Table of Contents
Title Page
CHAPTER One
CHAPTER Two
CHAPTER Three
CHAPTER Four
CHAPTER Five
CHAPTER Six
CHAPTER Seven
CHAPTER Eight
CHAPTER Nine
CHAPTER Ten
CHAPTER Eleven
CHAPTER Twelve
Nomad
Title Page
CHAPTER One
CHAPTER Two
CHAPTER Three
CHAPTER Four
CHAPTER Five
CHAPTER Six
CHAPTER Seven
CHAPTER Eight
CHAPTER Nine
CHAPTER Ten
CHAPTER Eleven
CHAPTER Twelve
Nomad
Sons of Sanctuary
Book 3
Victoria Danann
Copyright 2017 Victoria Danann
Published by 7th House Publishing
Imprint of Andromeda LLC
Read more about this author and upcoming works at VictoriaDanann.com
CHAPTER One
Cannon Johns was soaking wet when he pulled into the motel. Mid October rain storms are the worst.
The VACANCY light was on, but the once-bright neon was burned out on the first “A” and the second “C”. He was bone weary, out of options, and hungry, which was why his attention was drawn to the vending machine sitting under the overhang, barely out of the driving rain. The whole place was seedy, in disrepair, but he hadn’t been expecting a five star hotel with Relais & Châteaux room service.
It was way too late to find food anywhere else in the tiny panhandle town of Barburnett, Texas. He’d passed a Sonic and a convenience store, but both had been put to bed hours before. There was only one option. Three rundown machines. Two selling drinks. One vending the usual assortment of candy, crackers, pretzels and other unsatisfying stuff guaranteed to hasten demise. Which would be okay with him.
He unlocked the door marked with a number 16 and rolled his Harley inside. He hadn’t gotten permission, but didn’t expect the guy at the front desk would object. The man’s Indian accent was so thick Cann had been forced to ask him to repeat himself several times. The night manager, who was probably also the owner, gave every indication of being a man who wouldn’t be presenting much of an obstacle to anything that came his way. Especially not when cash was involved.
Kickstand set in place, Cannon promised himself that he’d towel off his ride as soon as he’d put on dry clothes and stuffed some empty calories into his stomach. He was never so glad that he’d taken the time to cover his clothes in plastic before stowing them in the side containers affectionately called saddle bags. Even the tightest, newest, best-made bike could leak in a hard enough rain and, at that moment, he would have said he needed dry clothes every bit as much as food or drink.
First order of business, vending machines.
Stepping back out into the hundred percent humidity air, he stayed close to the building on the part of the walkway that was under the overhang and dry. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t be any more wet. Out of habit, he looked around before starting toward the lighted food and drink dispensers. He was almost there when he saw movement by the Mountain Dew column. Somebody was crouched behind the one furthest from the rain, with the most darkness for cover.
In addition to being tired, hungry, and out of options, he was also out of sorts, with no patience for shenanigans, a combination that could play out very badly for a would-be mugger. Weary as he was, he wouldn’t mind a good excuse for administering some bare knuckle punishment to the wicked.
When he was eight feet away from the Mountain Dew column, he said, “Come on out of there and state your business.” He had to raise his voice to a near-shout to be heard over the pounding rain.
After a slight hesitation, a small figure emerged in a yellow plastic poncho, the kind you can get at the grocery store for a couple of bucks. As soon as she reached up to pull the hood back he knew it was a woman by the delicate size of her hands and the way she moved.
The light was dim, but he saw her as clearly as if it was noon on a bright sunny day. His late wife had once told him that he had to change out the light fixture in the kitchen because “nobody looks good in fluorescent light”. The girl standing in front of him was proof it just ain’t so.
Her eyes were violet blue. And wide. He wasn’t sure if that was because of fear or misery. Like him, she was soaking wet. Unlike him, she was shivering. Whether that was from fear or cold he couldn’t tell for sure.
“What the hell you doing out here, girl?” He looked around. “Somethin’ got you spooked?”
She licked her bottom lip. “No, I… ah, I’m just a little down on luck. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Don’t want no trouble, huh.” It wasn’t a question. He said it as if it was a provable fact. She shook her head to both punctuate his assessment and agree with it. “Yeah. Me neither. At least not tonight.”
He fed the dollar bills he’d gotten from the night manager into the machine one by one, selecting items that were fried and coated in cheese that was more chemical than dairy, or candy bars that were more sugar than protein. When he held a Snickers out to the girl, she took it.
He breathed the rainy air deep into his lungs and let it out slowly. “Well, come on. You can’t spend the night out here.” When she didn’t move to follow, he said, “If your woman’s intuition is sayin’ I might do you harm, it’s badly in need of a tune up.”
