Transporting Tricia (for RennyStyle)

[brunoone]

“Lucas Wachira to see Deputy, uh….” The man consulted handwritten notes in a Moleskine only slightly blacker than his own skin. “…Deputy Sheriff Gutierrez.”

“Wachira. Bounty hunter?” Her voice was brusque and tinny through the bullet resistant speak-thru window.

“Reliable Fugitive Recovery.” He put an embossed business card in the window’s metal tray. “We prefer the term ‘bail enforcement agent.’”

“Don’t care.” The surly clerk surveyed the sprawl of prisoner transfer orders. “You registered in this state?”

“I am,” he said precisely. “License number 238.” Like many natives of Mombasa, he’d been bilingual since childhood, fluent in both of Kenya’s official languages. Still, his consonants proved too crisp for American English. He returned the small notebook to the inner breast pocket of a Brooks Brothers blazer.

“That’s an active number?”

“It expires in September.”

“Gonna need a…” Dorothea Gamble, 53, a grade 9 municipal counter clerk grossing $32,750 a year looked up from her desk and stopped talking. It was a fleeting hesitation, a hitch in her usually continuous stream of seen-it-all cynicism. In a glance she absorbed the sleek shaved scalp, the gunmetal flesh, the gym-hardened physique poorly camouflaged by tailored clothing. The woman’s breath hung briefly in the wattles of her neck. With a pair of slow blinks, Dorothea’s world-weary veneer reassembled itself. “I… I’m gonna need a bail piece and a certified copy of the bond, hon. Who’d you bring us?”

Lucas unfolded a pair of nested papers on the stainless steel ledge. “Her name’s Tricia Wells.”

“Where’d you pick her up?”

“8701. 160th Ave NE. Redmond.”

“Lord, you brought her all the way from Redmond? Got yourself a runner, did you?”

The man smiled cryptically, hinting at a narrative longer than the last ten days of Lucas's life.

_______________

The vanilla whey protein in his smoothie tasted faintly of chalk, but Lucas up-ended the travel mug and drank it to the dregs. Fastidious, he retired the empty to a cup-holder in the console of the van. Lucas raised night-vision binoculars and looked again toward a second floor window in the brick tenement's rear facade. A woman's silhouette against a drawn shade. If he could trust the live-in Super he'd interviewed earlier in the day, the shapely shadow belonged to Tricia Wells, fugitive.

 

[RennyStyle]

http://www.joblo.com/moviehotties/images/news-gallery/thumb/Tricia-Helfer-TJ-Tub-Nude_3.jpg

After soaking for an hour in the tub, Tricia Wells mind was still nowhere close to clear.

She was still reeling from the fact that she had actually jumped bail, but she was too terrified of what would happen if she showed up in court. Her lawyer and the idiots at his firm had totally dropped the ball, if she had shown up in court she'd be arrested, but first she would be humiliated. She couldn't stand that.

She thought she could disappear, it would be easy enough. There were murderers and drug dealers and all sorts of terrible people that the police should be looking for, she would have to be a low priority. And, if she was being honest with herself, she was young, beautiful, and white. She had gotten pulled over plenty of times and never gotten a ticket. Odds are no officer who ever encountered her would have any reason to check her ID.

But she also realized that she had no idea how to go on the run. How to access her bank account, where she would go, or what her long term plan was. She hoped that her bath would give her time to figure it out, or at least calm her down enough so she could approach the problem with a clear head. So far, nothing was working.

So once the water turned cold, she withdrew from the beige tub and wrapped a towel around her body. The tall blonde returned to the cheap bed and decided to see if there was anything about her escape from the law on the news. Switching the radio on, she instead heard Bruno Mars and decided to leave it on. She relaxed, began moving her hips, and soon she was dancing in her towel as she brushed her teeth.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/a742e69e4d46a6e596ed0fb6c594ceda/tumblr_olroudlbps1v21qz0o1_500.gif

 

[brunoone]

Gorilla

“What use have I got for money?” her grandmother asked rhetorically. “Food? This place has two dining rooms! Two of them. Different menus, even. You ever hear of such a thing? And there’s a game room. A beauty salon. That craft studio in the basement next to physical therapy. Who has to go anywhere? Not that I could, really, since my hip.

“You just write yourself that check and enjoy a little something. A weekend away with your fella, maybe? Go ahead. Five hundred. Just make it out to ‘cash,’ sweetie. Oh, no… no, dear. Just look at that.” She held her hand up. It shook horribly. “The Parkinsons. Can’t make an ‘x,’ never mind my whole name. You do it for me. You remember what it used to look like.”

By the end of the day, a surge of paranoid dementia had erased all memory of the woman's generosity. “Somebody stole it from me! My own checkbook! Bold as brass!” she told the home’s activities director. Blood relative or no, only the police could appease the old woman.

Three hours after a huddle with Adult Protective Services, the charges were being read in open court: “Section 750-251. Second degree forgery of a bank note. A federal felony, punishable by not less than one nor more than seven years in prison. How does the defendant plea?”

