by Abbie Roads
“Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first?” he asked.
“You.”
“Okay. You’ll reach forward with your arms and pull yourself.” He demonstrated what looked like a chin-up. “Use your toes to help push you. As soon as my feet go in, you follow. We stick together. No matter what.”
She nodded, but her head felt heavy with fear.
“Everything is going to be all right. I’ll keep you safe.” He stroked her cheek with his knuckle. It was a tiny gesture, but it had the same potency as a hug from a dear friend.
He bent down, and his head, his shoulders, his torso, his legs, his feet all disappeared into the tunnel.
Oh God. She reached into the dark hole. The movement strained her sore breast and pressed it to the ground. It felt like a knife to the nipple, but she would endure. For him. For everything he was sacrificing on her behalf.
She shimmied, slithered, and crawled into the tunnel. The earth closed around her. Pressed against her stomach, her sides. She lifted herself and found only an inch or two of clearance above her.
Her toes no longer touched cool, smooth concrete, but instead dug into hard-packed earth. She reached forward, grasped a slight hump in the ground, and pulled with her hands and pushed with her toes.
The space got blacker and blacker. The darkness blinded her. The tunnel tightened around her. Breath squeezed out of her. Loud whooshing gasps escaped her mouth. The air itself wasn’t air, but a combination of dirt and roots and oxygen that was a solid, not a gas like her lungs were used to. She choked on something, maybe her own spit, started coughing and coughing and coughing.
James called her name, worry in his voice.
“Imallright,” she gasped in the brief space between coughs. “Somethinginmythroat.” It’d be a miracle if he understood her. It’d be a miracle if she didn’t need the Heimlich.
“In my pack. In the outside zipper pocket is a bottle of water. You have to come to me. I can’t go backward.”
Disco lights of oxygen deprivation danced in front of her eyes, but she managed to crawl forward while coughing until she ran into the pack. She fumbled around, blindly searching for the zipper, then groping inside for the familiar shape of a bottle of water. She tore the cap off and slugged the liquid down her throat, swallowing what felt like a dry mouthful of dirt. At least the coughing had stopped.
Sweat rained from her pores, rolling down her forehead and burning her eyes. She wasn’t going to be able to do this.
“We need to keep moving. Reach.”
She heard the movement of fabric from in front of her.
“Pull.”
She heard his body scraping against the ground, the sound raw to her ears.
“Reach with me.”
She did.
“Pull.”
She did.
Everything in the world narrowed down to this moment where all that existed was the cadence of James’s voice. Reach. Pull. She began speaking the words with him, her body moving in a rhythm. Reach. Pull. Almost a melody. An endless melody. One that went on and on and on, until she was certain two eternities had passed.
“Just a few more feet. You’re almost there.”
It took a few moments for her to understand the meaning behind these new and different words. The oppressive blackness lightened. Relief eased the weight of the earth over the top of her. The end. She’d made it.
“Okay, I’m out. Reach out to me. I’ll pull you the rest of the way.” His voice was clear and fresh, not the muffled, muted tones of being in the earth.
She stretched her arms out and waggled her fingers until she felt the solid strength of him, groping in the dark, searching by touch for the magical handgrip of strength that would lock them together.
James pulled. Her shoulders strained in their sockets, the stretch welcome after the eternity of repetitive movements. Head, torso, hips emerged from the tunnel, and she was birthed into a new life with a man she hardly knew.
The tunnel ended—a random hole in the bank of a dry streambed. Starlight shone down on the world, its illumination vast and beautiful to her color-deprived eyes.
James shifted his grip, wrapped both arms around her so her chest pressed to his chest, and backed away from the hole. Finally, her legs fell out of the tunnel, limp, swinging, banging into his shins like they were no longer hers to control.
He settled her weight on her feet, but didn’t let her go. A good thing since she wasn’t certain about her ability to stand just yet.
“I was so scared. No, beyond scared. So far beyond scared that to be scared would’ve been a pleasure.” A deranged giggle tried to gurgle its way up her throat, but she stopped it.
“You’re strong. I knew you could do it.” His arms around her squeezed, infusing her with the truth of his words.
She suddenly felt all I-won proud of herself. A bashful blush warmed her cheeks.
Already quiet with the expectancy of winter, the air around them shifted, almost crackled. Evanee opened her mouth to ask him if he felt it. A dull, serrated explosion startled the hush. All her muscles clenched, rigid, then released. He didn’t even flinch.
“They exploded the door. They’re going to send someone through the tunnel.” He released her from his embrace and stared into her face. “Are you ready to run for it?”
She didn’t know if she had the strength, the stamina for running, but for him she’d try. “Yeah.”
“Liar.” An ornery smile played at the corners of his mouth.
He was teasing her. Teasing. While they were trying to escape the police, the FBI, and Ken doll Gill, who had disliked her from the moment he met her. And yet, somehow James’s lack of worry evaporated her own doubts and fears. He wasn’t devastated at being saddled with a fugitive. He was enjoying himself.
