Live Wire (Blue-Eyed Bomb #1)

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  So torn.

  “I don’t want you to go, Trouble, but…I just…I don't know what choice I have,” he rambled while searching my face for some clue that would make his uncertainty disappear. “You have to see how this all looks, don’t you?” I nodded. “But then you just walk out to save face and prove me wrong, and I thought it was a stunt at first until I looked outside and saw you walking into what’s certain to be a mighty bad storm, and I thought holy crap…maybe this isn’t what it looks like at all. Because who walks into a storm just to avoid being called out on a lie? To avoid getting caught up in something dark from her past?” He paused for a moment before placing his hands on my cheeks and lowering his face to mine. “Tell me you aren’t lying. Tell me you’d pass a polygraph test if I strapped you to one and asked you all about this Nico and how you came to be here.”

  “I’d pass, Gabe. With flying colors.”

  He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his hands still holding my face.

  “Then get your ass back inside the house before the rain comes. With your luck you’ll get hit by lightning if you stay out here.”

  I smiled wide.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” I replied as he wiped the tears from my face. “I’ll race you.”

  His hearty laugh caught me off guard at first, as did the kiss he planted on my forehead, but both were welcome. I knew that, from that point on, Gabe was really and truly on my side.

  With his arm around my shoulders, we walked back to the house, the sound of a distant, angry thunderstorm the soundtrack to our journey.

  Chapter 11

  “Looks like the storm is heading out east now,” Gabe observed from the window in the living room. “I need to go out and get the big tractor working if I’m ever going to get my work done.”

  “Can I help somehow?” I asked, still feeling uneasy about what had transpired that morning. He looked as though he were about to dismiss my offer, then thought better of it.

  “Maybe. Jinx needs to be brushed and watered. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “If it helps get me out of the doghouse, then yes. I can totally handle that.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “Then get up off your duff and get moving. We’re burning sunlight here, Trouble.” He grabbed an old gallon milk jug filled with water off the table near the window and opened the front door. Hovering in the doorway, he looked back at me expectantly. I caught his not-so-subtle cue, wiggled out of the chair and onto my crutches, and walked toward him.

  “Aye aye, Captain,” I said as I squeezed past him sideways, careful not to plant the butt end of my crutches on his feet.

  “This is a farm, not a ship.”

  “Well whatever the farm equivalent is to that, then,” I countered.

  “There isn’t one, but I sure do appreciate the gesture.”

  He laughed as I made my way down the steps, closing the door behind him. It wasn’t long before he was walking beside me to the barn, the sunlight warm on our faces. Everything seemed so right that I almost forgot the morning’s shenanigans. Almost. But the nagging sensation in the back of my mind just wouldn’t let me be, and the quiet between us did little to help silence it. Distraction was my only hope.

  Once I was fitted with everything needed to groom Jinx, Gabe disappeared through the wide barn doors to go work on his old tractor.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, buddy. Do me a favor and behave yourself, okay? I don’t want you proving your dad right. I'll never hear the end of it.” The horse whinnied and shook his head a bit, as if to tell me he wouldn’t dare cross me like that. I couldn’t help but chuckle. “That’s a good boy.”

  Jinx was a total gentleman while I worked on him. He seemed to enjoy the attention, which made me wonder if it had been a while since he’d received much. Gabe was spread so thin working the farm on his own. I felt terrible thinking it, but I wondered if maybe he was better off without Mason to care for as well.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been in the barn, but it seemed like forever. My ankle was throbbing from being upright for so long, so I made my way over to a small stool and sat for a moment, pulling my pant leg up to assess the swelling. My ankle looked like a tree trunk, which wasn't a good sign.

  “Jinx, I think I need you to carry me around from now on, okay?” He looked at me with curiosity, then stomped his hoof on the ground. “Well, you don't need to be pushy about it,” I replied with a laugh. “I don’t think your dad will be excited about that idea though.”

