It had been ages since he’d traveled that stretch of road. He was going the wrong way, but ultimately, it would bring him around to where he needed to be. The drive would help him clear his head and decide what to do next.
Behind him, Ava stirred. The leather squeaked beneath her as she shifted to an upright position. Green eyes squinted at the flat landscape rolling past their windows.
“Where are we?” Her hoarse voice was small under the rush of wind.
“Half a mile from Charleston,” he told her.
Her frown deepened. “Jesus, have you been driving all night?” She cleared her throat of sleep. “What’s in Charleston?”
“Nothing,” and he meant it.
The sleepy town didn’t even have a stoplight. Where they were headed was nowhere near Charleston.
“Can we stop? I need the bathroom.”
He glanced at the time, then at his fuel gauge. “We’ll pull over at the next gas stop.”
She said nothing for a long stretch of time. When she was about to, she sucked up half the air in the car first.
“Where’s my phone?”
“Gone.”
Her eyes narrowed. He didn’t have to see it to feel its prodding abilities against the back of his skull.
“Gone where? I just got that thing.”
He claimed the rest of the air with a deep inhale. “It wasn’t safe to keep.”
Her mouth fell open. “You … you threw out my phone?”
Any other time, any other woman, her absolute horror would have been amusing. This woman, seated directly behind him, had him lighting up on the gas, just in case she decided to steer them off the road.
“It wasn’t safe,” he repeated. “Someone knows about you, Ava. I don’t know who or how, but they do and I need to protect you.”
“Protect me?” She scrambled out of the backseat and into the passenger’s side one. “You’re the one who broke into my hotel and kidnapped me. Those men were probably after you.”
“They weren’t.”
The folded piece of paper he’d found on the men who’d attacked them the night before attested to his claim. It burned like a heavy clump of hot coal in his pocket. The weight of it seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat.
“How do you know that?”
He said nothing. There was honestly no way to explain the situation when he needed half a mind on the road. Every time he thought about the picture of Ava beneath a kill order, his blood roared between his ears. He could literally feel it boiling in his veins. Ignoring it, even temporarily, was the only way he’d gotten them as far as he had.
“Who knows about me?” he asked instead, veering to a mildly less dangerous topic. “Have you told anyone?”
“Of course not. I’m not stupid.”
“Anyone?” he stressed. “Your boyfriend? Your friends? That doctor guy?”
“Robby,” she corrected. “Doctor guy has a name, and no. I haven’t told anyone anything.”
His fingers tightened around the wheel. “Someone knows.”
“Maybe your girlfriend,” she countered shortly.
Dimitri shook his head. “No.”
He seldom had time for women, never mind the patience for a relationship. Most of the women he came across wanted something he was incapable of giving. The rest couldn’t give him what he needed. There had only ever been one woman capable of soothing his demons and she sat in the car with him.
They stopped at a rundown gas station in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of flat, dry dirt. It was the kind of place horror movies started, right down to the filthy, toothless man slumped behind the counter. He peered from Ava to Dimitri with one good eye. The other was clouded over in a milky blur that gave even Dimitri the shivers.
“Stay close,” he told Ava, even as he physically maneuvered her away from the counter towards the sign marked bathrooms.
“Don’t worry. I will,” she mumbled, eyeing a matted deer head nailed to the wall above their heads.
He checked the room before motioning her to go ahead. It was small and disgusting with weird, slimy stains on the walls and clumps of furry mold collecting in the corners, but she was the one who had wanted to go.
“I don’t think I have all my shots for this place,” she groaned through clenched teeth.
“I’ll be outside … the door,” he added when her head jerked up and her wide, horrified eyes locked with his. “This door. I’ll be right here.”
Satisfied he wasn’t abandoning her, she inched inside and gingerly pushed the door closed with the tip of her one nail.
Dimitri waited a couple of seconds before letting his gaze wander to the shelves. There were the usual bags of chips, the odd boxes of cereal, drinks, and magazines. He was wandering over to eye a jar of what looked like pickles when the scream had him whipping out the gun from his waistband and kicking in the bathroom door. It crashed into the wall, leaving a knob sized hole in the plaster. But he was focused on the woman standing on the toilet seat, arms braced against the walls on either side of her.
“That’s not how you use it,” he mumbled, stowing the gun away when there was no threat to shoot.
“Kill it!” she shrieked, jabbing a finger at the corner of the room. “Shoot it!”
It took some eye straining to see the mouse, the tiny, gray bundle of fur he’d mistaken for mold.
“It’s already dead,” he told her.
“Kill it again,” she practically sobbed.
Biting the inside of his cheek, because he was a smart man, he walked over to her. “Come on.”
Rather than accept the hand he offered like a grown woman, she threw her arms around his neck, hooked her legs around his waist and clung to him like a baby koala.
“Seriously?”
“Walk!” she snapped.
Mentally shaking his head, he carried her out of the bathroom and into the shop. Only then did she untangle herself from him and step gingerly on the floor. Even then, her eyes surveyed the ground around them, possibly searching for other dead rodents.