She continued to simply stare. She was either frozen by her resolve to stay put or frozen by indecision. Either way she wasn’t moving.
“Have it your way,” he said and started back toward his room.
After taking three steps he heard the rustle of plastic poncho over the rain and knew she was behind him. He’d left his room unlocked knowing that he’d only be gone a couple of minutes and that the door would be in sight the entire time. Not that anybody besides himself and the lost girl would be out in that little forgotten town at that time of night, in that weather.
He pushed open the door, turned on the overhead light, and looked around, realizing what the place would look like in her eyes.
Two double beds covered in old rose chenille spreads. He refused to think about whether or not they’d been washed since the last occupant or occupants. At least the sheets were clean.
The walls were covered in pecan-stained faux paneling left over from the seventies. The carpet was a ratty rust color, but that was okay. Even he knew it would be rude to park his bike on carpet if it was nice and new.
He turned on the two bedside table lamps, which gave the room a slightly less down-and-out look.
The girl still stood outside on the walkway. Her toes were touching the threshold, but it seemed she still hadn’t made up her mind about what she was going to do.
“In or out, girl. Makes no difference to me. But one way or the other that door is about to close.”
When he started back toward the door, she took a step inside and moved to the right out of the way of the closing door, watching him like he’d been on the news as an escaped psycho killer.
He pulled off his leather jacket that displayed the Sons of Sanctuary logo on the back, closed the door, locked it, and stomped off toward the bath to get a towel for drying off the bike, stopping by the thermostat on the way to turn up the heat.
He returned with two glasses and a towel, which he set on the seat before opening one of the compartments. He withdrew clothes and a fifth of bourbon.
“Which bed do you want?” he asked.
She looked at the two beds with tre
pidation, but didn’t answer.
“Okay, then. I’ll take that one.” He pointed at the bed closest to the door.
He divided up the vending machine haul. Two candy bars on top of his bedspread. Two candy bars on top of the other bedspread. Two chips on each. Two cheese and peanut butter crackers on each.
Setting the glasses next to each other on the table by the ancient console TV, he poured an inch of bourbon into each glass. “This will warm you up.” He downed his in one gulp then set the other glass on the bedside table that wasn’t his.
“When I finish taking care of my ride,” he went on, “I’m going to get a hot shower and put on some dry clothes. Do you have anything dry?” Apparently she was hiding some kind of shoulder bag under the poncho. She lifted it up slightly in silent response. “Okay. Well. You can use the shower after me and put on dry stuff. You got a name?”
She cleared her throat and answered so quietly that Cann almost didn’t understand. “Bud.”
“What’s that?”
“Bud,” she said a little louder.
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me your name, just say, ‘Fuck off,’ but don’t make up something stupid.”
Before he turned back to toweling off the Harley, he thought he saw a tiny burst of flame in eyes that looked too old and tired for her face.
“It’s not stupid. It’s my name.”
He looked up at her and cocked an eyebrow. “If you’re on the level, then I guess I should apologize. You just don’t strike me as a ‘Bud’.”
“My daddy… I guess he wanted somebody else.”
Cann looked her over. “Why don’t you take that thing off? Eat something. Gulp down that bourbon over there. You don’t need to be afraid of me. My name’s Cannon, but people usually just say Cann.” Before she realized that she’d let her guard down a little, he saw a small smile. “What’s funny?”
“Uh, nothin’. It’s just that your name is kind of…”
“Kind of what?”
“Kind of stupid, too.”
Cann stared at her for a few beats before shaking his head. “You got an odd way of accepting hospitality. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“The hell. You are not twenty-five. Gonna ask again, but I hate repeatin’ myself. How old are you?”
Her shoulders sagged. “Seventeen.”
“Yeah. Sounds more like it.”
He glanced over after she pulled the wet poncho over her head. She looked around for a place to hang it and finally settled on spreading it out on the floor.
She was tiny. At six feet two he outweighed her by almost a hundred pounds. He didn’t have any trouble understanding why somebody that size would be hesitant to accept a bed from a stranger who looked like him.
She was wearing one of those oversized knit shirts and jeans with a hole in one knee. He thought it was more fashion statement than poverty.
Her hair was dirty blonde and natural. All in all, she was entirely too cute to be hiding behind a drink dispenser at a ratty rundown motel.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her look around the room as if she was deciding what to do. She’d pulled the strap of the shoulder bag over her head so that it was cross-body. He guessed it was easier to carry that way. When she took it off, she let the bag drop on the bed then sat down on the side of the mattress.
Cann could see she was shivering. After he finished toweling off the bike, he pulled a light blanket down from the closet and handed it to the girl before going off to the shower.
