CHAPTER 6
The town limits of Boone disappeared behind us as we sped toward the Tennessee state line. Nathan watched every approaching car suspiciously, but not one of them turned to follow us. The farther we got from Boone, the number of cars on the road dwindled. I watched in the side mirror until the last set of headlights disappeared from sight.
Only then did the stiffness in my muscles slowly abate.
Nathan’s fist slammed down on the steering wheel, and he let loose a series of words that would put a sailor to shame. My muscles involuntarily tensed again, and I peeked at him from under my lashes. He brushed the same hand through his hair before he returned it to the wheel. It shook as he forced himself to not take his frustration out on the Jeep again.
He looked as stressed as I felt.
Neither of us had wanted to leave Gran. My mind swirled with all the potential consequences of her decision. Before we left, she had said goodbye to each of us, and it had felt so...final. My travelling buddy wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, so when the tears welled up in my eyes, I brushed them away hastily so that he didn’t see.
He sighed loudly and, for a second, I feared he had seen me. When I glanced at him, he cursed again, quietly, sadly, under his breath. I could tell Gran was important to him, and he had reached the same difficult conclusion I had.
I opened my mouth a few times before I got up the nerve to speak. Even then, I kept my voice low so that he didn’t hear the quaver in it. “Why did she insist on staying behind?”
He kept his eyes on the road when he answered. “To give us a head start.”
“From who?”
He glanced at me, but didn’t answer, choosing instead to focus on the road.
Where we were going, I didn’t know. Following one back road after another, we wound our way farther up the mountain, and farther from any civilization I knew. Nathan seemed to know the roads well and took the turns swiftly, automatically. We moved from winding double yellow line roads, to roads with no lines, to roads that didn’t look wide enough for two lanes of traffic—not that there was any—to a dark ominous road that I doubted had seen another vehicle in a long time. The only sound came from the tires as they crunched over the gravel.
I glanced at Nathan, assuming he knew where he was going, but wary. I doubted he had saved me, only to drive me out here to get rid of me, though, if that were his plan, he had chosen the ideal location. There was no one out here besides us. Still, his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror a few times. It could have been habit. Paranoia? Or we were still in danger of being followed?
I didn’t bother to ask. I knew I wouldn’t get an answer.
After another ten minutes, he turned onto a rough dirt road that I wasn’t convinced was an actual road from the looks of it. I glanced at him nervously. He was as calm as could be, at least as far as the driving was concerned.
The Jeep bounced over the washed out crevices and small boulders in its path. He knew the way well, knew where some of the harder to navigate areas were, and how to get around them. Now I understood why he drove a Jeep. Anything else would have rolled off the side of the mountain by now. At least it was dark, and I couldn’t see the severity of the drop-off outside my window.
It wasn’t until the road leveled out, and a wide clearing appeared ahead in the headlights that I realized how tense I was. Seeing the signs of this trip coming to an end, I leaned back in my seat in relief.
The Jeep came to a stop in front of a small cabin. Nathan got out without a word to me, jogged to the front door, and slipped inside. I sat in my seat, wondering if I was supposed to follow. He wasn’t very clear with instructions.
A light came on in the cabin and I climbed out of the Jeep. Rubbing my arms to fend off the chill, I watched the door and waited. And waited.
He couldn’t have given me some clue as to what I was supposed to do?
I sighed in annoyance and made it halfway to the cabin when he appeared in the doorway. He flicked the light off behind him and walked toward me, his arms full of clothes and water bottles. He had changed into blood-free jeans and a clean grey hoodie.
“Can you fit some of this in your bag?”
His unexpected politeness caught me off guard. “Yeah,” I muttered and scurried back to the Jeep with him on my heels.
“Here. You’re going to need this.” He handed me a second grey hoodie. It was enormous on me, but warm, and I was more gracious than I let on as I slipped it over my head. His masculine rustic smell—with a touch of something minty—enveloped me. Aftershave perhaps? He didn’t strike me as an expensive cologne kind of guy.
He handed me the rest of his clothes. “I’ll be right back.”
I stuffed his clothes into the bag with mine as he rounded the corner of the cabin, out of sight. He returned a moment later, carrying two rolled up sleeping bags and a small cylinder container with the picture of a tent on the front of it, and threw it all in the back of the Jeep.
It seemed we were going camping now. In thirty degree temperatures. Great.
He withdrew something from the back of the Jeep—a gun holster I thought it was called—and put it around his waist, where he secured the gun Gran had given him and the fancy-looking knife. Considering my knowledge base on this sort of stuff came exclusively from what I have gathered from movies and television, I was fascinated as I watched him, and mesmerized at how routine it all seemed to him.