_______________

The circumstances were immaterial. The plea was immaterial. Guilt or innocence was immaterial. Only the bond that secured her release meant anything to Lucas Wachira. The bond made Tricia Wells his prey.

Was she… dancing? The shadow on the yellowed shade certainly seemed to be gyrating. Lucas exited the 2008 Chevy Express, quietly closing its driver-side door. He advanced, unhurried, as if he belonged in the neighborhood. If the streets were better lit (or the residents generally more sober), his clothing and physique might have made a memorable impression on passers-by. As it was, he sauntered unchallenged toward the backside of the tenement.

Lucas leapt easily from a trashcan to a fire escape ladder to a black iron catwalk not far from one of the windows he’d been surveilling for the last two hours. Stealthy, he parked himself at the casing edge and folded his 6’3” frame in a crouch. The bounty hunter aligned his eye with a warp in the shade that resulted in a small gap.

Almost no one is as ugly as her booking photo. Tricia Wells was exponentially more lovely. A writhing towel hugged slender curves as she danced to a song… well, a song that a younger Lucas’s mother certainly would not have let him listen to. You got your legs up in the sky/ With the devil in your eyes/ Let me hear you say you want it all, crooned Bruno Mars. In the chorus, the singer promised his baby they’d be "fuckin’ like gorillas."

As she danced, Lucas watched the woman caress her molars with a toothbrush. He swallowed, straightening somewhat to accommodate an unexpected lengthening in the left leg of his trousers. He had to remind himself to look elsewhere in the apartment for signs of other inhabitants.

 

[RennyStyle]

Wiggling her hips, Tricia returned to the bathroom, bent over the sink and spit the rest of the toothpaste into the sink. She tugged the towel around her loose and used it to wipe the side of her mouth clean.

She tossed the towel aside and returned to the bedroom, shaking her naked body as the song finished. She tried again to find the news, but without any luck. She sighed, picked up the remote and turned the TV on, letting it drone on while she searched for wherever she left her bathrobe.

 

[brunoone]

Throwing Shade

Even an unaccommodating angle of view past the edge of the shade afforded Lucas a telling eyeful of Tricia Wells. As far as the bounty hunter could surmise, the woman was alone in the apartment. She had no motive for performance. No one to attract or impress. Yet – fugitive or no – she seemed relaxed in her own [damnably attractive] skin. The most winsome of women are unaware of such beauty. Entitled others weaponize their good looks, using them to unlock doors of privilege. He shouldn’t have cared, but he hoped Tricia Wells was the second sort of woman.

He took a last look at her shapely ass, swallowed, and stood to the simple work of entry. The tenement’s age made it stupidly easy to slide a thin metal ruler between the inner and outer sashes of the window. The job wasn’t entirely noiseless, but the radio and TV were loud enough to camouflage the scrape of metal. He pulled hard to the right. The ruler’s thin edge twisted the latch blade to the left. He waited to see if he’d attracted attention. No change in the apartment’s pattern of sounds. A local news anchor introduced a report on the auto crash of a texting teen. Lucas splayed gloved hands against the pane, waited for a breeze to pass, then eased the window upward.

In a practiced move, he straddled the sill and slithered into the apartment. A well-executed dismount, thought Lucas. He suppressed a grin self-satisfaction. But the man was too quick to celebrate. His large trailing foot caught the edge of the shade, freeing pin from ratchet. The coiled inner spring snatched the thing upward in a clamorous, flapping roll.

Gasping, Tricia pivoted suddenly toward the noise. Instinctively, she hugged her exposed torso – inadequate cover by far for the woman’s glorious nakedness. Lucas felt his eyes widen. Her curves were a collection of eddies swirling in a sculpted basin. A pair of frozen seconds passed before Lucas remembered to reach for his I.D. “Bail – “ He cleared his dry throat and tried again: “Bail enforcement, Ms. Wells.” The bounty hunter’s composure returned with each stride across the apartment, with each familiar word of introduction. “I am Lucas Wachira. And you are a fugitive.”

One hand wrapped her right bicep like a warm shackle. The other traded his badge wallet for a pair of handcuffs. “You have the right to…” the familiar incantation petered to a rehearsed stop. Bounty hunters aren’t required to Mirandize their prisoners. “Actually, you have no rights, Ms. Wells. I am not a policeman. I am not a sheriff. Not a marshal.” His voice was smooth and dark, like chocolate plasma. “Per the terms of your bail, you forfeit the protections one might expect in their custody.”

 

[RennyStyle]

Tricia tried to pull out of his iron grip. "Let go of me!" When she couldn't get a single finger to budge, she returned to covering herself.

"What are you going to do with me?" She asked, knowing the answer but asking regardless. "Take me to jail? Fine, just let me dress first, okay? My clothes are in the bathroom." There was also a window in there, she wondered if she would be able to slip out. But she knew she had to try. She tried to step back to the door, but she couldn't budge as long as he had his hand on her. "Will you let go of me? Please?"