“Where have you brought me?” she hissed up at him, like it was his fault the place was disgusting.
Without waiting, she stalked at an almost run down the aisle and bolted out the door.
The toothless man behind the counter snickered. “Women,” he rasped.
Dimitri said nothing as he followed Ava back into the early morning sunlight.
She was gone. The whole entire area of the gas station was void of her.
His heart plummeted. “Ava!”
His voice carried in the wind, echoed through the emptiness.
Jesus, had someone grabbed her?
“Ava!” The panic was real even to his own ears as her name burst out of him again, louder.
Heart thumping, lungs burning, he sprinted around the back of the building, calling her again and again. The cold metal of the gun burned into his palm, surprising him that he’d reached for it. His finger hovered over the trigger, prepared to blast the fucking brains of anyone near her.
Then, he saw her, a tiny, moving figure racing across the fields, her red hair a flaming cape swinging behind her.
“What the fuck…?”
For a moment, he only stood there, dumbfounded, his adrenaline fueled brain not understanding the scene unfolding before his eyes.
Coming out of his shock, he stowed away the gun and chased after her. Even with her head start, he caught her in minutes. His arms hooked around her middle and he swung her up off the ground and into his arms.
His shoulder screamed. It had been throbbing for most of the night as a result of picking her up at the bar. Now it was just a full on roar of pain that almost made him lose his grip on her.
“Stop fucking struggling!” His snarl was met with a vicious kick from her that met air, but the momentum sent him back a step. “Ava!”
“Put me down!” she screamed.
He did, but only because hot liquid was beginning to seep through the gauze a
nd soak into his shirt.
“Fuck!” he growled at her. “What the hell are you doing?”
Panting, she rounded on him, wildly swiping away strands of hair off her face.
“Escaping!” she shot back like it was the most logical thing in the world.
“Why?” Torn between grabbing her and grabbing his throbbing arm, he compromised by clenching his fists. “There is nothing out here.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “I want to go home. John Paul is probably frantic. I was supposed to call him, and Robby, this morning, but some asshole threw out my brand new phone.”
“You’re not going home right now,” he told her as evenly as he could manage between bursts of hot pain.
“Then you’re clearly crazy and I’m not staying with a crazy person!” she partially screamed at him.
He didn’t have time for this. Aside from being in the middle of nowhere, they had bigger problems, like the person after them.
“You need to get back in the car.”
“No!”
She’d always been stubborn. It was one of the qualities he honestly loved about her, except for in that moment. In that moment, he wanted to strangle her.
“Get in the fucking car, Ava!”
“No! I fucking will not, Dimitri!”
This was getting them nowhere.
Ignoring the blinding spears of excruciating agony, Dimitri bent at the knees, grabbed her, and pitched her like a sack of potatoes over his good shoulder.
Her screams were deafening. They broke the sound barrier in a long, endless wail that trailed after them the entire way back to the car. It was the first time in his life he was ever grateful to be in the middle of nowhere with only a weirdo gas station keeper as witness when he tossed the flailing woman into the backseat of his car.
“Stop it or I swear to God, I will put you in the trunk.”
“Bite me!”
She nearly kicked in his nose. It was only his quick reflexes that saved his face from getting rearranged.
He slammed the door on her and rounded the trunk to the driver’s side. He climbed in.
“Okay, look—”
Thin arms locked around his throat from behind, dragging his head back and cutting off his airway. Shaking her off would have been easy if she didn’t have leverage on her side. There was no way to get her off without hurting her, so, he did the only thing he could think of; he reached for the lever and give it just a nudge. Her arms sprung open in surprise when the seat jerked back into recline mode. Dimitri grabbed the arm on his right before she could fall into the backseat and yanked her forward. It was tricky, but he kept tugging until she was through gap between the two front seats, over the console and in his lap, wedged between him and the wheel, all the while kicking and screaming.
“Ava!” He narrowly missed an elbow in the jaw. “Christ, stop!”
He clamped his arms around her, pinning hers down as he did so. With her legs draped over the console and into the passenger’s side chair, he had her properly contained.
“Let go of me!”
“Stop,” he said more softly. “Ava.” He closed one hand in the downy weight of her silky locks, just enough to turn her face to his. “I will take you home,” he promised quietly. “But I need you to come with me first.”
She was too close. Those big, green eyes bore into his, bright with anger. He remembered a time when they held a different kind of fire, the kind that turned kings into slaves. He remembered how that look was always followed by the silky whisper of his name, the quiet parting of her lips in silent invitation. He had been so lost in her, so utterly helpless to her every wish and desire. Hell, he still was. Her spell on him hadn’t weakened in the years he’d left between them. He still loved her with a blinding madness that kept him up at night.
“You won’t hurt me?”
The very idea kicked him in the chest with a steel toed boot.
“I would never hurt you, myshka.” The strands of her hair glided through his fingers in soft tendrils of silk. He was rewarded by the little catch in her breath, the slight darkening in her eyes … her lips parted. “I’d kill anyone who did.”
