gurgled and staggered backward, tripped and fell to the ground.
Trevor stepped forward to finish the job. Smith picked up the gun he’d dropped earlier with a shaky hand and aimed it at Trevor.
“You’re going to die for that, asshole,” Smith rasped.
Trevor heard the sound of another projectile piercing skin and watched as Smith’s mouth opened in surprise, his gun dropped from his hand and he slowly fell to the side—a perfect hole in the middle of his forehead, taken down by a sniper’s bullet.
Adam.
Trevor turned, determined to not give that fucker one more moment of his time or energy. Smith was gone. No longer darkening Trevor’s future, or anyone else’s future. His sister had been avenged. His woman protected. The past was now officially the past. The future wide open with possibility. He strode across the hall, to Rebel who was still propped against the wall, holding his shirt against her shoulder, her face pale.
“Is it over now?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah baby…it’s all over.”
Trevor turned around and gently picked his woman up, sliding his arms underneath her legs and behind her back, cradling her in his arms as he walked outside into the sunlight.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rebel sat on the concrete edge of a raised planter bed, twirling her hair and staring off into the middle distance.
Everyone was saved who wanted to be saved. The girl who had been chained to Smith was free. Most of the bad guys were dead, or had run away.
It was seriously like they’d finished filming a movie. Like she’d been on location with this crew for weeks and they’d finally nailed it. All that was left was for the AD to call, “Wrap!” Except there weren’t any production assistants running around with a water bottle to hand out. And no one would be asking her if she was going to the wrap party that night. And worst of all, there was no lovely trailer to crawl back into and relax with a good book.
This was real life. That old life was gone. Gone for good.
She didn’t know where Trevor had gone to, so she just found a quiet spot outside, one arm in a sling and her other hand tucked between her knees, and waited. She heard voices in the distance. The gunfire had stopped long ago. Eventually, at some point, they’d all figure everything out—who needed to be saved, who needed medical care and if anyone wanted to return with them to the farm.
She supposed she was in shock, or something, she wasn’t sure.
Rebel turned back and looked again at the devastation to the front of the John Muir Lodge. It was all too much. She was happy to let other people make the hard decisions. Really, all she wanted was a moment of quiet after all the drama to collect her thoughts.
And Trevor. She wanted Trevor to finish whatever he was doing, come and find her, and take her home.
She smiled.
Home. She actually thought of that farm on the edge of nowhere as home. Weird.
“Water bottle?”
Rebel glanced up, surprised to see Justin standing above her. She reached out and took the sparkling bottle from his hand. “Thanks.”
He carefully sat down next to her, wincing in pain. The parking lot in front of them held a few cars that looked operable, and others that were obviously dusty derelicts left over from the end of days. But beyond that were the peaks of distant mountains. Directly across the street stood dense groves of enormous sequoia trees, and a hawk circled above in the bright blue sky. The air smelled like fresh pine. It was so much cooler up here in the mountains. She lifted her chin to catch the sun on her face.
“I can’t believe you’re walking and talking,” she told him. “You just recently recovered from pneumonia and you got your ass kicked yesterday.”
Justin grunted. “Well, there really was a real Doctor here. He’s a white supremacist asshole like the others so he packed up and ran out of here with a small group of them, but he did wrap my broken ribs and give me some world-class pain relievers. I’ll probably end up back in that damn RV for a while again. What about you, are you okay? And why are you out here by yourself?”
She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m okay. A bullet grazed my arm, but it’s mainly a deep scratch. It hurt, but like you, good painkillers make the difference. After everything ended in the main hall, Trevor carried me outside. Then he ran ahead to help check the rooms to see if anyone needed help. Christian fixed me up and gave me this sling. Then I did a head count and saw all our women, and you…and I don’t know, it was all chaotic for a bit there and…I just needed…I don’t know, I’m just out here sitting next to Trevor’s motorcycle, waiting for him like a loser, I guess.”
Justin grinned. “You’re not a loser. But I heard I missed your performance.”
She snorted. “I didn’t even get to prepare. No practice. No warm-up, but yeah, it went pretty well despite that.”
“I know you were performing at the insistence of that asshole, Smith, but you have to remember there were lots of other people in that room who were just people. Just survivors of this apocalypse, like the rest of us. Some of them were people who wished they could get the fuck out from under that asshole’s thumb. You gave everyone there a ray of hope. A bit of home. A remembrance that things aren’t quite as shitty as they thought, because, check it out, Rebel Case is still around and singing for us.”
She turned to him and gave him a rueful smile, letting him know she appreciated his words.
He placed a hand on her good shoulder. “I’m not kidding about this. It’s a big deal. Remember how celebrities would always go and play for troops in combat zones in the USO? You’re like that.”
She sat up straighter. Yeah, she was like that, wasn’t she? And she could be like that more.
“You know what’s cool? I sort of had this moment where I felt like I had that old zing. That magic was coming back. Like my power was filling me up again. Or does that sound totally corny?”
