More gun shots, exploding just above our heads.
Christa squeezed her eyes shut. She started to tremble, shaking in my arms.
I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do to make it better for her. And all I wanted was for her to be safe. I wished like hell there was some way to get her out of this. She shouldn’t be here.
I rubbed her back, slow, barely perceptible motions, trying to sooth her.
And then something really embarrassing and horrible happened.
I got an erection.
Like out of nowhere, it just popped up.
Christa’s eyes snapped open.
I cringed. I guess she could feel it. I tried to shift away from her, keep it from… poking her.
It was so fucked up. I swear to god, the last thing on my mind at that moment was sex. I was thinking about getting away safely, about not getting shot, about not letting Christa get shot, about staying still and quiet.
It wasn’t my fault. It was just that my body was stupid. Apparently, it interpreted trembling girl in my arms as a universal sign that I was about to get lucky and prepared accordingly.
Stupid, stupid body.
A shot cracked again—this time even closer. You’d think that would encourage my moronic dick to lay back down and go to sleep, but it seemed oblivious.
“Sorry,” I said in a very low, barely audible voice.
She didn’t hear me. “What?” she whispered.
“Shut up,” said Emmett.
I shifted again, moving my hard-on away from her body.
We lay there quietly, not moving.
Minutes passed.
It was silent except for the noise of insect in the distance.
Then a voice, not too far away. “Look. Here’s their fire. Still hot.”
“Yeah, they probably just put it out. Can’t be too far off.”
I tensed. Should we move now?
“Let’s let them run.”
“Really?”
“There’s only four of them left at this point. We could find them now and blow them all away, but—”
“But then the fun would be over.’
“Exactly.”
“All right, let’s head back for some cold beers.”
The sounds of footsteps through the underbrush.
Still, we didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Maybe they were bluffing. Maybe they were trying to draw us out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Is that a cave?” said Milo. His voice was strained and agonized.
I was leading the four of us as we walked in the stream (to avoid leaving a trail) in the general direction of the power lines. We were looking for some place to take cover for the night.
“Where?” I said, looking back at him.
He pointed using his good arm. “Right there.”
I squinted. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Looks like a cave to me,” said Christa.
“Can we stop there?” said Milo.
We all looked at Emmett.
Emmett sighed. “Why you looking at me?”
“You’re the man with the plan,” I said.
“Cave’s fine with me,” he said.
“Oh, thank god,” said Milo, heading for it.
I started to follow him, but Christa caught me by the elbow.
I turned to her. “Yeah?”
“I want to talk to you,” she said.
Emmett pushed past us. “We’ll be in the cave while you two have a moment alone.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We waited until they were gone.
Then I raised my eyebrows at Christa questioningly. “What’s up?”
She twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. “They both think we’re together.”
“I know,” I said. “I figure it’s better. Keep them from messing with you, you know, if they think you’re taken.” A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Milo didn’t—”
“No,” she said. “No one’s tried anything. Except you.”
I blushed, looking at my feet. “Look, uh, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t, you know, do that on purpose.”
“You were dry humping me on accident?”
“I wasn’t dry humping you,” I said. “I didn’t do anything like that.”
She raised her eyebrows. She didn’t believe me.
Suddenly, I was irrationally angry with her. “I got an unfortunate, unexpected erection. It’s not my fault. It’s your fault. Your body is all soft and squirmy and sexy or whatever.”
She made a face. “Squirmy?”
I dragged a hand over my face. “Look, I’m sorry. I really don’t know why that happened. Sometimes, you know, it just does that. I really can’t control it.”
“So, you’re saying that you’re not going to try to get in my pants, then?”
“Christa, we’re running for our lives,” I said. “That’s the last thing I’m thinking about.”
She stepped closer to me. “Bullshit. You got hard for me because you want me.”
“No,” I said. “I’m trying to explain that it was a biological response that I had no control over.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You’re annoyed. When we were in that parking lot, you were going to take me home, and you missed out on it.”
“No,” I said. God, she was making me flustered. “To be honest, I was kind of freaked out about the way you were acting in the bar. Because, you know, you were all hands-off before, and then out of nowhere, you wanted to get it on, and that was really confusing.”
She took another step closer to me. She trailed fingers over my chest. “What do you think, Silas,” she whispered, “you want me to take the pressure off for you?” Her fingers stopped at the waist of my pants.
“What?” I was feeling flustered. “No. Why would you say that?”
She fingered my zipper. Her voice was breathy and seductive. “I could get down on my knees right here and put you in my mouth and suck your big, hard—”
“Stop.” I moved her hand away. I squeezed my eyes shut. Okay, so I was now hard again, but it was a very confusing erection. Because the last thing I wanted was to get a blow job in the woods while being chased by crazy men with guns.
Right?
She was acting weird. That was a weird way for her to act. Wasn’t it?
Her hand darted back to my crotch, squeezing me. “You do want me.”
