Run Among Thorns

by Anna Louise Lucia

  “Sit here. Put your feet there. Brace them, that’s it, against the front of the trench.” He finished tying the rope, and looked at her. “If you feel like you’re going to be pulled in, let go.”

  Like hell I will.

  He bent and caught her face in wet hands, forcing her to look up at him as she wound the rope around her own. “If you lose your footing, you will let go.” He enunciated each word slowly and precisely, holding her gaze with his. Her throat tight, she nodded in his grip, and he dropped his head and kissed her once, hard on her cold lips.

  Then he turned, holding the rope out of the way in his left hand, and without hesitation dropped waist-deep into the river. The current caught him immediately, and the rope tautened, biting into the flesh on her hands. She planted her feet more firmly into the trench and leaned back, letting the rope play out little by little till her teeth were clenched from the burning pain.

  Kier reached the car, and fumbled with the door handle. He backed upstream a few steps, fighting against the flow to open the door. The pressure of the water kept it closed for a moment, but he managed to wrench it open a fraction and the current did the rest, almost ripping it off its hinges.

  Jenny couldn’t see past Kier to the interior of the Merc; she could only see him bending into the car, and his hand hanging tight to the door frame. He remained like that for some time, his shoulders moving as he struggled with something out of her sight.

  Then he was backing out, leaning back hard to drag Kendrick through the door. He heaved, lifting a leg to brace against the bottom of the door frame, then Kendrick’s inanimate form came free suddenly, sending Kier staggering backwards … and they both disappeared beneath the surging brown water.

  She cried out, the rope tugging viciously on her hands. Her knees started to buckle, but she twisted her wrist around the vibrating rope, threw her shoulders back, and heaved, shouting again as the harsh fibre burned her skin.

  Through vision blurred with effort, she saw Kier surface again, turning towards her, supporting Kendrick with arms wrapped tightly around his chest from behind. He climbed to his feet and to the bank, and she hauled in the wet rope, almost sobbing with relief.

  Once on relatively dry land, Kier heaved Kendrick onto his shoulders, and Jenny followed him up the slope, the rope in hand.

  He deposited him on the verge, and she dropped to her knees to hunt for the man’s pulse.

  She looked up at Kier, fumbling with the knot of the rope. “He’s breathing, but he’s got a major knock on the head, look, here.”

  “We can’t take him farther than this, Jenny. We need the breathing room.” Kier was still labouring for air, and his voice came out in gasps, but she could still hear the note of finality in his pronouncement.

  With businesslike precision she rolled Kendrick into the recovery position, checked again that he was breathing, and ran to get the blanket she had seen in the boot of the car. She had to clamber over the backseat to get it, as the rear door was twisted out of shape, the window shattered and opaque.

  As she came back, Kier was rising from beside Kendrick, with a gun in one hand and a radio in the other. He tried the radio, shook it once, and then tossed both it and the gun back down the slope and into the river. Wordlessly she handed him his mobile that she’d also grabbed from the front dash.

  “No arguments?” he said, one brow rose quizzically.

  You listened to me, and you almost drowned for it. “Not this time,” she said, lightly.

  While he called the emergency services, she rummaged in the bag she’d taken from the cottage stash, producing a spare jumper of his. She tossed it to him, and he grinned, although she could see his teeth chattering from where she was.

  They piled back into the car, wet trousers and all, and she pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her sore wrists and hands.

  “With him out, we’ve got a night, at least,” Kier said. “His team won’t blink without his say-so, I know his style.” He glanced across at her. “The ambulance will be here in ten minutes. He’ll be fine.”

  She smiled. Logically he was right. Kendrick was chilled and in shock, but he hadn’t drowned, and he was going to live. “I know.”

  “Ready?”

  She glanced through the window at Kendrick, lumpish and indistinct under the blanket, his face showing blotchy red where the bruises were starting to form. Far, far in the distance, she heard the rising wail of an ambulance siren. “Ready.”