  “Be excited about what?” Gabe asked, rounding the corner. He wiped his hands with a dirty rag, attempting to get the grease off of them. It appeared to be a losing battle.

  “Jinx wants to be my personal chauffeur.”

  “Bad idea,” Gabe scoffed, throwing the rag onto the gate of Mason’s old pen. I pretended not to see the flash of sadness in his eyes when he looked at the empty stall.

  “He’s been very good for me. He was perfectly gentle the whole time.”

  Gabe shot the horse a dubious glance.

  “Traitor.”

  The horse snorted.

  “Maybe…if you need a break you can help me saddle him up? Maybe take him for a walk with me riding him?”

  “Jinx doesn’t walk anywhere. He gallops. Like a wild man.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you, Jinx?”

  The horse looked at me with big sad brown eyes and then turned them on Gabe.

  “If you’re fixin’ to bust up that other ankle of yours, this is a great way to do it.”

  “You should live a little,” I joked, pulling myself up onto my crutches.

  Gabe’s stern gaze gave me pause.

  “I’m serious, Trouble. He’s not for beginners.”

  “Maybe I’m not a beginner,” I argued. In fairness, it was a valid point. Though nothing about being near Jinx gave me the same feelings I had when I was around the piano, I just felt safe near him. I trusted him.

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  “Probably not.”

  He sighed heavily.

  “Well, I’m waiting on a part that’s supposed to arrive today, so I can’t do much else until it gets here anyway. I guess if you want to get thrown from a horse, you might as well do it when I’m there to pick you up after you fall.”

  “A fair point,” I said with a smile. “So…let's do this.”

  ***

  “Holy shit this is high!” I exclaimed, clutching the reins a little tighter in my hands.

  “Last chance,” Gabe said playfully, a satisfied smile on his face. “You want to come down?”

  Yes.

  “No. I’m good. Let’s go.” Gabe took Jinx by the bridle and led him out of the barn. He guided him down the driveway and onto a path cut through the field. “Be good, buddy. This is so not the time to prove your dad right.”

  Jinx snorted and shook his head a little.

  “I don’t want to go too far,” Gabe said, looking over his shoulder back to the house. “I can’t miss Mitch when he delivers the part. I’ll have to sign for it, and I can’t afford for him to leave with it. He only comes out this way once a week, and it's a solid two-hour drive to his shop.”

  “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Not worried. Just sayin’,” he corrected, still looking back over his shoulder.

  As if on cue, a delivery truck pulled into the driveway, which was a solid half-mile away from us.

  “Dammit,” Gabe said under his breath. “He’s not going to wait for us to walk back.”

  “Then just go,” I said, trying to cover up the uncertainty in my voice. “We’ll be fine, right, Jinx?”

  “No way,” Gabe said, flashing me an incredulous look.

  “Really. How much can go wrong in the time it takes you to run back there and do what you need to? We’ll just hang out here. No worries.” Gabe looked to the house and back to me, uncertainty in his expression.
“Seriously, just go.”

  “You stay right here, Jinx,” he told the horse. “Do not move.”

  Without another word, he took off running toward the house. Jinx, being the good boy he’d proven to be, didn’t move a muscle. At least not right away. When Gabe reached the house, Jinx turned and started walking deeper into the field at a calm pace.

  “Um, Jinx? Pretty sure you need to stop, or whoa, or whatever it is I need to say to get you to quit doing what you’re doing.”

  The horse ignored me and picked up his pace a bit to a slow trot. I could hear Gabe shouting in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. What I did notice was, the more he seemed to shout, the faster the horse started to move.

  “He’s not mad,” I said, trying to calm him. “Let's just turn around and go get him, okay?” The horse wasn’t buying what I was selling. “Not good. This is not good.”

