“No,” he snapped, pulling the gun away from her grip. “No, fuck that. What the hell are you thinking?”
“Mutual suicide,” Bella drawled, the thump of desire in her voice. “I want to know what she knows so badly, but this is almost too hot to resist. Someone give her their gun. Let’s see if she’ll really do it.”
“No!” Strike said, thrusting an arm up toward Bella, his hand open wide, but kept his eyes on Rora. “I am not going to let you hurt yourself, Aurora. You don’t take the coward’s way out like he did.”
An invisible weight on her chest made it hard to breathe. “I made him a promise,” she said, finding herself unable to look into his eyes.
But it wasn’t out of guilt that numbness was creeping through her. She didn’t want to live here under Bella’s torture and that’s the only thing she had to look forward to. Strike was always telling her to look to the future. For her, there were two choices, torture or death.
“A promise to kill yourself?” Strike snarled. “Fine.” Loading the gun, he slapped it into her hand and grabbed her wrist, yanking it up hard. Instead of putting the gun to her head, he used his strength to point it at his own. “Take out the trash first.”
The venom in his words complemented the anger burning from his eyes to hers. His mother had killed herself. Rora didn’t know how she’d done it. But Strike had admitted how he wished she’d taken him too. Now he had his chance to be taken by someone else before their suicide.
“I need him as well,” Bella said, from somewhere in the room. “But triple suicide?” She squealed. “If they go, we’re all going with them… Can you just imagine the horror? Hell will be crowded tonight!”
Strike’s eyes got closer to hers, his gaze so intense that Aurora believed he was unaware of anyone else being in the room. He had his hand around hers, holding the gun to his temple so tight that the metal pattern from the grip was imprinting itself on her palm.
“Pull the trigger, Cupcake, what are you waiting for?”
“I… I don’t want you to die,” she said.
“Then put the gun down,” he growled and dipped even lower to get into her face. “Because there isn’t anywhere you can go that I won’t follow.”
She felt how deeply he meant that, his determination made her shiver. “Flame,” she whispered, tormented by his vehemence, her promise, and Benjamin’s sacrifice.
“Send me first. I’ll scare the demons into their holes, clear your path home. Death’s no obstacle to the devil.”
Her finger tensed, and he didn’t even blink as it tightened around the trigger.
But she faltered. “No,” she said, taking her finger from the trigger. “I can’t do it.”
Without acknowledgement of her admission, he clicked into action mode. “Go out the window,” he said and spun around, pulling his phone from his back pocket.
The window in the corner was behind them, and a better option than trying to go through the guards to get to the door, but they were on the second floor. “You think we’ll just let you walk out of here?” Bella said.
Halfway to the window, Rora noticed Opal on the arm of the couch. Strike had his back to her, blocking her from the aim of the others, and still holding the gun on the guards while doing something with his phone.
Diverting, Rora grabbed Opal and ran to the window. The latch wasn’t locked, and it was starting to get dark out, but she didn’t remember about the cold or about her partially nude body until she pushed the window open as wide as it would go.
She gasped, but had no choice now. Strike was backing toward her, obviously meaning to come the same way. With Opal tucked under her arm, she grabbed the frame and hauled herself up onto the sill. Stepping over the lip of the window, she put a hand over her head, balancing herself on the fixed pane above.
“Flame,” she said, waiting for him to get closer.
“Out,” he called over his shoulder. “Go now.”
Beneath this window was a drop of just a few feet. The roof over the lower floor provided a landing. Forgetting the cold and her lack of outerwear, Rora put her other foot over onto the outer sill, dipping her head to exit at the same time. The narrow ledge didn’t offer much safety, but she crouched, and just at that moment something sparked inside.
Whipping around to see what it was, she saw sparks leaping from every electrical socket and appliance in the room. The carpet flamed, going up in a blaze just a second later.
Strike spun around to head for her, the flames rushing up behind him. Rora looked at the roof four feet below, measured the distance in a blink, and jumped.
Her feet chilled in the snow, but she went into a crouch and scrambled toward the wall, pinning herself to it to give Strike space to jump down. Peeking upward, she saw him come out onto the upper windowsill. But he didn’t jump straight away, he pulled the window closed and did something to the outer latch, then he dropped down. The jump barely registered to him as anything more than a step.
Scooping an arm around her, he urged her to the corner near them. “Down onto the tank then to the ground,” he said. “Good girl, go.”
Her butt froze in the snow when she sat on the edge of the roof to dangle her feet over. Sliding down onto the top of the tank as he’d said, she got her footing and then sprang to the ground. Strike wasn’t a breath behind her.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand to pull her around the building, tugging her arm to speed her up. The first gunshot startled her to a stop, but when she saw it was Strike who was firing at the wheels of the truck closest to them, she breathed a sigh of relief.
He pulled her to the second vehicle, opened the door and shoved her inside. “All the way across, go,” he said, shoving her ass and leaping in behind her.
Speeding away from the house, he kept his focus on the road ahead and she blinked at his profile, amazed and speechless. Light out the back window made her turn and she gasped. Scrambling around to press herself against the back of the seat, Rora gaped at the view of the orange flames leaping from the lodge they’d just left.
