Rue smiled in relief and climbed back onto the bed. I unlocked the door and opened it.
Kodee stood in the open doorway. His eyebrows lifted, his gaze dropping down my body.
“Do you always answer the door naked?”
I lowered the weapon and smirked. “Depends who’s on the other side of the door.”
He didn’t react to my comment. “Get some clothes on. We need to keep moving.”
“Have I got time for a quick shower?” Rue asked from the bed.
“Sure. But a quick one.” Kodee shot me a look. “And alone.”
“Trying to ruin my fun,” I chuckled.
“How’s Ryan?” Rue asked. “Everything all right last night?”
“It was fine, Rue. Don’t worry.” Kodee looked back to me. “Fifteen minutes, and then we’re getting back on the road. There’s a machine near the lobby that sells coffee, but I suggest waiting until we’re on the road. I already tried it, and it’s like hot cat piss.”
Rue wrinkled her nose. “I think I’ll give that a miss.”
She was on her feet, the sheet still covering her body, as she headed to the shower. The bathroom door shut behind her, and I gave it a regretful look.
“Fifteen minutes,” Kodee warned me.
“Okay, okay.” He knew me too well.
I closed the motel room door on him. The shower was running now, and Rue’s sweet singing voice filtered out to me. I pictured her all wet and soapy, running her hands over her body as she washed. My cock jumped in response, and I forced the picture from my mind. I didn’t want to do the next part of our journey with a raging hard-on that I couldn’t do anything about.
“Fucking Kodee,” I muttered beneath my breath.
Fragrant steam billowed out as Rue opened the bathroom door. Instead of the sheet, she now had a towel wrapped around her.
“You have no idea how much I want to yank that from your body,” I growled.
She giggled. “Don’t you dare. You heard Kodee.”
I folded my arms across my bare chest. “Kodee’s not the boss of us.”
She lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips.
“Okay, fine,” I relented. “But hurry up and put some clothes on before I change my mind.”
I stalked past her and went to use the bathroom myself. I didn’t want to leave Rue in the room alone for too long. Yes, Ryan and Kodee were right next door, but sudden panic filled me at the possibility that I might step out of the shower and discover her either missing, or worse, dead. I took the world’s fastest shower and reappeared back in the bedroom before she’d even managed to put her t-shirt on.
She gave me a quizzical look.
“What?” I shrugged. “Thought I was supposed to be quick.”
She picked up my jeans and threw them at me. “Better get a move on, then.”
Both dressed, we grabbed the bags we’d taken from the car and carried them out. Kodee was already waiting, and Ryan pulled their motel room door shut and made his way over.
Ryan’s limp seemed more pronounced than usual.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay to drive?” I frowned at him.
Not meeting my eye, he unlocked the car. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Let me drive for a while.” The car had been modified, but not to a point where I wasn’t able to figure it out.
“It’s not the driving that’s the problem. It’s the sitting still for a long period of time. Fluid builds on my stump and then my leg doesn’t fit so well. It normally goes down overnight, but it hasn’t so much this time.”
That was concerning. “Do you need to see a doctor. What if it’s something more than that? It might be a problem with your kidneys.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “My kidneys are fine.”
“Let me drive,” I insisted. “Sit in the back with Rue. I’m sure she won’t mind if you use her as a footrest.”
Rue smiled. “I won’t mind at all.”
“Fine.” He tossed me the keys. “Knock yourself out.”
The lure of cozying up to Rue for a few hours was clearly stronger than his pride. A pang of envy and regret went through me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so eager to swap positions. But then I remembered Ryan and everything he’d been through, and the emotions melted away. He was in this position, away from his doctors, partly because of me. I’d done something hoping to help him, to be able to pay for an expensive new prosthesis for him, and instead we’d ended up away from his doctors and on the run. So, no, I didn’t begrudge him getting to sit with Rue.
I climbed behind the wheel and got the car started. There didn’t appear to be anyone or anything suspicious around, no signs of anyone following us, but I made sure I kept my gun at my side, just in case.
“Did you manage to make that call to your contact?” I asked Kodee, who was riding shotgun.
Kodee nodded and scrubbed his hand across his mouth. “Yeah, he can take on the job.”
“I wish we could have stayed at the apartment long enough to do it ourselves.” I didn’t like getting other people involved, especially ones I didn’t know or trust for myself. But Kodee was a good judge of character, and if he said we could trust this person, I guessed we had to roll with it. It wasn’t as though we had any other choice. Rue needed identification if we were going to get her out of the States. Maybe we could stay in the country, but I didn’t think we’d ever feel safe. We’d be constantly watching our backs, expecting either Joe Nettie’s men, or the Capello brothers, to come after us. Making enemies of one mafia gang was bad enough, but we’d somehow managed to piss off two at the same time.
“You know we didn’t have time,” Kodee said. “They’d have caught up with us, for sure.”
I sighed and sat back in the seat, both hands on the wheel, focusing on the road ahead. “Aye, I know.”
From the back seat, a stomach grumbled loudly.
“Someone needs breakfast.” I chuckled.
