by Selena Scott
“I’ve never shot anyone before.”
“And you still haven’t, not really. You tranquilized him.”
“I’ve never done that either,” she said hoarsely.
“You had to do it.” His voice was grim. “I can tell you feel guilty, but Dawn, that was not a play gun in his hands when he came into this room. Make no mistake, he was here to relieve me of my duties. If we hadn’t woken up, I would be dead on that bed and you’d be tranquilized and abducted. You saved my life just now.”
She started shaking even more and Quill quickly sat her down on the bed and helped her step into her clothes.
“Dawn, we have to act fast, okay? We don’t know if there are more of them.”
“Right.”
He turned and quickly inventoried the unconscious man’s pockets. There were handcuffs, knives, another gun, a few communication devices, and a small medical pack filled with vials of liquids of a few different colors. Quill took everything except for the communication devices.
It wasn’t until he started dragging the man’s unconscious body toward the bathroom that Dawn realized she was being utterly useless, sitting stunned on the bed. She grabbed the man’s heavy legs.
“You don’t have to,” Quill said, his icy eyes piercing hers, even through the dark.
“I want to help.”
They dragged the man into the bathtub and Quill used the man’s handcuffs to cuff him to the handicap shower bar. Dawn took a moment to study his sleeping face. He had small, squirrelly features and purple bags under his eyes. She could smell the road on him. He’d been traveling to find them. He needed a haircut. She couldn’t find it in her heart to hate him. Not after everything she’d been through with Quill. It was clear to her now that there were no bad guys, not really. Had this man been a part of the camps? Had his family been threatened? Killed? Was he attempting to purchase his freedom with their capture? Maybe he really would have killed Quill. Or maybe his finger would have trembled on the trigger.
“We have to go.”
She snapped to attention to see that Quill had packed their bags and dressed. His hand was warm on her cheek, her throat, her shoulder, her hand.
“We have to go,” he repeated.
Dawn followed him wordlessly to the car and neither of them spoke for the first fifteen minutes of his driving. He was easily going thirty miles per hour over the speed limit. And Dawn wasn’t sure if they were speeding away from danger or toward it.
“I meant what I said, Dawn,” he said, the black velvet of the night out his window making his silhouette strikingly defined. “I’ll never let anything hurt you.”
And she knew he was telling the truth. Her finger that had pulled the trigger tingled with the memory. This time, she knew in her heart that she could truly say it back to him. She would protect him just as he’d protect her.
***
To his surprise, Dawn fell asleep almost instantly once they got on the road. He’d thought for sure that she’d be way too keyed up to rest. It was nice, comforting even, to know that he didn’t know everything about her. She had so much capacity, so many endless options within her. It made him feel like she was going to be okay. No matter what happened, she’d surprise him and just… be okay.
He hadn’t anticipated that tranqing someone would bring her so much turmoil. It was nice that she was so reticent to bring that kind of pain down on someone. Mostly because Quill had become so immune to stuff like that over the years. To spend so much time with such a tender heart was exhilarating. Rejuvenating.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
She had to be protected at any cost.
Unfortunately, Quill had come to a very not-good conclusion last night. There might just not be a way to fool the Director. Dawn was too obviously competent. Her shift was so in control that it was basically unfakeable. And the Director wasn’t an idiot. There was every chance that Quill was walking her right into a trap.
And if everything went to shit, he had to know for a fact that he could get her out. Did he know that?
Well, fighting the Director would be no problem. He was an old man whose only weapons were, well, weapons. As long as Quill could keep a gun out of his hands, then they should be all right. But there was no knowing who else the Director was employing to guard him these days.
There were a fair number of unknowns and Quill would have been a lot more comfortable with this plan if he had a backup for how to get Dawn out of there. He needed somebody strong. He needed somebody he could trust to care for Dawn.
He needed… her brothers.
“Oh god,” he groaned softly and leaned over the steering wheel. Of course the only people he could trust to protect Dawn were the people who surely hated him the most in the world. Of course, because that’s the way it was with him and Dawn. Nothing was ever simple. It was like the whole world had already decided that no matter how long it might be, the rest of his life was going to be hard as fuck.
Dawn stirred beside him and he straightened back up. Now, this was going to be tricky. There was no way she would go along with any plan that involved her brothers. The whole reason she’d even come along on this doomed road trip was to keep her brothers as safe as possible.
Signs for a gas station beckoned to him and he knew what he had to do. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t like any of this. Except for Dawn. He really liked Dawn.
She didn’t stir when he turned off the car, or when he started filling the tank. So, he considered it safe to do what he had to do next. He went into the gas station and paid for the tank of gas and purchased a pay-as-you-go phone.
He pulled out the small handwritten list of phone numbers that he’d made sure to copy down before he skipped town.
And there it was in black and white. Phoenix’s phone number. Didn’t that just say it all right there? That even then, when he’d considered himself to just be saving his own ass by leaving town, he’d taken down the Wolf family’s phone numbers. Just in case he had to warn them of anything.