  I gripped the reins tighter and squeezed his massive frame with my legs. With only one good foot, I didn’t have the grip on him that I wanted to, but I fought to hold on while he broke out into a full-on run through the already harvested section of the fields. From what I remembered of the property, he was heading toward the creek.

  “Are you thirsty, buddy?” I asked. “Are we going for a drink?”

  Or a swim…

  Held hostage by the galloping horse, I had little choice but to literally ride out his little off-book adventure and hope to dismount him once he stopped at the creek, providing that was his plan at all.

  As he ran toward the edge of the property, I could see dark clouds rolling in from the northwest. Black and ominous and moving fast, they did little to ease my anxiety. Without my crutches and far from the house, the last thing I needed was to be caught in a storm with nowhere to hide.

  And Gabe sure as hell didn’t need to lose another horse.

  I could see the trees that peppered the bank of the creek in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief. It wouldn’t be long before we arrived, which meant it wouldn’t be long before I could try to escape the runaway train known as Jinx. After that I didn't have much of a plan. Hopefully Gabe would know where we were headed and come with the truck. He had to have seen the storm front rolling in. I was confident that he didn’t want to be caught up in it any more than I did.

  When we arrived, I found that there was a slight hill down to the water. I was nervous about riding Jinx down and having him bend to get a drink. Falling ass over teakettle into the creek wasn’t high on my list of things to do, but getting down on my own proved difficult, so up on the horse I stayed and hoped for the best.

  “Easy, boy,” I said as we made our way down to the running water. There was an edge of cold to the air that day that was unseasonable, like an early cold front was making its way across the plains. “Let’s try to keep me dry today, okay?”

  He whinnied in response and eased his pace, stopping gracefully at the water’s edge. A step or two into the water, he lowered his head to drink. I held onto his mane like a lifeline while he lapped away.

  A gust of wind ruffled my hair into my face, the icy nature of it surprising both me and Jinx. He shook his head while stamping his feet a bit in agitation.

  “Easy, boy. It’s just the wind,” I cooed, patting his neck with my hand. “Let’s just get your drink and go, okay?”

  He seemed to calm a bit and went back to drinking. But when the next blast of wintry chill hit us, he didn’t weather it as gracefully. He shot back up onto his hind legs, nearly knocking me loose. My grip on his mane slipped, and I fumbled to grab hold of the saddle. I’d just gotten my hand on it when Jinx turned abruptly and reared, flinging me from his back to land far out in the creek. What should have been lukewarm water was bitter cold.

  I scrambled to get out, but my body quickly turned sluggish and uncoordinated, making it difficult to move. My good foot had gotten caught between two large rocks under the water, keeping me from drifting downstream. But it also made it impossible to escape the creek.

  I tried shouting for help, but the cold water seemed to steal my breath, making it hard to force the word out with any more volume than a whisper. I was in big trouble and I knew it. Time was running out.

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get much worse, I heard a rushing sound headed my way. I turned upstream to see what it was, but somehow I already knew. A wave of water thundered toward me as if a levy had just been opened. That surge of water would easily drag me under, and with my foot stuck, I’d drown for sure.

  “Help!” I squeaked. “Help!” But it was no use. With seized-up limbs, I floated in the water, awaiting the impending impact.

  Seconds later the wave slammed into me with incredible force, pushing me under water. Like a fool, I struggled against the surge, using up precious oxygen in the process. Something I wasn’t likely to get any time soon. Surrounded by murky darkness, I felt claustrophobic, which only fueled my panic. I had to get out of there.

  If I can just outlast it, I thought to myself, doing all that I could to keep myself under control. The force of the water was dissipating, and I thought that maybe—just maybe—I'd have a chance to get above the water line for a breath. I tried to grab hold of something to help pull me up but found nothing. With little more than the strength of my abs, I bent myself up to the surface, gasping for air the second I broke through.

  And that’s when I heard something that made my blood run as cold as the icy creek I was drowning in.

  “Time to die, Phira,” a garbled voice told me right before another surge of water shoved me under again. “You should have never left.”

