Smolder Road (Scorch Series Romance Thriller Book 6)

by Toby Neal

  Finney is vulnerable. He doesn’t want to be here. He certainly doesn’t want to hurt me. There is a softness about him; maybe I remind him of someone, his mother or sister.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out my strange new knowledge, these almost oppressive sensations, trying to concentrate on how to survive.

  Think logically, Lucille.

  I’m pretty sure the guy holding me is Dwight Kane, Jolene’s brother, who Cash said he killed. A part of the hero of Grimesville story is that Kane was killed in the raid that freed Jolene and began the resurgence of decency, of community, of working together to go on the offensive against Great Nation America.

  How is Kane alive?

  I roll onto my side, curling my body around itself, covering my ears with my hands. As if that will help. As if what I’m sensing is coming in through my ears. Ha!

  But where is it coming from?

  Hot tears seep out of my eyes, and they are the only warm thing about me.

  What would Nando say? His face flashes in my mind’s eye, smiling, his dark eyes sparkling with good humor, the warm scent of tomato sauce filling my nostrils for just a moment. Just a brief, wondrous moment.

  Use it. Nando’s voice is in my head. Use it to free yourself.

  A sob wrenches from my chest and I feel as the sound of it hits Finney. It shakes him. It hurts him. Guilt churns in his stomach, tightens his throat. He was raised better than this.

  I sit up and look around the dark space again. There’s nothing to use here. I tried to get that leg off the chair. But, big surprise, I can’t get it loose.

  I’ve never even hung a shelf. I thought I was going to disassemble a chair and use the pieces to defend myself against armed, dangerous, hate-filled men?

  That’s not my skill set. I’m good at mind games, at getting my way.

  And clearly, so is Dwight Kane.

  He tortured me and enjoyed every second of it. I shiver, the memory swamping me with nausea as my stomach clenches on itself. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve eaten. Don’t know when I’ll have food again.

  But I’m not going to die here. This is so not where I’m going to die. I hear Nando laughing, like he’d just seen something funny. Nando loved slapstick comedy. Nothing got him going like a person falling downstairs in a dramatic and hysterical fashion.

  My heart squeezes, as it has so many times since he passed. But I miss him a little less. He is here with me.

  No. That’s crazy. I just wish Nando was here.

  Dwight Kane is going to come back—and he’s going to chop off one of my freaking fingers! I curl my hands into fists, looking down at them, pale against dark stone. There are goose bumps all over my body—every hair is at attention, vibrating, trying to warm me as I continue to shiver.

  I need to prepare some lies for when Kane returns. Prepare some details about what the Haven is like that sound true but are not. Lies that might get Kane killed would be best…

  But I need my lies to be bulletproof. He’s good at reading people—we have that in common.

  I shiver more, because I sensed his rage in my gut, almost like it started there, rather than coming from him. When I looked up into his eyes, he jerked back for just a second, recognizing the hate reflected in my gaze. I’d surprised him, perhaps confused him, if only for a moment.

  When Dwight Kane recognized his rage in me, that’s when I realized it wasn’t mine. It was his.

  I’m a lover, not a hater. I’m a big mushball just like Nando, except with heels and big hair…well, they cut some of that off, but it’ll grow back. Whatever, like I care about my hair. Dwight Kane can cut off my hair, chop off a finger, do anything he wants but take more of the lives I love.

  Love.

  That’s what I need to help get me out of here. Roan’s face is in my mind again.

  Finney takes a couple of steps and I glance up to see his figure on the other side of the bars.

  “You okay?”

  He knows I’m not. “So cold.” My voice wavers as my teeth clatter together. “Can I have some dry clothing?” I bite my lip and look at him from under my eyelashes. A bolt of lust shoots through him. He wants to see me change out of these wet clothes.

  “I know you need me alive and this is the kind of thing that would make a girl catch pneumonia. Or Scorch Flu.” Fear. Oh yes, he is afraid of Scorch Flu.

