by Julia Swift
“But what happened to the FBI? Weren’t they supposed to help you?” I glance back and forth between Freddie and Gage, but both of them avoid my eye, staring out the window or down passing streets. Or, in Gage’s case, over his shoulder at the road behind us.
“Heads up,” he says, without answering my question. I whip my head around to follow his gaze, and recognize the black SUV that was once parked outside my apartment, hot on our tail.
“Hold on,” Lacey tells us through gritted teeth. Gritted smiling teeth, I might add. I’d almost swear she’s enjoying this.
She downshifts hard, throws the e-brake and whips the wheel around. We do a 180, just as the SUV was almost caught up to us. It blows past, tires squealing as it tries to compensate, to brake and follow us, but we’re already taking off again, turning down a smaller side road, then whipping through windier and windier neighborhoods, off the grid of Atlantic City proper into the suburbs.
“Where the hell are we going?” I ask, heart in my throat, after several minutes have passed, and it seems like maybe—maybe—we lost our tail.
“One pit stop to make,” Gage says.
Lacey catches his eye in the rearview. “I left the car you asked for outside,” she says. “Like you told me. Rented under a different name than this one.” She pats the wheel fondly, a broad smile stretching her lips. “Which, by the way, thanks for. I’ve always wanted to take one of these babies for a spin.”
Freddie, for his part, is staring at Lacey like she’s an alien with two heads.
A really sexy alien with two heads.
“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?”
She flashes him a grin and takes the next corner a little gentler. I only skid a few inches across the seat, rather than nearly falling out of it entirely.
“Grew up on farm,” she says. “Not a lot else to do out on those backroads. You think this is impressive, you should see me tackle a cornfield in a mower.”
The tires screech one last time, and I can’t say I’m not relieved when we brake outside a large building, finally coming to a standstill for the first time since we jumped into this death trap.
“Here you are,” she says.
I frown in confusion. We’re parked outside . . . a hospital?
But Gage and Freddie are already jumping out of their doors, so I guess there’s nothing left for it but to follow. I pause halfway out my door to lean over the seat and hug Lacey hard from behind.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “Seriously.”
“Hey, what are neighbors for?” She flashes me a wink, then shoves me gently toward the doors. “Go on. He’s gonna need your help for this one.”
I frown, still not understanding what we’re doing here. Or what the hell just happened in the last hour of my life. One minute I thought I was about to die. Now . . . ?
But I nod at her, waving as she takes off around the corner, driving a little less insanely now. Only a little.
When I glance back, Freddie stands off to one side, and Gage is already entering the sliding doors of the memorial hospital.
“What are we doing here?” I ask Freddie, but he shakes his head.
“Ask him.”
Confused does not begin to describe the riot of emotions warring in my gut right now.
Gage, pretty obviously, just saved my life. Saved my brother’s life while he was at it, too. Yet our lives wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if not for him.
Or, maybe they would have, but someone else would’ve gotten us into the mess. One of those other faceless idiots. Not him. Not something I actually was falling for. Not someone I trusted. Not someone I gave everything I had to, only to be chewed up and spat out in return.
Maybe Gage had the right motivations all along, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a criminal. He worked with Aaron for years before I met him. He’s not trustworthy.
I cannot trust him. And if I cannot trust him, how can I love him?
I stare at his back as he speaks to the front desk woman. I stare for so long, so intently, that it takes me a long time to realize he’s having a conversation with the woman. A conversation that’s making the woman’s eyes go wide, and her mouth fall open in seeming shock.
I shake myself, and inch closer to him.
“You’re sure?” she’s saying. “Absolutely sure.”
“It’s time,” he says. “It’s been time for a while, honestly.”
“Then I’ll send the doctors in.” The woman glances at me now, but if she’s curious, she doesn’t say anything. Just spares a small, sad smile for Gage as she waves us past. Freddie lurks in the waiting room, and when I shoot him a curious glance, he just shakes his head. Mouths, I’ll stay here.