“No, with your singing and acting, it’s like you have a superpower. And you haven’t been able to use it, which must have sucked the big one.”
She chuckled. “It did suck the big one. This whole time I’ve felt like this loser who was worthless now. You’ve got skills that translate into this world. So does Trevor. So does…everyone but me. I swear, even Josie contributes more than I do. No one needs a singer or actor when the world is ending. They need doctors and farmers.”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“What?”
“You’re the one who decided where we should live. Who organized all of our supplies and decides when we need more of something?”
“I did…but, come on, I hardly spoke the whole first month and walked around like a zombie.”
“I did too. Rebel, we’d survived the goddamn apocalypse. We’re only human, not machines without hearts. It was fucking hard, losing everyone. It still is. I still wake up and hear the silence and it tears me up.” He looked away, his voice softening. “It’s hard on everyone. It doesn’t make you weak or less because it kicks you in the ass. It does that to everyone. And if someone says it’s not hard, they’re just talking shit. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” she whispered.
“So, you’re hooking up with that Aryan Brotherhood bastard?” he asked, a smile playing on the corner of his lips.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “After he declared his love for me and saved my life, I kinda thought he might be a keeper.”
Justin crooked an eyebrow. “Well, I guess it’s okay then.”
She looked back again at the lodge and back at Justin. “I can’t believe we made it. It’s like there’s always something else, and we manage to keep on surviving.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“Isn’t that from a song?”
Justin smiled. “Yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
She straightened her back. “I do feel like I can
stand a little taller.”
“You came back swinging.”
“We both came back swinging. Actually, all of us have.”
“Rebel!”
Rebel looked up to see Tiana and Krissy running toward her, Trevor at their side. He looked grim and the two women looked scared as hell. Rebel’s chest tightened. A bad feeling lodged in the pit of her stomach. This couldn’t be good news.
Justin helped her to stand up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“She’s gone, we can’t find her anywhere,” Krissy panted.
“Gone? Who’s gone?”
“Kati’s gone,” Tiana sobbed. “She’s disappeared. She was here with us when we all ran out of the hall when it exploded and she was with me searching rooms for other female survivors and then…she was gone.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Have you looked—”
“We’ve looked everywhere,” Trevor cut in. “We’ve systematically gone through every room. Even the cabins in the back. She’s not here. Christian and Adam are driving around, looking for any signs of which way the car must have gone.”
Oh shit. Her throat tightened. “You mean…”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Justin ground out. “In the middle of the chaos one of those fuckers got smart and stole Kati for himself.”
“No!”
Rebel used her one good arm to pull Tiana in so they could cry together.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Finally, hours later, Trevor lay in bed with Rebel snuggled into his side. Her head tucked into his shoulder, her arm thrown over his chest, one of her legs crooked over his. They were both naked under the sheets. It was pretty damn wonderful to have her back.
He lay quiet though, not able to feel fully at peace. His woman was safe, but another woman wasn’t.
It weighed heavily on his mind. He’d looked everywhere for Kati. They’d all looked everywhere. No stone had been left unturned. Every possible scenario talked through. They’d raged, cried, yelled, planned. Eventually, there’d been nothing more to do at the lodge, Kati’s trail had run cold. So now, they were back on the farm, bringing with them the quiet girl who looked like she wasn’t old enough to drive, who hadn’t said a word yet, the one Smith had probably fucked up so bad she’d need years to recover.
Everyone returned home, except for Kati. Kati was lost and they had no idea which of those bastards had taken her and which way they’d gone.
Tiana, Krissy, Adam, Christian and Justin, were already planning a new search party, pulling out maps and making plans on areas to cover. They weren’t giving up. No one was giving up.
He exhaled, his stomach twisting at the realization of how easily that could have been Rebel, lost to him.
“Trevor?”
He blinked, broken out of his painful reverie. “I’m here, babe.”
“I just want you to know…I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to tell you about the baby,” she said softly.
His brows furrowed, surprised at the topic of conversation.
“It’s okay. I didn’t exactly inspire trust.”
“But you did,” she sat up in the bed pulling the sheet up over her tits, her hazel eyes bright with emotion. “You did, and I didn’t see it.”
He placed a hand on her hip, carefully avoiding the blue sling that was still on her arm. “Rebel, you don’t need to say this. Let’s remember I have a swastika tattooed on my neck. You were right to question that.”
She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “After today, after all that happened up on that mountain…it’s making me remember how this could all be gone in the blink of an eye. I need to live every day to the fullest. That means I have to make sure I don’t leave anything unsaid. So, like I said, I want you to know that I’m sorry, I really am, that I didn’t trust you enough to tell you I was pregnant. I kept pushing you away.”
“Rebel, you were in my bed, letting me fuck you blind, in my arms every night. You introduced me to your girlfriends and to Justin as your boyfriend. You were right there with me.”
Her face burned red. “You noticed that?”
“Sweetheart, I notice everything.”
