by Fox, Logan
He didn’t speak again, as if he was waiting for her to reply.
“Okay,” she said, eventually.
“Can’t keep you safe if you don’t trust me.”
“Okay.”
“And you have to start listening to me.”
Her jaw clenched. He was starting to sound more and more like her father. “Okay!”
He let out a frustrated growl. When he shifted in his seat, the Ford veered a little to the right. She grabbed the seat under her, and then hurriedly put on her seatbelt as she peeked at Finn from under her lashes.
“She wanted money for the room. There was a buffet. I thought you’d be hungry. Then they started playing music and—”
He made a soft sound, and she stopped talking. She stared out the window, fingers against her mouth.
She felt hollow. Her skin too tight. Every nerve ending in her body sparked as adrenalin slowly bled out of her. Her stomach rumbled quietly, and she put a hand over her belly.
“Hungry?” he asked woodenly.
“Starving.”
He gave a reluctant nod and began scanning the street as if looking for a drive through.
So they were back to a mono-syllabic conversation? Well, that suited her just fine.
14
‘Nilla
Cora was chewing on a french fry when Finn pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping center. It didn’t look like the same one they’d stopped at earlier; this one bustled with cars and almost every shop was still open.
“Hold this,” Finn said, handing her his holster with the pistol still secured inside. A second later, he gave her the Taurus as well.
“Head down and follow me at a distance.” He stalled the Ford and climbed out of the car.
Cora slid out, following him when he strode away through the parking lot. It was almost eight at night; orange light reflected off windshields and hoods as they walked down the aisles. Up ahead, a battered Honda Civic pulled into a parking spot. The car jerked and then rolled forward an inch before it came to a stop.
Finn lifted his fist and stopped walking like they were in some action movie. Cora tried not to roll her eyes.
A woman with windswept hair got out of the car with a small child clinging to her hip.
“Kyle?” She stuck her head back inside the car. “Kyle!” A second child clambered out after her. “Hold my hand.” The woman stuck out her hand, and the boy clung to it with evident reluctance.
“Wan’ ‘nilla.”
“We’ll get ice cream when I’m done at the shop. Where’s your sister?”
The boy shrugged half-heartedly.
“Lisa!” The woman stuck her head back in the car. “Get out.”
A mumbled voice came from inside.
In front of Cora, Finn tensed. His head turned as he began scanning the parking lot again, but then he faced the distant woman when she reached inside the car and grabbed out a young girl.
“I don’t care. You’re not staying in the car.” She yanked out the girl, who let out an impressive wail before the woman could deliver a swift smack to her bottom.
Finn relaxed.
The mother slammed the car door closed with her hip.
“Stay,” Finn murmured in a barely audible rasp, and then moved forward.
“Hold hands,” the woman said. Brother and sister reluctantly held hands, the girl grimacing.
The woman had only just managed to get hold of Kyle’s hand, nearly losing her grip on the child still clinging to her hip, when Finn came up behind her.
“Evening, ma’am.”
“What? Oh, good evening.” The woman glanced at Finn and then did a double-take.
“Quite the handful,” he said as he ruffled Kyle’s hair.
“You’ve got no idea.” She held out Kyle’s hand to Finn. “Here, do you want one?”
He chuckled quietly.
Cora’s lips slowly parted. It was like watching a lion in a circus. Once a ferocious, wild beast…now tame enough to sit on a chair while a lion tamer pranced around the beast.
“Thanks for the offer, but I got two of my own already. Starting to wonder if they come with a return policy.” Finn bent and picked up the woman’s handbag, which had fallen to the concrete after she’d wrenched Lisa from the car. “I saw you drop this.”
The woman laughed and took it from Finn. Lisa was staring up at him like a deer eclipsed by a bear, and Kyle had a deep frown on his face, no doubt wondering how long this conversation was going to delay him getting his ice cream. Cora stepped a little closer, sliding the cap down her forehead in case the woman looked up.
“Two? Boys or girls?”
“One of each.” Finn began moving toward the shop. “Nine and seven.”
“This one’s two,” the woman said, shifting her grip on the toddler slung from her waist. “Kyle’s five and Lisa’s eight.”
“Three years between each?” Finn asked as if he had conversations like this every day. “That planned?”
“Happy coincidence,” the woman said.
Their voices trailed away. Cora crept closer to the abandoned Civic and tried the door.
The woman had been too caught up with Finn’s arrival to lock her door. That, and his eyes, probably.
He really did have impressive eyes. Especially when he wasn’t frowning.
Scanning the parking lot to make sure no one was looking her way, Cora slid behind the wheel and glanced around the car’s interior. It reeked of apple juice and sweaty hands. Empty cartons, baby wipes, candy wrappers and a handful of toys littered the seats and footwell.
Finn arrived a few minutes later, wearing a new jacket, with a shopping bag in his hands. Cora clambered over the car’s console when he opened the driver’s door and slid inside. He fished a bunch of keys from the jacket. Its keychain — once a fluffy kitten, now a tacky gray ball — looked incongruous against his tanned skin. Then he took out a phone, turned it off, and slid it back inside his jacket. Was it the woman’s phone? A pang of guilt stabbed through Cora. It was going to be a nightmare for that poor woman, coming out to see her car gone. Three kids in tow, while she rummaged through her handbag, and then discovered her cell phone wasn’t there either.