Rue laughed, embarrassed. “Yeah, that was me. We didn’t really have a proper meal yesterday.”
“You mean chips and candy wasn’t satisfying enough?”
“And we burned off a bit of energy,” she teased.
The other two hadn’t asked about what we’d gotten up to while we’d been in separate rooms, and we hadn’t asked them either. The four of us might be together, but we were still allowed those one-on-one times. I knew Ryan probably needed them more than anyone.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. He was sitting across from Rue, but his leg was elevated across the back seat.
“How are you doing back there?” I asked him.
“Coffee and breakfast sound good,” Ryan said, nodding, though he looked pale. I hoped the food would help him.
We drove for another twenty minutes before signs for a roadside coffee shop appeared on the side of the interstate. The building soon came into view, and I signaled and took the exit.
I felt less concerned that we were being followed than I had been the previous day. If anyone knew our location, they would have tried to take us down by now. Sure, we’d had locks on the motel room doors, but they wouldn’t have held up against a gun with a silencer.
The parking lot was busy, with cars and trucks of all shapes and sizes filling the spaces. I found an empty spot near the restaurant’s front door and pulled in. The place was going to be busy, and I guessed that was a good thing. We’d be able to blend in easier if there were plenty of other people around.
I opened the driver’s door and climbed out. We were still close to the interstate, and the steady flow of traffic created a low hum.
Together, we entered the restaurant and stopped at the sign asking us to wait to be seated. I glanced over at Rue. She seemed nervous. She wasn’t used to being around so many people.
A hostess approached. “Good morning. Is it just the four of you today?”
Even though I’d lived in the States my entire adult life, the perkiness of the people here never failed to surprise me. “A
ye, just the four.”
The hostess showed us over to one of the booths, and we slid into our seats. She set menus down in front of us.
“Your server will be over to take your order shortly,” she chirped.
Rue stared down at the menu, her eyebrows drawn together, her lips pinched. Her dark hair fell over her face.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
Her cheeks grew pink. “I... I’m not sure what all of this says.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about her not being able to read.
I leaned over and pointed at the side of the menu that was for the breakfast options. “This part says what they’re offering for breakfast. The section over here is for lunch and dinner, and then this is for drinks.”
She pursed her lips and then lifted her gaze to mine. “What are you going to have?”
“Coffee, waffles, and a shit load of bacon and syrup.” The sweet and salty thing Americans seemed to love was definitely something I’d gotten on board with.
A smile touched her lips. “That sounds good to me, too.”
The waitress appeared. “Good morning, folks. What can I do for you?”
She was slightly older, in her thirties, I would have guessed, and I watched her trying to figure out what our connection might be to each other. Rue looked noticeably younger than us, even though she was only a couple of years younger than me, and I hoped that wasn’t going to cause us any problems. It wasn’t as though Rue was acting like she didn’t want to be with us, but still three older men and one younger woman might raise a few eyebrows. Plus, there were still bruises around Rue’s throat, and though they’d faded a little now, and she wore her hair to cover them, it didn’t look good. If someone asked her directly if one of us had hurt her, what would she say? If she lied and said no, they probably wouldn’t believe her, but if she tried to tell the truth, that would look like a lie as well in order to make excuses for what Ryan had done.
I nudged Rue in the side. “Go on. You order.”
Had she been taken out to restaurants before? It wasn’t something I’d ever really wanted to ask about. Perhaps it was completely selfish of me, but I hated to think of her life before she came to us. The men who had used her made my blood boil. But perhaps we weren’t so much better. It wasn’t as though we’d acted like angels around her either. She’d been conditioned into believing she was only good for one thing, and we hadn’t exactly pushed her away when she’d offered that same thing to us. I told myself it was different, because we loved her, and we wanted to keep her safe and happy, but was it? Perhaps that was something none of us had ever wanted to look into too deeply, afraid of what we might learn about ourselves if we did.
She gave our order to the waitress and flashed me a smile, pleased with herself, unaware of the thoughts going around my head. I couldn’t help but grin back, my stomach flipped and my heart tightening in my chest. A need, a longing, a desperation not to let anything happened to her gripped me.
I’d do whatever it took to keep her safe.
I turned my attention to the other person I felt protective over. “How are you doing, Ryan?”
His expression darkened. “Would you quit asking me that?”
Kodee angled his body in the booth to face him. “If you’re in pain, we should get you to a hospital.”
“No.” His tone was sharp. “No hospital. It’s just swelling. It’ll go down.”
“It might be more than that. You should get it checked out.”
His fist thumped down on the table, and everyone jumped. Other diners turned to look at us, and the waitress who’d been trying to work out our situation frowned.
“Keep your voice down,” I warned him.
“Sorry, it’s just that I don’t want to be the one who holds you all back.” He dropped his volume down a notch, ducking his head and shoulders to speak to us across the booth. “If it wasn’t for me, and what I did to Rue, we might not be in this position now.”
“We’ve all played a part in what’s happening now,” Kodee said. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“That’s easy for you to say. What part have you played? You’re like Mister Perfect, while the rest of us are fuckups.”
Kodee shook his head, glancing away. “You know that’s not true.”