  My lungs burned with the need for air and my vision became spotted. I didn’t have long and I knew it. With any luck, my leg would dislodge after I died and my body would drift away from Gabe’s farm. I didn’t want him to find me. He’d seen enough death in his time.

  Trouble. That’s exactly what I was.

  As my mind went dark, I heard the word again.

  “Trouble! Trouble!” I knew that voice. “Trouble! Where are you?”

  With what was left of the energy I had, I thrust my hand upward, hoping it would breach the surface of the water and be visible to him. If not, I was a goner.

  A moment later someone grabbed that hand and yanked my torso up out of the creek.

  “Jesus Christ,” Gabe cried, tugging on my leg. Finally it came loose and he scooped me up in his arms, wading out of the water, then sprinting up the hill and toward the house. “You’re okay,” he told me, though he didn’t sound convinced. “We just need to warm you up. You’ll be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  I wanted to say something smart—something that would help ease his mind—but no words came out.

  He bolted up the front steps and into the house, tearing through the living room to the staircase. In a flash we were on the second floor, crashing into the bathroom.

  “I have to take these off,” he said, sounding apologetic about stripping me down. I was far too out of it to care. “What in the hell happened, Trouble?” I shook my head. “Christ, if Jinx hadn’t come for me and led me to you…”

  He couldn’t seem to bring himself to finish the sentence.

  Once he had me stripped down to my skivvies, he picked me up again and took me across the hall to his room. He placed me down on his bed and started to pile blankets on top of me, practically emptying his closet of all its winter bedding.

  “Here,” he said, wrapping me up like a frozen burrito. “We need to get your core temperature up.” That was true enough. “I don’t understand what’s going on with the weather or how that water was so cold, but something is very, very wrong.”

  “I heard a voice,” I whispered, my chattering teeth making it almost impossible understand what I said.

  “Voice? What voice?”

  “Called me…Phira.”

  “Phira? Is that your name?”

  I nodded.

  “Holy shit,” he said, looking at me like he’d see
n a ghost. “Well, we’ll deal with that later. Right now, we need to get you warm. Do you feel any better yet? Any warmer?”

  I wished I could have told him I did.

  Instead, I shook my head.

  “Okay…okay,” he said, searching the room with his eyes for something else he could use to warm me. “Body heat! That’s what they say you have to use in an emergency, and this here sure as hell qualifies.” He tore off his dirty shirt and threw it on the floor by his bed before unbuckling his belt and sliding his jeans down off his hips. Standing there in his black boxer briefs, he looked at me as though seeking my permission to approach. When I said nothing, he started to peel the layers of blankets off of me until there was nothing but me in my underwear and bra. I tried to scoot back and make room for him on the twin bed, but he gently pushed me over, sliding in beside me. After he had us covered in all the bedding again, he pulled my body into his.

  “Geez,” he gasped at the touch of my frozen skin on his.

  “Sorry,” I said, still shaking in his embrace.

  “Here, let me try something else,” he said, rolling me onto my back. He looked down at me, his warm eyes full of fear. “Do you still trust me?”

  I nodded.

  Without an explanation, he rolled on top of me, letting his weight press me deeper into the warmth of the bed. He placed his forearms on either side of my head to keep himself slightly propped up, presumably to avoid crushing me. The way his skin felt against mine at that moment, I wondered if I would care if he did.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, his voice low and quiet.

  “Yes,” I whispered, feeling the muscles in my body start to relent ever so slightly.

  “I’m not—” he started, cutting himself off. “This isn't about—”

  “I know,” I replied, my voice still shaky. His warmth slowly seeped into my body and the sensation was absolute heaven. “Just stay with me. Please. It's helping.”

  “I will,” he said, peering down at me through his tousled black hair. It reminded me of the day he’d found me in the field, only the look in his eyes was very, very different. A hunger now resided there.