  He must’ve been vaccinated by now, though. It’s highly unlikely that a boy his age could have survived without a vaccine from Kane. Scorch Flu goes after the young and strong—the working heart of society.

  Dwight Kane is all that Finney has in this messed-up world.

  At the Haven, we are so lucky. We get to live in a safe place while the rest of the country struggles. All the things I have because of my family, because of our bond, our love, Finney gets from Kane—and hate’s a poor substitute.

  “I don’t have any dry clothing.” Finney keeps his voice low.

  “Maybe you could go get me some?”

  Finney rubs the back of his neck and looks down at his big feet. He is already tall, but still skinny with narrow shoulders. He probably isn’t even done growing yet.

  Maybe Finney still has a chance to become a good person. He doesn’t harbor the same rage that infuses Kane. He isn’t yet infected with hate.

  He’s just afraid. Scared, like me. Scared like every one of us left alive in this strange new world after the Scorching.

  “Please.” I beg. “I’m so cold.” I’m not ashamed to beg—I need warmth. I need Finney to begin to trust me, to begin to care for me.

  I can use this boy to save myself. And save my family.

  I know everything about the Haven’s security. I can’t, I won’t give that information up to Kane. I’d rather die, but he probably won’t let me. Escape is my only choice.

  “I guess I could give you my shirt.” Finney looks at me, his brows raised.

  I smile, the grin stilling the chattering of my jaw. “That’s so nice of you. So kind.”

  The boy’s crooked teeth flash for just a moment in the dim light as he reaches for the hem of his shirt. Satisfaction and pride swell out of him. Helping me makes him happy.

  Yes, this is the way. Not fighting, not killing, but kindness and compassion. Love is the answer. Love will set me free.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Roan

  I stand back against the wall of the Command Center at the Haven. All of Lucy’s brothers are clustered behind Dante. The genius is sitting in his chair, working his magic. Behind him, on a round kitchen table, is spread a huge topographical map of the area.

  JT has a supply of these maps rolled up in the storeroom, left behind when he bought the place. Nani, Luca’s very pregnant wife, bends over the map with difficulty, one hand on her lower back. She traces a line with a long brown finger along the road leading away from the gate of the Haven. “The motorcycle messenger followed the same trajectory as the men who took Lucy. Dante, can you pinpoint where they went?”

  “I’ve been working on that.” Dante has a flat, uninflected voice, especially in stress situations, though I’ve heard him both laugh and cry since he arrived at the Haven and married his wife, Melody. “I have a location for us. It’s about two hours by road, in the foothills.” Dante uses a pullback feature on the time-stamped satellite recording to show us a view of the vehicle’s path. He points at the satellite photo. “See the line of the road? It branches in several places. I put a red marker on both the motorbike and the car.”

  A blurry, pixelated mass of shapes rendered in shades of gray, the map is difficult to interpret as landscape. “Transpose this satellite image over the topographical map,” Nani says.

  Nani is a former FBI agent and a bioterror expert with two doctoral degrees. She has commanded men in battle, and she is obeyed without question by the brothers. Luca picks up the topography map and pins it to the wall as Dante works his keyboard. The satellite image blooms onto the wall through a projection camera.<
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  Dante zooms in, and the disorganized photo resolves into a map with contours and definition, making sense to my eye at last. I zero in on the large red dot where the SUV came to a final stop.

  I don’t have Dante’s skills at the computer, but I have spent most of my life exploring this area on foot and horseback.

  I know where Dwight Kane’s stronghold is, and I know the way there.

  The brothers are studying the map and discussing various strategies as I fade out the door.

  I know where Lucy is. I’m going to get her back. And I don’t need any of them to help me.

  Shadow and I hurry along the dimly lit hall. I pass the open doorway of Ana Luciano’s room and hear the distraught sobs of Lucy’s mother, and the low comforting voice of Jolene.

  This trauma affects the whole family.

  I’m an outsider, even though the Lucianos, especially JT and Ana, have tried to break that down and invite me in.

  I exit the Haven, entering the cool forest, and break into a run for my cabin.

