He grunted but stayed on top of her.
When the debris seemed to die down, he climbed to his feet and grabbed her hand. When they took off again he was limping.
Pleasance jerked her hand from his. “What’s wrong?”
He grabbed it back. “Nothing, let’s keep moving.”
Pleasance dug her feet in and snatched her hand back. “Why are you limping?”
He sighed and turned his leg. Pleasance gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. “Oh my god!” A large sliver of wood, as big around as her pinkie finger and probably four inches long had been driven into the back of his thigh. “We need to get that out.”
He reached down and yanked hard, grimacing as the bloody piece of wood slid free. He grabbed her elbow. “Let’s go. They’ll be coming after us.”
“Who the hell are these people?”
He grabbed her hand. “Not the right time or place for that discussion. Come on.”
There was nothing else she could do. She went with him. They followed the tree line for a couple of hours until they spotted a farmhouse in the distance. “We’ll spend the night here.”
Pleasance looked relieved. “Thank you, God. A soft bed and a hot shower.”
He shook his head. “Not where we’re going.” He nodded toward a huge, slightly worn structure in the distance.
Pleasance’s face folded in horror. “The barn!”
He started walking toward the dilapidated structure. “For their safety, we can’t involve the people in that farmhouse. Right now, we’re on our own. We’ll spend the night in the barn. In the morning I’ll call somebody for help.”
Pleasance sighed. “I guess we don’t want to involve those poor people in our problems.”
“Exactly,” he said, looking at her kind of funny, she thought. “Have you ever slept in a hay loft?”
Pleasance laughed and turned with him to trudge wearily toward the barn. “I’m totally a city girl. You have no idea how much bugs and dirt terrify me.”
He laughed. “How about cows?”
Pleasance turned such a horrified face to him he laughed outright, his handsome face momentarily kicking off the shadow of pain as true amusement replaced it. “Not so much, I see. Well, it could be a long night for you.”
“Shit!” Pleasance murmured, earning her another chuckle.
Chapter Four
It turned out that cows weren’t a problem. But the horses caused cold sweat to stream down between her shoulder blades. She jumped as they entered the dark barn and were greeted by a series of loud snorts and the sound of huge feet stomping the ground. She turned and started right back out of that barn.
He stopped her with a strong hand on her forearm. “Not so fast, City Mouse. They’re just horses, they won’t eat you.” He laughed softly. “They’re vegetarians.”
Pleasance fixed an assessing gaze on the huge, stinky creatures. They stared back at her with large brown eyes, unblinking. Pleasance imagined she saw malevolence in their gazes.
She bit her lip and frowned. “Are they locked up?” She squinted into the dark, aromatic space but couldn’t tell if the animals were wandering around loose or shut up in cages of some kind.
He dragged her into the rickety looking structure and pulled the huge door closed behind her. “These are farm animals. They’re used to people. They won’t hurt you. They’re probably just begging. Horses always think they’re hungry.”
She heard a click and a small light appeared. He’d opened his cell phone to give them light. He was grinning at her.
“So, does that mean you’re a farm boy?”
“Not even close. But I have an Aunt who rides with the US Equestrian team.”
“Of course you do,” Pleasance murmured.
“Let’s find a spot to bed down for the night.” Apparently sensing that she would stand in that spot right in front of the door all night if he didn’t take charge, he grabbed her hand and dragged her with him into the deep recesses of the barn.
Pleasance wrinkled her nose. “It stinks in here.”
They walked down a wide aisle that appeared to have low walled enclosures along both sides. From these enclosed spaces several enormous heads stuck into the aisle. A few of them tried to nudge her as she slid past.
He seemed very comfortable with the huge heads, patting them companionably as he passed. They seemed to like him too. More than one of them made a soft sound as he patted their huge faces.
Pleasance took deep breaths and tried to relax. She quickly regretted the deep intake of fragrant air.
“Here we go.” He’d stopped and was looking at a wooden ladder leading up into a disturbing blackness high above their heads. He turned to her. “Do you want to go first? Or follow me?”
Pleasance just shook her head, feeling as if her eyes would pop.
He sighed. “I’ll go up first and make sure there are no four legged monsters up there.” When she didn’t respond he just turned and started climbing the ladder. The wood of the ancient rungs creaked threateningly as he climbed, but they held.
Pleasance had thought she’d feel better when he left. But suddenly she felt all alone in the terrifying barn, with an even more terrifying array of problems awaiting her outside. She rubbed her arms and watched the play of light above her head with trepidation and impatience.
When both the light and his face reappeared over the edge of the loft above, Pleasance felt something very close to relief sweep over her.
“All clear. I’ll hold the light so you can see the ladder.”
She hesitated only a second. But something banged loudly behind her and she hit the ladder like a hawk hits a field mouse and was climbing the thing before she even knew she’d moved.
The sound of laughter above her head didn’t make her feel any better.
“The kids are restless,” he said as he grabbed her hand and helped her into the loft from the last rung. “I’ll give them some hay as soon as I get you settled.”
Pleasance nodded, shivering, and tried to look around. At least it smelled better up there. It smelled of freshly mown, sweet grass.
