by Minton, Toby
"Seriously?" she groaned, closing her eyes. The cabin wasn't that big. "Can't Elias just walk in and say what he wants?" Or better yet, not?
The beeping didn't answer her, nor did it stop.
She fumbled for the com with one eye half open. Morning light glowed around the edges of the curtain covering Sam's single small window, but not enough to warrant the pain it was causing. Squeezing her eyes shut, she opted for a blind search instead of a painful one. She finally found the com and dragged her hand back to her head, eyes still firmly closed. As soon as she got the tiny loop over her ear, a cheery voice greeted her.
"About time, kiddo," Ace said. "I was beginning to think you were comatose."
Well, maybe not cheery. Nikki blinked her eyes open slowly. Ace? She tried again, out loud this time.
"Good morning to you too," Ace replied. She sounded like she was enjoying herself. That made one of them.
"What time is it?"
"Past time for you to be on the trail," Ace answered.
Nikki couldn't settle on the right words to respond to that. Too many choice options were swirling about.
"I know what you're thinking," Ace said, proving she didn't by continuing to talk. "You're thinking you wore yourself out last night—"
She was right so far.
"You're thinking you barely got any sleep—"
On a roll.
"You're thinking only a fool would jump right back in—"
Nikki was thinking more along the lines of masochist, but Ace's word worked too.
"Well, kiddo, today you are that fool."
"I don't like you," Nikki said.
Ace laughed, her voice rich and rolling. How could she sound so positive and energetic after what they'd been through just a few hours ago? The woman was a machine.
"Out of bed, Nikki," Ace commanded, even though Nikki could tell by her voice she was still smiling. "Unless you're giving up. Fine if you are, but I didn't take you for a quitter."
Like that was going to work. How naive did she think Nikki was?
After a nice long stretch of silence, Nikki climbed out of the bed to get dressed. Not because of Ace. Just…because.
She opened her pack and pulled out the tight, moisture-wicking long-sleeved top and shorts Ace had picked up for her. Then she dug through her pack for the new shoes at the bottom, under her worn pink sneakers, of course. She didn't want any trail gunk she might have gotten on the new kicks dirtying up her babies.
Once she was laced up and as ready as she was going to be, Nikki swung open the creaky door and stepped out into the hall. From the kitchen at the other end, Sam looked up from a tablet on the table in front of him. He put a finger to his lips and cut his eyes toward the big living room through the door halfway down the hall between them.
Sure, she could be quiet. Wouldn't want to wake up somebody who'd been up all night traveling. That would be a dick move.
"Everything OK, kiddo?" Ace asked.
"Give me a minute," Nikki whispered. "Sam's worried about somebody's beauty sleep."
Sam gave her a questioning look as she crossed the hall and stepped into the kitchen. Then his eyes cut to her ear and he nodded with that knowing smile of his.
Nikki shrugged and made a face.
Sam slid the cup in front of him toward Nikki with two fingers. It was half full of coffee. She took the cup with a mouthed "thank you" and downed the lukewarm liquid in two gulps.
"Take your time, kiddo," Ace said. "It's not like I'm just sitting around waiting on you."
Nikki made another face as she returned the cup to Sam and stepped past him toward the back door. "Keep your pants on," she whispered. "I'm going."
The morning air was cold enough to cause an involuntary grunt Nikki failed to stop as she eased the kitchen door shut behind her. The sound she heard through the com might have been a chuckle, but Ace didn't say anything. Wise of her.
"I'm seeing seven degrees C where you are, kiddo," Ace said. "So you should be waking up nicely."
Nikki responded with another grunt. She wasn't about to complain though. She could be a machine too.
"OK," Ace said. "Let's get some heat in those muscles."
"Sweet," Nikki said. "You mean hot coffee and food, right?"
"I mean running. Get to it," Ace commanded. "The map Padre left me shows two trails into the woods off the back porch. Take the left one."