“Strike,” she whispered. “Oh my God, how did you do that?”
“I’ve been laying accelerant all day. My tricks do have a purpose,” he said, doing a double take when he noticed what she was hugging to her chest. “Is that…”
“Opal,” she said, keeping her fingers curled around the edge of the laptop as she twisted onto her knees and laid it on her lap. “Wouldn’t have felt right to leave her behind.”
He exhaled what might have been a vague laugh. “Get warm,” he said. “Look in the back for a blanket or a shirt, anything.”
“I’m not cold,” she said, unable to take her eyes away from him.
He reached over and rubbed her upper arm. “You’re like ice,” he said. “You’re shivering.”
“Strike,” she said, her heart so overwhelmed that she didn’t feel anything but its mass dominating her chest. “You saved my life.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said, using the dials on the dash to turn on the heat. “Literally. We’ve got two more miles before we reach the plane, and without headlights…”
She hadn’t even noticed that they were bouncing around off the beaten track without any light to help them find their way.
“You’re brilliant,” she breathed out.
She’d said it before, but tonight proved beyond any doubt that his abilities went beyond basic skills or theatrics.
“Cupcake, don’t make me stop,” he said. “Look for a blanket. There will be one in the back.”
She didn’t want to leave him, but she climbed over into the back and pulled a heavy flannel blanket from the back of the truck. Tossing it into the front, she climbed after it and wrapped it around herself, tucking her feet up against her butt when she laid down, putting her head on his thigh.
His hand rose from the wheel, unblocking his view of her. After he looked down at her, he put his hand back on the wheel, looked again, and then squirmed.
“Ro, you’re to
uching me,” he said.
She smiled and closed her eyes. “Get used to it.”
No way was she moving. He might not be used to having her at this proximity, but she wasn’t going anywhere, she was staying right where she was.
Focusing on the adrenaline, she didn’t expect to feel his fingertips touching her forehead, but they did. Tentative though they were, they slid to her temple, and then returned to her forehead. Next time, he let a fraction more of his fingers touch her and when they reached her temple, the heel of his hand relaxed onto her head and she smiled, he was getting used to it already.
seventeen
From what Rora could tell, they hadn’t been pursued. They got into the plane and took off, but Strike hadn’t relaxed even after they were in the air.
He took them into land at a different airstrip than the one they’d taken off from though she didn’t realize that until they’d landed when she found that she didn’t recognize anything. At first, she’d thought it was because it was dark, but Strike had taken her hand and pulled her back to the plane to stop her from wandering too far and that’s when he’d told her they were in a different state.
Strike put her next to a hangar, dealt with everything, and then came back to take her hand. Rora was getting used to blindly following him and so didn’t think much of the car he put her in until they were a few miles down the highway.
“Strike,” she said, her eyes going left then right. “I didn’t see a rental car place.”
“This is Ad Hoc Rentals,” he said, glancing at her. “They’re up and coming, great future.”
“Strike,” she whined, but laughed. “You stole this car!”
He shrugged and lifted a hand to put it on the back of her head rest. “Least I didn’t steal a bike,” he said and nodded at her legs. “You’re not wearing pants.”
“And how did you explain that to the guy at the airstrip? He noticed that I was half-naked by the way.”
Strike had some supplies in the plane, but not many. He’d given her a shirt and it hung almost to her knees, so she was warm enough with her hands tucked up in the sleeves. But he was right that a bike might have been too much, especially since she didn’t have shoes either.
Covering her yawn with her hand that was lost in his shirt sleeve, she twisted and snuggled into the seat, tucking her feet up under her. “I told you a car was better,” she said.
“You’re tired,” he said. “Let me put some distance between us and the plane, I’ll switch out the car and then take you to a motel.”
“With room service?”
Again, he turned to steal a look at her. “You’re hungry? Of course you’re hungry.”
“I haven’t really eaten today,” she said. “I didn’t think about it. But I skipped lunch, and breakfast with Bella was—”
“Ok, ok,” he said, cupping his jaw to rub his stubble. “I can’t go to a drive thru. Their security cameras will—fuck it, we’ll go to the drive thru.”
Leaning over the console, she folded her hands on top of his thigh. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. We’re in a stolen car and…” Straightening, she peeked out the windshield to see he was pulling onto the shoulder. “What are you doing?” He stopped the car and reached into the backseat. A second later, he was typing on his laptop. “Updating your TiVo?” she asked but received no response. “Strike?” A minute later, he leaned back and put the laptop in the back again. “What was that?”
He put on his blinker to merge back onto the highway. “We are now the proud owners of our very own Honda.”
“You hacked the DMV?” she asked.
He shrugged. “There’s no stolen report on the car yet. Cops would be crazy to take one when the owners can’t prove ownership. But I’ve put a bug in their network, if they try to put the report in the system, it’ll bounce and never stick.”
“Strike, you—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I put ten K in the owners’ account, and no way is this car worth ten K. This is a good day for them.”