He walked her over to an area close to the back wall where a mountain of hay bales were neatly stacked. “We’ll make a place to sleep here. The hay is soft and green. It should be very comfortable.
Pleasance just stood there, fighting a sudden urge to cry. The last thing she wanted was to look wimpy in front of him. She was rubbing her arms and studiously avoiding his phone light so he couldn’t see the moisture on her cheeks when something warm dropped over her shoulders. She realized he’d returned his tux jacket to her shoulders. She’d lost track of it sometime during their flight from bullets and missiles. He must have retrieved it.
Pleasance pulled it close, enjoying the warmth of it more than she wanted to admit even to herself. “Thanks,” she managed to grind out of her clenched throat.
It smelled wonderful. Just like he did.
“Alfric Honeybun,” he said in a husky voice.
Pleasance looked up at him, blinking back tears as she nodded. “Pleasance…Pleasance Roberts.”
He nodded. “I’m happy to meet you…Pleasance.” Reaching down, he hefted a bale of hay off the floor of the loft. “I’ll be right back.”
When he walked away from her, carrying the bale of hay as if it weighed nothing, Pleasance let the tears slip down her cheeks.
She couldn’t sleep. Pleasance wasn’t sure if it was because of the myriad things poking and prickling her through the thin material of her inappropriate gown, or the man snoring softly next to her, whose arms had dropped all too naturally around her in his sleep.
Alfric Honeybun.
It had a nice ring to it. A strange name, but musical. Pleasance couldn’t help wondering about the woman who would name her son Alfric. Of course ‘Pleasance’ wasn’t your average, run of the mill name either. She smiled to herself and rolled over, trying to get comfortable in the prickly hay bed Alfric had made for them.
The
hay just stabbed her in a new spot. Sighing, Pleasance sat up. Forget sleeping, she’d just sit there and try to figure a way out of her current predicament.
That was when she heard the sound of helicopter rotors outside.
Alfric mumbled as his arm was dislodged from its soft, shapely resting place. He opened his eyes and saw the woman, Pleasance, sitting up. Moonlight from the small window high in the peak of the barn building touched her hair, painting it with silver highlights. She was hugging his jacket close around her shoulders and for some reason that made him smile.
Suddenly, her head jerked up. Alfric heard what she’d apparently heard at almost the same moment. He jumped to his feet. “They’ve found us.”
She looked up at him, pushing herself to her feet with one hand, the other one still clutched at his jacket. “How do you know? They might just be passing over.”
Alfric grabbed her free hand. “There can’t be too many places to hide around here. They’ll come to investigate. We need to be gone when that happens.”
He handed her down the ladder, his jaw clenched with tension as the chopper moved steadily closer. As soon as she stepped onto the bottom rung, Alfric hit the ladder and was down in two seconds, almost sliding down the sides rather than using the rungs. He ran to the barn doors and peered out. The copter was hovering over the field, about thirty yards from the barn.
Hearing the unfamiliar whir of the nearby rotors, the horses started to spin in their stalls.
Pleasance put her hand on his arm and looked through the crack in the doors over his shoulder. “Oh my god! What are we gonna do?”
“We need to get out of here.” He nodded toward a smaller door on the opposite side of the barn. “We’ll go out that way and keep the barn between us and them. Hopefully they won’t come around the building until we’re well away.”
She frowned. “We’re never gonna be able to outrun a helicopter.”
One of the horses kicked the door of his stall and threw his head back on an alarmed whinny. Alfric turned to look at him and grinned. “No, but I bet he could, if he had enough of a head start.”
Pleasance turned to look at the huge black horse, her head already starting to shake. “Oh no! Not me, I’m not getting on the back of one of those things.”
Alfric ignored her. He slid a long pole through the bars attached to the inside of the barn’s heavy, wooden doors and turned, running toward the stall of the large, black horse which had already made his feelings about the helicopter well known.
Alfric pulled something that looked like a series of leather strips with a huge, shiny piece of metal in the middle of it off the hook on the stall.
Pleasance frowned, “What are you doing? I said I’m not riding one of these horses.”
Alfric threw her a glance. “Suit yourself. I’d rather take my chances with this guy then those two legged monsters out there.”
He slipped the leather contraption over the horse’s head and slid the metal into its mouth. Amazingly the horse took the whole operation in stride, and aside from some toe threatening stomping of its enormous feet, was fairly well behaved.
Alfric led the big horse out into the aisle and unlocked the small door at the back, sticking his head out to make sure no one was there. Then he turned back, leaving the door open, and led the horse back down the aisle. Looking around, he spotted a small pile of hay bales that had been discarded in one corner. He led the horse toward them. “Come on, I’ll get on first and then pull you up.”
Pleasance was too horrified to move. She watched him pull the horse up next to a couple of bales of yellowed hay and step up onto them. Then he jumped onto the horse’s bare back and shifted until he was sitting upright, with his long legs stretched down the horse’s heaving sides. He spoke softly to the huge creature as it spun and shuffled with alarm.
