#17 A Thief - Gadai

I didn't dare look behind me. Instead I watched as Lyle checked the rear view mirror and sighed, indicating to me that the men had given up. My body slumped against the seat and I leaned on the window, my muscles finally accepting the relief that flooded its system. The car was quiet except for our labored breaths, and the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

I stared at the window blankly. The bonfire outside had grown, Tony must have conceded to Grace's plea and put more logs into the pit. The flames outlined several figures that gathered around the fire. Grace was probably sitting with Tony, by now she would be conducting her socializing from her lawn chair throne. Dania would be helping little kids make her trademark 'double s'more' with two sandwiches stacked on top of each other while Evelyn anxiously showered everyone in bug spray.

They seemed so far away as we traveled out of the parking lot and into the forested drive toward town. So far away that they didn't pay attention to a green hatchback as it spun storms of gravel into the night.

They had no idea - but I suppose in a way I really didn't have an idea either.

I blinked and the scene left my view, bringing my back to reality. My right cheek pressed tightly to the window as I angled my head awkwardly behind me, trying to catch a glimpse of the fire as it disappeared.

My clammy hands clutched the handle and the console next to me. What was I doing in this car?

I was suddenly at a loss, a state of confusion. How had I gotten here? It was all so quick. The men. The tree. Lyle.

I closed my eyes tightly in order to quiet my mind. Marshmallows. What a harmless way for this all to begin. My body jolted forward as if a strike of lightning had hit me between my shoulder blades.

The events of the night poured back into my head, filling me and crowding the space until I felt as if it was pushing everything else out. All snapshots, none in focus ran through my mind. There was no attachment to scenes, it seemed as if I were recalling a movie that I couldn't quite piece together. Then came the feelings. First on their own, fear, anxiety, dread. Then all compiling, attacking, and captivating every corner of my mind. I clutched my head with both hands and bent forward resting it between my knees. I was sure if I didn't physically hold myself together I would fall apart.

One thought rose above the others.

"We have to go back." I panicked, snapping my head up to face Lyle.

How could I have left them? Was I really that self-conceded that I would leave for the promise of answers? Answers for questions that I hardly even knew to ask?

Grace, Tony, Dania, Evelyn, Nora, William, even Mrs. McCarthy. I couldn't leave without warning them. They needed to know that Smith and Jones were dangerous. What if someone else went back to the house to fetch something and found the mess? What stopped them from attacking the bonfire?

I didn't wait for a reply and I reached across the console for the steering wheel.

"Are you fucking insane?" Lyle bellowed as we swerved across the yellow dotted line before she recovered us. Her voice was harsh and abrupt in the otherwise silent vehicle. I flinched away from her, but did not back off.

"There are people back there!" My voice broke and I lunged again for the wheel.

"Quit." Lyle blocked my advance and held up her palm ordering me to stop.

Her action was something a mother would say to a child who'd been fussy all day and had finally wore down her last nerve. Except I wasn't behaving childishly, no I refused to believe that I was in any way overreacting.

"They aren't going to hurt your friends." Lyle did her best to console me, though her tone impassive and her eyes didn't stray from the road before her. "Trust me they won't stay at the scene of the crime, they aren't total idiots." The last part she mumbled under her breath and I barely caught it, yet one word held my attention.

A Crime.

Had I just witnessed a crime? Well of course, a gun was pointed at me, we were threatened, chased. It just hadn't occurred to me that the events bared that name, that title that made it all that much more real. And terrifying.

"A crime." My lips felt numb as the statement spilled from my mouth.

My phone.

How had I not thought of it before? Every scary movie Grace had forced me to watch I condoned the idiots who would go into a haunted house without their phone. Now here I was with the damn thing, and couldn't be bothered to remember it. My hands fumbled as I patted my body vigorously in search of it. My breath hitched in my throat as I pulled it from my back pocket. The smooth plastic had never felt so comforting in my palm as I urged my uncontrollably shaky digits to punch in my passcode.

With a grunt Lyle reached over and swiftly removed the cell from my loose grip tucking it into her own back pocket. I stared at my empty hands blankly, her smooth motion catching me off guard.

