by Vivi Paige
Deryk appeared in the mouth of the fissure, panting and out of breath. I squirmed my way out to him and threw my arms around his waist, burying my face in his chest.
“I’m so sorry I ran away,” I said. “I just don’t know what was going through my head.”
“We don’t have time to talk about this right now,” Deryk said, running his hand through my hair while he stared with adoring eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“No, just a couple scrapes and cuts,” I said. “I heard gunfire.”
Deryk nodded.
“Will and Joe are keeping them busy, but we need to get out of here. It won’t take them long to pick up our trail thanks to the damn bear.”
He took my hand and led us fleeing up over the top of the ridge. Deryk glanced back, looking down at my feet.
“I approve of your footwear,” he said.
“Thanks, they’re a little big but nothing three layers of socks couldn’t fix.” My toes swam in a sea of sweat, but at least I could run and had protection from the upthrust roots and knobby rocks in our path.
We reached the top of the ridge, and Deryk called for a halt. He peered down intently toward the mill, using a pair of goggles, which apparently let him see further and in the dark.
“Will and Joe have fled into the woods. The mercs rushed their position. We don’t have much time before they come after us.”
He turned to me and unstrapped a belted holster from his shoulder. Deryk held the holstered gun out to me, and I awkwardly took it. He helped strap it in place on my body and then handed me a box of shells. I thrust them into my billowed dress shorts as best I could.
“Do you know how to use a gun?” he asked.
“I’ve fired my dad’s a few times, out in the country when we visited Grandpa,” I said. “But it was a little twenty-two, not this monster.”
“Just don’t jerk the trigger,” Deryk instructed. “Squeeze. Now come on, we have to go.” He tugged me along, but I realized we weren’t going toward the lights of his manor.
“Deryk, we’re going the wrong way,” I said. “Your home is back there.”
“The manor will be the first place they check for us,” I said. “And unfortunately, the only backup there is Jimmy the Bull. We’re going to try for the highway and flag down a passing motorist.”
“Will they give us a ride?” I asked.
“They will,” he said, hefting his gun. I frowned and he sighed. “This isn’t a game, Ella. We’re not going to hurt anyone, but if we’re going to get out of this alive, we’re going to have to bend those inflexible morals of yours a little.”
“I know, but do I have to be happy about it?” I blurted. “All right, lead on.”
“Ella…”
“I said lead on,” I snapped. He turned and took my hand, plunging us down the steep slope of the opposite edge of the ridge.
“The interstate is about two miles west,” he said as we moved along a game trail. “Speed is our best option now. They’ll be moving cautiously to avoid ambushes from the other two.”
“Do you think Will and Joe will be all right?” I asked.
“Probably. You’re the one they really want.”
I felt a chill run down my spine at that. Being hunted was not exactly a comforting feeling. Deryk led the way as we sprinted up inclines, ducked under branches, and splashed through chill shallow streams. The landscape was ironically beautiful in the moonlight, which did nothing but make me long for safety to be able to enjoy its aesthetics.
Deryk glanced over his shoulder and cursed.
“They’re on the same trail as us,” he said. His head swiveled about, and then he pointed to our left. “There’s another trail just over that stream. We’ll use that one.”
Deryk had me step carefully over the stream, so the splashing wouldn’t alert the Coachmen to our presence. Then we fast-walked with as much stealth as possible up the incline to the alternate trail.
For a time, we raced in relative quiet in the darkness, not speaking. Our heavy breathing, my thudding heartbeat, and the patter of our boots on the hard-packed dirt trail were the only sounds joining the relentless insect cacophony.
We paused to catch our breath on the top of a ridge, looking back down below us. Flashlights swished about, their cones of radiance piercing the gloom. Deryk cursed and spat.
“They’re doubling back. They must have realized we gave them the slip back at the stream,” he said.
“How long do we have?” I stood bent over, with my hands on my knees, panting like a landed fish.
“Not long. Here, drink,” he said, trying to hand me a canteen. I shook my head and reached into my pack to get a plastic bottle of water. Gus peeked his head out, twitching his nose.