He stood with his back against the brick wall of the gas station and kept his eye on Dawn sleeping across the lot in the passenger seat.
Hopefully Phoenix had his phone on at this hour. It was almost sunrise here which meant that it was the middle of the night in Portland.
“Yeah?” A gruff, surprised-sounding Phoenix answered the phone.
Quill’s heart skipped.
“Phoenix, it’s Quill.”
There was a beat of heated, irate silence. And then, “Where is she?”
It wasn’t the hatred in Phoenix’s voice that sent a chill up Quill’s spine. It was the worry. So much had happened in the days since they’d left Portland, Quill’s life had been completely turned on its head. It hadn’t occurred to him that these days might have passed just as slowly for Dawn’s brothers. He could practically feel the pained, concerned fatigue in every breath Phoenix took.
“How did you know she’s with me?” The last that Quill heard, she’d told her brothers she was with her old boyfriend in Salt Lake City.
“Where. Is. She.”
“She’s safe, Phoenix. Nothing is going to happen to her. I promise.”
“Your promises don’t mean a goddamn thing to me, you piece of shit. Now tell me where the fuck my sister is.” His voice only rose in volume on the last few words and immediately Quill heard Ida’s voice in the background, soothing her man, calming him.
“Fair enough. I’ll tell you where she is. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But you have to do something for me.”
“You’re blackmailing me?” Phoenix hissed.
“No! Just listen to me, for fuck’s sake!” He glanced at the car, knowing that she might wake up at any minute. He could hide around the corner of the gas station but that was even worse. He didn’t want her to wake up and worry about him. And that in itself was a kick in the heart. Because when was the last time he had someone who cared about him enough to get worried? To come looking for him?
He’d do anything for this woman. “It’s for Dawn. I need you to do something for me to help Dawn.”
There was silence on the other end of the line and Quill surmised that he at least had Phoenix’s attention, if not his acquiescence.
“Why should I believe that you want to do anything to help Dawn?” Phoenix asked.
Fair enough, considering all that Phoenix knew about Quill. “Look, I know that my word isn’t going to mean much to you, but I swear on my life. On her life. On everything, that I’m trying to keep her safe.”
He heard Ida speaking again in the background but couldn’t make out her words.
“I’m not asking him that,” Phoenix said in a firm, if not exasperated, tone.
Quill heard Ida’s voice again, this time frustrated and insistent.
Phoenix let out a harsh breath. “Quill, Ida wants to know if you’re in love with Dawn.”
Quill was quiet for a long second and then, “Yeah. I am.”
Phoenix made a strange, low sound. “Then why the fuck would you have set her up like that? Why the fuck would you have put her in that much danger?”
Quill pressed at his eyes. They were burning the seconds away here, valuable seconds. But he could tell that this was the kind of question he wasn’t going to get asked twice. If he didn’t answer it honestly, he might miss his chance to get help from Phoenix. And he really couldn’t miss this chance.
“Because I’m a damaged, angry person who, up until recently, thought the world was a terrible place. But it turns out damaged, angry people can still fall in love. And it turns out when they do, sometimes it changes their perspective.”
Phoenix grunted. “How could I possibly know that this isn’t a trick?”
“Look,” Quill continued. “You can’t know that. And you, more than anyone, have been given a raw deal. First with Watt and now with me. It must seem like people are betraying you left and right. But just know that the world isn’t really like that. Not most of the time. Most of my life, up until my family got dragged off to the camps, I had a happy life. No betrayal. We argued, but over small stuff. I had friends. My parents loved me. My brother and I did everything together. That’s what the world is like, Phoenix. For the most part, that’s how people live. How they treat each other. And then, when they’re really lucky, they meet somebody like Dawn. And they do everything they can to treat her right and make her happy and marry her and have kids and start the whole cycle over again. That’s life. This whole twisted, fucked-up bit in the middle, the part with torture and death camps and murdered families, that’s the bit that’s not most people’s real life. That’s the part that is rare. It happened to me. And it made me do a lot of fucked-up shit. But I’m to the other side now. Dawn got me to the other side. I’m just saying that just because Watt tricked you, just because I betrayed you, it doesn’t mean that that’s going to happen over and over to you. It doesn’t mean anything more than that it happened and it sucked and you didn’t deserve it. You deserve loyal friends. You deserve to know your sister is with someone who will treat her right. And I’m so fucking sorry that that hasn’t been the case up to now. And I’m asking you to see me not as I was. But as I am. Right now in this very moment. I’m never going to ask for your forgiveness for what I did. Hell, I’m never going to forgive myself. All I need is your help. Help for Dawn.”
There was a very long silence where he listened to Phoenix breathe. Quill barely breathed himself. He’d said everything that he could and if it didn’t convince Phoenix that he was genuine, he wasn’t sure what would.
“I’m not supposed to say no,” Phoenix finally said in a low tone that Quill wasn’t sure was meant for him.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Phoenix sighed. “Look, all I can say is that you’re one lucky asshole, Quill. Because if I hadn’t had the day that I’ve had, I would not be trusting you right now.”