"What are you doing?"

"Can't let you do that."

"Excuse me?" I demanded my entire body shaking as I struggled to keep the rush of emotions I could no longer identify under control. Unresponsive as she faced forward watching the road unfold before us.

"My friends are back there," I snapped as a dangerous cocktail of adrenaline and emotion poured out of me. "People are back there, you - we just got shot at. I need to call the police right fucking now." My body convulsed with every word. I meant it, White Pine was my home. All the people whom I loved were concentrated there. I wasn't about to even chance losing them.

My hands trembled as I held them in front of my face. I couldn't stop the feeling of dread from creeping up into my gut. I couldn't let them go through the same horror I had - or worse.

"Are you even listening?" I twisted my body so that I sat at the edge of the tattered seat to face her.

Lyle's response was characteristically even and calm, the polar opposite of me. "Hard not to when you're yelling in my ear. Take a deep breath."

How could she be so unshaken, finding humor in the situation? Was she so out of touch with the danger we'd just faced? Where had the fear I saw in her eyes gone?

"Lyle," I chewed on the inside of my lip. "What's going on?"

"It's not your business." She assured through gritted teeth as the road curved to the left. We were a few miles from town.

"Not my business?" It was nearly laughable. "I was just threatened in my own home. They addressed me specifically. I am so tired of your vague bullshit, I have never been more scared in my entire life. Now you said you'd explain everything, so just what the hell is going on?" I finished on a loud exhale, I felt lighter as my passionate plea left me.

Lyle matched my sigh though hers seemed to take on more stress. "They won't go after your friends."

"How do you know that?" I countered quickly folding my arms over my chest. She wasn't a goddamn medium she couldn't predict the future.

Lyle's jaw clenched as if preventing herself from sharing the information. Annoyed with her delayed answer I lunged for the steering wheel again.

"Jesus Christ, ok, ok." She held her ground and I back away from the wheel. "The last thing they want to do is make a big scene. From what I've gathered they're professionals, so they know a job like this has to be done quickly and quietly."

"A job?" I interrupted.

"They're paid to retrieve an item that they were lead to believe is in the B&B, but they haven't been able to find it - obviously - so they are getting desperate. Which is why they threatened me, and oh just a little extra bonus, you walked in on the whole thing! And they think - drumroll please - you have the item they can't seem to find and with enough persuasion you could be convinced to give it to them. Which is why we are hightailing it the fuck out of there." She spoke quickly with a dry sense of humor as she glowered at the windshield. "That enough information for you?"

It wasn't.

"What do they think I have?" I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it.

There was a brief pause before she responded. "Do you remember the painting that was in the foyer? Not much bigger than a novel, a nature scene maybe a lake or a pond?" She refused to look me in the eye as she spoke.

I stared dumbly at her my hands instinctively clutching the locket that hung from my neck. I rubbed the smooth surface as if to shield it from what Lyle was about to confirm.

"It should have a name on the frame, Mo Soileireacht."

I sat like a stone my blood running cold. I shook my head more to deny the reality to myself than answer Lyle.

It wasn't possible. The answer to why I was chased by two men bearing guns was not for my mother's art work. It simply couldn't be.

This was never how I imagined it - how my mother's art work would impact me. Of course I'd fantasized about people requesting to see her work, but in my dreams they'd been foreign art critics. People that knew my mother intimately. They would invite me to coffee in town and tell me about her time in Paris or Venice and share little anecdotes about the time she dropped her paints in the river or off the Eiffel tower.

I'd get to hear about her from a real live person, and at the end of the day they would tell me they'd visit again tomorrow. And they would. They would keep coming back to admire her work and to tell me about her and how much she loved me.

"May?" Lyle spoke softly finally looking away from the road for a split second to rest her hand on my knee. "You told Grace it was your painting and they heard you."

Mine. I'd perpetuated the masquerade that my mother's exquisite paintings were my own. Just so that I could keep her memory - or what little I had of it - to myself. So that I never had to explain to anyone what little I knew about her. So I never had to experience the pity I felt all throughout my childhood.