  They’d put ten miles or so between them and the gorge, on back roads and country lanes, before Jenny started nodding off. Since it was pretty close to dark anyway, Kier pulled into a passing place, half-screened by the trailing lower branches of an ash tree. Smashed taillights were illegal. And they were much more obvious at night. It made sense to wait for light again, instead of running the risk of being seen by a police vehicle.

  Beside him, Jenny snuffled and slipped sideways as he pulled on the parking brake. Twisting slightly, he got his arm round her, holding her against his shoulder. Her sweater was still damp under his hand, so he left the engine on, and cranked up the heater.

  He couldn’t blame her. He could feel tiredness throbbing in his own muscles, and the faint stiffness of bruises, here and there. He should follow her example, and get some sleep.

  Which was easier said than done, Kier thought irritably. Tiredness or no, Kier couldn’t quite grasp the gentle oblivion that had Jenny boneless against his side. He strained his ears past the soft rumble of the engine and the whisper of the blower, but there was nothing happening outside.

  He leaned his head back against the rest and breathed deep. He could smell mud and the damp, musty smell of a recent soaking on them both. If they’d had time, and if they’d had a complete change of clothes, they should have stripped out of those wet things and warmed up properly. Carefully, he lifted the dark mass of hair from her neck and lightly touched her throat. Warm, not too warm.

  With his other hand he turned off the engine.

  His fingers lingered, without his permission, feeling the thump of her pulse and the slight shift when she breathed. In spite of himself, for a moment he imagined her stripped, naked, nipples pursed tight with cold, her skin pale and flawless. But thoughts of her skin inevitably led to the sight of those vicious bruises on her back, marring the softness and looking so painful. And of more recent marks he knew were there.

  His fingers withdrew from her throat, her hair slipped down again to hide her face and neck. A bitter, sick feeling curled in his stomach. Everything he did, no matter how well-intentioned, seemed to hurt her. Bruises he’d put there. Mental scars. Fears and shadows of mistrust. Physically, mentally, it didn’t matter, whatever he did, she got hurt. He couldn’t protect her.

  Jenny made a slight “huh” sound and slipped a bit, burrowing her shoulder into his side. He twisted some more, trying to support her, and somehow she ended up halfway on her back, on his lap. He looked down at her, trying to see clearly in the darkness while the engine plinked cool.

  A week ago he would have said he was the best in the business with pride and absolute conviction.

  Now that seemed like an empty achievement, with Jenny sleeping off pain and fear and exhaustion right there in his lap. Nothing to be proud of anymore.

  He’d always sought to do the best he possibly could, to stretch his abilities to the limit. So what if that meant other people got hurt? He needed to use the skills he had.

  It sounded cold to him now. He’d done his job with Jenny, and he was close to hating himself for it. Which was a type of introspection he hadn’t indulged in for many, many years.

  He rubbed his eyes, squeezing them tight shut. Trying to drag his mind away from those thoughts that threatened all his goals of the last ten years or so, and latch onto the problems and solutions of the present. He reached for the dial to tilt the seat back, awkwardly scooping Jenny along with him as it reclined. She stirred a little in her sleep, and murmured, burrowing her nose into his abdomen.
He absently slid her hair out from under her neck, smoothing it the best he could up over his thigh as he knew she liked to smooth it over the pillow. His fingertips lingered again on the smooth skin of the back of her neck, her hot breath seeped through his sweater, and his mouth went dry.

  He wondered how long it would be before they actually got to sleep in a bed again.

  He sneered in the darkness in disgust at his own train of thought. He was hardly the knight in shining armour of fantasy. I’ll take care of you, babe, but you gotta take care of me, too … He might be more the stuff of nightmare than dreams, but Jenny didn’t need a fairy-tale prince. She needed ruthlessness and resolve. Someone who wouldn’t drop, who wouldn’t stop. Not till they were done. He might not be able to provide the fantasy, but the rest he could do.