  The brothers will be enraged when they discover I’ve left—but why risk more lives, when it’s my fault Lucy was taken? She’s mine. And I’ll bring her home.

  I could pity anyone getting in my way, but I don’t care enough about those skinhead assholes to feel anything like regret as Shadow and I run through the forest.

  Back at the cabin, I don’t bother opening it up, just sit on the steps and pull supplies from my pack—if only I’d left earlier, Lucy might still be with her family.

  I apply camouflage paint to my face and descend into a cold, detached place where killing is simply another thing to be done.

  I change into my buckskin hunting clothes with their forest patterns. My weapons are already packed and I whistle for Adelle, who comes trotting out of the forest, ears pricked.

  I don’t usually ride her with a saddle, but this occasion calls for the stability of an anchor for my rifle and other supplies. Shadow senses something more than just a normal hunting trip, and he whines, pacing, as I mount up.

  Adelle is fresh, and Shadow ghosts along beside us as I take a compass heading and set out, making a beeline for Lucy.

  Steep valley walls, rushing streams, thick stands of trees, and every other obstacle posed by virgin wilderness lie between Lucy and I—but nothing can keep me away from her.

  As soon as I saw the map I knew where Kane was hiding. I’m familiar with the mine and the area around it because it’s located on reservation land. Our tribe contracted with the Blue Mountain Mining Company through the 1970s, and the company stripped a whole hillside, blasting it to bits, before our leadership put a stop to that. They switched to a less invasive underground process, but ultimately the mine tore the heart out of the mountain and left the area riddled with sinkholes, polluted water, and a maze of dangerous tunnels.

  A fence was erected around it when the copper was played out, and we tried to forget what was done to the land.

  The site is an ideal fortification.

  It’s full night by the time I reach the area. I hobble Adelle a half-mile away in a thick stand of trees, and Shadow and I approach the abandoned copper mine on foot, moving quietly through the darkness.

  From a vantage point above the mine’s entrance, on my belly between a couple of rocks, I pull out a pair of miniature, high-powered binoculars and scan the area.

  The fortified entrance of the mine is strung with lights, and men come and go like ants from the mouth of a hill. An earthen wall about ten feet high and six feet wide, topped with coiled razor wire, has been built up around it. The bulldozer used to build the berm is parked beside the wooden-beamed entrance to the tunnels, along with several vehicles, including the SUV that took Lucy, which I recognize from the video.

  Lucy is somewhere in those depths. It’s almost like I can sense her in there: cold and afraid…but also filled with iron determination to escape.

  I take heart that she will be expecting rescue. Lucy has faith in me.

  The entrance to the protected area is a heavy gate made of tall, sharpened logs. It will not be easy to breach.

  There must be surveillance.

  I scan until I identify two manned sniper nests in the trees surrounding the mine area, camouflaged by military-grade netting.

  A plan begins to form: I will create a distraction to lure the men out of the mine, then sneak inside and get her out the back way.

  The mine has an exit about a mile away on the other side of the mountain that I discovered a few years back while hunting bear. A sow had taken up residence in the shaft leading down into the mine proper. Needless to say, I left the bear and her cubs alone in the tunnels, with the possibility of ceiling collapse and stygian blackness.

  Before I execute the distraction, I need to move Adelle to that back exit and then return to begin my assault. It’s not much of a plan, but this way I’m the only one in danger. I don’t want to put any more lives at risk. Besides, it’s unlikely that the brothers could have come up with anything better given the strategic challenges of Kane’s encampment.

  Scanning the entrance one more time, my binoculars come to rest on something that tightens my chest with rage: a fluttering, silky tassel of black hair, hanging like a trophy from the wooden beam over the entrance of the mine. Lucy’s hair, cut off and displayed to taunt us.

