Luke was suddenly descended on by a dozen men. He was lifted to his feet while Henry barked orders. I struggled against Oliver, but he’d completely cut off my air now. Black spots clouded my vision, and I was helpless to do anything. Unable to even breathe as I watched Luke taken away.
The beach was almost empty of Henry’s men. He turned to leave, too, then paused and returned his attention to Thomas with eyes narrowed into a deadly glare. “I’d say welcome to the family, but you’re rather noisy and apparently quite clumsy. I don’t think you are Lowen Security material, boy,” he said.
And the last thing I saw before succumbing to darkness was my father pulling a handgun from his coat pocket and sending my best friend off his feet with a single gunshot.
The desire to keep my eyes closed forever was impeded with Oliver’s persistent cheek slaps.
“C’mon, wake up,” he whispered.
I played dead. Opening my eyes meant facing reality. Luke was gone. Thomas was dead.
“Kaya, wake up. Your friend Thomas is dying…”
What? Thomas wasn’t dead?
My hands stung from the cold. I brought them to my face and rubbed at my eyes to get them open. Raising my head, I saw Oliver—and was instantly flooded with rage. I flung my hand up to slap him, but he caught it easily.
“Shh…. stay quiet,” he said softly. “There is Lowen security everywhere still. There’s no time for—”
“I hate you,” I hissed.
He nodded as if that was acceptable, and I fumed that what I’d said hadn’t seemed to hurt him. He motioned toward Thomas, who was flat on his back in a lovely pool of red, mere feet away, but out of reach. “Good thing your father is a lousy shot.”
Thomas… I tried to rise, wanting to go to him, but Oliver held me back. A clump of snow fell from the overhanging trees, and I jumped in alarm. “Be still. We can’t be seen yet, all right? Or we will have no chance of getting him out of here.”
I pulled in air and remained where I was—in clear sight of Thomas’s chest, barely rising and falling with small, labored breaths. There was a Lowen Security man on the beach. His hands were gloved, and he was heading for Thomas to take his body away—if Thomas wasn’t dead yet, he soon would be. My only hope was Sindra. I held my breath as she moved quickly to stand at Thomas’s feet, blocking the guard.
“I’ll look after this one,” she said.
The guard was confused. “My instructions were to get rid of all the bodies.”
Sindra sighed. “Well, I guess it’s your choice. You can follow my instructions,” she motioned behind her. “…or end up dead like this one. What’ll it be?”
Her legendary wrath wasn’t tempting the guard into an argument, so he was quickly marching off down the beach. When he was out of sight, Sindra scanned the area and came to stand mere feet from where we were hiding. She pretended to dial a number on her cell phone. Putting the device to her ear, she spoke, but her words were directed at us.
“I will leave a car for you on the road you ran on yesterday. At the dead end. Do you know the place, Kaya?”
I’d assumed she was talking to Oliver until she spoke my name. “Yes,” I whispered through bare branches.
“I’ll try and keep everyone focused on the ranch house for a couple of hours to give you some time to get there. If you get caught, there will be nothing I can do for you or Oliver. Got it? You must not get caught, Kaya. Understand?”
“Yes,” I replied quietly and glanced at Oliver. Was he gritting his teeth? Why wasn’t he doing the talking? “My necklace?” I asked hopefully. “Is it destroyed?”
“Yes,” Sindra said, phone to her ear. “That insurance policy has expired.”
I glared at Oliver, waiting for him to say something because his arms were practically vibrating, and his jaw was set as if a million words were waiting on the tip of his tongue—but he only watched Sindra with what seemed like revulsion and hate. That was new.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
Sindra stared out at the lake. “I care about you, Kaya. Have since you were a kid. I’ve helped you your whole life so why stop now?”
“Then help me get Luke back,” I said, feeling my heart race. “Please.”
Sindra began to pace, tiny footsteps in the mucky snow, eyes on the beach and on high alert. “I promise you I’ll do what I can to make sure Luke isn’t harmed. That’s all I can do. And only if you promise me right now that you will get as far away from here as possible—you must never go back to the estate. I’ll keep Luke alive, and you disappear—with Oliver—forever. Deal?”
