Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  He ran his tongue over his lip and winced. A stitch would be worthless there since the split was already scabbing over. With a shrug, he shook his head, and the movement tilted him off balance. If the tub hadn’t been next to the sink to slow him down, he’d have fallen onto the floor.

  “Shit,” he grumbled, precariously perched on the tub rim, one hand cupped over his manhood to keep at least part of his body covered.

  Still waiting by the bed, she adjusted the towel on her arm, and stared at him. “It’s beautiful outside. Not a cloud in the sky, if you can believe that.” Then, when he didn’t say anything, she asked, “Are you sure you don’t need stitches? Maybe for the back of your head?”

  When he looked at her, she glanced down at her feet, guilty. “My head’s not bleeding. Just hurts like hell,” he complained.

  She nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that. I thought you were going to kill him.”

  Drake tried to frown, but it hurt, so he let his face go slack and closed his eyes. “Why are you sorry? Connor’s the one who did this to me.”

  “Actually…”

  He opened one eye with a wince, and watched her fidget with the towel. “What?” he asked.

  Her brown hair fell off her shoulder as she looked up from her feet to meet his gaze. “You don’t remember the lamp?”

  The lamp. In his woozy state, he thought the words were code for something, and when he couldn’t decipher the meaning between the ache that roared inside his skull and the nausea that made the room spin, he gave up trying and waved a hand dismissively at her.

  “Right. Well, anyway, sorry about that,” she blurted.

  She left the tray on the bed and folded the towel beside it before making a quick escape from the room. After she closed the door, Drake reached up and gingerly ran his fingers through his hair till they found a large and sensitive lump.

  “What the shit?” he mumbled. Then he remembered the infamous lamp. Ashlyn had knocked him out cold with it. “That bitch,” he snickered, then immediately regretted it.

  At least the second time that Drake vomited on himself, he was already undressed.

  She’d brought him food, bandages, two tablets of pain medication, and four single use packs of antibiotic ointment. And by his door, when he opened it to see how bad the hallway looked, were two steaming buckets of fresh water. He dumped both into the small tub, which gave him one inch to sit in, but it was better than nothing. With a washcloth, he cleaned his face, and then the other important parts of his body, and sat in the pink water until it was almost as cold as the air outside. Getting out of the tub proved to be much harder than getting in, and at one point, Drake was certain he would have to call for Kris or Jacks to haul him out. There was nothing wrong with his legs, in fact, his legs were the only things on his body that didn’t hurt. He was certain one of his ribs was bruised or worse, and his hands were cracked and swollen, but it was his head that caused the most problems. Every time he looked up or down, his vision narrowed into a tunnel. When he turned his head, his balance was thrown off. If he did all three, then he risked purging his insides. It was a concussion of epic magnitude, and all he could think to do was stay awake, which was the opposite of what his body wanted. It was amazing he woke up that morning at all.

  Once he did make it out of the bathroom, he dressed in the easiest outfit he could find that would keep him from freezing, which meant he was free-balling in his sweats, because putting on boxers was an extra step that required bending at the waist. It took ten minutes just to put on socks. He sat on the bed with his legs bent at awkward angles until the deed was done, and Drake was surprised to learn how incredibly flexible his hips were. Seriously. He could be a yogi.

  The soup that Ashlyn had brought him seemed safe enough. He sniffed it first, and dipped his finger in for a taste to make sure she hadn’t dumped a box of rat poison in the meal. The crackers were stale, and he was only able to eat one. Most of the meal stayed on the tray untouched. He had zero appetite. What he needed was a cup of strong coffee, or something else that would keep him awake, like hard liquor.

  After he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, he slowly shuffled to his window and looked outside. The snow had stopped falling at some point during the night, and if he was at the lodge voluntarily, he supposed the view would have been beautiful. But the miles of white that had turned the land into one giant frozen marshmallow didn’t relax him, it just pissed him off. Half of the trees were swallowed up in snow, the firs and spruce only visible by their tops, but he could still clearly make out the curve they took up the mountain. He followed their pointed line as far as his view allowed, and saw the drift of smoke from their neighbor blowing to the east. They had also survived the blizzard.

