“So I guess we’re pulling over and sleeping, then,” Marie noted dryly.
“We are,” Pete confirmed. “I have to have some sleep or I’ll be useless, and I’m betting you’re not much better.”
There was silence from the other side of the car, and it wasn’t comfortable.
“Kind of cold out to just lay around in a car, don’t you think?” she finally asked.
Pete glanced at her, took in the downward turn of her face, and then looked down between them. This was a military-issue Hummer, which meant it had a whole lot of extra space for gear and additional soldiers. Instead of the standard armrest or center divide between them, the designers had laid out a large, flat area.
Perfect for laying down.
“It’s not going to get that cold,” he said. “Not when I’ve been blasting the heater like crazy. But we can conserve our body heat and huddle up if you want.”
He didn’t tell her whether or not he wanted to. Leave that up to her, he thought. After all, he wasn’t the one who was worried about freezing to death out here in the middle of an Alaska night.
“Do you mind?” she asked, her voice smaller than it had been.
Pete stifled another grin. “Not at all.” He got up and moved toward the back of the Hummer, trying to see through the darkness to figure out whether there were any supplies back there. “Now if only Thomas and his merry men decided to supply this particular truck with blankets and pillows…”
“Ahem.” A cleared throat behind him—in the tones of Marie—had him turning around, crouched over as he was.
She was holding up a blanket. And as he watched, she pulled another from the pack in front of her.
“Where the hell did you have those hidden?” he asked, surprised.
“In the packs,” she said. “I figured we were heading into the icy Alaskan wilderness and might need, you know, blankets. Stole them right off the bed we slept in last night.”
She gave him a cocky grin and a cocked eyebrow, and he grinned back.
“Figure Thomas owes us something for all the work we did there, after all,” she finished, already laying the blankets out on the flat section of the Hummer.
Within thirty seconds she’d managed to build a bed that looked almost comfortable, and though it wasn’t—they were, after all, laying on a single blanket on top of very hard metal—by the time they got the second blanket up over them and Marie scooted back into Pete’s arms, his eyes were already so heavy that he could hardly keep them open.
“Better than the last time we slept together,” Marie murmured, referencing their time in the woods before they’d made it to Clearview.
“Wouldn’t take much,” he replied.
His thoughts snagged for a moment on two things: first, that he shouldn’t be sleeping while Jack, who was basically a stranger, was in the car; and second, that he shouldn’t be sleeping while those villagers might currently be organizing a search party to come after him.
He reminded himself that Jack needed them a whole lot more than they needed him, and that he knew that. Then he reminded himself of what Jack had said about the town not having any leadership, and that it would be morning before they got organized enough to come after the refugees.
He told himself firmly to wake up within an hour, then pulled Marie closer—just for warmth—and let himself rest for the first time in what felt like years.
Chapter 11
By the time the sun came up the next morning, Pete had been driving again for several hours and was bent over the steering wheel, his eyes on the horizon as he searched for some sign that they were getting close to anything other than this damn forest.
“How close did you say we are?” he asked.
A snort came from the seat next to him. “I don’t exactly have a location app to use, you know. No estimated time of arrival, courtesy of global satellites. But we’ve got to be within fifty miles, if I’m reading this map right.”
If. It was a big question.
“We’re getting close,” Jack chimed in from the backseat. “Maybe an hour, and that’s only because of the snow.”
Pete took his eyes off the road in front of them—still twisting and turning through an incredibly dense, snow-covered forest, though the twists were getting rarer now and he could see the start of the plains in front of him when the turns put him in the right position.
Anchorage wasn’t in the mountains. It was set practically on the beach, if you could call it that. On the water, in any event. As soon as they came to the end of this mountain pass, they should be able to see it sitting out on the land below them.
And holy smokes, was he ready for that view. Ready to stop driving. Ready to be back on city streets again. Hopefully with something that looked like law enforcement or, at the very least, a military presence.
Energy. Warmth. Safety. Things he’d always taken for granted in the past. Things he would fucking kill for right now.
And beyond that, he’d love to be back in the city where he’d grown up. No, he hadn’t been there in years—he’d moved to Portland the second he was old enough to leave home and try to make his own life—but his soul was already yearning for the place where he’d first learned to drive. Gone on his first date.
Within the car, though, there were things to deal with before they got to that town.
“How exactly would you know how close we are?” Marie was asking Jack, her body turned so she could look at him.
Pete watched the other man in the rearview mirror, wondering the same thing. Because everything around here looked exactly the same. What did he have, some special tree that he watched for or something?
Jack gave Marie a grin that reminded Pete that this was the guy who’d been making eyes at her when they first got into Clearview. This was the guy that Marie had specifically called out for being too interested in her when she was serving him food. Pete’s own eyes narrowed in distaste, but he put the thought aside.
