“Staring down death has a way of making things clear.”
“You say that like you understand.”
He didn’t reply.
“How long have you been a Marine?”
“Six years.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-four. I joined the Corps right out of high school.”
“I didn’t know there were Marines in this area.”
“I’m stationed in Allentown. It’s a very small reservist base.”
“You live out in this area?” I asked, curious.
“Mmmm,” he replied. “I like to get away at the end of the day.”
“Are you from the South?”
“You like my accent?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
“Maybe,” I said, smiling.
He chuckled. “Born and raised in North Carolina.”
“This your first time being stationed up North?”
“Yep.”
Without realizing it, I cuddled in a little closer and he tightened his hold on my body. I felt his chin rub the top of my head, and I took a deep breath. “You smell like a Christmas tree.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“My favorite holiday is Christmas,” I said shyly.
He started stroking my hair again.
“Not many people would have come looking for me,” I told him, wondering what he would say. Because of me, he’d been shot at, punched, stranded in the woods, and now forced to hike through the rain with an injured woman.
“The police were busy.”
“You could have left them all the information and gone home.”
“I don’t leave behind people in trouble.”
Again, I sensed more behind his words than he said, but I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask. “Well, whatever your reason… thank you.”
“You already thanked me.”
“Words are never enough.”
“Aren’t you a writer?” he asked, amusement in his tone.
I laughed. It hurt my ribs. “Yeah.”
“Bake me a pie.”
“What?” I asked, wondering how the topic turned to food.
“You can thank me by baking a pie.”
“You like pie?”
“Who doesn’t?”
He had a point. He was probably one of those bachelors who never cooked… Wait a minute… bachelor. “Are you married?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“You haven’t really seen my face yet,” he replied, amused.
I didn’t need to see his face. I knew he was beautiful.
“What kind of pie do you want?” I said, getting back on topic.
“Apple.”
“Apple pie it is.” Nearby, a branch snapped. Nathan’s entire body changed. He went from relaxed and playful to tensely gripping the gun. He moved swiftly, placing me between the trunk of the tree and his body as he scanned the area around us.
When no gunshots rang out and Lex didn’t appear, he reached around and took my hand. “We need to keep moving.”
As we walked, he felt in his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. The cell phone that started it all, the cell phone that kept me alive.
He pressed the button at the bottom, but nothing happened. He did it again and again. Nothing. He stopped walking and we both stared down at the inoperative phone.
“Shit,” he swore. “It got too wet.”
“How much longer?” I worried.
He looked through the dark. Off in the distance was an obscure, hulking shape. Fear made my belly bottom out.
“Thank fucking God,” he said and took my hand, dragging me along behind him. His legs were much longer than mine, and I had to practically run to keep up.
“What is that?” I asked between gasping for breath. I kind of assumed it wasn’t something bad like I supposed before, judging from the way he used breakneck speed to get there.
I stared through the pounding rain again and realized what it was he was so anxious to get to.
A car.
A truck to be exact.
A black pickup truck sitting right there in the open.
For some reason, a memory of banging around in the bed of that truck washed over me. I tripped and stumbled. Nathan tried to haul me up, but I fell anyway, landing on my knees on the soaking ground.
“Honor?”
“It’s Lex’s,” I whispered, feeling sick. I barely remembered anything about the trip here.
Until I saw that truck.
Memories washed over me and I started to retch. The protein bar I’d eaten hours ago came up with violent force.
A string of cuss words came from above me, but I barely heard them. I was too busy barfing. Tears leaked down my face. I wasn’t crying, but the force of my heaving pushed them out of my eyes.
Nathan dropped to his knees beside me. It was like he didn’t care about what I was doing at all. His warm hands gathered the loose, wet strands of my hair and pulled them back while he murmured words that were meant to comfort me.
Finally, thankfully, I stopped.
I would have collapsed in the mess I just made, but he caught me and hauled me into his lap. I really liked sitting in his lap.
I hated being so vulnerable. Yet my body couldn’t take anymore. I was a strong person, but everyone had their limits.
He rocked me back and forth, holding me close while the rain fell in sheets around us. He didn’t tell me I was being a baby. He didn’t tell me we had to go. He acted as if we had all the time in the world and he would hold me as long as I wanted.
I couldn’t even properly appreciate that because I was being assaulted.
Assaulted by images I had no doubt my mind had pushed away to protect itself.
I hit the bottom of the truck bed. The rough Rhino liner scraped my knee. He had tied my hands behind my back and then rolled me so I was lying on top of them.
He stood above me, staring down… hatred and lust glittering in his cold eyes.
I didn’t know lust and hatred could ever go together.
But there was no denying the lust.
Because he unzipped his jeans and pulled out his very hard penis. I gagged at the sight. Fear of what he planned to do overwhelmed me.