  “Fucking great,” he mumbled at the glass.

  He couldn’t stay in his room all day; he wanted to, but he was afraid to sit down or lay on the bed. He had to move. Wrapped in the blanket, he cracked open his door enough to glance down the hall. Kris’ room was open, and there was no sign of her or the dog moving around inside. The baby, wherever Jacks had her, was either asleep or downstairs with the others. The hall was eerily quiet, but as he leaned through the doorway, there were clear signs of a struggle everywhere. Bloodstains from fists streaked the walls, and empty nails jutted out in several places where pictures had been hanging. Something was missing, too. He stepped into the hall and glanced at the stairway. The table, where the lamp had been. It, and all other debris had been cleaned up.

  “Admiring your handy work?”

  Drake snapped his head around toward the opposite end of the hall, and regretted it instantly when an explosion of tiny stars flew across his vision like a flock of birds. Connor sat in a wooden chair, balancing a large ceramic mug on his knee. His face was mangled, like Drake’s, but when he stood up steady as can be, he appeared to have come away from the fight the victor. As he walked down the hall, Drake noted that one hand was tightly wrapped in bandages, and Connor raised his mug up for Drake to get a better visual.

  “You bit me,” he said. Then he smiled at Drake, showing off a split lip of his own.

  “You kicked me in the balls. And then your girlfriend tried to kill me,” Drake grumbled.

  Connor eyed him warily and then shook his head. “You’re wrong about what happened last night.”

  Drake shifted, suddenly feeling his weight multiply by ten. He badly wanted to sit down. “Oh, I know you kicked me in the balls, they’re swollen and turned this funky color. Wanna see?” He snapped at his waistband and Connor rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.

  “Stop. That’s not what I mean,” he said.

  Drake sighed. “Look. I can’t do this right now, I’m kind of having a shit day. Come back on Tuesday, and maybe by then the knot on my head will be smaller than a baseball.” He turned to retreat into his room, but Connor grabbed at his elbow.

  “I thought she was Riley,” he blurted next to Drake’s ear. “I was half-asleep and thought it was Riley. That’s why Ash stormed out like that. It’s not what you think.”

  Drake pulled his arm free and swayed into the doorframe. “Right, that’s a convenient way to excuse how your dick ended up in another woman. Anyway, I don’t care. What I think doesn’t matter, does it?” He gripped the wall to steady himself and grimaced.

  “You look like you’re going to pass out,” Connor said. “Let me help…”

  When he reached for Drake’s arm again, he smacked it away. “I’m fine. Just need to sit.”

  He turned around slowly, ignoring his blotchy peripheral vision long enough to slam the door closed in Connor’s face, even though the man was still talking to him. He counted the seven excruciating steps to the bed. When he eased himself over the edge of the mattress, his body immediately fell backwards, and despite the intense glaring sunlight that bounced off the snow outside and spotlighted the upper half of the comforter, Drake was out before his head slumped into the pillow. He didn’t dream.

  JACKS

 
Ashlyn came back downstairs without the tray in her arms, and he watched her walk into the kitchen and stare blankly at the cabinets before gathering up two of the extra buckets. They kept a metal one next to the fireplace, full to the brim, so it would be easier to divvy up hot water when needed. She crossed the room and dumped the hot water into the smaller buckets, and then hefted them back upstairs, without a word. He watched her return, passing through the main sitting area and back again into the kitchen, where she lifted one of the small windows just enough to scoop snow into a bowl until it was full. She then crossed the room and dumped the snow back into the metal bucket, and repeated this process until the bucket was full. She never looked at Lily, who was fascinated with all the comings and goings through the room. And she never talked to Jacks. Never even made eye contact.

  Before she found something else to do, he stretched out alongside Lily and cleared his throat as Ashlyn walked out of the room.

  “So, is he alive?” he asked.