When he’d gotten the horse under control he glanced at her. Alfric reached down and wiggled his fingers as an obvious signal for her to grab his hand.
Pleasance crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
He frowned. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
She glared at him.
Voices sounded on the other side of the big barn doors and the door creaked heavily as weight was apparently applied to it.
Alfric leaned close and spoke softly. “When they can’t open that door they’re gonna start looking for another one. I need you to get on this horse right now!”
Pleasance gave the door one last glance and whimpered. Then she clambered up onto the hay bales and grabbed his hand.
“Bend your knees and jump on the count of three. I’ll pull you up as you jump. Okay?”
Pleasance nodded.
“One, two, three!”
Pleasance sailed through the air and hit the back of the horse just as something crashed into the other side of the door.
The horse spooked, screamed, and spun, heading down the aisle toward the open door. Pleasance squeaked in alarm and almost slid off one side. She felt herself going over but somehow Alfric got hold of her and pulled her upright again.
“Wrap your arms around my waist. Use your legs to hold onto the horse.”
Pleasance had every muscle in her body clutching something. He didn’t need to tell her to hold on tight. She closed her eyes and laid her head on his back, praying silently. The horse leapt through the open door and headed out into the cool, clear night.
Air screamed past them and it felt as if they were going about eighty miles an hour. Still, Alfric kicked the horse’s sides and urged it to go even faster.
The sound of hooves against the dirt sounded ominously loud. For a few moments, Pleasance was sure they’d be heard. But no shouts came and, for the moment anyway, no helicopter lights illuminated their flight from the sky.
After several moments, despite the headlong flight through the deepest dark of night on the back of an unpredictable, spookish deathtrap, Pleasance finally started to relax a little bit.
That’s about when she realized her thighs were cramping up.
She leaned close to Alfric’s ear. “Can we stop for a minute? My legs are screaming.”
He turned his head and she saw him frown. “We’re almost into the woods, we’ll stop there. I don’t want to stop out in the open.”
Pleasance sighed and tried to stretch her legs out to the sides to release the cramping muscles, but as soon as she let go to any degree at all she started to slip. Sighing, she bit her lip and tried to ignore the searing pain jolting through her legs.
As they thundered toward the quickly approaching tree line, Pleasance gradually became aware of a deep rumbling noise intruding on the night. She clutched Alfric more tightly around the waist and turned her head just enough to see a pair of dancing lights criss-crossing the ground behind them. “Alfric!”
“I know!” He kicked the horse’s already heaving sides and they exploded forward, nearly leaping off the ground as the horse dug in hard with its back hooves and surged into the black night. Pleasance squealed as her butt left the horse’s wide back and then pounded back down onto the swiftly moving, slippery surface.
Alfric grabbed her hands, clutched together frantically at his stomach, and steadied her as he held the reins with one hand. “Almost there, hold on!”
They exploded into the tree line just ahead of the searching lights and Alfric leaned back, pulling hard on the reins to slow the galloping horse. The horse trotted forward for a few moments blowing steadily to calm its heart and get its breathing back to normal, and then Alfric brought it down to a sedate walk, turning it toward the deeper part of the woods, away from the highway and any signs of humanity.
“Where are we going?” Pleasance had an uncomfortable feeling she already knew the answer to that question.
Alfric turned his head to look into her face. The action brought his lips close to hers, so close she could feel the soft wash of his breath across her cheeks and almost taste the masculine scent of him. Briefly, she wondered if that was test
osterone she was scenting. Good old-fashioned male pheromones. Because none of the guys she knew could have pulled off what Alfric Honeybun had just pulled off without seeming to even strain.
He smiled as she licked her lips, her eyes locked on his mouth. “We’re disappearing for a while. Then I need to see about getting us some help. I don’t think Raia’s going to give up any time soon. It seems he’s more worried about what you know than even I first suspected.”
Pleasance’s eyes had gone unfocused. “Huh?” Her beautiful eyes were heavy, whether from weariness or lust Alfric didn’t know.
His choice of the two was obvious.
Alfric chuckled and turned away from her, “Pleasance Roberts, why do I think you’re gonna be way more trouble to me than Jon-Luc Raia could ever hope to be?”
The beautiful woman leaning against his back merely shrugged as if the question hadn’t been purely rhetorical, and laid her head between his shoulder blades.
The sound of the helicopter blades faded into the background as they moved slowly through the dense woods, toward an even denser wood, and then toward…Alfric had no idea. But he thought there was a small village a few miles away in that direction. Crimshaw…or Crocker? He wasn’t sure of the name.
With any luck they could catch a night of sleep there and he could contact his brothers in the morning. It didn’t even occur to him to contact the agency. He’d been compromised and his deep cover agency would have already shut him out.
He was on his own.
Correction, he and Pleasance Roberts were on their own. But Alfric wasn’t sure which side she was on. For the moment, she was with him because Raia had made it obvious she was more than expendable. But if she saw a way to get back into Raia’s good graces…and his organization…well…Alfric was a realist. He’d have to watch his back with Ms. Roberts.
Though he’d much prefer to watch hers.
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of a Honeybun Page 3
