It turned out they weren’t going very far, Cole pulling to the side of the road after only a few minutes of riding.
“What’s wrong?” she hollered up.
And then he cut the engine.
She said it again, quieter this time.
“Get off,” he said.
“What?”
A wave of fear shook through her. Get off?
“Why?”
When his body moved, so did hers, Annica sliding to the side until she was suddenly up in his arms somehow. It happened fast and she was now being lifted off the bike. He placed her down on the street next to the bike. His smile reassured her.
“What’s up?” she said, trying to sound normal about it, like she wasn’t just worried that he’d revert back into the menace she originally thought he was. The security guard at the facility. The gun pointed at her face.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah . . . Why?”
“You look kinda scared or something.”
“No.”
“Did the ride spook you?”
“No.”
“I just wanted to get away from the house.”
They were away from the house. Away from any house.
She looked to both ends of the road. All empty. Along one side, a cliff perched above the green canopy of a forest. The ocean below that. Across the street, the mountainside continued up, steeper, the close crashing of waves echoing off the rock. She turned back down to the canopy, looking for a trail head. Maybe that was why Cole stopped the bike where he had. Her wondering, as well as thinking, came to an abrupt end as soon as he’d touched her again. She was already against him, Cole moving into her silently, his arms around her, dropping down to her waist, his face dipping to hers. Annica tilted her head back and felt his lips again.
Several waves crashed ashore.
They pulled apart, Annica a little reluctantly.
She played with his shirt to tide her over, hands bunching up in black cotton. She smiled up at him and said, “So you just wanted to get me away from them so you could do this?”
“Do what?”
“Make out.”
He waited a moment, then said, “Yeah. Was that too unreasonable? Just a few minutes?”
“No,” Annica said.
“Just a little drive,” he said with a shrug.
“Just a little.”
“No big deal.”
“None,” she said.
And then her phone buzzed inside her pocket.
She cursed at it, her hand leaving Cole and already going there. “You know who that is,” she said.
“Probably.”
“It’s probably him.” Jackson. Checking up on her.
“In all seriousness,” Cole said, “is he your boss or something?”
“No,” she said, her hand at her pocket. Waiting.
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“You sure? I mean, I know he’s got Mira, but—”
“No,” Annica said, her jaw tightening with the word. “No, it’s not like that. At all.”
“Okay,” he said, looking down through the canopy. “Just making sure.”
“Sure.”
“Sorry,” he said.
The phone had stopped ringing. But Annica had almost forgotten about it now. “Why did you say that?”
“Did I upset you?”
“No,” Annica said. Strangely, he hadn’t. If she thought about it, Jackson’s name had changed entirely in her head since the moment she’d started following the strange man who had caught her eye on the street. “I’m just curious.”
“I was just curious, too.”
“About me and Jackson?”
“I sensed something,” Cole said. “I don’t know. Chemistry? I mean, I know you guys are good friends, so . . .”
She took a step back. “Is this the same type of chemistry you sensed from me and Ethan?”
“No.”
“You seem to be sensing a lot of chemistry tonight.”
“No,” he said. “Aside from us, you mean?”
“Pretty much with whomever I talk to.”
“I was just teasing you,” Cole said, “about the Ethan thing.” He smiled and cocked his head to the side and said, “Come on, don’t be so easy.”
“Yeah, maybe I won’t.”
Cole said, “Easy to antagonize, I mean.”
“That, too,” Annica said, pulling out her phone and checking the screen, and seeing Jackson’s name appear as the missed call. “Shit, it was him.”
“I knew it,” Cole said. “Just call and tell him you’re in the middle of an interview.”
Annica sighed. “We already used that excuse.”
“We did?”
“I did. What did you say we were doing down there?”
Cole shrugged. There was something about his smile that seemed to imply that he’d told them everything.
“Cole?”
“You really are easy,” he said, laughing to himself. “Why would I tell them anything like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“So are you going to call him and ask permission?” Cole’s shit-eating grin faded when his face lit up in a pale glow. His focus swung off her face, his gaze over her shoulder and narrowing at something in the distance. Annica turned and saw a car approaching.
“What kind of car does he drive?” Cole asked.
Annica couldn’t remember. When she looked back to Cole, he was already at his bike, walking it off the side of the road. “What are you doing?” She followed him without knowing.
They stood a few feet lowered from the road, in a trailhead, the dirt bike camouflaged behind a boulder and a bushy clump of areca plants.
“Get down,” Cole said, his arm pulling her close. They hid together, crouched in the areca. Cole seemed to know who was in the car.
“What’s going on?”
His face was grim. “Maybe you should call him.”
“Cole?”
“After this car.”
She could see up over the street, across to the mountainside. It was glowing brighter from the headlights. Brighter, almost there.
