Chapter 39: Helena

Chapter 39: Helena
Before Daniel drove the van out of the city, Troy cinched Helena’s wrists together with a zip tie and blindfolded her with what she was guessing was a dirty strip of fabric ripped off of a t-shirt. It had taken him a minute to find, and in the passing moment, Helena saw the red pillars and cables of the Golden Gate Bridge as they moved into the headlands.
“This’ll do, I suppose,” Troy muttered as he jerked Helena roughly over to him and bound the fabric around her head. “Can’t have you seeing where we’re going.”
He kept his fingers entwined into the zip tie, tugging at it occasionally like it was a worry doll, a makeshift string of rosary. The other hand traced a route around Helena’s neck and clavicle. He touched the prominent bones along her shoulders and throat, let a finger roam the length of her decolletage.
“What do you think you’re worth to your old man?” Troy asked her, a dirty nail scraping the skin on her chest. “And by old man, I mean your daddy. Not your boyfriend.”
“You’re a fool if you think my father cares enough about me to give you anything,” Helena answered.
“Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart: you’ve got plenty already to cover his debts.”
There was a game in all this, Helena knew that much, but she had no understanding of how it was played. When Ryan spoke about how the packs interacted with each other and who her father might have involved to connect to Troy, she thought it all sounded like a joy. Like children playing on arbitrary teams. Now she was enmeshed in it too deeply to see it from the outside like she had tried. A sensation contracted her chest, hooked a vice around her heart and dared it to keep beating as it squeezed. If she didn’t know any better, she’d swear she was being buried alive.
She could tell when they were away from the city and moving up into the hilly areas of the headlands. Where she had spent her charmed life was along the rocky coasts and cliffs that framed the entirety of the pacific ocean as if they were holding this vast, eternal body of water just to appeal to her sense of aesthetic. The inland towns had been hamlets she passed through on her way to somewhere else, black holes in her memory where she imagined them as the same place each time. They’re probably not taking me anywhere I’d have seen even if I could recognize the town, she thought. Ryan’s description of the headland pack’s way of living sounded more like a compound with a lot of people all living on the same property. Helena was pretty sure a set-up like that wouldn’t be too close to the general public.
Helena turned her blindfolded head towards Troy, hoping for it to seem like she was still staring at him even if she couldn’t see him. “Can I ask where we’re going?”
“You can ask whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“I mean, will you tell me where we’re going?”
Daniel snorted from the front. The sound ricocheted around the empty van like a bullet in a tin can. “That’s not exactly how this works,” he told her.
She could hear the change in his voice as he turned his head over his shoulder to speak to her. From her shuttered perspective, the road seemed too windy to be looking away like that.
“We’re taking you to our place,” Troy said. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. You’re going with us and I don’t think you’re the type who’d be able to escape.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
Troy’s fingers pushed into the top of her arm. One lone digit extended and dug a nail into her breast. “I’d wager a bet you don’t know how to find your way around the woods.” He was bending closer to her; Helena felt the heat of him, the wetness of his breath, sticking to the side of her face. “I know you’re a girl who grew up out here who can’t figure out shit when it comes time to it. And I know your daddy owes me a lot of money. So I know what I need to know about you.”
He released her but the spot where he had gripped into her arm tingled as if it was coming back from being numb. She shifted clumsily away from him, which only made Troy laugh.
“Yeah, go ahead.” He pushed the toe of his boot into the side of her thigh. “That’ll keep me away from ya.”
“Why? What’s she doing?”
The change in Daniel’s voice happened again, and Helena tensed up. All of this was bad enough but if Daniel god forbid drove them off the side of a cliff, she knew Ryan would never forgive himself for putting her in the middle of this plan.
“Daniel, watch the goddamned road!” Troy shouted. “She’s not doing anything interesting, calm down.”
“I was just asking-”
“The road, Daniel! The road!”
“I can talk and watch at the-”
“Daniel, stop the car!”
Everything lurched forward, Helena very much included. Her hands were bound so she slammed limp and defenseless in the back of the seat. Something jagged sliced at her arm; she felt the warm escape of blood from a cut.