Now wasn’t the time to start getting jealous over a girl he’d probably never see again after tomorrow. It wasn’t like they had anything in common other than trying to escape convicts and find a place that had power.
Those things didn’t exactly make for a great foundation for a relationship.
“We drove this way all the time, in one of the smaller cars,” Jack said cheerfully. “Didn’t bring the Humvees because we didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves. Don’t know why it mattered, though. Never went all the way into town, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to notice us.”
Pete frowned and turned his eyes back to the road. “So… Why make the drive if you weren’t going to bother going into town? Did you guys just like the view or something?”
“Thomas wanted to make sure the town was still peaceful,” Jack replied. “It’s the closest city to Clearview. If we were going to be attacked, it would come from them. He sent scouts down here once a week to make sure they didn’t see anything that looked like an invasion.”
“You… thought the good people of Anchorage were going to attack you?” Marie asked, barely containing her smile.
When he answered, Jack’s voice was mocking. “Not the people. The good people of Alaska would never have done anything like that. But the army? Yeah, the army might have. We had things they wanted. And they had things we wanted. Where do you think we got all this gear?”
The pride crept back into his voice at that, and Pete just shook his head. He couldn’t tell how much Jack had bought into Thomas’ crazy theories—and he didn’t know how long he’d been stuck in that town with the cult leader—but that cult wasn’t his problem anymore.
He hoped.
“Were all the other trucks like this one?” he asked. “All those other Hummers in that warehouse. All this same model?”
“Better models,” Jack said with pride. “We had lots of newer ones. We had bad luck back there. Got one of the oldest ones in the entire place. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers, huh?”
> He added that last question flippantly, like it was the funniest thing in the world.
He didn’t see Pete’s face, though—or the look Pete shared with Marie.
Because he was 99.9 percent sure those villagers were already after them, now that the sun was up and driving would be easier. Presumably, they’d managed to elect another leader. Hell, maybe they’d had some duel to the death to figure out who should take the mantle. Who knew.
Either way, if they were coming in newer vehicles—and therefore, most likely faster and more powerful—than the one he was driving, then there was going to be trouble.
They knew this area in a way he didn’t, as he hadn’t spent much time in the mountains above Anchorage. And they were, if Jack was telling the truth, used to driving through the snow on a regular basis. Used to driving this exact road through the snow. They’d made the trip once a week.
Some of them probably knew the twists by heart.
“This could be a problem,” he muttered, his words for Marie only.
“A big one,” she agreed. “I’m betting they’re already on our tail.”
“And they’ve got the guys who drove this road all the time behind the wheels of trucks that are newer and faster than this one. Shit.”
She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t have to. He already knew that she was thinking the exact same thing he was.
They shouldn’t have taken time off to have that nap last night. He’d ended up waking up an hour later, having trained himself to do just that, so they hadn’t taken a long break. But given what they were up against, it had been too much.
A stupid, stupid gamble. And another situation where he was putting Marie’s life in danger, as well as his own.
“Think they’ll have electricity in Anchorage?” she asked, her voice drawn up with more tension than it had held before.
He knew what she was doing. She was changing the subject to something safer. Not that he could blame her. If the people from Clearview were after them, there was nothing they were going to be able to do about it now. The deed was already done, and worrying about it wasn’t going to change the situation.
Better to move on to things that they could change. Like building a plan for what they were going to do when they got to Anchorage.
If they got to Anchorage. If they could outrun people who knew the terrain better than he did, and who were driving trucks that were both more powerful and faster.
“I have my doubts,” he answered, going to the question of Anchorage instead of the question of whether they would make it or not. Hey, positive intentions, right? “Don’t see how they could have power when the rest of the world doesn’t seem to, and it would be awfully quick for them to have gotten anything repaired and back online. The tech that broke doesn’t exactly grow on trees.”
“What are we going to do if they don’t?”
“Same thing we’d do if they did. I want the stuff Clyde has in his warehouse. We get in there, we make our way toward the airport, and we start searching. And God help anyone who gets in our way or tries to stop us.”
“What if the city’s government is still working, though? Should we go to them? Tell them about Clyde or the convicts that might be coming for them?”
“Not our problem,” he grunted. “If there is city government or law enforcement, they’ll know what to do if those prisoners arrive looking for trouble. We don’t need to get ourselves involved in that.” He paused and shot her a look, remembering that she tended to stick her nose into situations where she wasn’t needed. “Seriously. We don’t say one damn thing to anyone we meet about any of that. It’ll just get us in trouble. We don’t need to be involved. We get in there, figure out how to find that warehouse, and take as much of the stuff as we need. We keep our mouths shut while we do it, and we lay as low as we can. Avoid detection. Then we get to a bigger city. One that has a better chance of having recovered.”
