by Skye Warren
CHAPTER FOUR
Elijah
Muffled keystrokes on the other end of the phone line punctuate a distracted silence.
“Howie.”
Silence. I shift in a pew five rows back from the front and watch the last of the sunset fade through the last of the stained glass. Not all of the original windows have survived over the years. I’ve had them replaced with plain, clear glass. Now that I have time to look at them, I’m regretting the decision. It would at least be more interesting to look at while I wait for Howie to come out of his trance.
He is probably the last person on earth named Howard. The nickname might be a joke, come to think of it. You never know with hackers.
“I don’t believe your name is Howard,” I say.
There’s a sharp rustle, like plastic wrap up against his speaker. “What?”
“Are you going to update me or not?”
“I was checking up on our happy couple. They’re all settled in at the resort. Nothing new to report there. The rental car was checked in a couple of hours ago, and I’m still waiting to see—”
He takes me through the list of red herrings. Sooner or later, the Army’s going to realize they’re all false leads, but for now they’ll be busy. We sent a couple matching our description on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. We paid another guy to rent a car with a planted alias and drive it across the country. Three separate women have checked into mid-tier roadside motels at various locations. There are others. There will be more if necessary.
For now, Holly is safe with me in the abandoned church.
Howie has started typing again, and his words tumble out with increasing speed until he reaches the end of his updates. “Gotta go.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he ends the call.
I stand up from the pew and stretch, my ass aching from the unforgiving curve of the wood. I should’ve ripped out all of these cursed benches when I bought the church. It makes a kind of poetic sense, though, that the pews are straight out of hell.
Worship should be uncomfortable. At least the kind that was done here.
Eventually the Army will break through the paper trail obscured by the shell corporations, but for now this place is safe. Holly needs to rest if she has any hope of recovering.
I take the stairs back down to the basement. Being here with her has attuned me to every small sound in the building, which is how I know she’s already awake. I hear her movement before it should be possible and pick up the pace. Go through the door.
Find her sitting up on one of the cots, rubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand. I’m across in a matter of steps, one arm around her, easing her back down to the pillow.
Holly glares at me all the way down, her protest lighting her face, but I can see from the tightness around her eyes that it cost her. That little show of strength, sitting up in bed, it cost her.
I stroke her hair away from her face. “You need to rest.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for the past year.” Her voice is sweet gravel laced in pain. It’s hard to stay awake with painkillers like she’s on. The stubborn set of her jaw is proof that lying around is not Holly’s favorite thing. “Lying down. Staying low. Hiding.”
“It’s been three days since you were shot.”
“Well, it feels like longer. Especially with no windows.” Holly turns her head into the palm of my hand. It’s a fleeting closeness. It hurts her to turn over, so she doesn’t. She stops herself, except when she’s dreaming. The glancing touch of her warm skin on mine is enough to set me on fire. No, I’m not a good man. I’m definitely not, if I’m lusting after an injured woman.
A narrow table, more of a cart on legs, holds all the supplies I need to change the dressing on her wound. This is all I do. I bring Holly glasses of water. I press pills onto her tongue and make her swallow. I come back again and again with soup and clean blankets and more bandages and gauze. It’s as painful as sitting on the goddamn pew upstairs. More painful.
The guilt is a sickness all its own, and it’s eating me alive.
I had Dax bring me clothes for her, and I reach for a fresh shirt.
She watches me with her brown eyes clouded with the pain she tries to hide. It hurts when I touch her this way, and I have spent every waking hour trying to make it better and failing. The guilt never sleeps. It balls itself up in the back of my throat and chokes me.
“We’ll take you somewhere with windows next,” I tell her while I peel away the old gauze as gently as humanly possible. There never would have been time for this kind of care on the battlefield. On any battlefield.
And we’re in a battle now, albeit a quieter one. Every minute that we’re here, I want to leave. I want to run. But there’s no running to be done now. She has to heal.
“Maybe somewhere with no walls. You can go hiking and sleep under the stars.”
Holly gives me a hazy smile, like light through those stained-glass windows if the windows were the color of hurt. “You and me, both. Do you promise?”
“Yes.” It’s a lie.
We’re being hunted by the U.S. government like animals. If they find this place, if they chew through all the layers of shell companies and anonymous purchases and frantic drives from her apartment to the basement of one abandoned church, then we’ll be caught. And if we’re caught, the catching will be the least of our worries. We’ll be tortured. Probably executed.
I haven’t said any of this to Holly. How would it help to know, even though it’s true?
And the other truth, underpinning the constant prickling at the base of my spine:
It’s inevitable.
The government has time and money and manpower to tie up all our loose ends. A wild goose chase won’t keep them running forever. They will find us. Maybe not today, but someday.
There is no happy ending for us.
I thought I was used to the prospect of a bleak future. Enough nights down in a well will teach you not to expect much from a new dawn. With Holly, knowing the outcome is a thousand times harder than a steep climb out of dark water.
In some ways, the well would be easier. At least back then I was down there alone.