  These skinheads are going down.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucy

  I’m curled up in the corner of the cave on the hard, cold floor. The shirt Finney gave me is now moist, and I’m still freezing. My body shudders and my teeth chatter. This is the coldest I’ve ever been. Not even the one winter we had all the ice storms in Philly and I had to wait at the bus stop for ages, was I this deeply chilled. I didn’t know what cold was, how totally it could reach into my bones. I didn’t know what grief was, how bottomless it could be. I didn’t know jack. All I had wanted was to be a lawyer, and help people with legal problems—like Nando, only better-paid.

  What a tiny little dream I had; what a naive fool I was.

  With my eyes closed, I know that my cell is just one part of a large tunnel system that crisscrosses throughout the mountain. I can tell this because I can feel this rabbit’s warren by where the men are. Angry men. Hate filled, ugly men.

  Finney is the one spot of kindness in this whole damn place. He brought me a power bar just an hour ago. I scarfed it down like it was ambrosia, but now my stomach is clenching. I wish I’d eaten it slower, saved some for later. The heavy substance was too much for my empty gut.

  I even peed in that stupid bucket. Squatted over the thing and sighed with relief as I let go.

  At least my pee was warm. I swear, there was a second when I looked into it and thought about sinking my frozen fingers into that liquid warmth.

  The smell though. The smell permeates the room.

  I try to sleep, flitting in and out of consciousness, but I can’t, even though the lack of food and these strange Sight sensations battering me are exhausting. The swelling around my eyes and lip pulls my skin taut, and the pain of my injuries is the bass note to a melody of shivering.

  I’m trying to hold faces in my mind—people who I love, that love me in return.

  But Roan’s face is the only one that keeps appearing.

  He’s riding his horse—he rides bareback, like he and Adelle are one creature.

  He’s chopping wood with that grace and strength I admire.

  He’s giving me one of those rare, sweet smiles, and his gray eyes are warm as the dawn.

  Roan has a sense of humor, a sly funny way of teasing JT particularly. He likes to sneak up and startle people, or bust out with a pun when you least expect it, or use an obscure word no one knows. I used to try so hard to get him to laugh. I never could, but he’d smile sometimes, and my God he was gorgeous when he did.

  His hands are caressing my shoulders, stroking my waist. His lips are taking mine. We kiss, dancing to the song that only he and I make together. If on
ly that day had ended up inside the cabin instead of how it did…

  Something changes around me.

  There’s a shift in the energy at the entrance of the mountain: a throbbing combination of excitement and dread. A life is extinguished. Cut from this world, disappeared, silenced, stopped. I sit up quickly because it’s so strange, so freaking weird to suddenly know this.

  Did my grandmother have this kind of Sight? Is this what it’s like for JT? Or is this my own thing?

  There isn’t time for me to even think about it because another life is snuffed out.

  That throbbing, heated ball of emotions somewhere out there simply disappears. Nothing fills the space where there was most certainly something just a moment before.

  I close my eyes against the chill blackness of my cell to find an even deeper darkness, a place where I follow this knowing to knowledge.

  Roan’s here.

  Outside the cave, he’s here! He’s come to save me.

  But there are so many men. How can he possibly get through them all? How can he find me?

  I stand up, knocking into the wall, and stumble forward, grabbing onto the bars, pressing my face between them.

  “Roan!” His name is wrenched from my throat. “Roan! Roan!”

  Finney runs to me. “Be quiet. Shut up!” Finney is scared, frantic, a tangled ball of emotional, pulsing energy wires. He doesn’t want me to draw attention to myself.

  But I keep screaming Roan’s name. He has to know I’m waiting, I’m ready, I believe in him.

  Roan’s energy is stark, white-hot, and single-minded. There’s no place for fear or even anger in his being. He is pure killing instinct and it’s driven by love. He is desperation, commitment, and total focus, and it’s so intense. Oh man, this guy’s got me wound so tight that even my bizarre psychic abilities think he’s hot.

  I sense more men headed towards him. Oh God. Don’t let him die.

  I can’t help him! I’m useless in here! What’s the point of this damn knowing? What’s the point of being able to feel all this, just so I can sense Roan die? So, I know the moment he disappears?