Legend_A Rockstar Romance

by Ellie Danes

  “Stop! You’re scaring them,” I said.

  I slipped around Nathan and knelt on the ground. The young boy stood fiercely with both arms outstretched to shield the kids behind him. He was no more than eleven years old.

  I held out my hand. “My name is Bree, and his name is Nathan. We’ve come to take you home but we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “It’s a rescue?” a little voice asked from the back.

  The boy in front scowled. “Are you police? Why should we go with you?”

  Nathan grumbled with impatience and dug deep into his boot. He dangled his dog tags in front of the little boy’s face. “I’m a Navy SEAL, and I can get you home. Unless you would rather stay here.”

  I shooed Nathan back. “You’re protecting your friends, and that’s very brave. I know this is a tough decision, but if you come with us now we can get you to the police.”

  “The American police?” the little boy asked.

  “Yes.” I nodded.

  “They told us not to run. Bad things will happen to our families,” the little boy said.

  Somewhere in the back, the younger children began to sniffle. My heart clutched in my chest but I took a deep breath and kept my voice calm.

  “They lied. It was a trick to keep you here,” I said.

  “Bree, speed this up,” Nathan warned.

  “If we run fast enough, we’ll be able to get to the police before the bad guys can do anything,” I said.

  The little boy shook his head but the children behind him stirred. A few pushed past him. One little girl marched right up to Nathan and looked him up and down.

  “My daddy’s in the Army,” she said.

  Nathan showed her his dog tags. “I’d like to meet your dad. Should we go see him now?”

  She nodded and held up her arms. Nathan scooped her up and headed for the door. The children streamed around their young, forgotten leader and followed Nathan out into the narrow hallway.

  “Are you coming?” I asked the little boy. “We need your help.”

  He followed me into the hallway and sprinted ahead to join the rest. Nathan led them at a fast pace down the narrow hallway to the doorway he estimated was closest to our RV.

  Nathan coaxed the door open and pressed an eye to it. The warehouse was empty for the moment, so he swung the door wide and gestured for the children to follow. I was last out the door, watching the small, jostling crowd across the warehouse floor to where our RV was parked.

  A sudden fear gripped me, and I couldn’t leave. Why hadn’t we counted the children before we left? I had to see if anyone was left behind.

  I waved to Nathan who couldn’t yell at me from across the warehouse. He gestured furiously but I ducked back into the narrow hallway and ran back to the children’s room. The idea of leaving anyone alone was too much to bear.

  I skidded into the room and found it empty. A wave of relief swept over me but it soon turned to ice as I heard shouts down the other end of the hallway.

  The three unconscious guards had been found and an alarm was raised. Suddenly the sound of crackling walkie-talkies was everywhere.

  I took a deep breath and sprinted out the door, down the narrow hallway. I could hear the men yelling behind me but I didn’t look back. I flew through the door to the warehouse and ran to the RV. Nathan hauled me in the door and shut it behind me.

  The children were all huddled on the floor in the back, sniffling in the dark. Nathan told them to keep down while he crawled to the driver’s seat. He grabbed the keys off the dashboard.

  Then he paused, watching out the windshield as men scattered across the warehouse looking for me.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I just didn’t want to leave anyone behind.”

  “No, it’s good. They’re in a panic but they don’t know the children are gone yet.”

  I turned to the huddled group and gave them reassuring pats and caresses. “It’s okay, we’re only hiding so we can get a head start. We’ll be on the road before you know it.”

  “Just think of it as hide-and-seek,” Nathan said.

  I smiled. “Nah, it’s more like kick-the-can. We’ll wait until the men are away from the door and then we’ll run, run, run, and win!”

  One little boy nodded eagerly. “Except we have a truck, and they’ve just got legs.”

  “This isn’t a truck, it’s an RV. My grandpa has one like this,” a little girl said.

  The children whispered back and forth. Nathan motioned for me to quiet them down but I shook my head. The hushed conversation was keeping them calm.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember all the faces I had seen in the darkened room. I did a mental count of my memory and then opened my eyes. I saw the little girl whose father was in the Army, and a few other faces I recognized.

  “Wait. Is someone missing?” I asked the children.

  They froze and looked around. It got very, very quiet.

  “Where’s the little boy who was in front?” Nathan asked.

  “Trevor,” a little girl said.

  “Trevor? Are you here?” I called softly.

  No one answered and the bottom of my stomach dropped out. Trevor was gone. I crawled to the front of the RV and peeked out the windshield.

  “He was afraid that if he ran, they would hurt his family,” I whispered to Nathan.

  “And he’d do anything to protect them,” Nathan said.

  His shoulders tensed, and I followed his eye-line to the corner of the warehouse. A group of men appeared. They were not running like the rest of the scattered guards. Instead, they walked very deliberately straight toward our RV.

  “Oh, Trevor, what have you done?” I whispered.

  The little boy trailed behind the group of men, his face pinched and anxious. He must have run out the door with the rest of the children and then hidden behind one of the many other vehicles in the warehouse. After the children were all in the RV, Trevor had run to the warehouse office and alerted the guards.