I struggled. I tried to pull my hands free. I tried to protect myself.
He dropped to his knees, straddling my chest. He shoved himself in my face, demanding I take him in my mouth.
His satiny skin pushed at my lips, trying to get me to open up, trying to get me to let him in.
I opened up all right. And I screamed my head off.
My captor looked around sharply, like he was afraid someone would hear. Then he trained his angry gaze back down at me, took a handful of my hair, and slammed my head into the floor.
I blinked, trying to recall what happened next, but I couldn’t. I must have blacked out from the hit. Automatically, my hand reached up to the back of my neck and delved into my hair. There in the center of my head was a bump.
I thought my headache was because I was hungry and weak.
But now I knew differently.
“What’s going on, Honor?” Nathan said, his voice a little desperate.
“I remembered something,” I said hollow. “Something I’d… forgotten.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. In one swift move, he stood, bringing me with him. He cradled me against his chest like a child. I tried to tell him I would walk, but when I glanced back at the truck, the words died on my lips.
“Are we taking that?” I asked shakily.
“Yep.”
I began to shake. He stopped and looked between me and the truck. His lips turned into a thin, straight line.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, forcing my voice to be strong. That truck was our way out of this hell. I wasn’t about to make things harder than they were.
He nodded briskly an
d strode the short distance to the truck and peered into the passenger-side window. When he tried the handle, it opened and he snorted.
“Idiot,” I heard him mouth under his breath.
He stepped up to the inside of the truck, between the seat and the door. Instead of depositing me on the seat, he tightened his hold and looked down.
“The bad shit’s over. I won’t let him touch you again.”
I nodded. His words loosened something inside me and made it easier to breathe. Gently, he placed me on the seat and then pulled back slightly. From this close, I could see the tenderness in his eyes, and then he pressed a kiss to my forehead.
When he climbed into the driver’s seat, I glanced at the ignition. “There’s no keys,” I noted, nerves fluttering around in my chest.
“I don’t need keys,” he replied confidently.
I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it sounded like he ripped out a part of the dash and then he shoved his hand up inside and pulled out a handful of wires.
“They teach you how to hotwire a car in the Marine Corps?” I asked incredulously.
He grinned. “Nope. I was a teenager once.”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
Then I glanced out the window. A familiar figure was rushing through the rain at us.
“Nathan,” I cried, pointing in the direction of Lex.
The truck roared to life and he threw it in drive. The blast of a gun and the shattering of glass had me screaming.
“Get down,” Nathan barked as he shoved at my head until I slid onto the floorboard.
I heard the truck accelerate and it fishtailed over the slick ground, but he didn’t slow down. He ripped and roared down the side of the mountain until the gunshots couldn’t even be heard in the distance.
18
Nathan
He shot out the back window. Holy shit, when that glass shattered and shards of it started raining from behind, I almost busted a vein. Honor was sitting right there. Right. Fucking. There.
If she’d have been shot or stabbed, I would have stopped the truck right then and killed him.
Bullets wouldn’t have stopped me.
But the bullet didn’t hit her, and as I tore down the mountain, I glanced toward the floorboard, expecting to see her spurting out red rain.
I never wanted to see that sight again.
But she wasn’t bleeding. She didn’t look hurt at all (well, no more than before).
“He’s crazy!” she yelled over the rumble of the truck’s engine as she gripped the edge of the seat while I flew around a curve. We came a little too close to going over the edge and plummeting down into the trees, so I laid off the gas.
Honor started to push herself up but then swore. I cut my eyes over to see a fresh trail of red sliding from the palm of her hand and winding a path down the inside of her wrist.
My stomach turned. The sight of blood didn’t bother me, but the sight of it pouring from Honor’s body did.
“Stay down,” I said, averting my gaze. “There’s too much glass up here.”
But just because I wasn’t looking didn’t mean she stopped bleeding. With one hand, I reached around my neck and yanked the long-sleeve waffle-knit tee I was wearing over my head. I tossed it at her. “Here, wrap that around your hand.”
“I don’t want to ruin your shirt.”
“You prefer blood loss?”
“I owe you a shirt with your pie,” she said, and I smiled.
A few minutes later, I glanced back down at her hand, which was now completely covered with my shirt. She looked small, hunched down there on the floor. And pale. Her skin stood out against the darkness.
The reaction she had when she saw this truck wasn’t good. I’d seen enough during my time in the Corps to know that something bad happened to her in this truck, something that her brain probably suppressed until she was brought face to face with it.
I felt like the world’s biggest ass by forcing her into this vehicle. I was afraid to even know what the hell caused her to have such a violent reaction back there. But I didn’t have a choice. This truck was our best option at getting away. It was beyond clear to me that Honor needed away from here as soon as possible.
Yeah, I wanted to stay and take him down.
Yeah, beating him in the head might feel good.