I snatched her wrist and yanked it up in front of her face. I stared at her hand. “What are you doing?”
“You want me. Admit it.” She gave me a knowing smile.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe, yeah, but not… now. Not here. This is… You are being so weird right now.”
“Silas,” called Emmett’s voice. “You guys done making out? I need a hand with trying to wrap up Milo’s arm.”
I let go of her. I pointed at her. “Can you stop being weird, please?”
I stalked off.
* * *
“Don’t lie to me,” said Milo. “It’s probably going to get infected, isn’t it?”
We were inside the cave. It was completely dark outside, and we all sat inside the dankness of the stone opening. I had to admit that it was warmer in here than it had been last night exposed to the elements.
“I dressed it as best I could,” said Emmett.
“We washed it in the stream,” said Christa.
“There’s no way to know what’s going to happen,” I said.
“If it were you, you’d be healed up already,” said Milo.
I could hear a body shifting, as if Emmett was turning to face me. But it was too dark to make out features in this darkness. He might as well not have bothered.
“Why is it that you heal so easily?” said Emmett. “And how is that you know this Rolf, the one who’s doing this to us?”
“Long story,” I said.
“I’m in too much pain to sleep,” said Milo. “And I’m going to die one way or another, I think.
So, I got time. Tell me.”
I considered telling them to fuck off. I didn’t owe them a story about my past. But there wasn’t any reason to keep it in. Not really. And Christa should know.
I took a deep breath. “Well, Rolf buys a lot of his weapons from an arms corporation called Dewhurst-McFarland. They make the guns he’s using to hunt us down. But Dewhurst-McFarland does more than make guns. They also have projects that they’re working on, innovative things that they can sell. They created a serum, and it was to make supersoldiers. It made it so a person healed really quickly, so that he couldn’t die as easily as everyone else. They figured an army of men like that would be unstoppable.
“But,” I continued, “they couldn’t find anyone who was interested in buying the product, so they stopped working on it. Except that some of the people who worked for Dewhurst-McFarland thought that they could find lucrative ways to make the serum work for them. They started injecting it in people—mostly terminal patients who everyone had given up on. They called themselves Operation Wraith, and they used their new supersoldiers as assassins for hire. I was one of those.”
“So, you met Rolf because he was a client of Dewhurst-McFarland?” said Milo.
“Yes,” I said. It was a little more complicated than that, but I didn’t want to get into it. “He’s very rich and very entitled, and he sort of thinks of himself as above the law. Personally, I think he’s crazy.”
“But he wants to kill you for some kind of personal reasons?” said Emmett.
“Yeah, he kind of hates me.”
“Tell them why, Silas,” Christa spoke up. “Tell them why you and I are here.” I could hear the disgust in her voice.
I didn’t say anything.
“Well?” said Milo. “What did you do that pissed him off?”
I still didn’t say anything.
“He slept with his wife,” said Christa. “He’s a big freaking slut, and now I’m going to die because of that.”
“You’re not going to die,” I said. “I’m not going to let him—”
“You can’t stop him,” said Christa. “You don’t have any reason to think you can.”
“I can,” I said. “I will.”
Milo snorted. “She’s right, you know. He’s got us running scared. The only reason we’re not dead yet is luck.”
“I’ll find a way to stop him,” I said. I had to do that. There was no way I was letting Christa get hurt.
“We need to get to the power lines,” said Emmett. “That’s our way out.”
“I don’t know,” said Milo. “I think if there was any way out of here, he’d have done something to make sure that we couldn’t find it or use it. He seems to have this all planned out pretty good.”
“Maybe not,” said Emmett. “He’s a real General Zaroff all right, but he can’t have thought of everything.”
“Who’s General Zaroff?” I said.
“From ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” said Christa.
“What’s that?” said Milo.
“It’s a story about this hunter who gets shipwrecked on an island where this crazy man lives. He hunts humans for sport,” she said.
“Yeah, the literary irony isn’t lost on me,” said Emmett. “But you know what happened to Zaroff at the end of that story? He got fed to a pack of dogs. Silas is right. We can’t give up hope. We have to believe we can find a way out of this.”
I did believe it. I wasn’t going to stop believing it until I made it happen.
Milo laughed loudly and bitterly. “That’s fine for you guys. I’m the one with a shot in my damned arm. I’m the one who’s going to die.”
“Don’t say that,” said Christa.
“Guess you’re right, though,” said Milo. “Rolf is crazy. If he’s hunting you and your girlfriend down to get revenge, he’s over the deep end.”
“But that’s why he picked people like you and me,” said Emmett. “He picked us because we were already going to die.”
“I don’t even think he sees it as wrong,” I said. “I think he figures that you were going to die anyway, so why not use you for his amusement?”
Emmett laughed a little. “It does make a certain kind of sense. You could almost make the argument that it’s moral.”
“No way,” said Christa.
“Morals are a funny thing,” said Emmett. “People do bad things. They deserve punishment. Lots of people think that. What Rolf’s doing here is a variation on that theme. Even his revenge against you, Silas.”