“I’ve never really had a boyfriend before. That’s why I’m so terrible at this. I’ve had hookups, lots of those, but I’ve never really let a man in close. It always seemed that when I would start to soften and think that way, that maybe someone could be a keeper, he’d immediately do something dumbass, like cheat on me, sell stories and pictures to the magazines, start asking for a loan, shit like that. It got to the point where I considered men to be either friends or location affairs and never the twain shall meet. I didn’t think I’d find a man I could rely on. I didn’t think they existed. I’ve just had nothing but bad luck with men in the past and I was unfortunately judging you against that, the men I used to know, thinking you’d treat me like they did, sort of waiting for it.”
“You’d started to soften, to trust me, see that I was different, and then I snatched it away?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Yeah, it hurt. I thought you might be the one. A man I could count on like I could count on women, or my family, like that. And because of that I was about to tell you about the baby, I swear, then I found out…”
“You found out I was like the rest of those fuckers, but only worse.”
“Well…”
“I’m not going to lie to you anymore, Rebel. I was the worst of the worst. Your worst nightmare. I was raised with murderers and racists. My father was the head of our local Aryan Brotherhood. I grew up in the mountains around here, with drug dealers. When I was a kid my father was in and out of prison, but when he got out he established a ring of pot-growing operations hidden in the mountains. He worked closely with the Mexican cartels. So, while other people were getting dressed up and going to church on Sunday mornings, at my house there were usually stacks of money, guns, bags of marijuana and Mexican drug runners all busy funneling drugs to the stupid Americans. It was a crazy way to live. My mom finally managed to get away for good when I was a teen. She’d never really been into that lifestyle and had enough of Dad’s beatings, his other women on the side. She tried to get me out of there too, but I wouldn’t go. I was in too deep…thought I was the heir apparent, a badass in the making. My dad was rich, nice cars, nice everything, no one gave him shit, and I could be just like him? Why would I give that up?”
He thought back to what happened to Jenny, how his Dad had treated his mom, to the young traumatized girl they’d brought back from the mountains who wouldn’t speak, and to Kati…and how many people he’d “helped” on their road to drug addiction…and felt a burning shame in his gut. A twisting, bile-inducing sensation. Right there was the reason why he should’ve given all that shit up, long ago. Living a life hurting others was no life at all.
“Which of these tats are the ones that Justin saw? The ones that made him angry?”
“This one”—Trevor pointed at the swastika on his neck—“and this one”—he pointed at the four-leaf clover.
“You know, I knew the swastika on your neck couldn’t be anything good, because who walks around with a swastika on their neck? But because you’d told me not to ask about your past and judge you for who you were now, I just kept watching you, waiting for you to act like a racist asshole. But, when you never did I assumed this tat was something stupid you did when you were younger and regretted now that you’re older. You told me you regretted it, remember?”
“That basically sums it up. The swastika symbolizes joining the Aryan Brotherhood. The four-leaf clover told the other inmates I’d killed for the Brotherhood and that I would again, so stay the fuck away. I wish I could remove them. I’ve sat here, in this room, with a knife to my throat trying to figure out how to get these fuckers off my skin.”
“We have to learn to live with it. Remember, you’ve changed completely.” She leaned over and kissed his neck, on top of the former mark of a murderer. “The old you is gone, they’re now here to show the w
orld the new you.”
He stared into her eyes and swallowed against the lump in his throat.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “If someone asks you what these mean, you say that was the past and they’re meaningless now. And I’ll be standing right next to you to vouch for that. And so will Justin, and Krissy and all your friends out there.”
A tingling sensation spread across his chest. He smiled. “You’re amazing.”
“You said that going forward I can be whoever I want to be. Well, so can you. It was wrong of me to judge you for your past. You never did that to me and I did it to you. It was hard, because,” she swallowed, her eyes wet, “because of what happened to my brother. But now I know who you really are.” She placed a hand over his heart. “In here, this is who you really are. And I see this person, clearly.”
“You remind me of my mom,” he said thickly. “Back when she was with us and I was young, and my dad was home and sometimes things were good. You remind me of her. Your personality. You’re both sweet and fierce at the same time.”
She blushed, an attractive shade of pink across her delicate cheeks. Damn, she was beautiful. He was so fucking lucky to have this woman, he couldn’t believe it was real.
“Tell me about your family. You said before you wanted to be just like your dad. Did you…did you used to treat women the way he treated your mom?”
“No,” he said emphatically. He shook his head, his jaw clenched. “No. That was one thing I did different. He and most of the other guys, they treated women like crap. Smith was part of our gang, he was the instigator of that abuse. Slapped their old ladies around. Punched them, kicked them, raped them. It was disgusting. Not all of them were like that. But some of them. I didn’t raise my hand to a woman. Ever. The guys I was closest to in the gang, they didn’t either. I saw what it did to my mom and I didn’t want that. And my sister—”
“You had a sister? Oh no. Did she get out too?”
Kill For You Page 27