“Car’s insured,” Finn said without looking up as if reading her mind. “She’ll prob’ly get a better payout than the thing’s worth.” His casual scan took in torn seat covers, a crack in the windshield. He put his holster back on after Cora handed it to him, and then slid into his jacket, with a soft groan.
Her mind flashed back to the bruises she’d seen on his chest — it probably hurt like all hell.
He handed her the shopping bag before starting the car. “Jacket. Wear it to cover your pistol.” Then he started the car, put it into reverse, and backed out of the parking spot with a grimace as he turned to check the traffic behind him. “And stay down.”
Cora slid down in her seat.
Her obedience obviously made the man happy; when he glanced down, there was a noticeable absence of a scowl on his face. They turned into Payson’s main street.
“Thank you,” she murmured, as she struggled into the denim jacket while trying to keep her head below the window.
“Long drive ahead,” was his only response. “Get some sleep.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
Cora climbed over the front seat, scooped as much of the kids’s junk off the back as she could, and lay on her side. A soft blanket lay in a bundle in the footwell. She shook it out, peeled a chocolate wrapper from it, and slung it over her hips.
As if she could sleep. Her mind kept flashing back to the way Finn’s eyes had looked when he’d lifted Ned by the neck. The way the man had bounced when he’d thrown him to the floor.
You’d have sworn Ned had been holding a knife to her throat, the way Finn had reacted. Cora bit the inside of her lip and hurriedly pushed away the thought.
She shifted uncomfortably and then yanked a plastic soldier out from under her hip. She considered it fo
r a moment, before shoving it in her pocket, next to the ballerina. Then she closed her hand over the pendant lying in the crook of her arm. Rubbing it, she pressed her eyes closed.
She’d thought this was a temporary thing. She’d been moved to safe houses before — a long drive, usually in the company of mute statues like Finn — and then a new room, new staff, new scenery. Waiting days for her stuff to catch up with her. Clothes, horses, books. Having to learn everyone’s names.
She snorted quietly to herself. As if she ever had contact with more than five people.
But this was day two, almost day three, and she was still with him.
Finn wasn’t like the other bodyguards. He was quiet and reserved…but if he was a statue, then that marble-like exterior was only a shell. Maybe not even marble, but titanium. Something had flickered in his eyes, back there in the pub. And when he’d slit that ratero’s throat back in the canyon. A darkness that had turned his pale irises into the darkness she’d expect to see at the deepest depths of the ocean.
It terrified her. He terrified her.
15
The Rest of the Way
Finn had been driving on Route 191 for almost two hours when the Honda’s back tire blew out. Instinctively, he gripped the steering wheel. Trying to ignore the flash of pain this caused his shoulder, he tapped the accelerator and fought the urge to slam on brakes.
“What was that?” came the inevitable voice from the backseat. Cora had been asleep — the blow out had cut off her dainty snores in an instant.
A hand grabbed the back of his seat. He glanced in the rear view mirror, catching a glimpse of a pale face and wide eyes.
The Honda slowed, the flat tire making a sad fwap-fwap sound as their speed dropped from forty to thirty to twenty. When they were down to ten, Finn carefully guided the car off the road.
That’s what you got when you stole a piece of shit car from a woman who was too busy to check her tires.
“Finn?”
“Blow out.” He looked in the mirror again. “Get out.”
She glanced out the window. There were no street lamps along the 191. No houses.
He got out of the car, wincing at the ache that brought to his neck and chest. That short sleep he’d had at the inn hadn’t done any fucking good. It made him think of the man who’d been feeling up Cora. And that brought a dose of anger so strong he slammed the car door hard enough to rock the Civic.
Cora scurried from the car, her face a pale smudge in the darkness. He leaned inside, released the emergency brake, and put his right shoulder against the car’s door frame. Grimacing as his body complained, he leaned into the metal. The vehicle began to move, but slowly.
There was a thump behind him. When he glanced over his shoulder, Cora was behind the Honda, both hands on the trunk. She ducked her head, groaned, and the car began rolling forward with gusto. Finn caught its steering wheel, guiding it until it picked up enough speed that he could step back and watch it slowly mow between a cluster of low shrubs.
Someone would find it. But it wouldn’t happen tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow morning. It gave them time.
Cora was breathing hard when he walked up the incline dusting his hands.
She’s so weak. Anyone could overpower her. You could overpower her. Out here, in the dark. No one would know. No one to see. No one to hear her—
He found his pistol, checked the magazine out here in the semi-dark beside the road. Loaded. The thought faded, but it left the same uneasy itch behind like it always did.
He strode down the road, not waiting for her to follow, knowing she would.
Footsteps. He caught her yawning from the corner of his eyes and had to suppress one himself.
Where in the hell were they? The last road sign had been one for Alpine. He’d been down this road more than once, but he couldn’t remember anything of significance until Luna, which was still a far way off.