No way in hell. “Deal,” I said.
Sindra dropped her phone in her pocket, and then headed off down the beach. That was it—conversation over. Oliver and I waited until we were sure the coast was clear before we lunged to Thomas’s side. His eyes were open. He was staring up at me as he lay flat on his back. His black shirt was soaked with blood and lifted away from his waist. There was a gushing hole in him, just above his hipbone.
“Took ya… long enough,” he said weakly.
I pulled him into my arms. His body was cold from lying in the snow and losing so much blood. “Don’t worry, you’ll be all right.” I ached to comfort him. He coughed and moaned. I brushed the snow from his bare arms. “You said you’d stay inside. You broke your promise to me,” I said, unable to hide the worry in my voice.
“Sorry,” he answered.
“I should’ve locked you in. What you did was the dumbest thing ever.”
Oliver was kneeling across from me. He gently moved Thomas’s shirt to inspect his wound.
“I would call it incredibly brave,” he said.
I wanted to shove Oliver away. “No one asked you.”
He ignored me by pressing his meaty hand to Thomas’s wound to halt the bleeding. “Thanks for what you did, Thomas. Kaya is lucky to have a friend like—”
I cut him off. “Oh, save it! We both know what you’re thinking. And I won’t let you hurt him, Oliver.”
Oliver blinked as my words cut deep. He swallowed hard. “I’m here only to help,” he said.
“Oh, really? You’re not going to try to drown him in a few minutes? Or choke the life outta him? Because I care about this guy a lot.” I was pushing him. I didn’t care. “That’s right… I care… a lot.”
The hands that had protected me for so many years remained firm on Thomas’s belly, but only for aid. There was no anger about Oliver. His eyes were bright and clear and only sadness clouded the edges. “Truly, on my honor, I will not hurt your friend.” His eyes bore into mine. “Or you,” he added.
Oliver was telling the truth. I had to use hatred to keep myself together. “There are blankets in the shack. Go get them,” I ordered.
He flinched, but rose promptly to do as I asked. I tried to hide my shock.
“Keep your hand over his wound,” he called back to me.
I placed my palm over the bullet hole, Thomas’s taut skin sticky and warm. I held back the desire to scream at the skies. Instead, I smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead, the bump there from yesterday an angry red.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, sensing my anxiety.
I pushed down harder on his wound when I felt blood seep through my fingers. He stifled a moan. “How did Sindra know your name?” I asked, not sure if I really wanted to know.
Thomas’s eyelids were fluttering, and I was amazed he was conscious. Still though, with all the pain registering on his face and the unsteadiness of his pupils, I could see he was about to lie.
“No idea,” he said.
“No idea?” I repeated incredulously, and my palm pushed down a little harder.
“She must have… heard it somewhere… I guess,” he said between ragged breaths.
Oliver was back with the blankets. I pulled Thomas tighter, shoving away all notions of betrayal and displaying more affection than I felt. Somehow, Sindra knew Thomas’s name, so there was a hefty bit of information he wasn’t t
elling me. I wanted to demand the truth, but now wasn’t the time. Besides, I’d pulled a gun on Thomas; I didn’t want to address that yet, either.
I cradled Thomas lovingly while Oliver draped a blanket over him. I kept Thomas’s head against my chest and a watchful eye on Oliver, but that warning look never came over his face. He wasn’t vibrating with anger and jealousy or looking like he might take the knife strapped to his waist and slit Thomas’s throat like he’d tried to do with Luke. No. He seemed to be genuinely concerned with the well-being of a man I was openly showing affection for. Something about him was different. Had he gotten into some strange pool of Kool-Aid with Sindra?
“Can you stand?” Oliver asked Thomas.
“Of course.”
Thomas tried, but his legs weren’t holding him up. He remained upright for mere seconds before tipping backward. Oliver caught him before he hit the ground.
“We gotta get you out of here and patched up, boy,” Oliver said as he dragged Thomas into the trees and away from the beach. “That bullet has to come out or you won’t last long.”