Was this my fault then? My fault for bringing the paintings into the B&B, for putting Grace and others in possible danger?

But how could I have known?

I squinted at her in the bare light of the car's dashboard trying to make out any emotion, any tell that would allow me insight of what was running through her mind. My arms felt weak as they floated down from their place at my chest.

Thoughts raced through my head as I struggled to come up with a response to the information she relayed to me. Mo Soileireacht was safe in Unit #16. There was no way the men could know about the storage unit. But they knew about Mo Soileireacht didn't they, my mind played devil's advocate. And if they knew about it, what else did they know? I couldn't deny the curiosity that plagued me.

I took a deep breath, collecting my thoughts before I spoke. "It isn't in the B&B anymore." I began in a daze. "They almost killed us for it. Why Mo Soileireacht?" The words seemed absurd as they rolled off my tongue.

"I don't know."

Her answer passed through one ear and out the other as I thought. A million questions fought to make their way out of my skull but I was dumbfounded.

"May please focus there is a lot at stake here." Her words were impatient as she cast another worried glance over her shoulder. The road was empty on either side, only lines of dark trees rose above us.

"Damn right there is I just got shot at." My tone was devoid of all feelings as they had melted away leaving only one thought in my mind. My mother's painting. I shook my head. No, she had to be mistaken.

"They've been looking for the painting for a long time May, they won't just give up."

I ignored her and began to think out loud, piecing together all the oddities that occurred within the last few days. "They've been going through the rooms."

I thought back to Evelyn's remark about Mr. McCarthy who swore his stuff had been moved around. The girls had even seen Jones go into the room only they assumed he was having an affair, not looking for a piece of canvas.

"Even my cabin seemed a bit out of place." I mused recalling the night my album made its way to the other side of my mattress, frown lines formed on my forehead. "But that was before the men arrived."

Lyle? I turned to look at her but she looked away. I thought back to the first night I met her. She'd commented on the sketch that filled the space in the foyer where Mo Soileireacht once hung.

She'd been casing White Pine since the moment she'd walked in.

"Did you go through my cabin?" My voice faltered as everything came together. "How do you know all this?" My chest tightened and my entire body tensed. How could I have been so stupid? I was in a car with a thief. "You're looking for it too aren't you? And you've been using me to find Mo Soileireacht?"

Stoic, she stared straight ahead. The headlights from her car revealing only a few feet of road at a time. "If you take me to it this will all be over." Her voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it. Was she ashamed of what she'd done?

"No fucking way." I retorted crossing my arms over my chest.

"You're in a moving car May," She tore her eyes away from the road meeting mine. "What other option do you have?" Her gaze wasn't taunting or cruel, rather she seemed to be pleading with me. Her light eyes focused acutely on mine and I studied them intently searching for what I'd caught a glimpse of earlier.

I wasn't scared of Lyle, maybe I was blinded by my unbridled interest in her, but I did not fear her. But now, the thought of her going through my cabin changed things. She'd broken my trust and violated my privacy. Had she seen my mother's portrait? My photo albums?

My heart stopped. Would she be able to piece together that my mother was the real artist? My head felt like a balloon pumped too full with helium. What would she do then?

And why was anyone after the painting? There was nothing special about it. It wasn't a collector's item, my mother was as unknown to the world as she was to me.

My mind screamed to press her for more answers but eventually the sound faded and one thought rose above it. A whisper that commanded just as much attention as a shout. I could not give away my mother's painting and I could not allow Lyle to learn any more about Mo Soileireacht's true artist.

I bit my lip and let out a short breath.

But what other option did I have?

Out of the passenger window I could see the lights of the town flickering through the line of trees. They seemed so far away, the window pane quarantining me from the outside world. I needed to get out, away from the madness I'd been thrown into. Away from the strange men with guns, away from Lyle. My eyes fell to the handle of the car door.

Without another word I flung the door open and jumped into the night.

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I know this is a long one - but we have a lot to cover ! What do you think about May's reaction ??

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