“Well, maybe not over a lifetime, but it is in this situation.”
Tension simmered between us, and I sensed the side-eyed glances we were receiving from other patrons. The last thing we needed was extra attention, or anyone asking any awkward questions. We needed to be more careful.
The waitress arrived with our order. She gave a strained smile as she slid plates on the table in front of us. “Everything okay?”
“Absolutely.” I shot her one of my most winning smiles, the one that normally had women flustered and unable to make eye contact. “This looks great.”
“Well, give me a shout if I can get you anything else.”
I clocked the name on her shirt. “Sure thing, Libby.”
Satisfied, she went away and left us to eat.
Chapter Seven
Rue
I HATED THE GUYS FIGHTING.
A part of me wondered if it was like being a child and hearing your parents argue and being frightened that they were going to divorce. Not that the guys were anything like my parents, of course, but I didn’t know what I would do if they fell out badly enough for one or more of them to want to walk away. What would happen to me then? It wasn’t as though I could ever choose between them.
The coffee was hot and sweet and strong, and the food the waitress brought was delicious, too. We ate in a silence, each of us lost in thought, and too hungry to waste time talking when we could be eating.
I was worried about Ryan, though. He was clearly in pain, and Dillon was right when he suggested getting him checked out. What if the swelling got worse, and put Ryan out of action altogether? It was better that he got it seen to.
I wanted to suggest that to him, but I was frightened of his reaction. I hadn’t missed how everyone had turned and looked at us when he’d slammed his fist down on the table, and right now we didn’t need to attract any unwanted attention. It wasn’t only the Capello brothers or Joe Nettie’s men we needed to be fearful of. There were several weapons and a big bag of cash sitting in the booth beside us—Kodee hadn’t wanted to leave anything in the car—together with fake passports and the start of my forged passport, too. If we were stopped and searched, it was enough reason to arrest us. It wasn’t even that I was afraid of getting arrested. It was more the reality of that if we were, I’d be separated from the guys. I could probably handle us all being locked up together, but that was never going to happen.
“Everyone done?” Kodee asked, looking around.
“Yeah, I’m stuffed.” I placed my hands on my belly. There was a definite food baby growing inside there.
He signaled the waitress for the check then threw some bills on the table. “That should cover it. Let’s get out of here.”
Ryan pulled himself out of the booth and straightened. I tried not to stare at him, knowing he hated any unwanted attention, but I couldn’t miss the signs as he limped across the restaurant toward the exit. His face was pinched, his skin pale. I exchanged a worried glance with Kodee, who only shrugged. What could we do? We couldn’t bully Ryan into going to the hospital, could we?
We made it back to the car, and I sat in the backseat with Ryan. He reached down to lift his stump and the prosthetic leg up onto the seat.
“Why don’t you take off the leg?” I suggested, hoping he wasn’t going to snap at me for saying it. “It doesn’t look like it’s comfortable to wear right now.”
Ryan shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Did he mean he wasn’t physically able to remove it? I didn’t understand.
“What if Joe Nettie’s men or the Capello brothers catch up with us and I’ve only got one leg? How do you think I’m going to be able to protect you if I can’t even stand o
n two feet?”
My heart broke. “Oh, Ryan. You don’t have to protect me.”
“Yes, I do.” He nodded fiercely. “That’s exactly what I have to do.”
Kodee and Dillon had overheard our conversation from the front. “We’d cover you,” Kodee said. “You know that.”
“What if there wasn’t time? I’m the best shot out of any of us by far. You know that. You need me to be covering you, not the other way around.”
Dillon twisted in his seat. “Hey, man. We’re fine right now, okay? No one is coming for us. We’re safe. You do what you need to do and let us worry about the rest of it.”
Ryan sighed and dropped the back of his head onto the seat behind. “I’m just so fucking sick of this. I’m sick of being the one who always needs special treatment. The exception made for him.”
I reached out and took his hand. “No, that’s me. I’m the one who’s uprooted your entire lives.”
He shook his head. “You were worth it.”
“And so are you.”
We exchanged smiles.
Dillon started the car. “Let’s get out of here.”
I kept hold of Ryan’s hand as we pulled out of the parking lot and got back on the interstate. We still had a fair distance to cover.
A full stomach and the steady hum of the car engine lulled me to sleep. My eyelids grew heavier, and I settled back in the seat and closed my eyes.
THE CAR SCREECHED TO a sudden halt, the slamming of the brakes throwing me forward, the seatbelt jamming across my chest, locking my breath in my lungs. In the road directly ahead, a black SUV with blacked out windows had stopped, blocking the way and forcing us to stop.
Oh, God.
I didn’t know who these people were, but they meant us harm.
“Back up!” I yelled to Kodee, who was sitting behind the wheel. “Get us out of here.”
Confusion ran through me. Why was Kodee driving? Kodee didn’t like to drive because of the accident that had killed his family. I glanced to my side. Ryan was no longer beside me. He’d switched with Dillon, so I could see the back of Ryan’s blond head in the passenger seat and Dillon was sitting beside me. When had they switched places? I didn’t understand.
Guarded by Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #2) Page 5