“What are we doing?” I ask as I fall into step beside Gage. The first words I’ve spoken to him since our fight outside the motel room. Since I decided he’d betrayed me. Betrayed Freddie. Damned us both.
“Saying goodbye,” he replies, simply. We reach the door to a small, quiet room in a near-empty wing of the hospital. A rush of memories strike me suddenly. Mom, in her final weeks. In and out of wards. Emergency rooms at first, but later, after it became clear that she wasn’t going to win this fight, a wing like this. Quiet. Almost peaceful.
Full of people waiting to fall asleep for good.
“Sloan, I . . . ” Gage’s voice catches in his throat.
I glance up at him, startled to find his eyes red and bloodshot.
“I know I can never make up for what I did to you. For using you, at first. I hope saving you was . . . I hope that in some way helped, but it still doesn’t make it right.
I do too, even though I’m not quite sure yet what’s going on. What this place is. What we’re doing here.
“Maybe this will help you understand me, a little bit. Why I did what I did.” He pushes open the door, and I blink at the dim, quiet room, empty save for the soft beep of machinery, the mechanical in-out breath of someone deep asleep. And a woman, curled in the middle of the hospital bed sheets, her dark hair fanned around her head, the same color as Gage’s.
“Sloan, this is the reason I agreed to work for Aaron, all those years ago. When she was still . . . still alive. Still awake. He swore he could help her.”
I wet my lips, unsure what to say, how to ask what I want to ask. Turns out I don’t need to. He fills in the obvious blanks for me.
“Sloan, this is my mother.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Gage
We don’t stay long at the hospital. There’s not time for it, and anyway, I’d said everything I needed to say a long time ago. I stopped by today to let her go. To make sure I was the one next to her, and not Aaron, when she finally breathed her last.
But I already grieved. I already made my peace with her death. I hope, maybe, sharing this last moment with Sloan will in some ways make up for everything I could not share with her before. For every lie I told, and every promise I broke. I hope she can understand me now.
That’s probably all I can hope for, but I’ll take it. I’ll take anything that keeps me from being just one bad nightmare memory in her mind, if we don’t wind up together. If she leaves me now, I’ll completely understand, but maybe, just maybe, she’ll remember me fondly.
From the hospital, we take the rental car Lacey got us and hit the turnpike. In Elizabeth, far enough away from Atlantic City that they won’t trace us too quickly, Freddie pulls over at a rest stop and borrows their phone in the back room.
Sloan hovers over his shoulder, an anxious frown on her face, as we both listen to him recite the story. He tells the police that the wire recordings are already in their mailbox. He and I dropped them off this morning, before we met at the casino, what already feels like a lifetime ago.
Sloan’s frown deepens, though, as Freddie tells them that Aaron has the money. She glances at me, and I tap a finger to my lips. Let her brother play this last one out, I want to say. We’re so close.
“You’r
e sure?” Freddie is saying. “It’ll be enough to arrest him on?”
Whatever they say on the other end, it must be reassuring, because he sinks back in his seat, visible relief spreading across his features.
At that, Sloan leaves him to it, storms across the small gas station back room to grab my arm and drag me out into the convenience store. I check the mirror in the corner, the one the store owner uses to watch for pickpockets, but there’s no one else in the store aside from the cashier, who’s sitting on the counter texting.
“What the hell is going on?” Sloan hisses under her breath. “Why didn’t the FBI come this morning? Why did Freddie tell them Aaron has the money? That case was empty.”
“Your brother requested witness protection guarantees for all three of us,” I say.
“And? So what?” She tosses her head.
God, I love it when she gets sassy like this. “And they turned down his request.”
She groans loudly. “Great. They didn’t even send in anyone for him today either, is that it? They just wanted to let my brother get murdered so they’d have an easier case to pin on Aaron?”
I bob my head from side to side. “I doubt they would phrase it quite like that, but . . . that’s about how it looked to me and him, when we heard their reply, yeah.”