“Jesus, I didn’t even see it,” Daniel was saying as Troy moved around the back of the van. She felt him bending over her to slap Daniel in the back of the head. Or so she assumed.
“Yeah, you didn’t see it ’cause you were looking back here. Eyes on the road next time.” Helena felt Troy’s weight settle next to her again. “Fucking idiot almost killed a coyote. A big one too.”
“That thing wouldn’t have done any damage to the van, Troy,” Daniel replied, sounding wounded at his fresh scolding.
“But you would have killed the damn thing,” Troy snapped. “I don’t want a coyote killed because you’re too stupid to watch the road.”
They were on their way once more. Helena’s head hurt where she hit it and she was pretty sure there was still blood running from her arm. Troy didn’t bother to ask if she was alright. It’s not like she was a coyote after all.
The drive was longer than Helena had expected. Forty minutes later, they were still going, and she was beginning to think that “the headlands gang” wasn’t really an accurate title. She wondered if Daniel was driving in circles to throw her off, but to Troy’s point, that was unnecessary. Unless they were keeping her right in the dead center of town, escape was a distant possibility. The natural world would eat her alive. Quite literally in some cases.
For a long stretch of the drive, Troy left his hand on her stomach in the space where her ribcage flowered out and stretched her skin taut. The feeling of his hand on her body turned every inch of her to stone, to crawling restless bugs, to flesh so tense it could shatter like glass. Still, she knew it was better to have him touching her there than anywhere else and not just for the obvious reasons. For what she was hiding against her skin; what she had smuggled against her for the next part of the plan.
The tiny bag, fat with powder, taped against the inside of her thigh. Ryan secured it in place, hardly able to look her in the eye as he did it.
“Sheila thinks this is a terrible idea,” he told her as he crouched down, cradling the package in the palm of his hand.
“It’s not a great one. If either of us could come up-”
Ryan lifted a hand to cut her off. “Trust me, I already said the same thing.” He stroked the outside of his fingers along the sensitive seam of her leg. “Maybe this isn’t the best spot for it. He might find it if he frisks you.”
Or puts his hands all over you. She saw that on his face whether he wanted to say it or not. God knows Helena was thinking it too.
“Maybe tape it around my midriff?”
Helena lifted her shirt. Without warning, Ryan leaned forward and pressed his forehead into her stomach. Her hand stroked into his hair, the sweat from it dewing her fingers, keeping his scent on her even as they both prepared to send her off.
“You have to do everything he says,” Ryan told her, his voice vibrating his mouth against her body. “Please. If you piss him off, he could kill you.”
Helena moved her hands to the side of his face and peeled him off of her. It was then when it hit her that he was more scared of losing her than she was of dying. “I’m not a princess anymore, Ryan.”
“I know you think all of this is stupid but you don’t know this world. It’s dangerous.”
Helena gave him a sad smile. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling, what was going through her mind. There was an autopilot setting that had kicked in once the plan was fully laid out. For the first time in her life, Helena wanted to accomplish something. She saw an end goal and was headed for it, no matter what the outcome wound up being.
Ryan sighed. He pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh. Right where he was about to affix the baggie of powder; right where he was about to put the plan into action.
“Just promise me this won’t be the last time I kiss this leg,” Ryan pleaded, his eyes level with Helena’s navel and hesitant to lift further.
“I absolutely fucking promise.”
Ryan let his eyes meet hers and a sense of calm washed through her. A million things could still go wrong. Any terrible or wonderful outcome was possible. This moment though belonged to the two of them.
Helena bent at the waist and kissed Ryan hard on the mouth. When they pulled apart, she stood upright and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Ryan positioned the bag as high up her thigh as he could and wrapped two circumferences of tape around it. Helena pulled on the pair of jeans Sheila had loaned her to keep everything hidden, and they had stood face to face for a long stretch of time. It was that moment that Helena held onto as she rattled around in the back of the van, Troy’s hand on the flare of her ribcage.
She kept breathing, kept herself steady. The plan was in motion. She knew the next step. Hell, even better than that: she was the next step.