  He believed he was protecting his family by following the cartel’s rules, but his little face was tear-streaked and afraid. He’d ratted out his friends and was now alone with the bad men. It was no wonder his feet dragged across the warehouse floor.

  “Time to go,” I said.

  “Find something to hang on to and don’t let go,” Nathan warned the children.

  I crawled back to them and helped them all find a safe place to cling. The RV roared to life.

  “Good thing they have it tuned up for a border crossing,” Nathan said.

  He checked on us once and grabbed the steering wheel. He slammed on the gas and the RV squealed across the smooth floor of the warehouse. Nathan took a sharp turn, and I could hear men shouting outside the RV’s thin walls.

  “Please don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” I prayed as we barreled across the warehouse.

  Nathan changed gears and the RV picked up speed. A few of the children sniffled and whimpered but there were others who hung on with wide, excited eyes. They smiled with hope as the RV sped up more.

  A sharp turn had all of us clinging tight. I stopped a little girl from tumbling across the floor and pulled her into my lap. Nathan muttered a string of swear words under his breath and yanked the steering wheel again.

  Outside, men were shouting but their voices dropped away as we straightened out and sped away.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Nathan

  It wasn’t hard to remember the RV was not an armored vehicle. I was used to driving Hummers tuned for desert terrain or armored Jeeps made for sharp maneuvers. The RV moved like an ox and every change in direction made the kids cry out in surprise.

  Their sniffles and giggles and babbling worries were a distraction but I tuned them out long enough to get a real sense of where we were. The wide rolling doors of the warehouse were on the opposite end. All I had to do was swing the RV wide and to the right and we’d have a straight shot at the doors.

  “Hang on,” I c
alled again.

  The RV groaned as I hauled the steering wheel around. Kids tumbled from one side of the RV to the other and I felt the weight shift. I straightened out just before we lifted off two wheels.

  “I got you, don’t worry, just hang in there.” Bree’s soft words flowed over the chaos.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her huddling the kids into a tight group, her arms wrapped around them tight.

  “You okay back there?” I called.

  “Just get us out of here,” Bree yelled.

  A few of the kids cheered their agreement while others continued to cry and whimper. Bree soothed the tearful ones and encouraged the excited kids. She wanted them to think of it as a fun, wild ride instead of a desperate bid to escape.

  As we barreled past the office area, I saw the little boy who had told on us. Trevor’s face was a white sheet of fear and regret. It tore my heart to drive past and leave him there, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t risk all the other children and Bree.

  The poor kid had made his choice and was stuck with it. I gave him one more glance in the rearview mirror and saw the men around him raise their guns. The bodyguard who had strong-armed us the night before loomed up and one look was enough to make the men lower their weapons.

  They wouldn’t risk firing on their fleet of drug-laden vehicles. Bullet-riddled cars didn’t make it across the border without being stopped.

  “Nathan?” Bree called. “How are we going to open the warehouse doors?”

  I caught her eye in the rearview mirror and pressed on the gas. Bree understood and gathered the children tighter behind her. She whispered for them to duck down and hang on.

  I gauged the distance to the doors and counted down out loud.

  “There’s going to be a big bang. Just think of it as a rocket ship blasting off,” Bree told the kids.

  We were more like a wrecking ball. The warehouse doors were thin and exploded against the RV’s bumper. Corrugated metal crumpled back as we rammed through without much loss of force. My instincts forced me to duck but we were through the other side so fast I had to pop back up.

  The warehouse yard was unknown. We’d been in the van with the blacked-out windows on our way in, and I had no clue what kind of terrain I was navigating.

  One quick glance told me there was only a chain-link fence between us and the desert road.

  “Just one more little bump and we’re free,” I lied.

  I didn’t mention the two towers flanking the chain-link gates or the men posted there with semi-automatic rifles. It was a disgusting fact that the cocaine hidden in our RV was worth more to the cartel than the dozen lives within it, and I swerved to avoid the first peppering bullets.

  Asphalt spit up onto the windshield as the men fired warning shots along the road in front of me. I answered by turning sharply and taking out one leg of the watchtower in a hard swipe.

  I watched in the sideview mirror as the tower collapsed behind us. It blocked the other gunman with a cloud of dust and forced the men on foot to backtrack and find another way around.

  “What about the gate?” Bree called.

  “Fence, gate, what’s the difference, right?” I asked.

  A few adrenaline-filled little boys cheered.

  Their cheers turned to screams as a man leaped onto the side of the RV and reached through my open window. I had slowed down to make another turn, positioning us to ram the fence ahead. One of his hands groped for my throat while the other hung onto the door.

  I raised a fist and smashed his fingers against the metal of the door. He cried out and readjusted before trying to reach my throat again. I saw the flash of a thin switchblade in his hand.

  I slammed on the brakes and the man bounced off the hood of the RV as he fell to the ground. Once he was clear, I rammed the pedal all the way to the floor.

  The RV’s tires spun on the dusty ground then gripped with a squeal of hot rubber. We careened across the warehouse grounds, scattering the guards trying to cut us off on foot.

  The chain-link fence snapped off against the RV’s bumper and flew up and over us. A chorus of awed sounds came from the back. The kids watched the fence sail back to the ground and crash in a cloud of dust. Then they cheered.