She tosses her hands in the air. “What the hell do we do now?”
Now, I can’t help it anymore. Now, the grin I’ve been holding back, the olly olly oxen free that’s been building in me all day, every time we got away with another thing we should never have been able to pull off—losing the tails, making it this far out of Atlantic City, planting the wires with the cops. Watching Freddie relax when he heard that Aaron was really going to be arrested.
Sloan stares at me. Sloan starts to smile too, though I can tell she’s fighting it, that she doesn’t want to give in and mirror me right now, or find this in any way amusing. “No,” she says, though the budding smile betrays her. “No, you guys, tell me you fucking did not.”
“Five hundred thou is a lot of money, darlin’.” I shrug one shoulder. “Would be a shame to let it fall into the wrong hands.”
I’m not sure if it’s actual happiness or just hysteria, but when she launches herself at me, arms extended, I can’t resist. I catch her in a tight embrace, pull her body hard against mine and breathe in the sweet, familiar scent of her, my head bent over hers, my nose buried in her long black hair.
This, this is what I’ve been fighting for all these years. This is what’s really worth giving up everything for. I’m not really giving anything up, when you think about it, because she’s the entire world to me.
She shifts against me and I can’t stand the strain in my gut, the stirring in my blood. I want to drag her into the restroom right now, fuck decency. I want to remind her that she is mine and I am hers, and if we’re together, we don’t need anything else but this.
Then she stiffens. Seems to remember herself, remember me, and she tugs away before I can draw her in tighter.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks, arms crossed over her chest, eyes averted. Oh, she feels it too. This pull between us. She wants me every ounce as much as I want her, whether she’s going to admit it or not.
That, alone, is enough to give me hope. To make the smile come back, even though there’s still a gap between us. Because, I realize, it’s a gap I can close.
“Well, we were talking about that.” I cast a glance toward the back room. “How do you feel about colder climates?
Chapter Forty
Sloan
We roll up to the border crossing in the wee hours, after an all-night drive and a quick pit stop in upstate New York to meet with a guy Gage knows. I don’t ask too many questions when Gage pops into a motorcycle shop and returns half an hour later with three very convincing (to my eye, anyway) Canadian passports. At this point, I’m not sure I want to know everything about his life.
But I’m glad he shared some of it with me. That he trusted me enough to tell me about his mother. To invite me to be there with him when she went.
I know what that feels like. And maybe my mom didn’t hang on as long as his, but I can’t blame him for holding out hope, despite her condition. If my mom had fallen asleep, and all we’d had for a diagnosis was “maybe she’ll wake up, maybe she won’t”? I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing.
I study Gage’s profile in the dim light of the street lamps. Freddie’s taking his turn at the wheel now, and Gage sits in the backseat beside me, eyes fixed on the windshield, silent and contemplative. We haven’t spoken much the whole trip, aside from to bring up logistics. Pick up what and when and where and arrival times and rehearsing for the border crossing.
We could park somewhere and wait until a more normal hour. Some time of day that would be less suspicious than four going on five in the morning, not even a hint of dawn tinging the horizon yet.
But there’s an unspoken agreement between us, that we all want to get this over with, put the rest of today as far behind us as we possibly can, as soon as we can.
A couple miles from the crossing, though, at one of those “last rest stops before Canada” places, my brother veers off the road.
“I’m sorry, guys, I just need to wash my face or something. Wake up.”
We both nod sleepily. Watch through drowsy eyes as he parks the car.
“Half an hour, tops,” he promises, and then he starts into the rest stop.
Gage meets my eye in the rear view mirror. “How are you holding up?”
I force a tiny, weak smile. “I’ve been worse.”
He turns toward me, and I can’t help it. I mirror the action to face him. In the darkened car, his eyes glitter darkly. “Sloan . . . ”
I watch him, silent.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Repeats that a couple of times. I know how he feels. After today, I have no words left either. After today, I have no idea where we are heading. What the future holds. I can’t see anything beyond our next step. Cross the border. Get out of here. Figure the next part out when we arrive.