“Okay,” Quill said, his relief palpable even to himself. “If it’s luck, I’ll take it. Listen closely.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dawn woke up a few hours later, stretching and yawning. “I can’t believe I actually was able to fall asleep,” she said.
Quill handed over a cup of coffee. “I picked that up in a drive-through about twenty minutes ago. Should still be hot. I’m glad you slept. It’s good for you.”
“How long was I asleep for?”
“Five or six hours.”
She nearly pressed her nose to the glass as she stared out the window. “Are those palm trees?”
“Yup.”
She turned back to him, her eyes somber.
“We’re in Florida.”
She knew as well as he did that getting one step closer to the Director meant getting closer to both freedom and danger.
“Yup.”
“We probably won’t stop again, huh?” She bit her lip and stared at him.
He’d only been giving her his profile since she woke up, but he turned to look at her now, his expression soft. “We’ve gotta keep moving. The longer we’re on the road, the more likely another one of his flunkies finds us and hurts us. Or separates us. Or kills us.”
“Right.”
A lump rose in her throat.
He stroked a hand down her hair. “But we can stop for an hour or so. Find a quiet place to be just the two of us. Just not another hotel.”
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“Roll down your window,” he said after a minute. “Feel the air here. It’s kind of crazy.”
Dawn did as he asked, sticking her hand out into the warm, balmy day.
“It’s so… thick!” she exclaimed. “Like soup.”
He laughed and laced his fingers with hers. “There’s a ton of humidity in Florida. And gators. Lotsa gators.”
She frowned. “Can a wolf win in a fight against a gator?”
“Mmm,” he tipped his hand back and forth. “Toss-up. Depends on who has the higher ground.” He gave her a sly look. “A grizzly bear, though? Well, that’s no problem. Don’t worry, Dawn, I’ll protect you.”
She rolled her eyes and socked him in the shoulder, making him laugh.
“You’re laughing so much,” she observed. “You seem happy. Even though we’re barreling toward our potential demise right now.”
His laughter died away but he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I am happy right now. And we’re not barreling toward your demise. Don’t be dramatic.”
“What’re you so happy about?”
He gave her a droll look. “I’ll let that one slide since you didn’t grow up in human culture and probably don’t know how lame it is to fish for compliments.”
She grinned. “So, you’re saying that I’m the reason, huh?”
He shook his head at her and pursed his lips, obviously holding in a smile. Dawn got lost in the deep green scenery they were passing and a few minutes elapsed before he broke the silence again.
“Of course you’re the reason, Dawn.” His voice was low and intense, but it was nothing compared to his eyes. When she turned to look at him, she almost lost her breath at the low, burning light that was emanating from his gaze. His eyes looked like coals that had been heating through for hours, working themselves from flame to magma. “You’re the reason for everything.”
He turned back to the road and Dawn got that feeling again. The one where she was distinctly certain that there was something he wasn’t telling her.
“Quill,” she said carefully, one palm firmly on his arm, her eyes fastened to his expression. “You’re not going to do anything stupid when we get there, are you?”
He smirked. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Her fingers tightened over his muscle. One quick, serious squeeze. “Tell me.”
His sigh was long and low but when he dragged his eyes back from the road to meet hers for a moment, the burning was gone. They were back to his normal look. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“Okay.” She sa
t back and worried at a hangnail, her eyes out the passenger side window, her brain churning. Was he telling the truth?
“Why do you ask?” he asked softly.
“Because I know you’ll do anything to protect me,” she said easily, honestly. “And, not that I have any prior experience, but you know they say that people do crazy things when they’re in love. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t about to do something crazy.”
The brakes kicked on and Dawn leaned forward, pressing her hand to the dashboard to steady herself. Quill wasn’t looking at her, but his eyes were burning again. He braked harder and turned the car off the two-lane highway they’d been driving on. Dust kicked up behind them as he drove down a little dirt road. There was a wide, brown field to their right and a line of tall, green trees to their left, a cloud of some sort of airborne plant lining the canopy.
“What’re you doing?” Dawn asked.
He didn’t answer, and after another half a minute of driving, he pulled off into a small outcropping in the trees and shut the car off. He breathed heavily. Half the car was lit in bright, intense light and the other half was doused in a grainy, green shadow from the trees.
“Quill?” Dawn looked around her, and she wasn’t certain, but she really didn’t think it was likely that they were allowed to be here. One of the things that Quill had gone through with Dawn over and over had been about property and trespassing. Because Dawn had grown up in the mountains, there’d been no property lines. Private property had definitely been something she and her brothers had had to get used to. Quill had always been very clear that he didn’t want her to get arrested for something like trespassing, no matter how unintentional her mistakes were. But now, here they were, pretty clearly trespassing.
She turned back to him and was shocked to see him leaning forward, his forehead against the steering wheel, a track of tears down the cheek closest to her.
“Are you all right?” she whispered, putting her palm on his arm again.
Instead of responding, he reached down and pushed his seat back as far as it could go, unbuckled himself, and then her, and dragged her onto his lap.