“You’re defending him?” said Milo.
“I’m not,” said Emmett. “But I used to be in the military, and I know that people twist things around to try to make sure they feel their actions are moral. If you think hard enough, you can excuse anything.”
“Oh bullshit,” said Milo. “Things are either right or they’re wrong. It’s not all confusing like that.”
“Really?” said Emmett. “And what about you, Milo? What about what you did to get sentenced to death? Were you wrong?”
“Hell, I was wrongfully convicted,” said Milo.
Emmett’s laugh was caustic. “What’s the point in lying about it now?”
“Who says I’m lying? You don’t know. I could be telling the truth.”
Emmett didn’t say anything.
“Are you innocent?” said Christa. “Really?”
Milo cleared his throat. “Nah. I guess not. I didn’t mean to kill nobody, you know. But I did rob that store with a loaded gun, and I shot that guy. I didn’t really think before I did it. But I guess he’s still dead.”
“Oh,” said Christa in a tiny voice.
“Hey,” said Milo, “I would never hurt you, though. Didn’t I keep you safe those two days we were together?”
“You did,” she said.
“Never touched you neither.”
“You were a perfect gentleman,” she said. But her voice was strained.
“Christa,” I said. “It’s like Emmett says. Things are never black and white.”
She made a disbelieving little noise. “Easy for you to say. You’re an assassin. So I guess you killed people too.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I did. But, you know, so did Griffin. And so has Leigh. And Sloane. Basically everyone I know.”
“What?” Her voice grew high-pitched. “Griffin?”
“You didn’t actually think he was in a coma all that time, did you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
“Well, he wasn’t. He was working for Op Wraith, just like I was. But because of him, the whole operation has been completely destroyed. He went in, up against the whole place, and he dismantled it. He’s a good guy, your brother.”
“Who killed people.”
“He didn’t want to,” I said. “He doesn’t like doing it, you know. He’s not like—” I broke off, realizing it probably wasn’t wise to finish that sentence.
“Like who?” she said.
I sighed. My voice was quiet. “Like me.”
“Fuck this,” she said. “I’m not listening to this anymore.” I felt her move next to me. And then her body was silhouetted against the opening of the cave as she ran from us.
Emmett was on his feet, lightning fast. He stopped her. “You can’t go out there.”
“Let me go,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not safe. We need to stick together.”
“I can’t stay here with you people. I’m not like you. I’ve never killed anyone.” She tugged at her wrist, trying to get free of him. “You’ve killed someone, haven’t you, Emmett?”
“Lots of somebodies,” he said. “I told you that I was in the military.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “That’s not the same.”
“Sure, it’s the same,” he said. “Dead’s dead.”
“Being in the military doesn’t get you the death penalty.”
“No,” he agreed.
“So, what did you do?”
“Come ba
ck in the cave, and I’ll tell you.”
She hesitated, but then I saw her silhouette nod. “Okay.”
“Good,” said Emmett. He let go over her.
She came back into the cave, but she didn’t sit next to me again.
Emmett’s voice was softer. “I guess maybe I should be able to identify with Rolf and what he did to Silas. Because I found my wife in bed with another man, and I shot them both. Didn’t really think, you know. Just did it. By the time I realized what I was doing—really realized it—it was too late.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t?” said Christa in a small voice.
“Would that make it easier for you?” Emmett asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”
I spoke up. “Wait a second. That’s a crime of passion, man. They don’t give people the death penalty for crimes of passion.”
“Well, I’d bought the gun I used a week before, and I’d made a few offhand comments that she was acting different. The prosecution made the case that I knew it was going on, and that I planned it out. They said it was premeditated. They made me look guilty. Didn’t help that my wife was a cop. She was one of their own, you know. They weren’t going to give me an inch.”
That made sense. “Oh,” I said.
It was quiet.
“I can’t imagine killing anyone,” said Christa. “I couldn’t do it. No matter what.”
“Sometimes the things that you can do surprise you,” said Emmett.
* * *
Christa didn’t want to sleep near me, like she had the night we’d been in the prison together. I understood that she was upset, but it still worried me. I wanted to make sure that she was okay.
Of course, after her really weird attempt at seducing me earlier, maybe it was better that we didn’t sleep close.
But I didn’t end up sleeping very well. I needed to keep my eye on her, so I only slept very shallowly, waking every hour or so to make sure that she was all right.
I knew that she had every right to be angry and confused. And maybe I’d dropped too much of a bombshell on her by telling her about Griffin. She had an image of her older brother, and I’d shattered it. That couldn’t be easy for her to deal with.
I wondered if I should have kept it all to myself. Maybe there was no reason her for to know it. But she needed to know why I wasn’t dying when they shot me. She would have asked more questions, and she would have found out eventually. If I hadn’t told her now, I would have had to tell her at some point. She would have been angrier if I’d kept it from her even longer.
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