Her smile twitched before it spread. Pride welled up inside her. “You do the most despicable things and then you… fix it.”
This time when he tipped his attention to her, he didn’t look happy. “You’re a bad influence on me.”
“Because I provoked your conscience?”
“Because I knew you’d bitch at me, so I slid in a contingency to deal with that.”
“Contingency,” she said, settling down again and folding her hands under her head. “Is that what I do? Provoke you into contingencies?”
“You provoke something,” he muttered.
Her playfulness dwindled, and her focus began to wander. He was a handsome guy, smarter than most people on the planet, ripped, and he could turn her on with a glance. And he’d saved her life. He’d saved her life.
“I remember what it was like,” she murmured. “I remember every detail.”
“That fades with time.”
“Not about tonight,” she said, fixating on a point on his door. “I remember watching my mother die, watching the blade slice through my father’s chest… the terror in Markie’s voice when he begged Kyan not to hurt him… I remember it all. The smell, the sticky air, the panic. I couldn’t move.”
“You were thirteen,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to stop him.”
“They were dead. There was nothing but blood, soaking into the carpet, pooling on the floor, splattered on the walls and ceiling. And Kyan was… he was so happy, he turned to me with this big grin on his face and I was sure he was going to come for me and then… he crumpled. He started sobbing. The knife fell and… I held him, Strike. We sat on the floor, surrounded by their blood, saturated by it, and I held him while he sobbed. He talked about the pain, the release, the ache… I didn’t get it, but… I cried with him, Strike. I cried because he was in pain. He was. I don’t know if he knew why he did what he did, but there was a part of me that felt pain for him.”
Listening, he kept his hands on the wheel, but glanced at her. “He was your brother.”
“He is my brother,” she said. “He’s rotting in jail… I don’t even visit.”
“Do you want to?” he asked. “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said. “But tonight… when I saw Benjamin fall to the floor…”
“It brought it back.”
Lifting her head, she tried to figure out the root of her feelings. This wasn’t about grief, though it might have been provoked by it. Rora was affected by what she’d seen in a much more profound way tonight.
“I felt what you felt… You said you didn’t understand why your mother didn’t take you… I didn’t understand why Kyan didn’t take me like he took them, and Benjamin… why didn’t he take me?”
“He almost did,” he said. “Or did you forget asking me for my gun?”
“I would’ve done it if you hadn’t stopped me,” she said, clarity making her sit up. “I would’ve, Strike.”
“That’s the closest you’ll ever come to hurting yourself. That’s it, that’s your one. I’ve turned maintaining liberty into an artform, but that works in reverse too, Cupcake. I can have you locked up so fast your head will spin.”
He seemed so certain and there was still an edge of that anger in his voice. His stepping in had saved her life, but she still didn’t understand why he’d done it. As far as she knew, he felt nothing more for her tonight than he had on any of the previous nights they’d spent together.
“Strike,” she said, loosening her worried lip from her teeth to locate her gumption. “What’s going on with us? Are we together now?”
His slow blink took his eyes from the road to hers, but they didn’t linger. “Drive thru is ahead, buckle up.”
Turning into her seat, Rora put her belt on, and sat up straight. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves more than they had to. He was driving around with a half-naked woman in his car, after all. If the cops did choose to p
ursue them, the car would be one thing Strike could explain away with his digital magic. Her lack of clothes was a more complicated problem.
After eating, Strike told her to lie in the backseat to get some rest. It didn’t take Rora long to fall asleep and she only briefly woke up when he picked her up to carry her somewhere. She’d thought they were going into a motel, she was wrong.
When Rora woke up, she was in the backseat of a car, but it was a different car to the one she’d fallen asleep in.
The sun blaring in all the windows took a minute to adjust to, but she eventually figured out that they were still moving. With one eye closed, she lifted her head to see that Strike was still behind the wheel, but he only had one hand on it because the other held his phone to his ear.
“Couple of weeks, that’s it,” Strike said into the handset. “Yeah. Yeah, man. Soon as I stop moving, it’s done.”
He hung up the phone and lifted his hips, presumably to put it back into his pocket. She lay still for another minute before doing her best to stretch. Then sitting up, she yawned and wriggled to the edge of the seat.
There were no headrests in this car, and the seats were lower. Rora took the opportunity this presented to press her face into the back of his neck. Rubbing her face against him, she hummed with satisfaction and tossed her arms around him to pull herself closer, opening her hands flat on his hard torso.
“Good morning, Flame,” she whispered and kissed the back of his neck.
“It’s the afternoon,” he said, catching her wrist in a pincer of two fingers and lifting it from his torso. “And you’re touching me.”
“What are you going to be like when we have sex?” she asked, letting him go so she could clamber up front. “Are you a germaphobe? I’m clean, I promise. And anyway, I’ve been everywhere you’ve been for two solid weeks at least. If I’ve got it, you’ve got it already. I think if we survived the Last Resort, we can survive anything. Something tells me they don’t have a professional cleaner on payroll.”
“I’m not a germaphobe,” he said, and she was surprised to see shades on his face. “And we’re not having sex.”
Hide & Seek Page 15