"What if I told you I just drank coffee?" Nikki tried. "It's bad for me to run after that, right? I'm sure I heard that somewhere."
Ace didn't miss a beat. "Actually, no. The caffeine will help you push harder than usual. You'll get a little more out of this workout. Good to know. I'll adjust the plan accordingly."
Nikki had no response to that. She really was starting to dislike Ace.
"Did that work out the way you thought it would?" Ace asked.
"What do you think?"
"Didn't think so," Ace said. "Now run."
"I am," Nikki lied, the obvious solution to this problem finally popping into her head. She filled the ensuing silence with some fake labored breathing to really sell it.
"You know, Kate's really good at what she does, kiddo," Ace said, her tone telling Nikki just how bad her performance had been. "Your com sends me your pulse rate, among other things. Then there's the GPS."
Oh.
"You want to try anything else?"
"Fine, I'm going," Nikki said, breaking into a jog.
Ace didn't let the jog last long. True to her word, she worked Nikki hard, but not all that much harder than usual. In fact, when Ace called a break to stretch, Nikki wasn't breathing as heavily as she should have been. Either Ace was showing a little mercy or this exercise nonsense was paying off. It looked like she was getting some of her stamina back.
From the ridge lookout where she stopped, Nikki had an impressive view of a wide forested valley and a clear blue body of water glimmering in the distance. Sam's granddad sure had picked an idyllic spot for his cabin, if an uninhabited one. Nikki hadn't seen the first sign of life on her run, not the human kind at least.
As soon as that thought passed, movement caught her eye in the valley, a dark form streaking across the open field on the valley floor. Nikki's breath caught, but logic quickly reined in her imagination. The pale spot on top of the form, the way it moved, the unbelievable speed it was reaching—it was Impact. Had to be.
"You all right?" Ace asked.
Nikki nodded, then remembered to speak. She laughed at herself, wondering how many times she'd forgotten to respond out loud this morning. Having a com was going to take some getting used to. "Fine. Just got spooked by a streaking bald guy."
"Aha," Ace said. "Impact is hard at it already, is he?" She didn't sound any more pleased than she did surprised. In fact, she sounded concerned.
Nikki stood, giving up on the stretching, and watched Impact race toward the lake. She'd noticed his obsession, but she'd been so wrapped up in her own issues she hadn't stopped to consider the reason behind it. She hadn't considered how much his fight with Savior had affected Impact, how much it must have messed with his head.
"Way to be a self-absorbed dick, again," she mumbled to herself.
"Excuse me?"
"Me, not you," Nikki clarified.
"Right," Ace said. "So we're sure you're not crazy?"
"We're sure I'm about to smash this com," Nikki retorted, but she did so around a smile.
Ace laughed. "Tell you what, kiddo. You beat Impact back to the cabin and I'll go easy on you tomorrow."
Nikki smiled as she lost sight of Impact in the distance. "Done."
"Done," Ace said, sounding pleased with herself.
Nikki turned and started down the trail, feeling pretty proud of herself for getting the better of Ace in a bet. If Impact stayed true to form, he'd find some place high enough to get a good running jump over that water, and he'd spend hours "training."
"Tell you what," Ace said. "Since you had such a rough night, I'll e
ven wait a few minutes before I tell him about the bet."
"What? You can't…you didn't say any—"
"Better kick it into gear, kiddo. Clock's ticking."
* * *
When Nikki jogged out of the trees into the small clearing around the back porch, Impact was already there stripping off his sodden shirt. Apparently he'd found a spot high enough above the lake. He'd probably taken a half dozen running glides into the water and still made it back first.
Nikki leaned over, resting her hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath. She'd pushed herself hard to beat that jerk back. All for naught.
Impact noticed Nikki eyeing him and gave her a curt nod by way of greeting as he hung his shirt over the porch rail. No gloating. No acknowledgement of the bet in any way. No emotion. Typical Impact.
Then he proceeded to strip off his pants.