“I know where there’s a car, but it’s two miles away. A gold Honda Accord. I can run to it and get back here in under fifteen minutes.” He pointed out through the trees to a lonely road she hadn’t noticed before. “If anyone comes, run. But stay on the road.” He pointed. “If they catch you, buy time. Fight. Do whatever it takes to stay on the road.” He gripped her face between his hands and stared into her eyes. “I won’t let them take you.”
The intensity in his eyes sealed his words.
Before she could respond, he left her standing alone while he sprinted through the woods. She stared after him, not allowing herself to think until she lost sight of him and lost the sound of his feet pounding against the dried leaves and twigs.
She walked to the edge of the forest, her knees trembling, and leaned against a tree facing the silver strip of freedom. The wait was going to torture her. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…
At sixty, she marked the minute with a finger like a kid in grade school.
By minute three, cold infiltrated her. Goose bumps stood on her skin. She shivered, she shuddered, her teeth pattered together, filling the serene silence with their sound. Minute four brought alternating numbness and burning cold to her socked feet. Minute five arrived at the same time as a faint, indiscernible sound. She stopped counting and listened.
The car? She cocked her head toward the road, listening, searching for any sign of James’s car, even though the logical part of her knew it was too early. The sound was strongest in the forest. She peered into the dense trees.
Footsteps. Someone ran through the woods. Toward her.
Go away. Go away. Go away. The sound didn’t go away. Didn’t deviate from a seemingly straight line to her.
If she could hear footsteps, he was close. Too close. Each of his footfalls a damning impact upon the earth. She shoved off from the tree, her limbs stiff and gangly, and reached the road in only a few strides. Once on the pavement, she sprinted. Legs and arms pumped, socked feet barely whispered a sound. Maybe he wouldn’t hear h
er, see her.
“Stop! Evanee! Stop!”
That voice. Lathan’s voice changed everything. Stopped everything. Even her body.
She fell. For the tiniest of moments, she was flying, wishing she could just rocket off down the road like Superman. Knees hit the road, rough stones tearing through the layers, splitting her skin. Hands outstretched, wrists and shoulders absorbed most of the violence of her fall. Torso hit. She lay there. Didn’t move.
All the pain of losing Lathan that she’d forced out of her mind fought a battle with her sanity, until rationality joined the fray.
Lathan was dead. Dead. Dead. And he never called her Evanee. He was her past, and if she wanted a future, she needed to get back on her feet and run.
He was beside her before she even had a chance.
James’s words echoed in her mind. If they catch you, buy time. Fight.
Not even looking at the man, she launched herself at him, punching, clawing, biting. Used her knees to land repeated blows to his testicles, his stomach. He grunted from the impact, but the satisfaction of his pain didn’t register for her. Nothing registered, other than the primal urge to survive long enough to escape.
She beat him until her arms and legs became too heavy to raise anymore. She collapsed onto the road, limp. Exhaustion overtaking her. It was done. She’d fought the fight, and it wasn’t enough.
Chapter 21
Lathan stared up at a sky the same color as Honey’s eyes. Inside his chest, his heart surged, swelled, snuggled up with his ribs, then shattered. He’d found her. Alive. And yet she’d fought him. Hurt him. Rejected him. He wasn’t her savior here. He was the person she’d wanted to escape.
Had Gill been right all along? Had she partnered with the Strategist long before she’d met him?
Lathan tried to force that square thought into the round hole, but he just couldn’t make it fit. Her fighting him didn’t fit either, and yet she’d done it.
Water leaked from his eyes, from where Honey had tagged him in the nose. He wiped it away and sat up. His balls throbbed so deeply he felt the ache in his chest. Blood flowed into his mouth from his teeth splitting his lip. He spit and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
He shifted to where she’d collapsed, eyes closed, chest heaving up and down. She smelled of dirt and sweat and adrenaline. And the fucking Strategist. Tendrils of hair adhered to her face. Barely touching her, Lathan brushed them back. Dirt crusted her skin, but through the grime, he could see the vulgar color of a bruise reaching out from her temple, swelling around her eye, covering half of her cheek.
“Holy Jesus.” He remembered watching her and Junior struggle. Remembered watching Junior bash the gun into the side of her head. Remembered watching her fall, unconscious and completely vulnerable.
“Honey?”
Her face scrunched up. Tears slipped from her closed eyes, cleaning a track to her temples.
“Honey?”
She shook her head, refusing him, denying him. And yet, the pussy-whipped motherfucker in him couldn’t tolerate her pain. He took her hand—she didn’t resist—and placed it on his tattoo. In the moment of contact, her back arched off the pavement, her face contorted with anguish, then she settled, her features relaxed, tranquil, and content.
Her skin, cold and slick with sweat, warmed beneath his touch. Some ethereal part of him entered her and began to repair all her hurts, while her coolness flowed into him, swirled in his blood, soothing the ache in his balls and the burn of his split lip.
Her eyes opened. Tears shimmered and spilled over. “Lathan?” Her voice broke, and yet it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Her hand on his cheek flexed. “You’re dead.” The words didn’t sound like a question. Didn’t sound like a threat. Didn’t sound like a statement either. They just sounded wrong. What the fuck was going on?