And then the squealing of old brakes, the engine cooling down quietly. More brake noise, the engine ticking now. The sound and the light were steady. Stopped.
“Shh,” Cole said after she’d turned to him. She wanted to see what his face looked like, to measure the concern. But when they made eye contact, he just smiled.
“Having fun?” she asked.
“Shh.” And then with his face closer, mouth to ear, he whispered, “Sorta,” the word sending a nice little wave of shivers down her neck.
Annica leaned her head against his chest and waited. His heartbeat, slow and steady now.
She heard a car door open. But no footsteps.
She whispered, “What happens if he comes down here?”
“Who?”
“Whoever.”
“We can either run or fight,” he whispered. “Or you can run and I’ll fight. I’m packing.”
“I bet you are.”
“I can show it to you if you don’t believe me.”
“That’s okay,” Annica said, finding a way to laugh in the middle of their latest sticky situation. “Actually, I’ve already felt it.”
“Oh?”
“On the beach. Remember?” They both paused for a minute, listening for what came next from the car. Still no footsteps. Annica said, “We’re talking about your gun, right?”
“Of course. What else would we be talking about?”
“Exactly,” Annica said. “Way to keep us on topic.”
“It’s not so much me as it’s whoever that person is,” Cole said, motioning to the road, to the car. “He’s definitely keeping me on topic.”
“Should I call Jackson? Quietly?”
“Yeah, it might just be him,” Cole said, “looking for us. In which case, we can stay hiding until he leaves. And maybe long after that.”<
br />
Annica liked that idea. She felt his hand again, inching along the small of her back.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She almost forgot what it was . . .
The phone. The call. Jackson.
She squinted at the screen. There was a new message. From Jackson. He’d typed out a few frantic questions, trying to figure out where they’d gone off to. A new message came in as she read through the first: Take cover.
19
Annica
Annica showed the latest message to Cole. He repeated it in a quiet mumble, followed by a “Hmm.”
“We’re definitely taking cover,” Annica whispered.
Cole pushed the phone back toward her. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Go ahead what?”
“Get back to him. Tell him where we are.”
She started typing. “And I guess I should ask him what the hell he meant by take cover.”
A moment later, her phone lit up with updates about “security” tracking down someone who’d been lurking around the beach house.
“Security?” Annica said to Cole.
“You know Jackson,” he said. “I’ve only known him for a few hours, but I can tell he’s thorough enough to have a security team working the perimeter. Unless it’s normal to have a party in the middle of a major mission.”
“So, we were like the bait?”
The sound of a car door closing bounced of the rock face across the street, followed by the sound of an accelerating engine. Whoever it was, “security” or their lurker was now leaving at a high rate of speed.
“Let’s stay here,” Cole said.
“Hiding here in these plants?” Whether the bugs were just in her head or up her pants, a creeping sensation made Annica spring to her feet. She wanted to move away, back to the road maybe. Somewhere clear and open.
Or the beach . . .
“Where are you going?” Cole said.
“I don’t know.” She looked up toward the road again.
“Don’t go up there.”
“He drove off.”
“Even if he or she did, we’ll have to wait before using the bike again.”
“Because it’s too loud?” But in the silence of Cole’s response, she knew the answer. She looked at her phone again and said, “So what should we do then? Call Jackson?”
When he finally answered his phone, Jackson sounded out of breath. He also sounded more scared than she’d felt while waiting for the car to leave. She explained where she’d run off to, but it barely took the sharpened edge off his tone.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your security?” she asked.
“Tell you? I thought you would have assumed.”
“I try not to do that. It gets in the way of work.”
“What work? Journalism?”
“Is Ethan still there?”
“Everyone’s still here,” Jackson said. “I wish you would’ve stayed, too. What the hell are you guys doing?”
“Nothing,” Annica said, suddenly wanting to switch the call off the speaker setting. She had been watching Cole’s face in the dark, how he tried looking away and disinterested when Jackson went into his familiar protector routine. “We just wanted to get away for awhile.”
“Get away where?”
“I had more questions for him.”
“Yeah, okay. We’ll go with that.” Jackson said. “But now we’ve got a real problem.”
She huffed, resisting clenching her jaw. He was only looking out for her, in his own way. She knew that, but it still bugged her. She was a grown woman. “So you expect me to stay under your wing this whole time?”
“What? Under my what?”
Cole was looking straight at her now. His face had softened, his hands held with palms facing her, motioning down. Slow down.
“Okay,” Jackson said, coming back to the conversation after sharing a few murmurs with someone at the house. “We need you guys to hang tight for a minute. Do what you gotta do. Talk, interview, whatever.” She caught Cole’s smile. “Just stay off the roads until we can finish our sweep,” Jackson said, then hung up.
“Looks like I rubbed off on you a little bit,” Cole said, grinning.
“How so?”