Nikki watched for a few seconds as she caught her breath. Impact stripping down was a sight worthy of a little consideration—more than a little, really. His extra lean, genesis-ripped body glistened with the lake water steaming off into the cool air. The view was something. Of course, she couldn't think about him in a romantic way. Like Coop, he'd become more like a brother than a man—a grumpy, unfeeling brother. Still, if he wanted to put on a show…
The show ended with just as little pomp as the circumstance that started it. Ignoring Nikki like she didn't exist, Impact draped the rest of his clothes over the rail and went inside without a word.
Ace had already signed off, which meant Nikki was alone at the edge of the morning-lit wilderness. Just Nikki, the birds, the squirrels, and Savior's man-killing predators that were sure to show up at any moment.
Last night's victory didn't seem quite so thrilling in the light of day.
A sharp crack of wood against wood made Nikki jump. She turned and backed closer to the porch, her eyes scanning the woods around her in twitches and starts, her heart rate spiking. She felt the fear rising with her pulse, so she took a long, cool breath. She could hear Ace's words from last night like her voice was still coming through the com.
"There's nothing wrong with fear…it shows you where the danger lies."
Nikki relaxed her shoulders with her next breath, readying herself for whatever might fly out of the woods at her. Whatever it was, she wanted to face it like a woman—or, if it was one of those monsters, run like hell. She wasn't an idiot.
"Fear brings out who you really are…"
"I'm not an idiot," she whispered to herself, her eyes moving more slowly, tracking more carefully across the trees and whatever they were hiding.
I'm a survivor. She actually smiled at that thought. She was a survivor through and through. She and Michael had always done whatever it took to keep going, to survive, no matter what life threw at them. That hadn't changed with Michael's death. If anything, Nikki was more motivated than ever to keep kicking now that she was literally living for both of them. Sometimes that meant running. Sometimes it meant standing her ground. Sometimes it meant charging in with fists flying.
Right now it meant keeping her cool.
The crack sounded again, echoing off the cabin, but Nikki didn't flinch this time. It sounded like it was coming from near the garage shed Sam had mentioned last night. Moving as quietly as her new kicks allowed, Nikki crept toward the edge of the cabin. When she peeked around the corner and saw the source of the noise, she reconsidered that not-an-idiot thought.
Elias stood in the cleared ground between the shed and the cabin, axe in one hand, adding freshly split logs to the neat stack against the shed with the other. He turned toward the bigger stack of un-split logs and spotted Nikki.
"Morning," he said, pausing in his work to take in her exercise clothes. "Couldn't sleep?"
"I didn't have a choice," she grumbled, but with only feigned bitterness. She actually felt surprisingly awake and alive after her forced workout. "Hard to stay asleep with Ace yammering in my ear."
Elias smiled slightly, but his eyes still held more concern than amusement.
For a minute they just looked at each other, then anywhere but at each other. Finally, Elias positioned another log on the much wider stump that looked like it had been used for this purpose for eons.
"So, where are we?" Nikki asked, enjoying the chill in the air now that she'd run her body temperature up to boiling.
"Canada," Elias replied. He brought the axe around and down in a smooth, practiced motion, shearing the log in half in one stroke.
"Eh?"
"Canad—" He caught himself and gave her a slow glance and head shake as he collected the two pieces to add to the stack. His half smile said he got the joke but didn't find it anywhere near as funny as Sam had once upon a time. "Western Alberta, on the edge of Blackfeet territory."
She nodded, looking around. She'd never been this far north. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure she'd ever been to Canada. It didn't look all that different from parts of the States. She didn't know what she'd expected, but for some reason she just assumed a different country would look…well, different. It was stupid, she knew, but the idea of national borders being some kind of magical dividing line was one childhood thought she'd never outgrown.
"Pretty far away from the bunker then," she said after a minute.
Elias positioned another log but paused to look over at her before he attacked it. "Approximately four hours, direct flying."
From the way he was looking at her, she could tell he knew why she was asking.