  Without turning or stopping, she snapped over her shoulder, “Barely.” She dumped the plastic bowl into the sink, and then poured herself a cup of coffee and took it around the hall, where he couldn’t see her.

  “What’s her problem today?” Kris asked from the corner of the room.

  He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. She was in two layers of shirts, and sweats that were untied and hanging low on her hips. Her socks were pulled up over the cuffs, and he smiled at the mix-matched patterns. Kris’ hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and her eyes were still puffy from sleep. She looked just like a teenager was supposed to.

  He shrugged, and rolled onto his side so he could play with the baby. “No clue. But I’m betting it has something to do with that party upstairs last night.”

  Kris sighed and came closer so she could sit down on the other side of Lily, who was gurgling and batting at Jacks’ extended fingers. “Last night was rough,” Kris said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. It was rough in more ways than Jacks could tell her.

  Zoey ran through the room and into the kitchen, sniffing at the floor where her empty dog bowl was. Then she pawed at the door to be let out, whining and turning in tight circles.

  Through a yawn, Kris said to the dog, “Hold on, I’m coming.”

  But Jacks turned over on his stomach and pushed himself up onto his knees. “No, I’ll do it. You watch Lily,” he offered.

  Kris agreed, and stretched out on her side with an elbow propped. “Thanks.”

  He was already dressed, missing only his coat, which he retrieved from the rack near the door. When he opened it to step outside, he was greeted by a wall of snow. “Uh,” he stammered, looking down at the dog. “This might take a while.”

  Chapter Eight

  RILEY

  The tip of the poker turned white as I shifted it around the fire, gently shoving the wood where I wanted it to be, keeping the flames roaring, filling the treehouse with heat. Every so often I glanced up at the mirror above the mantel to see if Cole was sitting in his chair, keeping to himself. He was. Though always careful to avoid eye contact, I felt him watching me often. Probably wondering about the jar. About where the rest of the man was. He could wonder about it all he wanted, because it was a story that would never be shared.

  “Hungry?” Jin asked at my elbow, and I jumped, shoving the poker too far into the wood pile. Several logs toppled over, and one rolled out of the fireplace, landing with a sizzle by my feet. I quickly pushed it back in with the rest.

  After glaring at him, he rolled his shoulder in response. He hadn’t said much since we returned, but he’d paced by each window over a dozen times, looking for the wolves, I imagined.

  “I’m starving,” Cole complained. His reflection in the mirror stood in the center of the room, leaning against the tree trunk that ran straight through the cabin.

  “Too close,” I warned him, lifting the poker and pointing it back at the chair.

  He obliged with a grumble, falling into the seat cushion with his arms crossed, staring at the ceiling beams with a renewed sense of interest. He was bored, as we all were, but he was also our prisoner in a twisted sort of way. At least I wanted him to think that until he realized how easy it would be to simply leave on his own. The fact that he hadn’t done that yet was surprising. It could have been the extra three feet of snow he would have to traverse over to get back to his small camper and the hot chocolate there that he mentioned more than once, or the pack of wolves hunting nearby that kept him in the cabin. Either way, though he seemed to hate being stuck in his chair, he didn’t act as if he wanted to be anywhere else.

  “I could eat,” I mumbled.

  Jin nodded and retreated to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, while I was still poking around the fire, and Cole was still sitting in his chair with his arms crossed counting the cracks in the walls, Jin brought me a bowl of steaming soup.

  “Used the last can of coconut milk. And the green beans.”

  I pushed my spoon around the thin soup, smelling its sweet and rustic odor. There were dozens of dried herbs and seasonings in the kitchen. We would run out of food long before we ran out of a way to flavor snow. I took a sip and nodded at him.

  “It’s good,” I said. And it was. The coconut gave the beans a saccharine and nutty flavor. Jin had dressed it up with dried onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and turmeric.