Nothing about Oliver made sense. “What are you doing?” I challenged as Oliver plucked a few wide leaves from a low branch. Thomas was flat on his back again, turning the snow around him red.
“Uh, at the moment, I am trying to figure out how to get your pal’s wound to stop gushing—”
“No really, what are you doing?” I said, trying not to yell. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you. So, why are you trying to help me?”
Oliver pressed the leaves to Thomas’s wound, then shredded a strip off the blanket to hold them in place. Satisfied the bleeding had slowed, he then straightened his shoulders and leveled his eyes on mine. “I am here because my feelings for you haven’t changed,” he said rigidly.
I had no reply. None.
“And… I know you can tell that I’m not lying,” he added.
I had nothing to say to that, either.
He looked away uncomfortably. “Anyway, we have to get out of here and get your pal to a doctor. Then we’ll figure out what to do about Luke.”
His words slammed into my chest and almost knocked me over. “Luke?” I sputtered.
“Yeah. The past might give you a reason not to, but please, Kaya… trust me.”
I had no choice. I wasn’t getting Thomas anywhere by myself. Nor would I be getting Luke back alone. I stared hard into those brown eyes that used to melt my heart. “Just tell me what to do,” I said.
We rolled Thomas up in one blanket and dragged him with the other. I said we, but I wasn’t helping much. I was drained, mentally and physically, and pretty much only assisted by being in awe of Oliver’s determination to help my friend.
Once we were in the stand of birch trees, Oliver paused to catch his breath and answer his incessantly buzzing phone. “Lisa?” he said quietly into the device.
My mind reeled… Lisa? As in, Blonde Barbie from the Death Race? The Lisa who let me cry on her shoulder for hours? Luke’s ex-girlfriend? The same woman who’d threatened Oliver with a frying pan and called him every horrible name imaginable? Why would they be talking to each other?
Oliver kneeled, breathless. “Yeah, I’ve got Kaya with me… and a way out. We will meet you at the rendezvous point… No. No, I don’t have Luke. Yes, he’s alive. But… he was taken by Henry.”
Lisa’s frantic voice burst through the phone. She was practically screaming when Oliver hung up. He shrugged his shoulders, then grabbed the corners of the blanket and started pulling Thomas again.
“You’re talking to Lisa now?” I asked, and I hoped there wasn’t a tone of jealousy in my voice—because I certainly wasn’t jealous. Just confused.
“Yeah. She and Seth came to help us find you.”
“Us?”
“Luke and me.”
I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. “You and Luke?” I repeated.
Oliver cleared his throat. “Yes. We’ve been working together.”
This was too much. “You mean you and Luke stayed… with each other? And…” I couldn’t finish because I couldn’t even imagine what that would have been like.
“He’s a good guy, Kaya,” Oliver said sincerely.
I almost fell off my feet in shock. “Yeah, I know.” I had a million questions, but I desperately needed to think of anything but Luke—the worry for him was so deep I thought I might drown in it.
A half hour passed, and our breaths became white clouds as we tugged Thomas through the bush on the narrower animal trails. The sun was getting ready to leave the sky and not heating up the air anymore. I was sweating and freezing at the same time.
“You all right back there, Thomas?” I said, probably for the fiftieth time in the last fifteen minutes. All I could see was his dark hair, and I wondered if his feet were as frozen as mine. “Thomas?” I asked again.
There was no reply.
I didn’t have to ask Oliver to stop; he abruptly quit moving and began unwrapping Thomas from the heavy blanket. Thomas’s eyes were shut tight, his cheeks a deathly white. He was unresponsive.
“Damn it,” Oliver muttered under his breath as he checked Thomas’s wound. “Too much bleeding.” He flattened his hand over the bullet hole. “Get some more leaves, Kaya. They are cleaner than this filthy blanket.”
I plucked the widest ones I could find, brown from fall, and handed them over. He layered them over the wound and then packed a handful of clean snow on top. “The cold should slow the bleeding.” He secured his handiwork with the torn blanket before wrapping Thomas back up. “How much farther to the road?”