My head swims with questions, and suddenly I don’t want answers. All I want anymore is him.
He must read my mind. Before I can say a word, he closes the gap between us. Catches my jaw in one hand, wraps his other around my waist. I stare up at him in the faint light of the rest stop lights, share his breath, breathe in his familiar, heady scent. Then he dips toward me, slowly, so damn slowly it almost kills me, and finally, his lips sink into mine.
He tastes like a promise. He feels like finally knowing I’m safe, after days on the run. I wrap my arms around his neck, and his hand at my waist slides lower, cups my side, squeezes my hip hard. His fingers inch beneath the hem of my jeans and I dig my nails into his neck to draw him closer.
For a split second, my sane brain kicks in. “My brother . . . ” I cast a quick glance toward the rest stop. It’s dim, looking almost deserted. No sign of Freddie anywhere. But then, he said he’d take a while in there.
Gage pulls me back under his spell when he sinks his teeth into the soft, sensitive spot where my neck meets my jaw. He bites, licks, kisses his way down my throat to bury his face in my chest, his tongue lapping at me as his free hand cups my tit, pinches my nipple between his fingers, rolling me until I’m so hard he can feel me even through my bra.
I groan and grind against him. Fuck it. I need him today, if ever.
I let him lay me down along the back seat, the leather digging into my back, creaking faintly beneath us as he unzips himself, and I wriggle my jeans down to my knees. We’re desperate, needy, adrenaline-driven. The rush of our life-or-death escape earlier hits hard, and I’m practically trembling with the force of it.
Or maybe just trembling from him. The crush of his mouth against mine, the slip of his fingers down my panties, the way he clenches my ass so hard it makes me arch up into him, gasping.
His hand traces down my ass, then glides up my slit, making my legs shake
where they’re pressed against the car door. He keeps his eyes on me, watching my every move like he can’t get enough of me. He keeps our eyes locked as he presses his finger into me, slowly, an inch at a time, making me squirm beneath him with want. He slides it in and out, once, twice, swirling along my inner walls, making me gasp every time he hits my front wall, and the sensitive spot at its center.
He grins when I gasp, and adds another finger, both gliding in deep this time. I groan softly, as he dips to catch my ear between his teeth and bite gently, just hard enough to set every nerve ending from my neck down aflame.
My knees dig into the car door and steam clouds the windows around us but neither of us can stop ourselves. I reach down for his jeans, trace the hard outline of his cock through them, and savor the way it makes his arms clench, his breathing catch just a little. I love affecting him as much as he does me.
He adds a third finger inside of me, his hand gliding in and out in steady hard thrusts, and my hips buck, even as I tear at his zipper. His cock springs free, and I wrap both hands around his slick, hard member, savoring the velvety smooth feeling of him, and yet the steel-hard strength in him. His breathing catches again, and I lean forward just enough to lick him from base to tip, catching a drop of his pre-cum on my tongue. His hand inside me picks up pace, and I grasp him hard with both hands, stroking his length, feeling every inch of him, as he delves into every inch of my pussy.
Our breath quickens together, and before long, I can’t help it. My whole body shivers as I peak into an orgasm, his fingers still driving into me, keeping it going, and then his pinky presses into my ass, suddenly, a spark of pain and pleasure in the middle of the peak that makes me cry out. It’s hard to make my hands work, there’s so many sensations ricocheting through my body, but I keep stroking him, harder and faster, wanting to bring him to the same climax I’ve reached. Just as I’m about to finish him, though he presses me back against the seat hard, pulls my hands from him to grab his cock himself. He shoves my shirt up around my shoulders, presses his cock between my tits, and squeezes me hard on either side, his fingers digging into me as he thrusts against my chest, hard and fast, his breath short. A few more thrusts and his hot come spills across my chest, dripping down my shoulders and my neck. I wipe my hand across my chest, bring it to my lips to lick the taste of him from my fingers, even as he collapses across me.