  I watched him offer a serving to Cole, who didn’t bother with a spoon and brought the bowl to his mouth instead, hungrily drinking the broth down, and chewing the chunky green beans along the way. He ate like a teenager, and acted like one too. I had my suspicions that he was younger than he’d claimed to be back at the Ark, but lying about one’s age was on a long list of the least offensive lies one could tell after the apocalypse. Still, I watched him gulp down his food and imagined his age to be more like seventeen, nineteen at the very oldest. Closer to Kris’ age than the twenty-one he’d claimed.

  “Why did you lie about your age?” I blurted, my spoon hovering in the air.

  Jin glanced at Cole over his bowl, then quietly scooped a spoonful of soup, watching and waiting for the startled boy to respond.

  “Huh?” Cole stammered.

  “Your age,” I repeated, with less patience. “Why did you lie about it? I know you’re not twenty-one.”

  Jin raised a dark eyebrow, and took another sip of his food. He set his bowl down with care, then crossed one leg over the other and stared at Cole until the kid cleared his throat to answer.

  “Uh,” he started, and then cleared his throat again when he made eye contact with Jin. He was afraid of the man, which I found fascinating. He should be afraid of me, I thought. “Well. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  With a frown, I set my own bowl down with less grace than Jin had. It clanged on the floor next to the fireplace, but didn’t spill its contents. “I didn’t realize that was a complicated question.”

  He blushed, and lowered his bowl to his lap. “Promise you won’t hit me again?” His face showed off my handiwork from every angle. His nose was still twice its normal size and because he couldn’t breathe well, his voice had a nasal-like twang to it. The dark circles under his eyes had turned a glorious shade of purple that swelled my heart, and his lips were uneven, one much larger than the other.

  I shrugged, tugging on the sleeve of my oversized sweater. “Can’t promise that.”

  He blanched and his eyes darted to Jin, who shook his head. “Can’t promise that either.”

  When he looked back at me, I rose from the floor, dropping the poker next to my bowl and sat with deliberate care into the papasan chair. “Cole, what I can promise you, is that if you don’t learn to answer questions properly, I will continue to hit you. Maybe take something off.” To terrify him further, I glanced at the jar on the table and he nodded vigorously that he understood.

  “Okay,” he breathed. “Okay. No, I’m not twenty-one. Not yet,” he added, almost with a sigh of relief.

  “So�
�” I paused, waving my hand in the air. “Why the lie?”

  His pink tongue, probably the only part of his mouth that had yet to suffer my wrath, poked out and gingerly licked his lower lip. He thought carefully before replying. “It was because of those forms, you know, the ones we all had to fill out.”

  Ah, the Ark’s paperwork. “I remember them."

  “Yeah, well. I thought if I was older, I wouldn’t get stuck on some stupid dishwashing assignment.”

  I sat up straighter in the chair, glowering at him. “Right, so they stuck you on kidnapping and rape detail instead.”

  Jin had begun to eat again, and I looked over in time to see him spit out a mouthful of soup. He wiped his chin clean and sent a scathing glare Cole’s way.

  “No!” Cole pushed himself to the edge of the chair, as if about to bolt. “No, it wasn’t like that, I promise!”

  I went up on a knee, also ready to bolt. “Then what was it like, Cole,” I growled.

  He shook his blonde head vigorously. “I don’t know what they told you, but I never raped no one. I swear.” His eyes welled up with tears, but he kept them in. “I would never hurt Kris, that’s why I’m here…to find her. So she knows…”

  “Knows what?”

  When Cole fell back into the chair and dropped his hands into his lap, a chunk of snow slid off the roof and briefly came into sight behind the window before it dropped out of view. “To tell her that I love her,” he whispered.

  Jin’s cool eyes landed on me. He gave me a subtle nod before picking up his bowl. Again.

  “That’s it? You’re not going to help, huh?” I barked at him.

  Surprised, he peered at me over his spoon. “Love does strange things,” he reasoned.

  I laughed. “Love doesn’t do what Cole did to Kris. Love doesn’t do that to anyone.”

  “They told me it was safer,” Cole mumbled. “They told me she would be okay. I just did what they said.”

  “You mean that psycho hippie, Fern?” I asked.