He lifted the floor in the back of the Jeep to reveal a clever hiding place for more guns and ammunition. A lot more guns, I noticed as I leaned forward curiously. There was an arsenal of three small handguns and four large rifles, or shotguns, or whatever they were called. He grabbed the guns one at a time and checked that they had bullets. Instead of covering them when he was done, he glanced at me.
“You ever shoot a gun?” He didn’t look surprised when I shook my head. He hesitated, then picked up one of the small ones and turned it toward me. “Hopefully you won’t have to.”
Hopefully?
I restrained the hysteria and gawked like a dummy as he showed me the parts of the gun and explained the basics. Chamber, safety, trigger. Point, aim, shoot. He made it sound easy, like we were about to play a friendly game of Call of Duty on the PlayStation. He seemed to debate briefly whether or not to give me the gun before he placed it with the others.
I let out a sigh of relief. Though, that ‘hopefully’ still had me a bit concerned. “If you’re telling me there’s a chance I might have to use a gun at some point, I want to know what’s going on,” I said levelly.
He shut the hatch and glanced at me. “We have to keep moving.”
I folded my arms over my chest and planted my feet. He grabbed my elbow and escorted me to the passenger door, where I expected him to throw me in like he had earlier. Instead, he opened the door and looked at me expectantly. I returned an expectant look of my own.
A muscle in his cheek twitched, and his nostrils flared as he ran a hand through his hair. “When things get a little less dicey, I’ll explain what I can, but right now I have to worry about getting us out of here alive. Think you can manage to cooperate with me a bit longer?”
I relented, only because I wanted to live to see tomorrow. “You’d better explain,” I said, the warning tone of my voice sounding feeble when directed at him.
He nodded with little promise and tilted his head at the open door.
“Masochistic asshole,” I muttered under my breath as I climbed in.
My feet barely cleared the threshold before he slammed the door shut. I had spoken so quietly, I doubted he had heard me. Not that I cared if he had.
I kept my end of the bargain and kept quiet as we descended the mountain, the narrow road no less intimidating the second time around. Luckily, it didn’t take long and we soon turned onto the gravel road. I glanced at Nathan, wondering when he would be ready to answer some questions.
“Not yet,” he said without looking at me.
I gawke
d at him, knowing I had to have imagined the subtle lift at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. There was no way I had glimpsed a smile. In fact, looking closer, I clearly saw a frown.
He hit the brakes, and brought the Jeep to a sliding stop. The shoulder belt caught across my chest and pinned me to the seat. Nathan’s frown deepened and I followed his gaze, my heart racing at his alarm. I saw nothing other than gravel, trees, and tiny dust particles floating in the headlights. He grumbled under his breath as he turned in his seat to look out the rear window.
“What?” I asked him.
“Hold on,” he muttered as he shifted into reverse.
My head snapped forward when he punched the gas and jerked the wheel. He pulled off an impossibly tight turn, and within seconds we were speeding back the way we had come. A moment later, a bright light spilled through the back window and filled the interior. In the mirror, I saw quickly advancing headlights behind us.
They had been right there, waiting for us—and he had known.
The lights were large, and bright, and so close I thought they were going to ram us. The Jeep’s engine roared as it picked up speed, and they fell back. Barely. I turned in my seat and saw that it was a large truck. Unfortunately, something capable of keeping up with us.
“Stay down,” Nathan ordered as he pushed my head behind the seat.
I peeked at the speedometer. The needle hovered at seventy, but it felt like a hundred. I didn’t see the turnoff for the dirt non-road until we were past it, and glanced at Nathan, wondering if he had meant to pass it.
Of course he had. Granted, there was a good chance the truck would have slid off the side of the mountain, but if not, at the top was a dead end. We still had the advantage. Nathan knew the road better than they did, and the distance between us grew by the second.
At the appearance of headlights approaching from the other direction, Nathan pushed the gas harder. I braced in my seat, hoping his plan was not to play chicken, and stared down the advancing lights.
They were coming fast. Thirty yards.
Twenty.
Ten. They were so close I saw two occupants in the front seat of a large black truck.
Five yards. My eyes squeezed shut.
With a jerk of the wheel, Nathan sent the Jeep careening sideways onto a hidden side road. I was thrown into the door, and forced to stare at the headlights bearing down on me outside my window. Restrained by my seatbelt, unable to move away, I turned away from the impact I knew was coming.
They never hit. The headlights zipped by, missing us entirely. We were going too fast for the turn and the tires spun as they fought for grip. Nathan wrestled the wheel and somehow managed to not veer off the road or flip us.