"How long before they get here?" she asked, surprised at her lack of discomfort. Maybe all she'd needed to beat the fear was to realize it wasn't making her weak.
"That's hard to say," he began. "Cole is trailing them. Based on his last check-in, they're headed this way but not moving as fast as we've seen them move. If they keep to this pace—a week, maybe more."
Nikki nodded and wrapped her arms around her chest. Now the cool air was starting to get a little uncomfortable.
"Don't worry," Elias said, "we'll move on before they get here. I was serious when I said you wouldn't have to face those things again, not if I can help it."
Hearing they were still coming for her wasn't the best news in the world, but it wasn't surprising either. Running might feel good at the time, but it rarely solved a problem. Eventually they'd have to turn and face their pursuers. She was coming to accept that inevitability. Between now and then, she intended to make sure she was ready.
"So, when are we starting this thing?" she asked, earning a confused look from Elias.
"What thing is that?"
"Training," she answered slowly, like the answer was obvious. It should have been. "We always do fight training after PT. Is it different out here in the sticks? I won't complain if we're doing breakfast first."
Elias split another log then took his time adding the pieces to the stack.
"You want to continue training?" he asked at last without looking away from his work.
"Why wouldn't we?"
He thunked the axe into the stump and turned to face her, brushing the dirt from his hands. "After what happened with Cole, I assumed you wouldn't see the need."
"Well," she said, looking around the yard, "you know what happens when you assume—you look like a jackass."
"I don't believe that's the saying," he said, but she could see a hint of his smile hiding in his serious expression. Maybe.
"You assume it's not."
He shook his head and stepped closer, letting the hint fade away completely. He crossed his arms and looked down at her, but not in a condescending way. More like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure.
"Don't you think Cole's right?" he asked after a minute. "You're a natural fighter. You're at your best when you let go and fight on instinct. Our training was teaching you how to fight with control. If Cole's right, that's not the kind of fighter you are."
"Two things," she said, holding up a finger. "One—I don't care what Hillbilly thinks. He sucker punched me
. As a rule, I don't agree with people who do that." She flipped a second finger up. "Two—why can't I be both?"
Elias tightened his eyes slightly as he studied her. Otherwise, his face gave up nothing about what he was thinking. "Explain."
She ignored his commanding tone. He didn't mean anything by it. She could tell. Slipping into that tone was as much instinct for him as going crazy in a fight was for her. People shouldn't be faulted for their instincts.
"I'm saying why can't I be the best at both?"
He laughed softly, but his serious expression stayed in place. "With a little training and practice, I believe you could hold your own with just about any style you choose."
"You mean be the best."
"I mean—" He was doing a fair job keeping his smile under control, but she could tell it was taking an effort. "You could be better than good."
"The best," she insisted.
He just raised one eyebrow.
"Agree to disagree," she said. "Back to the point, if I master your style, I'll be able to handle myself when I'm calm and cool too, not just when I'm fired up. Best of both worlds."
Elias looked at her for a long stretch. Long enough that she started to wonder if she'd said something wrong. Finally, he let the smile go.
"Good answer, Nikki," he said.
"Thanks," she replied, feeling pleased with herself. Her answer had taken her a little by surprise, but she realized she meant every word. She wanted to learn. She wanted to practice. Fighting was the one thing that had always come naturally to her. She didn't want to lose that now that her power was…whatever it was. If learning Elias's way—Michael's way—could put her back on top, she was more than ready to get back to it. "So when do we start."
"Right after breakfast," Elias replied.
Nikki gave him her best smile. "Good answer."
Chapter 32
Nikki
"Ten seconds," Ace announced through the com. "Hold your pace."
Nikki charged up the rocky slope, huffing through the effort and keeping her eyes on the tricky ground in front of her feet. The trails on this side of the mountain were more rugged than those closer to the cabin, harder to navigate. They required constant focus to avoid twisting an ankle or tumbling into a ravine unless you slowed down and took your time, which Ace wouldn't allow.