  She needed a proper bastard.

  And he was the man for the job.

  In spite of himself, he let his fingers lightly trace the line of her jaw, gleaming milky white in the dark. He saw her soft lips part around a gentle sigh and found himself holding his breath to listen to hers. And he thought about what he could offer her.

  And how unlikely she was to want to accept it. From him, at least.

  The truth was … ah, truth. Dropping his head back, he sighed. This dawning conscience, the desire to protect her. That sure as hell wasn’t truth. That was the stuff of fantasy. Delusion.

  Truth was facts and figures. Actions and motivations and people. He saw Kendrick grinning in the Merc; saw Groven’s eyes, hard even through the blur of digital projection. Kendrick, Groven, Davids. They wanted Jenny. And McAllister had her.

  That was truth. That was tangible.

  For that reason only, he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

  Jenny woke because something hard was digging into her ribs, and because someone was snoring. The snoring rose out of the background noise of half-sleep and became a vibration, too, against the warm and scratchy something her face was pressed to.

  Reluctantly opening one eye, she got an ascending view of Kier’s jumper-clad chest and stubbled jaw. He wasn’t exactly snoring. It was more the raspy breathing of someone lying on his back with his mouth slightly open.

  It was incongruous enough to make her flick her hair out of her eyes to stare.

  Then she realised the thing digging into her side was the hand brake.

  “Hunh.” She wriggled back and up, trying to get upright without actually shoving at him, and without getting even more closely acquainted with the brake lever. “Ow,” she muttered, under her breath, and managed to get onto her hands and knees, mostly on her seat, but partly on his.

  “Morning.”

  And why, exactly, did that make her freeze? It wasn’t the first time his voice had sounded that rough.

  Although it may have been the first time it sounded that gentle, too. Looking up, she realised the windows were completely fogged over.

  Oh, for God’s sake.

  She swivelled her head in his direction and saw heavy-lidded eyes and the quirk of those mobile lips through the curtain of her hair. “Good”—she cleared her throat—”good morning.”

  He shook his head, the lines beside his eyes cutting deeper.

  She frowned at him, not understanding.

  He sat up, a smooth, effortless curl of his body up away from the seat, closing the distance between them. One hand tucked her hair behind her ear, one cupped her cheek.

  He kissed her.

  A touch. A smooth, hot pressure—nothing more.

  In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, the stroke of one fingertip along the curve of her ear was a totally absorbing sensation. She drifted, holding the thought, holding the moment, and thought, almost inconsequentially, I’m in love with this man.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  Opening her eyes, she took a breath and backed off, awkwardly shuffling onto her own seat, and fumbling the door open. The dawn air was cold, a slap in the face after the close confines of the car.

  “Where are you going?”

  She slipped out and tugged her top straight. “To find a big, secluded bush—do you mind?”

  “Be my guest,” he said, laughter in his voice.

  “Tell me about Kendrick.”

  Kier frowned, squinting at outlandish names on a crossroads signpost. They were working their way round the north of Carlisle, now, in open, windswept country. Scraggy fields and bent trees.

  He made his choice. “What about him?”

  “Why was he alone?”

  Kier took a corner with care before answering. There was mud on the road, thrown by some farm vehicle that had left deep trenches in the green-grass verges. “He likes to work alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he likes to hoard the glory.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jenny tug at the seat belt, drawing it away from her neck. He reached down and tweaked the heater up some.

  “So why do you work alone?”

  A stray sheep was grazing on the verge ahead, a straggly fleeced ewe that stood stiff-legged as they came near. He drove by with exaggerated care. “There’s another way?”

  “If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be asking.” She sounded sharp, and he couldn’t blame her. But she might as well have asked why he dug in people’s minds and made sand castles of what he found there.

  “What I do doesn’t lend itself to teams.”

  “What? No good cop, bad cop?”

  His lip curled. “No.”

  Good cop. Bad cop.

  Good … bad … He grimaced as the back end shook a little too far on a tight bend.