Surprisingly, Cora didn’t speak. Even more astonishing, lights appeared through the pines a few minutes later. Enough to suggest at least some kind of community had formed. Maybe they were close to Route 180 — it was a significant enough road that something might have sprung up around its intersection with the 191.
“Where are we?”
“Arizona.”
She let out a frustrated sigh.
He glanced at her. The moon was still too low to provide much illumination, but he could see shadows under her eyes. They both needed sleep; he was running on the kind of empty that even coffee couldn’t fight. He’d been hoping to drive all the way through to Silver City tonight. Now they’d have to scout out a new car, and if someone had been following them if the cops had picked up on their trail, then they could be closing in.
Headlamps lit up the road. They both looked around when a car came up behind them.
The white pickup slowed to a crawl and came to a stop fifty feet ahead of them.
“Finn!” Cora whispered urgently, ducking her head, so her cap hid her face.
“Relax,” he murmured, finding and squeezing her wrist. “Wait here.”
Finn jogged up to the pickup. His fingers itched to be around the grip of his Five-seveN, but he kept a hand on the two halves of his jacket, holding it closed.
“Evening,” came the friendly drawl from inside the pickup. “Need a ride?” The driver put his arm on the window frame and leaned out, glancing first at Finn and then down the road toward Cora. His weathered face made it impossible to judge his age better than between thirty and forty.
Finn gave a shrug. “Our lift turned off about a mile back. Thought we might as well leg it the rest of the way.”
Hopefully, the ‘rest of the way’ was something reasonable, and the man wouldn’t think it suspicious that they were trying to leg it all the way to Luna.
“You headed into Alpine?”
“Yeah,” Finn said. Not that he had a fucking clue if Alpine was a town, a bar, or a brothel.
“Well, lemme give you a lift.” The man stabbed a thumb to the back of his pickup.
Finn hesitated. Brushing him off might be suspicious. Besides, both he and Cora were armed, and this guy didn’t exactly look the type to pack.
“Thanks,” he said, and gestured at Cora to come forward.
“You two already set up?” the driver asked as they waited for Cora to join them. “‘Cos I got a spare room if—”
“We’re good, thanks.”
“Sure, sure. Where’m I dropping you?”
“Main road’s fine,” Finn said.
“There by the diner?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Then we’ll be there in a tick. Hold onto something, though; this thing rattles worse’n a spazz bucket.”
Cora came up to Finn and slid her hand in his. He looked aside at her and then cocked his chin to the back of the pickup. She gave the smallest shake of her head.
Finn squeezed her hand, leading her to the back of the truck.
“Finn.” Her voice was a low, urgent whisper.
“Just get in,” he muttered.
She grabbed the lip of the truck, stepped on the running board, and scrambled up. There was a second when it looked like she’d lost her grip and was going to fall into him, so he grabbed her hips and hoisted her.
Cora squealed and then laughed, cutting off the sound with an embarrassed huff as she sat on one of the wheel arches and hid behind the brim of her cap.
Finn climbed up after her and sat opposite. Leaning forward, Finn rested his elbows on his knees. Cora’s wide eyes caught what moonlight there was.
“We’re fine, Cora.” When his mouth formed her name, his stomach grew tight. He swallowed, shifted on the wheel arch, and tried to ignore the sensation.
She searched his face for a few seconds, lips pursing, and gave a slow nod.
They drove off, the pickup rattling every bit as much as the man had promised. A few minutes later, Alpine proper — or the closest thing to it — glimmered through the pine trees. It loo
ked less like a town and more like an ad-hoc settlement of farmers and RV owners. They passed something which might have been a motel. It was practically deserted, and the one pickup standing in the parking lot looked dodgier than the one they were in.
It didn’t give him much hope for the inn.
The man put on his turn signal and made a left. Finn glanced at Cora. She gave him a tentative smile, and then sat back and watched the mobile homes flash past them.
The pickup turned into a side road and slowed down in front of a blue, split level house. There were three cars outside, dusty enough to belong to a long-time resident or possibly the owner. The sign picked out by the pickup’s headlamps read ‘vacancies.’
Finn climbed down and then held out his hands for Cora.
He blinked up at her, and she down at him for a second before either of them moved.
Why the hell he thought she couldn’t get herself down was a fucking enigma. But her lips turned up, and she took his hands and climbed down, barely resting any of her weight on him. Then she took her duffel bag and moved to the side, waiting for him to lead them to the inn.
Finn came up to the window. The driver’s face was in shadow.
“Thanks for the ride,” Finn said.
“Don’t mention it. You two take care,” the driver called and then reversed out the shallow gravel parking lot. He gave them a wave before disappearing around a bend in the road.
Finn stared after him until he heard Cora’s shoes on the gravel.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Finn turned and looked at the inn. His hackles kept wanting to stand up. What were the chances a dump like this had an inn? And the one person who drove past them was just a friendly local? “Everything’s fine.”
But he wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure himself or Cora.
16
Danger, Intrigue, Conspiracies