I turned in my seat, hoping to see the two trucks collide. The one behind us bounced over a ditch, managing to avoid the oncoming truck. Unlike us, he had lost no momentum making the turn, and slammed into the side of the Jeep. The impact threw us into a spiral.
We came to a stop, facing the way we had come. Nathan shifted gears and accelerated, leaving the truck as it spun behind us. He cut the corner, launching us across the ditch, back onto the gravel road, where the second truck had turned around and was now coming back. We raced past them, and left them in a cloud of dust as they slid to a stop.
Nathan whooped as we sped away. I gaped at him in awe, wondering how he had managed to pull off that miracle. He glanced at me, and I could tell from the look on his face that he was as surprised as I was.
His eyes darted to the rearview mirror as both sets of headlights appeared behind us. He pressed on the gas. We had a sizeable lead. We could outrun them. So long as he didn’t screw up the driving too badly—and I highly doubted that would happen—we had a chance.
As we passed the turn-off for the dirt road again, I felt a ripple of hope. Ten minutes to civilization. As fast as he was driving, maybe five minutes.
I glanced out the rear window. “We’re losing them,” I called to Nathan excitedly.
His gaze lifted to the rearview mirror. Instead of lighting with excitement like mine, his eyes darkened with apprehension. His foot eased off the gas.
Since I was looking at him, I didn’t see the third truck. I saw its headlights fill the Jeep’s interior, saw Nathan tense and reach for me. Then they slammed into us.
The Jeep rolled side over side at least twice before it struck something big and sturdy—probably a monster tree. It swayed at an unsteady angle before it flipped back and came to a rest on its side. My side was up, with the nose of the Jeep tipped down, which left me elevated and pressed against my restraints. I fumbled with them, disoriented as I tried to force my shaky fingers to work. I had a really bad sense of déjà vu.
Nathan appeared beneath me, already out of his seatbelt. He unhooked my restraints, and his arms slipped around me to stop my plummet into the windshield below. I barely managed to get my feet under me before he started to push me toward the rear of the Jeep.
“Go, go, go,” he ordered as he shoved me up and between the seats. The Jeep teetered as our weight concentrated to the back.
“Are we on a cliff or something?” I shrieked at him.
Two sets of headlights approached, but they did nothing to illuminate the mile-high ledge I was certain we were balancing on the edge of.
“Ditch,” Nathan answered quickly. He nudged past me to release the hatch, and sent the Jeep into a stomach-hurling rock.
I wanted to know how he was so sure it wasn’t a cliff, but he pushed me out the back before I had a chance to ask. I was convinced I was falling to my death for all of the very long second it took me to drop to the ground. I hadn’t expected to hit land so soon, and rolled my ankle.
Sure enough, I was in a ditch. The nose of the Jeep was wedged in it sideways, which caused the back end to jut up in the air. It, at least, provided us with cover from our pursuers on the other side, who I could now hear getting out of their vehicles.
I looked up, saw Nathan’s outline above me, and moved out of the way as he dropped to the ground beside me. He landed much more gracefully than I had. But then, it wasn’t a fair comparison, considering he had all but tossed me out. He had managed to gather a few guns from under the floor board, and had a pistol in each hand, a third in his holster, and a shot gun at his feet.
Our eyes met briefly as we scanned each other. His hat was gone, and I saw a streak of blood on his forehead. Otherwise, he appeared uninjured. Once he was assured I was unharmed, he scooted to the edge of the Jeep and peeked around the corner. I moved aside as he crept by me to survey the situation from the other side. After he saw what he had to see, he sat with his back against the Jeep’s undercarriage, and lifted his eyes to mine slowly.
He swept a hand through his hair. I swallowed hard, wondering what he had seen to put that look on his face.
He joined me where I crouched and his eyes seared into mine. “I need you to run,” he said, nodding his head to my left.
I surveyed the steep embankment and the edge of the woods just beyond it. We could slip in there and be long gone before they realized it.
“Run fast and straight. Don’t stop for anyone but me,” he continued urgently.
I nodded my understanding, and then cowered when gun shots rang out. They were shooting blindly at the Jeep as they worked their way around it. I heard the gravel crunching under their shoes as they approached.
“Go!” Nathan gave me a shove.
I stared at him, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t planning to join me.
“Go! I’ll find you! Go!”
I clambered up the embankment as he returned fire. Once I reached the tree line, I turned back and saw that he had drawn their attention to himself, and my retreat had gone unnoticed. I also saw that he was outnumbered four to one. I reluctantly backed up a few steps into the cover of the woods, not wanting to leave him, but unable to do anything else.
I would only be a distraction. I would
only hurt his chances.
That was what I told myself when I ran. I had no other options other than to do what he said, and hope that he would be right behind me.
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