  I sped up and pointed us straight into the desert.

  “Where are we going?” Bree asked. She struggled to the front of the RV and peered out the windshield. “There isn’t even a road over here.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I didn’t see a lot of off-road vehicles in the warehouse. Maybe an ATV or two, but we can outrun those.”

  “So, we’re just going to drive into the desert and hope everything’s okay? Last time I checked, RVs weren’t really off-road vehicles either,” Bree said.

  We hit a rise of gorse bushes, and the children popped up in the air. They landed with a loud mix of giggles and tears. Bree turned back to comfort the little ones who were scared.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” she asked. “You looked just like popcorn jumping up into the air. Pop, pop!”

  Her description caught the imagination of the tearful ones and soon it turned into a game. Whenever we hit a big bump, the kids would yell out ‘pop, pop!’ They threw themselves all over the RV and giggled.

  I slowed down a little, afraid we might break an axle on the rough ground, and Bree had to find other ways to distract the kids.

  She opened a cabinet and let the contents spill to the floor of the RV. “Who wants a snack?”

  Bags of chips, boxes of granola bars, and all the regular snack food you would find in a vacation vehicle were snatched up by the kids. Bree tried to keep them from making a mess until another sharp bump made her spill.

  “What am I saying? Go ahead and make a mess. Have a little fun,” Bree said.

  The kids tore into the snacks and a crunchy peace fell over the RV.

  I turned on the RV’s GPS and laughed out loud as it immediately told me to do a U-turn. “Sorry, buddy, but we’re not going back,” I told it.

  Bree joined me in the front of the RV and stared out at the rough desert. “So, you don’t have any idea where we’re going?”

  “I do now, but I wanted to make sure we led them on a detour first. It’ll take them a while to sort out which way we’ve gone,” I said.

  “Won’t they expect us to head straight for the border?” Bree asked.

  I shook my head. “We don’t appear that organized. They’re going to assume we’ll crash the RV somewhere out in the desert and be forced to wait for them to pick us up.”

  Bree clung to the arms of her passenger seat. “And what happens if we do break down and get stuck in the desert?”

  “The desert isn’t a problem. I’ve survived in worse terrain for a lot longer. I’ll keep you and the kids safe,” I said.

  Bree nodded. She believed me but she was still worried. “The kids are the most important. We need to get them home.”

  I reached across and squeezed her hand.

  A chorus of grossed-out voices called, “Eeeewwww. They’re holding hands.”

  Bree laughed and turned back to the kids. “Watch out or we’ll start kissing, too.”

  It was good to hear everyone laughing. Even the littlest ones had stopped sniffling. They munched on cookies and chips and watched the desert fly by their windows.

  Then we hit a huge bump, and I pulled the RV to a complete stop.

  “Did we hit something?” Bree asked.

  “A road.” I paused and looked all around for signs of the cartel.

  “Hey, I know this place,” one little boy said. He clambered into the passenger side next to me. “See that weird box thing over there?”

  “That’s a trough. There must be cattle out here somewhere,” I said.

  The little boy nodded. “Cows are nice. A few even let me pet them.”

  “Wait, is this where the cartel used to drop you off?” Bree asked.

  The little boy nodded. “Me and Todd used this crossing. He doesn’t l
ike the cows because they’re too big.”

  I scanned the horizon again but didn’t see any telltale plumes of dust. The cartel had yet to catch up with us.

  “Everybody out,” I said, opening the door.

  The kids clambered out into the bright sunshine, followed by Bree. Her arms were overloaded with bottles of water she’d found inside. I waited while she gave one to each kid.

  “All right, boys.” I pulled the little boy and his friend, Todd, to the front of the RV. “It’s your job to lead the way. Do you think you can do that?”

  Todd whimpered. “Danny can lead.”

  “All right, Danny. You think you can get all your friends across the field and into the United States?” I asked.

  Danny puffed up his skinny chest. “I know the way in the dark, too.”

  “Brave man,” Bree said. She ruffled Danny’s hair.

  “Good,” I said. “Then it’s settled. You’ll all cross here.”

  “What about you?” Bree asked.

  I glanced back at the RV and then swept the horizon again. “I’m going to lead everyone else on a wild RV chase.”

  The kids giggled but Bree was not amused. She didn’t say anything as she prepared the kids for the crossing, and I knew she felt the same as me. A tight pain spread in my chest at the thought of leaving her, but it was the right thing to do.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Bree

  I strained my eyes and looked at the narrow cow path the children followed. Danny led the way, almost skipping at his chance to be the leader. After Nathan’s daring rescue, the children were enthusiastic to be heroes.

  The path was barely visible, a thin, dusty ribbon across an undulating expanse of pasture.

  “Danny, stop. Are you sure this is the way?” I asked. It was hard to determine the direction in the pre-dawn darkness. “Maybe we should wait for the sun to come up. I need to know we are heading north.”

  Danny giggled. “We are heading north. See that bright star up there?”

  “I taught him that,” Todd said shyly.

  I ruffled his hair. “How smart. But don’t you think we should rest? It’s been a crazy night.”