I felt my own blood drain from my cheeks, and an odd buzzing in my head.
“Kaya, we gotta get him outta here. How much farther?” Oliver asked again.
I tipped back my head to see the sun in the west end of the sky. “We either keep moving through the trees, the same way we’re going—and I’m not really sure for how long that will take us. Or we get out into the field and cross it.”
“We’d be in the open then. Sitting ducks.”
I moved toward the edge of the stand of trees. Oliver and I could make a run for it, ten minutes tops and we would be at the road. But with Thomas, we’d be moving slowly. Oliver was already exhausted, and there was no way he could carry or drag Thomas across the field quickly, if at all. Thomas’s life was slipping away. I felt helpless. The trails through the trees seemed never-ending and bleak. Was there another way? Maybe I could run back to the ranch house, sneak in somehow, find the medicine cabinet and gather supplies, then get back here. But that would take so long.
“C’mon, Kaya, let’s keep moving,” Oliver said breathlessly, maneuvering a completely unconscious Thomas back onto the blanket and dragging him again.
I felt frozen. Not by the cold, but by everything. I had been so strong, keeping my anxiety away, doing what I had to… Why suddenly was I about to crumble? My legs wouldn’t move. My arms felt stuck to my sides.
“Kaya?”
“I can’t move,” I said stubbornly.
Oliver let out an irritated huff. With a free hand, he grabbed a corner of my jacket and pushed me ahead. “No time for whatever’s going on in your head. Get walking.”
He wasn’t giving up on Thomas or me, so why was I? What was wrong with me? I wouldn’t have needed a shove a few hours ago…
I trudged ahead, fighting the buzzing in my head, only to stop short again. Oliver saw it, too. Through the shadowy trees, about a hundred feet ahead, there was a massive shape blocking the light from the field.
“Is that a horse?”
“No, can’t be,” I muttered, and motioned to Oliver not to move a muscle. I weaved through the bushes and around the silvery tree trunks until I was walking in hoofprints the horse had left behind. As I stepped lightly and not too fast, I knew he saw me coming. By the sheer mass of him and his solid black gleam from tail to nose, I could tell it was Zander.
Strangely, he didn’t take off.
�
�Zander?” I said calmly, and reminded myself to stay firm with him. “Just stay right there…” I was impressed with how well he obeyed, then I realized he was only still because his reins were tangled in a tree.
“Good boy,” I said. I untwisted the leather from a persistent branch. He flipped his head up when he was freed, and I held the straps tightly. “I think you’re my guardian angel today.” I rubbed him behind the ear, and his reply was a shake of his thick black mane. “Ben would be proud.”
Thomas slipped in and out of consciousness as we wrestled him onto Zander’s back. His arms and legs dangled uselessly while I led the way and Oliver made sure he wouldn’t fall off. We hurried into the sparkling white field stretching out between fences like a frozen lake. I hoped I remembered where I was going. The dead-end road was east of the ranch house, of that I was certain, but everything else from my memory was questionable. The field had to end at some point, and the road flanking it would be running east to west, so I headed south hoping to come upon it.
“Damn it. Now I can see the house, and that means they can see us,” Oliver said.
The Carlson ranch house was still very far off, but anyone straining their eye would spot the shifting dark spots on the white ground. We walked along the other side of Zander, hoping from a distance it would just look like one of the horses was wandering about.
We picked up the pace when we saw the road. At a barbed-wire fence, we struggled to get Thomas through. I said goodbye to Zander. After I stroked his muzzle, I removed the bridle from his head and thanked him profusely. After a series of horse snorts and head shakes, he took off running. I knew I’d never see him again, and I felt a sting of sadness as I said goodbye to Ben, too.
Oliver struggled with Thomas, dragging him out of the ditch and onto the road. Now, without any cover, we truly were sitting ducks in a white wonderland, on a white road… as obvious as the waning sun. And to top it all off, there was the unmistakable sound of a helicopter firing up. Every square inch of me turned to goose bumps. Terror, cold and stinging, crawled up my back. Oliver turned to me, sweat streaming across his face.
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