But the price of that would cost… maybe not cost someone like me anything, but it would cost Honor a lot. She’d already been through enough.
It was strange, the streak of protectiveness I felt when I looked at her. I’d never felt that way about anyone but my family and some of the men I worked with. But this was different… I’d only just met her. Why did I feel this innate drive to keep her safe?
It was almost as if something inside me claimed her.
The main road came into sight and my tense muscles relaxed a little.
“Where are we going?” Honor asked.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
She groaned. “I want to go home.”
“You need to be looked at. They’ll give you something for those ribs.”
“What about the police?”
“They can meet us at the hospital.”
Honor was silent for a minute, and I knew her brain was working. I could almost hear her worry.
“You know his name? Where he lives?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You’ll tell the police?”
I absolutely hated the tremor of fear in her voice. I knew she was worried he would come after her again. Hell, I was worried about that too.
“I’m gonna tell them, babe,” I said, taking my eyes off the road and looking directly at her. “I’m going to tell them everything, and they’re going to lock him up where he belongs.”
She nodded and then rested her cheek against the thick shirt wrapped around her hand. The ride to the hospital was quiet. The closer we got, the more traffic surrounded us and the more relaxed I felt. I wondered what Lex was doing, how pissed he was that we left him stranded in the woods.
I pulled into the hospital. The whole place was lit up with bright lights. Ambulances lined the sidewalk beneath the awning for the ER entrance. They must’ve still been dealing with the car pileup from earlier tonight.
There were also some police cars with flashing lights parked at the curb. Good. That would make for easy contact.
Because it was so crowded near the entrance, I parked in the lot. Of course there was nothing available close. Every vacant space was in the nosebleed section, so I took the first spot I came to and then reached down low and disconnected the wires, shutting off the truck.
Honor still rested her cheek on her hands, her face turned away. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not, but she didn’t move even after I pushed open my door and got out. I went around to the passenger side and opened the door. I reached in and slid my arm around her waist, and this panicked sound ripped from her throat and her body went rigid.
Her head nearly smacked the glove compartment, but I blocked it with my hand.
“Easy,” I said gently. “It’s Nathan. We’re at the hospital. Time to go inside.”
Her body relaxed, but she made no move to get out. “I’m going to pick you up,” I informed her. She didn’t try to blacken my eye, so I took that as consent and lifted her out and then kicked the door closed.
Her cheek fell against my chest and her lips parted on a deep exhale. “I can walk,” she protested.
I chuckled. She’d probably fall over the minute I put her down. “No,” I said, leaving no room for argument. I wasn’t about to admit how cute I thought she was. The minute she knew that, it would all be over. She’d have me wrapped around her little finger.
Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
I was going to place her in the doctors’ care and then go talk to the police. Once that was done, so was my job. I could go home.
Go home to what? a voice in my head argued. Cold fried chicken? Your weight set in the basement? Your
memories?
I ignored those thoughts as I walked past a police officer reclining against the side of his cruiser, holding a coffee cup in his hand. “I have a crime to report,” I told him and kept walking.
He could follow me. It irritated me the way he was just standing there and Honor was out there dumped in a hole for fifteen hours. No, it wasn’t that cop’s fault, but… but I was irritated anyway.
Inside the ER I found what I expected. A lot of organized chaos. People filled the chairs with various injuries, all waiting to be seen. I clenched my jaw and went to the check-in desk.
“This woman needs to be seen. She was kidnapped, dumped in a hole, exposed to the elements, and has several broken ribs and various other injuries.”
That got the nurse’s attention. She stared at me and my bedraggled appearance with shock. “Who are you?”
Honor lifted her head off my chest and turned toward the woman, who gasped at the sight of her bruised and swollen face. “He’s the guy who pulled me out of the hole. He’s a Marine.”
“Is she bleeding anywhere?” the nurse asked hopefully.
My back teeth came together.
“Yes,” I ground out. Why did it matter?
Honor held up her hand wrapped in my shirt.
“When people come in bleeding, they get higher priority.”
Oh. Well. That was good. “How long do we have to wait until she gets seen? She’s been through a lot. She needs fluid and a bed.”
She pushed a clipboard at me. “Sign in.”
I signed in. Under my name. For some reason, having a record of her being here for anyone to see didn’t sit well with me.
The nurse glanced up at me and then at Honor bundled up in my arms. Her eyes softened. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said low and then disappeared.
There wasn’t an empty chair in this place. Not one.
I took up position against the wall, planted my feet, and tucked her a little closer to me. Honor seemed to be floating around somewhere between consciousness and sleep. It made me worry she had a concussion. She did have that bump on the back of her head.
Fifteen minutes later, the nurse from behind the desk motioned to me. I pushed away from the wall and followed her back along a quiet hallway and into a small area with a bed and a curtain all the way around it. “Someone will be in as soon as they can.”
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