“Uh, hold still. Let me kill it,” Deryk said.
I turned away from him, an adrenal burst providing me with instant stamina.
“You leave Gus alone,” I said. “He helped me escape… well, sort of.”
“Fine, you can bring the rat,” Deryk agreed. “But if he bites me, I’ll break his little neck.”
“Don’t be mean. Are you jealous of a rat?”
“I don’t know. Let me tell it I love it and see if it runs away.”
“Fuck you,” I blurted as we crashed through the underbrush. “That wasn’t fair, Deryk. It was a low blow.”
“Sorry,” he murmured, and I believed he was sincere. “I’m sorry. I’m scared and hurt, and I’m taking it out on the wrong person. I’m the idiot who just blurted it out.”
“I never said you did anything wrong,” I said. “Did I say you did something wrong?”
“But you ran away,” Deryk countered.
“Yes, I ran away, but that doesn’t… that doesn’t mean I wasn’t… Damn it, Deryk, I’m too out of breath to do this now.”
“Fair enough,” he said, leading the way down into a ravine. He paused, sweat glistening on his face. “Hear that?”
My face split into a wide grin. “Cars. We’re close to the highway.”
“Close to freedom. Let’s go.” He dragged me along, setting a brutal pace I was barely able to sustain. I feared that if I failed to continue swishing my legs and getting my feet out in front of me, I would surely tumble to the dirt and be dragged along in his wake, bouncing off the terrain before he even noticed.
We broke through a dense copse and into a clearing. Towering, strangely bare tree trunks stood in neatly concentric rows before us. Confused, we slowed to a stop, glancing about. I could hear cars on the highway, but I couldn’t see them.
Then I noticed that the bare trees weren’t trees at all. They were concrete support pillars for the highway, which rushed over us sixty feet above.
“Oh no,” I said. “Is there some way up there? A maintenance ladder or something?”
“No,” Deryk said grimly. He turned to face the way we had come, pushing me behind him as a man broke out of the tree line. Deryk pointed his rifle at him, and the man dove to his belly in the dirt.
The sounds of shouting and crashing alerted us to the presence of others.
“Got one tango armed and have eyes on the HVT,” snapped the man who had dove into cover.
“One tango? Is it the Indian or the muscle guy?”
“Neither, it’s… son of a bitch, I think it’s Lucian Mayne’s kid.”
“Which one?”
“The whiny little goth one.”
“Oh shit then.”
A man broke out of the tree line, carrying a rifle but not bothering to aim it. He looked at Deryk with bemusement on his craggy face as my lover pointed his weapon.
“If you shoot me, boy, you condemn both of you to death,” he said in an English accent.
“You must be the leader of these morons,” Deryk said with a sneer. “Wade.”
Wade bowed his head in mock politeness, and gestured toward me. “Give me the girl, or give me my money.”
“Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t trust you to let us go,” Deryk said. “She goe
s with you over my dead body.”
“Poor choice of words,” Wade informed him.
“I’ll shoot you where you stand if your men don’t disarm now,” Deryk said, cocking his shotgun with a metallic click.
“Go ahead. I’m wearing a vest, so I’ll probably make it,” Wade said. “Then you’ll both be dead.”
“Then I’ll shoot you in the head,” Deryk said, adjusting his aim. Wade cackled.
“And you’ll still be dead. Face it, kid. You care about the skirt too much to let it end like that. Just hand her over, and you’ll get her back safe and sound once we’re paid.”
“Liar,” I accused. “They have no intention of letting me live. They want vengeance as much as money. One of them told me as much.”
“Goddamn it, Heath,” Wade spat in the grass. “All right, you got me. But you’re still going to turn her over to me because then there’s still a slim hope she’ll make it out alive.”
“No,” I said suddenly. “You’re thinking too small, Wade.”
“Excuse the fuck out of my French, but who asked you, Little Orphan Annie?”