Holly’s gritting her teeth and trying to hide it when I’m finished with the dressing. Her body fails to hide all its trembles and shakes while I button her shirt. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling, but it’s not me. Fresh guilt slices its way through my ribs and into soft guts. Water. Pills. I help her with both, and as soon as she swallows her muscles relax. They don’t work that fast, but a person can anticipate relief as powerfully as they can anticipate pain.
I pull up the sheet and smooth it over her, careful not to brush the dressing, hiding it beneath layers of cloth. Protecting it, as much as it can be protected. Her tongue darts out to wet her lip and she lets out a sigh. Holly watches the ceiling like a screen in a drive-in movie. They’re going sweetly unfocused. She’s starting to fall asleep. I’m relieved. I’m relieved, and I shouldn’t be.
I shouldn’t wish for her to be silent and far away. But being awake hurts her.
Seeing her in pain hurts me.
“What would it be like?”
I brush my knuckles over her cheek. How is she still so soft, after everything?
“Stars,” I tell her, and the scene springs to life in front of me. The church basement and the cot with its white sheets dissolve into a humming dark. “There would be a million stars to look at. Skies so clear we could lie there and watch the constellations rise and set. We’d bring blankets and lay them out to watch. It would be warm if we held onto each other.”
Holly’s eyes flutter closed. The corner of her mouth curls in a smile. “Keep going.”
“We’d find a brook to drink from. Or maybe a lake, the kind that appears so suddenly. One minute there’s grass and ground. The next there’s water filled with reeds. They’d wave above the water while we slept. Or while we didn’t sleep.”
She laughs,
the sound as dreamy as her eyes. Holly leans into my touch, her cheek warm against my palm. Blissfully warm. Heat means she’s alive. I haven’t stopped touching her, but I should.
I can’t.
“The ripples move through the reeds and onto the grass. They’re steady. And calm, for our camping trip. Calm water. The same sound wakes us up in the morning with the sun. Time means nothing out there. Everyone has enough.”
I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, but I keep talking. There are enough words to describe a day on the shore of the lake. A swim. An afternoon in the shade of a tent. An evening with a blazing sunset over the reeds and the water. Food over a campfire. Hot dogs and marshmallows. Innocent things. Things that make people like Holly happy. Stars, infinite stars.
Her breathing evens out. Gets deeper. I still can’t pull my hand away from her face. Not for a long time. The sunset is long over outside the church by the time I stand up and go about the second set of tasks. Getting rid of old gauze. Setting out new supplies. Counting her pills. We have enough water. There’s enough food. I turn off the overhead light and turn on an antique lamp brought down from the old church office.
It’s only when I take my seat again and listen to Holly’s deep breathing that I realize—
I wasn’t describing some fictional campground.
I was describing the woods in France where I fucked her for the first time. That’s my definition of peace. That’s the place I’d go back to if I could.
CHAPTER FIVE
Holly
My side throbs.
It throbs constantly, like those damned ripples Elijah put into my brain. I don’t know how he got them there, only that he did, and now it’s all I can think about. My body is a lake. The pain ripples through me, through the reeds. They get smaller with the painkillers and larger when the painkillers wear off but they are always, always there.
Living in this church is driving me insane.
But the pain is the worst of all.
Sometimes, the painkillers don’t touch it. They leave it whole. During those times I can’t move. My strongest instinct is to stay still, because if I stay still, then it can’t dig its claws in deeper.
It would be easier if I weren’t so tired of lying down.
I’m either unconscious or I’m hurting.
I am bone-tired of being here, on this cot. So tired that the exhaustion comes full circle and I’m wide awake, pointing my toes to stretch, trying to bend my knees. Anything. Anything other than lying still. Sometimes, I try to get up.
And Elijah stops me.
It feels like I’m still in France in that medieval church. Like I never really escaped. Like the last six months of my life have been a dream I created in my madness.
Sometimes I try to get up, but he is always here, urging me back down onto the cot.
I know he’s going to do it. I know he’ll rush in here the moment I so much as breathe deeply, but I can’t help it. I need to move. And so I try again, holding my breath while I push myself up on one elbow. Trying to be as silent as possible.
It doesn’t matter.
Elijah must have been waiting outside the door because he steps in before I’m fully upright. This time, when I grit my teeth, it’s to keep in the frothing resentment expanding in my veins. In this moment I resent all of him. All of his carved good looks and determined green eyes and gentle hands. Even his sympathetic expression.
Especially his sympathetic expression.
“You need to rest.” He eases me back down on the pillow for the millionth time, his tone infuriatingly even. As if I’m a child and he’s my parent.
“I’ll go insane if I rest for another minute.” I can feel the insanity creeping in at the borders of my body. It’s a buzzing in my elbows and my shoulders and down by my hips. “I mean it.”
He sighs, dropping into the seat next to the cot. Most times when I wake up, he’s there. He’s always there.
“Your body needs more time.”
“And then what? When this is gone, will I still be trapped here in the church?” I gesture to the wound at my side, the movement causing a twinge of pain through the skin and muscle. I don’t allow my face to react. The sports bra was a fun development in the wound-healing process. I go shirtless now, with no bandages, so my skin can knit itself back together in the open air.
