Joined: 25 Jun 2005
Posts: 263
Location: England
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"Pretty fancy place..." Carter remarked, lifting his cap off his balding head and wiping the sweat from his scalp. With dark clouds rolling over head, he heaved his substantial girth from the cab of the open-bed truck and turned towards the back. There, shivering from the wind in not nearly enough layers for the job, sat Grace Gordon. Her blonde hair was shoved back from her face in a messy knot, a zip-up hoodie covered her torso with the hood yanked up. It, along with the jeans she wore, were not several sizes too large. Her clothes had been left during the move to Washington. Creed had made sure of that and at the same time, had been sure to supply her with a wardrobe more fitting to your average female. Sweats were apparently not a good look.
But the clothing she wore was scuffed and dirty and her face betrayed at least twenty-four hours without sleep. It took a great deal of effort for her to unfurl herself from the truck, the tarp crumpled beneath her; used for something to sit on.
Carter waved something in his left hand; a bat he had pulled from the passenger seat of his truck and was now using as a sort of insurance policy against his passenger.
"Money first, mutie." He said, glancing nervously at the cameras that whirred on top of the gate posts on either side of him.
Grace didn't hesitate, pulling open her backpack, rifling through her bunched up clothing, clearly packed in a hurry, for a wad of crumpled money at the bottom, fastened crudely with a hair pin she had come across on the Greyhound out of Washington.
She threw it and Carter caught it neatly and pulled off the pin, flicking through it quickly to make sure that it was all there. Satisfied, he stepped to one side, stealing glances at her as she fumbled off the truck bed. Grace liked to think it was because he knew, somehow, that she had a semi-automatic pistol buried in her bag, wrapped hastily up in a shirt. Unfortunately, she knew that wasn't the case.
"I hear the old guy that runs this place does experiments. Cuts you up and stitches you back together." He grinned, revealing a missing incisor. Grace, unable to stop herself, rolled her eyes as she dropped heavily onto the tarmac.
No such luck. She signed, and was met with a familiar puzzled, slightly uncomfortable expression. She tried something easier. More universal.
Thank you. That one, he seemed to understand.
"Yeah. Just don't let them dice you up, honey." The endearment set her teeth on edge.
She turned toward the gate, not looking as Carter got back into his truck and drove away. She didn't acknowledge his beeping horn but stood there instead, trying to make the mansion fit what had been lurking in her memory for the past who knew how long. Memory had warped it a little, making the real thing an imperfect copy of what she had in mind but she felt an overflow of relief to be here.
She had done her best to stick to transport, reminding herself all the time of how Sabertooth operated. Instinct. Animal. She left few trails on her way here, taking the Greyhound, then every bus she could afford to bring her to a more local area of New York State. From there, she had been forced to walk a little, attempting to hitch a ride for two hours before she finally caught one.
But as relieved as she was to be here, at last, some small part of her niggled away, telling her it wouldn't stop him. That he wasn't stupid. He'd know exactly where she'd go and it'd only be a matter of time before he came looking. But she had needed to leave; the situation finally getting too far out of hand for her to deal with. Everyone had a line, and Grace thought that perhaps she had found hers.
Frankly, she was amazed she had made it this far without running into him. With a shiver, she adjusted her backpack into a more comfortable position and depressed the call button on the gate, fingers automatically selecting the video option, seeing as the speaker was not much of an option.
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Grace Gordon | Marinda Nightingale | Leodora Walker |
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