“Your analogy is wrong as shit, and this is Deryk Mayne, Lucian’s most beloved son. You can get way more money than you ever dreamed of just off of this one ransom. Isn’t a life of luxury worth letting go of your petty revenge?”
“Ella, what are you doing?” Deryk said under his breath.
“Saving both of our lives, I hope,” I muttered back. “So, what about it? You take him and leave me to take your demands back to Lucian.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Ella,” Deryk said as they disarmed him. Wade waved them off of me.
“Let her keep it. What’s one little girl going to do with a teeny little pistol? Go tell Lucian we want our back pay. Five hundred mill of it. He’s got until midnight tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell him,” I assured Wade. “Deryk—I love you.”
Deryk flinched, and then a look of fierce, determined devotion came over his face. I now knew he would fight to remain alive to the bitter end, which was exactly why I’d told him.
“I love you, too,” he said as they shoved him down the trail. I watched them leave, my heart breaking as I saw him vanish behind the leaves.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As Ella vanished behind us under the overpass, the sounds of rushing cars fading into the background, I was shoved along by one of the mercenaries. The bald mountain of muscle was named Tiny with the most delicious of irony.
I wondered where they were taking me. Surely not back to the mill. That would be dumb or arrogant beyond belief. We clearly already knew where it was. A chilling thought occurred to me. What if they had killed both Joe and Will? That might make them confident enough to risk taking me back to the same hideaway.
It turned out, I was close to being right. They eschewed the mill itself for a lumber barn a half-mile away. Any idiot who came to check on the mill would follow our trail right to it, but my father did say the Coachmen were conceited to the point of being sloppy.
They shoved me into the barn and filed in after me, closing the door tightly. Wade looked to two of his men, one dark-haired and angry looking, the other the mountain of muscle known as Tiny.
“Tiny, Justin, go out and set up a perimeter watch. I don’t want to get snuck up on again. Do you hear me?”
“No problem, Boss.” Tiny adjusted the goggles he’d stolen from me on his face and smiled smugly in my direction. “Who knows? Maybe that sweet little thing will show up and I’ll pop her tiny head off.”
“Don’t touch her,” I snarled, and he laughed. I made for him, but two of the others grabbed me and held me back. Tiny blew me a kiss as he filed out the door.
“You’re full of spirit,” Wade commented. “All piss and vinegar. Maybe I misjudged you. Are you a whiny goth kid, or some kind of secret bad ass?”
“Tell your goons to let me go and find out,” I sputtered.
“Hmm. Didn’t your generation grow up playing video games? You have to work your way up to the boss fight.” Wade looked over at one of his men. “Hey, G, you up for a little knuckle dusting?”
“Ready and willing, Boss,” the apparent G said. He was taller than Tiny but slimmer in build. That didn’t mean I relished the idea of fighting him. Not one bit. He moved like liquid as he shrugged himself off the wall and came to stand before me. He sloughed off his bullet-proof vest as he gestured at me.
“Go ahead, let the kid go,” he said. “You ever train to fight, son? Boxing?”
G put his fists through a few combos, coming within inches of hitting me, but I didn’t so much as flinch.
“No? No boxing. How about some Tae Kwan Do?” G stood back into a martial artist’s split-legged stance and jabbed a few quick kicks in the air, both right in front of my face and over my head. “How you like that?”
“Are you going to show off all night, or are you going to fight?” I snarled.
G’s smile faded, and he spun around for one of those fancy roundhouse kicks. But Joe had taught me a long time ago that while kicks had their place, when you used one, you were turning yourself into a one-legged man.
I snapped the steel toe of my boot into his knee while his weight was fully supported by one leg. He crumpled to the floor, screaming and holding his leg.
Wade burst into laughter, as did the rest of his crew. Well, except for this one redheaded guy who went to help G.
“Damn, but if G hasn’t had that coming for a while.” Wade chuckled. “I told you that chop saki shit was going to be your downfall, G.”
“Fuck you, man.” G rolled around.