The wound itself looks small now. Only an inch and a half of red scar tissue. Ironically it hurts now more than ever. On the inside, it feels like knives. I ignore the sharp points and keep looking into Elijah’s eyes. He’s going to answer me, damn it.
He shifts in his chair. “No.”
“You’re lying to me. We’re stuck here, aren’t we? Because of me. Because I shot him.” For the rest of my life, I’ll remember the sensation of recoil. It was different than when Elijah taught me to shoot. The bullet seemed to weigh more, even hanging in the air, even separate from me.
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
My heart beats harder, forcing more blood through my veins. My head throbs along with my wounded side. It takes a real effort not to grind my teeth together until they crack. How can he be so consistently calm about all of this? I’m ready to shed my skin like a snake and disappear into a puff of smoke, and there Elijah sits, watching me with concern in his eyes. I hate it.
“I did it to free you. So you could finally be rid of him.”
He looks away. “And you succeeded.”
“Except now I’m wanted for murder.”
“No one knows what happened in that apartment.”
“The men with him definitely know what happened. They shot me.”
“You don’t need to worry about them anymore.”
I’m not worried, precisely. It’s more like I’m in eternal agony. I know I’m losing perspective, but it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever really heal. If I live ten more years, or twenty, there will still be this terrible pain in my side. It’s as if I really was a mermaid who turned into a human. Now I forever have to walk the sandy shore, unsteady and excluded, in this new form.
He’s giving me that patient look again.
“You should be angry,” I say, venom in my voice. I’m the one angry—at circumstances, at the pain. And some of that anger transfers to the only other human I’ve seen in weeks. “You should be furious at me for pulling the trigger. For killing a man.”
“I’ve killed more men than you will ever know.”
“For killing that man. Your mentor. Your commanding officer.”
“He was a bastard. I once watched him order a man under his command to eat peanuts, knowing he was allergic to them. One. Two. Three. He ate them until he went into shock. He died, Holly. That’s who you stopped. Someone who killed for the joy of it.”
That makes me shiver. The colonel wasn’t a good man, but hearing that story makes him more real. As if his ghost haunts this old church now, malevolent and cold. “You shouldn’t make excuses for me. It’s because of me that you’re hiding right now.”
He runs a hand over his face, and I see a crack in the facade. He’s exhausted, and I know I’m to blame for that. He’s hurting, only his wounds don’t bleed like mine. “What do you want me to say? That I’m glad he’s dead? I am. That you shouldn’t have killed him? No, that was my fucking job. I failed you.”
“Hate me,” I say, and he’s already shaking his head before the words are out.
“You were protecting me. No one has ever done that before. Even my brothers—I don’t blame them. They saved themselves the only way they knew how, but they didn’t save me. No, I did that the day I killed my own father. No one has ever protected me before you.”
I force myself upright—yes, finally—and Elijah puts up his hands to stop me. I throw all of my frustration into my glare, and he stops, putting his hands back into his lap. I hate that even more than I hate his calm, his composure. Fighting him would be better than this. I’d fight him right now if he tried to stop me again. Even if it meant tearing open the
wound. Damn it, I wish he would, but of course he doesn’t give me the satisfaction. Only a patient look.
“I’m tired of this.” There’s a broken edge to my voice that I also hate. So much hate and pain that I’m drowning in it. It tastes metallic on my tongue. “Of you taking care of me. Of being an invalid. Of having you take care of me like a goddamn martyr.”
His green eyes turn dark, the color of moss in a forest. “I’m a shit caregiver. I know that.”
“It’s exactly the opposite. You’re perfect. Too damned perfect. I want you to rail at me. Yell, scream, tell me you’re sick and tired of feeding me chicken broth, because I’m damn sure tired of eating it.” I’m too loud, the rising voice too much for my overtaxed body, but I don’t care. I don’t care. I can’t care any longer.
Elijah’s lip quirks. “You want Chinese takeout?”
“Yes. But I can’t have it. We’d be found out.” I know this like I know he’ll come in here at the first sign I’ve tried to move. I know this like I know the edge of guilt in his eyes that never leaves. It’s there when I wake up, and there when I fall asleep, just like the relentless pain.
“I can maybe sneak a dumpling or two.” It’s a joke. A gentle joke for the woman who’s slowly going insane in the basement of a church. Elijah runs a soothing hand over my arm, a gentle pressure reminding me—yet again—that I need to rest.
He lets the silence settle over us like a blanket. I could kill him for being so perfect. I could kill him and kiss him and fight him if he’d just let me.
All my anger seeps into the ceiling and taunts me from up there, as useless as I am. I’m reduced to a hand on my arm. It’s not the kind of touch I crave from Elijah. It’s so neutral and bloodless that I don’t recognize it at all, never mind that it’s the way he’s been touching me for days.
I don’t know this man. This perfect, steady man who never shows me anything but competent concern. He’s been like some kind of caring robot, never flinching at my pain or at the blood, never losing his patience.
What happened to the beast who bared his teeth behind bars?