The rigid lines of her body softened in his arms. She stared at him with the same mixture of longing, hurt, need, sadness, twisting through him. They collected in the crease between the delicate arches of her eyebrows, pooled around the lines tugging at the corners of her beautiful mouth. But it was the swaying shadows dancing in those clear eyes that caught him in the gut. It was the loneliness and questions.
I promised, he wanted to tell her. For you, I had to.
“We should go,” she whispered. “The attendant has probably called the cops by now.”
He glanced to where the toothless man stood watching them through the grimy shop windows and sighed. It was unlikely. With the number of health code violations, there was no way he’d call attention to himself with the authorities, but it was a risk Dimitri couldn’t take.
He helped Ava into the next seat, waited until she’d snapped her belt into place, then pulled out.
The cabin was a two story structure crafted entirely of stone and glass. It sat nestled beneath the protective canopy of trees hundreds of feet tall and a forest so thick, it would require a chainsaw to get through. But there was no better hiding place.
Dimitri hated camping. He hated the wilderness and the absence of electricity and toilets. There was nothing worse than nature when it was crawling into bed with you. But he could manage it if it was done in the seclusion and privacy of a cabin with functioning taps and radiators.
Ava ducked out of the car the moment he’d killed the ignition. She stepped into the warm, May breeze and squinted up at the place, her expression puzzled.
“You hate nature,” she said at last. “Why do you have a cabin … in the woods?”
“Privacy.”
He stalked to the back of the car and unlatched the trunk. From within, he grabbed her bags and resealed the lid.
“There are locks on both sides of the door,” she observed, standing with him on the porch as he unlocked each one. “Do you kill people up here?”
He shot her a teasing sidelong glance. “Haven’t … yet.”
She rolled her eyes. “Funny.”
Inside was sparsely furnished with two sofas facing a stone fireplace, a coffee table for his beer, and a lamp. Across the room was a set of wooden stairs leading up to the bedrooms. On the other side of the fireplace wall, was the kitchen, laundry area, and a small bathroom. There were no paintings on the walls, no decorative rugs by the hearth, no scented candles, or clutter. It was not a place to live, just a place to lie low. Truth be told, she was the only other person to ever be inside.
“Charming,” Ava mumbled, pert nose wrinkled. “What’s that smell?”
He hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out, but the sour, decaying scent was everywhere.
“Probably a raccoon died in the chimney.”
“Oh! Ew!”
He smirked to himself as he stalked to the sofa and dumped her bags. “Bedrooms are upstairs. You can pick the one you want. They’re both the same.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked when he made towards the kitchen.
“Find a broom and shake the raccoon’s rotting corpse loose,” he threw over his shoulder, and burst out laughing when she grabbed her bags and practically tore a hole in the floor to the stairs.
He didn’t find a broom. He wasn’t even sure he had one. But he did have a first aid kit, which he pulled down from the cupboard and opened. He stripped out of his t-shirt and examined the damage to his shoulder.
Fucking Ronald, he thought, picking at the blood soaked gauze. Two faced little, lying rat. If Dimitri hadn’t already killed him, he would have done so just for getting him shot. The bastard had insisted the person holding Yolanda was hiding in some dump just on the outskirts of the city. The only thing that asshole was hiding was a meth lab and had mistaken Dimitri for a cop. H
e was dead now, which was no real loss to the world, but Dimitri had a damn hole in his arm for the effort.
“Oh my God!” Ava stood in the kitchen doorway, both hands mashed against her mouth. “What happened?”
He shot her a wry glower. “Absolutely no idea.”
She ignored his sarcasm and hurried forward. She smacked the hand trying to get the gauze off.
“Don’t touch it!” she snapped at him. “Your hands are filthy.”
He started to tell her he was a man and such things meant nothing to him, but she was already running from the room. A moment later, she’d returned, a toiletry bag in hand. She dumped it on the counter and ripped it open.
“Do you have any rags?” she asked, head half buried amongst the bottles and tubes.
Dimitri glanced around, caught sight of his discarded t-shirt, and held it out to her.
Ava stilled. Her unimpressed expression said it all before she flicked a glance from the wade to him.
“A clean rag,” she emphasized.
When he couldn’t respond, she began ripping open the drawers around the cramped bit of space. Most were empty. Occasionally a lone fork, or a loose screw would rattle.
“This is the worst safe house on the planet!” she exclaimed, slamming the last cupboard.
She was gone again, in a blur of red hair and a determined expression. He counted to fifteen before she huffed back into the kitchen, a neatly folded face cloth in hand.
“I always bring one,” she told him, stalking to the sink. “I don’t like the ones at the hotel.”
Waiting for no response from him, she snapped on the faucet and waited until the water had gone from brown to white before scrubbing her hands with the soap from her bag and dampening the cloth. Then she set to work taking off the gauze, cleaning the wound, spraying it down with enough antiseptic spray to kill a baby elephant, and then reapplying fresh wrap. She did the same with the back, though the damage wasn’t nearly as bad there.
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 8