Free Last Safe Place, The by Ninie Hammon Page A

Hated contact lenses, though, only wore them to Mass on Sundays, weddings, funerals … and other special occasions. Drumstick arranged for the car to be parked outside the restaurant’s back door—between two dumpsters that blocked the view from both ends of the alley.
    The alarm on the back door in Mama Rosina’s hadn’t worked since the Eisenhower administration.
    Soon as Gabriella, Ty and P.D. hopped into the car, they laid over in the seats and Theo covered them up with blankets. He had already gotten that crazy wig situated on his head with the dreadlocks hanging halfway down his back and put on the mirror sunglasses that made him look like a pimp.
    Only thing Gabriella said was: “Did your friend get what I asked for?”
    Theo wordlessly nodded to the glove box and she opened it. Inside was a .38 revolver. Serial number filed off. Untraceable. The whole transaction had cost $20,000.
    Once they got away from the restaurant, Gabriella took the wheel and the others remained covered up with blankets for the next two hours. Theo had spent most of that time praying—that the “watchers” hadn’t spotted them and that Gabriella’d stop soon so he could go to the bathroom before he wet himself. She drove through the night, getting off the expressway every thirty or forty miles, watching the exit ramps to see if any suspicious vehicles got off, too. Nothing. Maybe that didn’t prove they weren’t being followed, but it was all she could do.
    They was eating McDonald’s big breakfasts in the car in Salisbury, North Carolina, when Gabriella asked Theo where he wanted her to drop him off now that his part in this wild ride was over. She apologized for dragging him into her nightmare, thanked him for his help and said she’d give him plenty of money to get by on—because they both knew he was in Yesheb’s gunsights now, too, and he’d have to vanish his own self for the next couple of months.
    Theo shoved a syrup-slathered hunk of pancake into his mouth and said, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cept with you.”
    Her look of shock would have been comical if her face wasn’t all puckered up on one side—Smokey’s handiwork.
    “You’re going with us, Grandpa Slappy?” The instant of pure joy on that boy’s face made Theo’s throat draw up so tight he couldn’t swallow his own spit.
    “Oh no, he’s not!” Gabriella said.
    “How you figure to do this if I don’t? Face like yours ain’t ’xactly gone blend into a crowd. Every time you check into a motel, or go in some convenience store to pay for gasoline, or buy a box of fried chicken at a drive-in window—somebody gone see you. Anybody ask ’em later, they gone remember.”
    Gabriella couldn’t argue that.
    “But a old black man ... don’t matter what they say, most white folks still think all black people look alike. And ain’t nobody looking for a old bald black man. Under all this nappy cotton, I bet I look just like Denzel Washington.”
    “Theo, this is … dangerous.”
    “Ya think?”
    “You won’t like where we’re going.”
    “I don’t like where we been! You ever notice how many fat women they is in the South?”
    “Theo, I’m serious.”
    “So am I. That woman over there, she got so much flab on her arms she look like a flying squirrel.”
    Ty tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle.
    “And them spandex pants. They’s stretched so tight over them thunder thighs, she try to run, her legs gone rub together and start a fire.”
    Ty lost it then, laughed so hard he spilled his syrup and Gabriella used cleaning up his mess as an excuse to drop the subject. She didn’t bring it up again.
    They stopped at a Walmart in Charlotte and bought suitcases, toiletries and bare-essential clothing—they had to travel light. Made it as far as the suburbs of Atlanta before Gabriella crashed. Next day, they went into the city and got Gabriella a laptop and Ty a Nintendo 3DS and just about every video game ever invented. They drove to