Vanilla floated to him on a whispered breeze. From the darkened road, the Strategist emerged phantasm-like. A tiny piece of Lathan had been in denial that the mousy partner could actually be the killer, but his nose didn’t lie. Even if he hadn’t been able to smell the scent signature, he would’ve known something wasn’t right with the man.
His eyes were a chasm. Shark eyes. Snake eyes. Dead eyes—like Hell’s merciless master inhabited James Jonah’s body and looked out at the world through the man’s eyes. And those cruel orbs were focused on Honey.
Lathan pressed her hand more firmly onto his face, used his other arm to gather her tight to him, and rose to his feet. No way was he confronting death incarnate with his ass cheeks on the ground.
“James?” Honey’s voice jumbled with confusion. And a sickening familiarity. She knew him. Was comfortable with him. Not scared of him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The Strategist switched on a flashlight and held it backward, illuminating his savage gaze. “Let her go. I don’t want to—especially in front of her—but I will kill you.” Promise infused his tone.
“James, no! Oh my God. Lathan’s alive. He’s alive.” Honey’s voice rose with each syllable. She plastered herself against him, burrowed into him, held him so tight that she was nearly inside his skin. “I thought you were dead. I cried for you. I grieved for you. I almost—” Her words were soaked in sorrow. “If James hadn’t been there for me, I wouldn’t be here. I would’ve given up.”
“Fucker never should’ve taken you in the first place.” Lathan locked gazes with the asshole. “How long you been watching me?”
“He didn’t take me. He found me. In the woods.” The unscarred corner of her mouth tipped downward.
Lathan smelled vinegar—the pungency of her doubt. “He’s a liar. Look at him. He’s got that flashlight aimed at his face. He knows I have a hearing problem. That’s not something I advertise.”
“Let her go.” A gun materialized in James’s hand, barrel aimed at the ground but rising, rising, rising.
Life narrowed, pinched tighter and tighter, until all that existed were him and Honey and the Strategist with his gun aimed at Lathan’s head. Calm certainty hunkered down inside Lathan. If it came down to it, only two of them were going to walk away. One would die.
“James. No. You don’t understand. This is Lathan. My Lathan. The man I couldn’t stop crying over.”
“He knows. He doesn’t care.”
James’s inhuman eyes moved to Honey. He switched off the light, thinking Lathan couldn’t hear him. “I found you.”
Darkness swallowed James from sight until Lathan’s eyes adjusted to the dark. “You stole her.”
“I took care of you.” The Strategist ignored him and focused on Honey. “I kept you safe.”
“James? I don’t understand.” Confusion melted into her words, infused the air around her.
“I thought we were friends.” James voice swooped low on the word friends.
Honey flinched, sucked air like the guy had landed an invisible gut punch. “We are.” She gasped. “We always will be. Nothing has changed.”
“He’s fucking with your mind.” Lathan didn’t hide the disgust from his tone.
“I told you my secret.” The words were a shadow of barely audible sound. The Strategist’s shoulders sank. He seemed to hunch in on himself, diminishing. In a motion so slow, so deliberate, so fucking appalling, James swung his gun arm up, but the gun passed beyond aiming at Lathan and stopped when it was pressed against James’s own temple. “You want to leave me because of my secret.”
“No—” Honey launched herself toward James, but Lathan was ready. He’d bet his left nut that had been the Strategist’s plan all along.
Lathan lost his grip on her hand touching his cheek, but grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back against his chest. He wrangled her into him, holding her squirming, writhing body, smelling her horror at James’s threat. “We’re not safe unless we’re touching.”
A
s if to affirm his words, James moved the gun away from his head and pointed it directly at Lathan. No question, the asshole was going to shoot to kill.
* * *
Lathan is alive. The mantra continued to play inside Evanee’s head.
A hush nestled into her limbs. She stilled. Stopped struggling. Allowed Lathan to turn her away from James. Away from his gun aimed at Lathan. No matter what happened, Lathan was alive. Alive. Nothing could hurt them when they were together.
But James—
Pgull.
Her muscles froze, rigid and painful, then released by degrees as the sound of the shot ping-ponged around her skull, finally settling into a constant ear ring.
She pulled back just enough to confirm that Lathan wasn’t harmed. He was alive. Just as she’d known he would be.
His gaze was locked on where James had stood. “We’re a shield. He shot at me and it…it backfired.” Lathan’s somber eyes shifted to her. “Don’t look. It’s bad.”
But she had to.
James lay sprawled on the ground. His feet kicked out. Scraping. Scrambling against the pavement as if death licked his heels. Then he stilled. Quick, shallow breaths popped his chest up and down. Starlight shown too bright, shimmering and shining in the thick syrup gushing from the wound in his neck.
Long moments passed, moments when Evanee couldn’t move, could only watch James’s desperate struggle against death. Her brain could not translate the scene in front of her into anything more meaningful than a TV show, as if she was a mere observer instead of a participant.
And then guilt cinched around her tighter than a straitjacket, compressing her lungs, forbidding her next breath. He was dying because of her. Because he’d found her. Helped her. Fought for her.
“It’s not your fault.” Lathan shook her a little.
“I-I need to go to him.” In the next breath, she was kneeling next to James, Lathan right there with her.