“Challenging authority.”
“No,” she said. “Jackson isn’t authority.”
“You sure?”
She rolled her eyes, slipping the phone back into her pocket. “Okay. Should we go for a walk?”
“Great idea,” Cole said. “I found a path we can try. Looks like it leads down to the beach.”
“Oh. The beach, huh?”
“Or we could stay here in the jungle,” Cole said. “Get eaten alive by bugs.”
She looked him over, how he kept watching the road, scanning back and forth and then back to her. Through all of his usual outward bravado, even Cole was a little worried now. Or at least . . . concerned. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go to the beach.”
They walked single file down through the thick brush, the soft clay giving way slightly beneath her feet. At every turn of the path, she was met by a whole new bouquet of flora perfumes. Jasmine. Then hibiscus. Everything teeming and alive here. It felt so vibrant, even at night. She could sense its energy as she walked through the close darkness of the jungle, the heat of the day still trapped in plant cells. She had heat trapped in her bones, too, and desires, wants on the cellular level that only Cole could satisfy.
It was fitting that they were on their way back to the beach. Where the interviewing had all started. And where they could continue it in peace. Maybe even finish it. She was definitely feeling motivated enough. Industrious enough. Hot enough, despite their latest wave of danger.
When she slowed up at a particularly steep portion of the trail, Annica felt his warmth cover her. His hands on her shoulders.
“You got this?” he said. “Can you see?”
The moonlight filtered through the canopy and shone in shards of pale blue against the clay path. Some of the rocks were shiny, perhaps from ocean mist. The slope was steep, but she had Cole to guide her.
“Don’t slip,” he said, laughing, perhaps for her nerves. She, at least, felt the need for such an outlet. Something to take up some of that energy. She moved slowly, avoided the rocks, her feet sucking into the clay, his hands by her shoulders.
“Or I could just pick you up again,” Cole said.
She suppressed a shiver at the thought of being pressed firmly against his chest again. “No, I got it.” She walked slowly but steadily, her weight leaned back. And then her weight was completely swept off her feet, her body spinning in the air over Cole’s shoulder. His laughter vibrated through it. Annica tried struggling free, but she was upside down, hair hanging, hands stretching down his back, feeling him work his way down the path under her.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, staring at his ass. She stopped struggling. “Okay,” she said, “I guess you can just carry me all the way down.”
“That’s the idea,” he said.
Did he have some sort of obsession with carrying her?
“Cole?”
“Yeah?”
“Never mind,” she said, resting her head against his back. She couldn’t see where they were headed, but could feel his pace slowing. The moonlight had gotten stronger. The breeze, too, was more open and flowing. On the ground, clay had been replaced with sand. He took a few more steps, the ground going from dark to light.
“Ready?” he said before swinging her back around, over his shoulder, and dropping her gently on her feet in the sand. She was facing away from the beach, looking up at him. “This whole thing,” she said, “seems to be going right along with your plan. Isn’t it?”
“What plan? Surviving?”
“Finding another way onto this beach with me.”
“I guess that’s part of it, too,” he said. “That’s part of my survival.”
“You sure about that?” Annica moved in closer to him. “I feel like
I’ll decrease your chances.” She slipped a hand in his and then pulled away, pulling him with her as she walked along the edge of the forest, careful not to get too close to the ocean. Careful not to be in the open and visible. Careful of another rogue wave. “In case someone’s watching down the beach,” Annica said.
“What do you mean?”
“Staying close like this, to the cover.”
“Oh,” Cole said, “for cover.” His voice stayed quiet and mysterious, as if he hadn’t thought about it.
“If there’s someone looking for us, they could be looking down the length of the beach.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Got it.”
“Do you think we screwed up?”
“Why?” he said, his face suddenly lighting up with a smile. And then a chuckle. “No. You mean by coming out here?”
“My judgment is definitely a little off.”
“Mine, too,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t at all, so far.”
“This could be perfect,” he said.
Perfect. What was he talking about? Although, as they walked along curving edge of the jungle, she had the vague idea of perfection lurking behind one of these shady areas, some place where they could find it together. Where they could make it, inside themselves.
“Here,” Cole said, pointing to a dark shape of rocks. “Why don’t we sit on those rocks.”
“Those are lava rocks, Cole.”
“Oh,” he said. “You believe in the curse? I don’t think it applies if you sit on them.”
She grinned. “Unless you want me to sit in your lap the whole time?”
“We could do that.” He pulled her in close again, their sides touching. “Why don’t we do that here on the sand so I can be comfortable, too?”
She considered it, but a sound up above, along the road, drew her attention away. “What was that?” It came and went, perhaps the washing drone of a car speeding by. “I wonder if that was Jackson, or the first car coming back.”
Dark Salvation (DARC Ops Book 7) Page 15