here right now, correct?"

"Correct," Hayes said and then surprised me by slipping a hand behind my back and slicing the zip-ties. I looked up at him in curiosity, wondering how he managed to trust that I wouldn't take off the second he looked away. As if he read my mind, he pocketed the knife and took the seat beside me. "Look straight ahead. You see that? Nothing but trees for miles. I used to walk those woods every day with my dog, so I am very familiar with where they lead and how long you'll be running blindly before you pass out from exhaustion. If you try to run around the front of the house, you'll find that not only are the gates locked, but I'll be waiting for you in the driveway. I'm not worried about you trying to run, but I'd rather you didn't."

I rubbed my wrists, raw from the friction and sore from the positioning. "I don't plan on it."

That was the truth. I did have some common sense. As I learned earlier, trying to run from someone in their own territory wasn't wise.

"Good," he sighed, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. I hated Menthol, so of course that was what he had. Not that I'd complain, of course. I'd have already been chopped into a million tiny pieces if it weren't for Halloween.

He handed me a cigarette and I placed it between my lips. Hayes lit his own first, the flame filling in the shadows of his face and replacing it with tangy, orange-tinted skin. I watched his eyes, dark brown and filled with certainty, the fire dancing within them like this was a ceremony. The metal was still hot when he handed me the lighter.

"So," I said after filling my lungs with the cooling heat of the cigarette smoke, then exhaled it out into the crisp air. "Which shop was yours? Petrov's?"

Hayes kept his gaze on me. It was steady and precise, watching my every move. "That has nothing to do with me," he replied flatly. His cigarette burned between his fingertips, but he'd only hit it one time.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know anything about what you've done except that you've pissed off some rich people," he said, making my thoughts cease momentarily. "I'm just the middle man."

I tasted the words. "The middle man."

Hayes straightened his back. "I'm like... a bounty hunter. And you, little thief, have a very high price on your head."

My blood ran cold. This didn't feel real. I had a bounty on my head? Some rich asshole out there was so angry that I stole their replaceable goods that I had to die for it? Hayes didn't even know the details of my heists. He had no idea what I stole, how I did it, or why. Was it even worth it to tell him?

"How much?" I dared to ask.

"A quarter of a million," he said.

My life wasn't even worth a million dollars? My eyes drifted over to Hayes's curious person. He stared back at me. All I could think was, What kind of person are you to kill someone for such a low price? I hadn't realized my heart was throbbing in my chest.

I swallowed harshly. "I don't keep the money."

He blinked at me, finally raising the cigarette to his lips again. The metallic gray ash was too long and it fell down onto his bare chest. I refused to look.

"I don't want to know."

"I know you were there on Linden when I was making my deliveries. You saw me bringing those boxes to the door. All of the money goes to that," I said, my eyebrows furrowed. How could I make him understand that I didn't need to die? I didn't want to die. I shouldn't die. "Those people need me. I steal from the rich assholes who don't think people like them—people like me—are real. There are kids in that neighborhood who are lucky to have one meal a day. If I can make it two, that's the reason I do what I do."

Hayes didn't say anything, only looked away into the green abyss. I was wondering if he'd stopped listening. My cigarette was down to the filter so I stubbed it out on the table beside me. I stared out into the vast backyard, true to Hayes's description and spanning into an endless sea of age-old pines. The trees were so tall they hid the moon, making it even darker in our little corner of hell.

In my head, I pretended like I jumped over the porch barrier and ran across the lawn. My body carried me through the woods until I was across the country, far away from the men that wanted me dead and from the little worth my being was to the world. I was in Colorado, or New Mexico, or in goddamn Beijing, and I didn't look back.

But I wasn't. I was on the porch. My defense echoed in whispers amongst the pine trees.

"It doesn't matter. I already took the job."

That slice of uncertainty hidden behind his shield of indifference made me believe the impossible. That I could change this man's mind about me.

Bethany always scolded me for bragging. I never had much to brag about, but when I was the fastest in the race that the rest of the kids in the neighborhood put together, I wanted it to be known. When I learned how to pickpocket and I showed up to school in brand new Nikes, I didn't do so quietly. But I learned quickly after Bethany got my knuckles good with a ruler that speaking on the things I did or had meant absolutely nothing to anybody. That quiet modesty was a virtue.

"I'm not a spoiled brat like you think," I said, the words tumbling out before I'd barely thought them. "I would do almost anything for money, too."

Hayes looked at me again. "I'm sure you would."

I tightened my jaw and leaned back in my chair. He was playing a hard game, but I liked a challenge. With the stakes being so high, I couldn't give up just yet. Maybe I couldn't change his mind, or outrun him, or even negotiate. But, at risk of getting my knuckles smacked by Bethany, my intelligence was a bragging right.

I was smarter than Hayes.

"Let's go."

As I stood, my fingers tightened into a fist. He waited for me to step in front of him so he could block my body if I decided to run. I decided I didn't need to. He prodded at the small of my back and I opened the door, stepping into the moonlit sunroom with a sense of relief for the first time since arriving at this house.

In only a second so he wouldn't notice, I glanced downward. The glint of the window-hung prism's refraction hit my hand directly and the metal shone like it was grinning. It wasn't a trick of the light—no.  

I still had the lighter.