  “We need a new vehicle.”

  For which they needed civilisation, and anonymity. But the clock was ticking. He didn’t much fancy being conspicuous when Kendrick reported in. Stay out, Kendrick, he thought, hoping he’d stay unconscious, as least for now.

  Too much to hope for.

  Jenny cleared her throat. “Kier?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How about a little four-year-old diesel hatchback?”

  He glanced at her. Pale face, dark hair. Watchful eyes. He shrugged. “Sounds okay. Where is it?”

  She fiddled with the seat belt again. “Look, we’re only half an hour or so from my home, we can just nip in and—”

  “No.”

  “Kier—”

  “No.”

  She kicked the underside of the dashboard, startling him.

  “Will you listen to me?”

  “It’s no good, Jenny,” he said, making an honest-to-God effort at sounding conciliatory. “We can’t turn up in the first places they’ll look.”

  “But you said yourself that”—she gestured back over her shoulder—”gives us a head start. We don’t have to stop, it’s right there, surely—”

  “We’d be stupid to contemplate it.”

  “I don’t agree,” she snapped. “It’s close, it’s private, you can check it out from a distance, and if you see anything you don’t like, we can be out of there before they ever see us, we—”

  “But we’ll be exchanging one vehicle they know for another. All they have to do is circulate the licence and we’re theirs.”

  “But that’s just it. It’s not mine.”

  He shot her a glance. She looked triumphant. “What do you mean?”

  “A friend of mine was flying out to go travelling in Australia the same day I went to the U.S. I drove her down, and she left her car at my place. And since I was due back before her, she left me the keys.”

  The road was straight. He took the chance to stare at her, good and long. “And you’re happy to drive it away.”

  She blinked at him, looking self-conscious all of a sudden. And he knew that feeling, when problem solving had crossed some boundary and you hadn’t even felt it pass, hadn’t known you were on the other side, in new territory, until the ground under your feet felt different, and there was no way back.

  “She’d give it to me, if I asked. I …
we have to, don’t we?”

  He didn’t tell her he’d been planning on helping himself to the first car he saw whose security measures he was familiar with. It didn’t seem fair.

  “I don’t know, Jenny. It’s still a risk.”

  “I can get you within a mile of the place without being seen. Check it out. We can leave if you see anything. That’s all.”

  He shook his head. “First law—don’t go home, don’t visit friends, don’t—”

  “Please?”

  Don’t care.

  “Jenny—”

  “You were going to kill him.”

  He snapped a look at her. The voice was breathless, the eyes wide, almost blank. That one had come out of the blue for her, too. He swivelled his head back to the road, but he was driving on autopilot.

  “You tried to kill him,” she whispered again.

  “Yeah,” he said, when he knew he should be saying, yeah, I’m sorry, or yeah, but I had to. Anything rather than just, yeah.

  But, “yeah,” he said and wanted to say, but I didn’t, because that was important, too.

  She was staring at him, he knew, as if it horrified her to be in the same vehicle with him. In the same country. One day soon, he would like her to look at him as if he … as if she … He shook his head, sharply, turning his hands on the wheel to settle the grip, braking with care for a small rise, because at the very least the tracking had to be shot, and—

  “But you didn’t,” she said, for him. “You saved his life instead.”

  All the dirty jobs he’d done in his life, and done well, damn it, all the times he’d pushed a little harder, gone a little further. Nothing had prepared him for this, nothing had been harder than this conversation—right here—in a smashed-up SUV, sitting beside a woman he had wounded and wanted to rescue.

  “You made me,” he said, slowly, carefully, feeling his way, not daring to stop driving, never mind he had no idea what that last signpost had said.

  “What? You take orders from me now?”

  “No.”

  “We all have choices, Kier.”

  This junction he stopped at, but he didn’t look for the signpost. He stared at the strip of black steering wheel between his two hands. We all have choices. And hers had been to walk out from between the pines, and get in his car.