Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Five

Halfway back to her apartment complex, he has yet to utter a word.

Harley is huddled up in the passenger's seat with her knees hugged to her chest, shifted to the side of her seat farthest from Harry with her forehead pressing on the bulletproof window. Though it may be a juvenile manner of doing things, she thinks that if she sits as still as she can and doesn't say anything, he might forget she exists.

What else is she to do? Make small talk with the murderer she's now tied up in a partnership of crime with? As far as the sane side of her is concerned, she could escape the vehicle. However, the not-so-sane side, the one that has become amplified under the pressure of life's recent chaos, has some questions to ask, and she isn't going to let them go unanswered.

The problem is finding the courage to ask.

She eyes him from her peripheral vision the best she can without tipping him off that she's looking.

Harry drives like the human manifestation of her old Louisiana Driver's Ed manual. Fingers curled around the wheel and positioned at ten and two, shoulders pulled up, back straight, and his eyes fixed on the road ahead—he's her sophomore year Driver's Ed teacher's dream outcome. He's perfect...but rigid. Cold.

It almost offends her.

She can tell a lot about people in how they drive. Her dad was imaginative and wild. If they wanted to know him, all they had to do was know what to look for while they watched him drive. Her mother was casual. She drove with the journey as her point of focus, not the destination. Her hands were rarely on the wheel, it was usually her knee pressing into the bottom of the steering wheel and turning the car where she wanted to go.

Harry is none of these things. He's a blank slate. He's grayscale and empty, and she can't help but wonder what he's hiding behind it all. Because no one drives like this without hiding something, without knowing how valuable the information of how they truly like to drive is when shown to someone like her.

Despite her instinctual fear of the man, his lack of vulnerability in his driving brings more questions begging to be asked in the back of her mind, so she forces herself to ask the important ones before she loses her nerve.

"What the fuck was all of that back there?"

A little too general, perhaps, but it's the one thing she could articulate from the web of curiosity and panic stringing her thoughts together. The question doesn't ruffle him. His knuckles don't tighten their grip around the wheel, nor does his posture sag or tense to reveal anything. The man is a statue.

And, much to her frustration, he doesn't respond.

"Did you hear me?" she asks, "What was that? Not that I'm not thankful to be alive right now, but you just signed me up for something and I really need to know what that is. Am I gonna be your chauffeur or something?"

Harley isn't truly that naive. Considering what was said between him and Leo about him doing "jobs" and killing being "the only thing he's good for", the pieces are laid out and lined up for her. The thing is, she doesn't want to see it. If his job does rely on killing other people, why would she want any part in it? Even if she isn't the one doing the murder herself, being his driver makes her an accessory to it. There's no way she could justify that, right?

"You're not gonna be my chauffeur. You're my driver, and you're not stupid, so I know y'know what that means," Harry says without breaking his eye contact with the road. Somehow, she can still feel the harsh judgment of his eyes without having them directly on her. "If y'listened to me, like you should've, you wouldn't have to be doing any of this. But you made this bed, so lie in it. We all made our own mistakes to get roped in with Leo, and this is yours."