“Heath, keep him quiet or I’ll shoot you both,” Wade snapped. He turned his gaze on me and grinned. “Okay, kid. I obviously underestimated you. Let’s see how you do against a more capable opponent.”
Wade looked over to one of his men and arched his brows. “Tarver, go switch places with Tiny. Tell him he’s needed in here.”
“Aww,” the apparent Tarver said with a frown. “You mean I don’t get to see little rich boy get his ass kicked?”
“We’ll give you the play by play after,” Wade assured him. “Go.”
Tiny soon returned, slipping out of his vest and then his shirt to show off considerable muscle mass, but he moved much slower than G.
“Heard what you did to my man, G,” he said. “That was pretty cold. Not honorable to go for a man’s knee.”
With that he lashed out with his boot, forcing me to skim backward to avoid having a broken kneecap. Wade cackled with mirth as Tiny rushed me. I retreated back over a stack of roughhewn logs, scrambling for purchase as he mounted the pile in pursuit.
I climbed up to the chute, which had been used to sluice logs along in a shallow stream of water. It still contained fetid and brackish water in places. As Tiny climbed up onto the sluice, I kicked some of the nasty water right into his face.
Tiny sputtered, scrambling up onto the sluice despite his momentary blindness. I laid into him with my steel-toed boots, but he protected himself well, and I mostly caught him on the shoulders and thick back.
Tiny grabbed my ankle and shoved me back. I hit the sluice hard, splashing into more of the gross water, and barely made it back to my feet as he swung a massive overhand right.
I ducked underneath, grabbing him around the waist in an attempt to knock him prone, but he splayed his legs wide and fought off the effort. His hands beat a rapid tattoo on my back as he sought to ensnare my neck with his heavily muscled arm.
I knew if he got me into that position, it would be the end of me. I slammed my fist right between his legs. Tiny cried out as I did so again and again. His grip loosened enough that I was able to scramble back.
“You dirty mother fucker,” he said, holding his crotch. With a sudden surge, he launched his foot forward. I couldn’t dodge out of the way of that frozen-turkey-sized boot and took it flush on my chest. I flew backward on the sluice, slamming down hard on my back and then bouncing over th
e side.
I hit the pile of logs and then tumbled off, rolling with the momentum to eat up some of the impact. Tiny clambered down after me as I struggled back to my knees and then my feet, making swirling patterns in the sawdust.
“You want to take a minute and catch your breath?” he asked nicely.
I flipped him twin birds, and he cackled. I pretended to stumble, my hands snatching up dual grips of the sawdust. Then I sprang up and tossed it right into his eyes.
Tiny coughed and cursed, stumbling backward while frantically wiping his face with his hands. I launched myself on him, smothering him with blows. Each and every shot was a dirty one—kidneys, testicles, eyes, throat. It didn’t matter so long as it hurt. A lot.
Tiny crumpled over into the fetal position, and I gave up kicking him when I realized the fight was over and I was just wasting my energy.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around hard and off balance. I caught Wade’s bare knuckles right across my cheek, sending me into a further spiral down to the hard sawdust-covered floor. He moved in for the kill, lashing out with his boots for my head. I scrambled back, taking stinging blows on my forearms and hands but managing to avoid the worst of the blows. Wade backed me against the wall, and as I struggled to use its surface to regain my feet, he barreled into me, using his greater mass to pin me.
“Let’s see you dance all pretty now,” he said, his fetid breath blowing across my face. I spat blood in his eyes, drove my knee into his crotch, and somersaulted under his armpit to regain my feet behind hm.
This time it was my turn for a sucker punch. As Wade turned around, I clipped him on the temple. He spun in a tight circle and fell face-first to the ground. I jumped on his back, seating myself near the curve, and wrapped my hands around his face. My fingers sought his eye sockets, and I clawed and squeezed while a guttural growl escaped from between my clenched teeth. This bastard took Ella from me…
Suddenly men were pulling me off of him and dragging me away. I lashed out with my feet even as my arms were held, connecting a few hard blows to his back as they dragged me off.