Marie didn’t speak for a long moment, her mind no doubt coming up with all the ways he was wrong, and all the ways she thought she could improve on his plan. Hell, for all he knew, she was going to say they should wait for the convicts and try to figure out whether they could team up with them more successfully this time.
He didn’t have any doubt that whatever came out of her mouth next, it was going to be a bad idea.
“What if Clyde’s stash doesn’t actually exist?”
He bit his lip. That was the big question, wasn’t it? “You’re the one who said you’d heard of it. Did the prisoners you overheard sound like they were lying?”
“No, they sounded completely convinced. Like he’d brought pictures to prove it or something.”
“Then we go on that theory,” Pete replied. “We get into Anchorage and find it. Period. After that, we get the hell out of Dodge. Before the people from Clearview or those prisoners come looking for us.”
He didn’t go any further than that, because he didn’t want to. He knew for a fact that there was no guarantee. No guarantee that Clyde’s stash was actually there, and most certainly no guarantee that they could get to it and get out of Anchorage before any of the groups of people after them found them.
But he wasn’t willing to give up. He’d come too far and come through way too much at this point to even consider the downsides here.
He knew he was being stupid. Naive. Blind. A good soldier always considered all possibilities and came up with a plan to fight each and every one of them.
But he was starting to feel a glimmer of something that felt a whole lot like hope. And he wasn’t willing to squash that just yet. It was too good to feel like there might actually be a point to all of this. He didn’t care if it was reckless. He was going to allow himself to hope for just a little while longer.
At that moment, they came through one last twist on the mountain and saw the plains spread out below them, covered in snow and ice… and leading right to the city. It was right there in front of them, clean and bright, with its buildings standing up from the flatness around them.
“Anchorage,” Marie breathed. “Thank God.”
“Thank God,” Pete answered.
And at that moment, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a line of other Hummers on the road behind them. They were moving fast… and coming right for the vehicle he was driving.
Chapter 12
Pete’s eyes flew back to the road in front of him, taking in the twists and turns he’d have to navigate to get down from the mountain and quickly calculating how fast he thought he could take those turns.
Faster than the people behind him. He was willing to bet on that. Because unlike them, he was going to be running for his life—and the lives of Marie and Jack. He was sure Jack would be okay, in the end. He might be in trouble, but now that Thomas was (theoretically) decapacitated and out of power, he might be able to talk sweet to whoever had stepped in. Tell them he’d been taken hostage and there was nothing he could do.
But Marie and Pete? They’d shot up the town, injured the leader of said town, and then stolen goods, and that was on top of the fact that they’d also tried to steal horses yesterday. They’d also lied (as far as the townspeople were concerned) and may or may not be government spies or military agents.
Hell, at this point, they’d probably extended that to all-out aliens who had come to take over earth, starting with Clearview.
Either way, Thomas had deemed them outlaws, and as far as the citizens of Clearview were concerned, Pete was pretty sure that meant they were going to be shooting to kill.
Or using their vehicles as ramming devices.
He slammed on the gas, heading for the first hairpin turn at a speed that was totally and completely unsafe—and totally and completely necessary.
“Get in the back and wake Jack back up,” he muttered to Marie. “I want an ID on those trucks. I’m guessing they’re coming from Clearview, but if he looks at them and tells me they’re not the trucks that were in the warehouse with this one, I’ll feel a whole lot b
etter about our chances of surviving the next ten minutes or so.”
Marie had already undone her safety belt and started for the backseat, her eyes jumping from the road in front of them to the scene behind them. He hit a bump in the road right then and she went to the ground of the vehicle, but popped back up with a speed that made Pete wonder at her agility.
Seconds later, she was shaking Jack awake again. How the hell the guy had fallen asleep in that space of time, Pete didn’t know, because he’d literally just been telling them that they were within an hour of Anchorage.
Maybe he had a sleep disorder. Maybe it didn’t matter right now.
Pete hit the turn at that moment, shouted, “Hold on!” and whipped the vehicle into the curve, holding his breath and jamming down on the accelerator again, even though every instinct in his body was screaming for him to go for the brake. That would have been suicidal, though.
Even in a truck like this, accelerating through the turn was the only way to do it. Keep the momentum going forward. Keep the wheels tight to the ground. Hit the brakes and you’d suddenly become top-heavy as the wheels tried to stop and the top of the vehicle tried to keep going.
That was a sure recipe for flipping, especially in a truck like this. And right now, a flip like that would mean tumbling down the mountainside, which did not sound like a good time.
He grunted and hauled on the steering wheel, trying to get the truck to go around the curve, and didn’t breathe again until they were through the curve and into another straightaway.
“Think you can take the next one a little bit slower?” Marie snapped from behind him. “You almost threw me out the window.”
“I told you to hold on!” Pete answered. “And as long as those guys back there are chasing us, slower isn’t going to be an option. Jack, you up?”
“I’m up, I’m up!” came the answer.
Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn Page 6