She unfolded the blanket and draped it over her shoulders, feeling almost tearful with relief from the cold. It felt like it had been a very long time since she was last warm.
After staring at the glass for a full ten minutes, she decided to take a drink. She spluttered, gasped for air, and almost choked. The stuff tasted like kerosene or the way she imagined kerosene would taste if somebody was dumb enough to do that.
CHAPTER Two
Cannon Johns closed his eyes and let the hot water stream over his body. He was a man who’d once had the world in his hands. He was a man who’d lost everything in life that was worth having. He’d pulled into the motel looking for the only comfort life still had to offer. The escape of sleep.
The motel had thoughtfully provided two thin towels, neither of which were intended to take care of a man his size. He’d used one of them on his bike, which left one that was dry. He couldn’t very well use both towels and leave the girl with none, so he dried himself as best he could with the towel that was already wet. He put on a pair of clean jeans and opened the door to the tiny bath.
Bud was still sitting on the edge of the bed. She’d been watching the bathroom door while he took a shower. He was a very big, very built guy wearing jeans and nothing else, but for God knows what reason she wasn’t afraid of him. It was hard to tell how old he was with that beard. He could have been twenty-five. Could have been thirty-five.
“I left you a dry towel,” he said in his gruff way as he stalked toward the bed next to the door. “I’m going to sleep and hopefully I’ll sleep hard. If you plan to knife me in my sleep, I’m warning you now that I don’t really have anything worth taking.”
“I’m not going to knife you in your sleep.” He nodded and pulled back the covers. Replaying how that sounded, she decided to append an afterthought. “Or any other time.”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m not going to knife you at all.”
“Okay,” he said as if he had no personal stake in whether she would or wouldn’t. He turned away so that his back was to her.
“Cannon.”
“Yeah,” he said without turning around.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t reply or even move, but he did listen to the sounds she made as she pulled things out of her little bag and tried to take a shower quietly. It had been a long, long, long time since he’d shared a room with another person.
When she got into bed, he was still awake wondering what her story could be. When she began to snore softly, he was still awake thinking about all the things that could happen to a girl like her.
Inevitably his thoughts turned to his own baby girl. She’d only been three when she died, but he had no trouble imagining how he would have felt about her when she was seventeen. Who would name a daughter Bud?
Bud felt her shoulder being nudged. Once. Again. She cracked her eyes open and, when she realized where she was, scrambled into a sitting position.
“Come on,” he said. “Get dressed. We’re gonna get you some hot breakfast before I head out.”
When she pulled the covers back he saw that she’d slept in her clothes.
She glanced at the clock. Eight. She’d gotten more sleep than she’d had in a while, but would have loved another ten hours or so.
“Okay.”
He watched TV while she used the toilet, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair into a ponytail, situated the shoulder bag across her body and looked at him expectantly.
“You know where to eat in this town?”
“No. I’m not, um, from here.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Trucker.”
“You hitchhiked?” She nodded. He rolled the bike outside. “You ever been on a motorcycle before?”
“No.” She looked it over from end to end.
“You ever spent the night in a motel room with a stranger before?”
“No.” Her eyes jerked up to his sky-blue gaze.
“Well, it’s just like that. Not hard. Just get on behind me, put your feet there, not there,” he pointed as he gave instructions, “and hold onto me. We’ll find a café open.” She straddled the bike behind him. “Like it or not, you have to hold on or you’ll fall the hell off.”
“Okay.” She tentatively put her arms around him, liking the warmth, but not the closeness.
He fired the machine to life and, when he accelerated, she held on tighter. They found a café in the dilapidated two b
locks that had once been called downtown. A few pickup trucks were parked outside.
Cannon parked the bike across the street where he could keep an eye on it.
The locals gave the two of them a good long once-over when they entered, but went back to their business after they’d looked their fill.
Cannon held up two fingers.
“Sit wherever you want,” said a woman as she passed by with a plate of food in one hand and a coffee carafe in the other.
Bud looked up at Cannon. He motioned for her to pick a spot. She walked to the furthest booth in the back and slid into the seat facing away from the rest of the café. That left Cannon with his back to the wall, able to see everything that happened in the fine establishment, just the spot he would have chosen for himself.
Sitting across the table, it was the first time he’d felt like he had permission to openly stare at the girl who’d spent the night in his room. She was just as beautiful as he’d originally thought. Maybe more so. But the haunted look tugged at his heart.
He had a lot of questions, more than he should. Before he could decide where to start, the waitress set down two mugs and poured coffee without asking if they wanted any or not.
“Mornin’ folks,” she said as she set two menus down. “Back in a minute.”
“Breakfast is on me,” Cannon said. “Have whatever you want. Steak and eggs maybe? After last night’s dinner we both need real food.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s very nice of you.”
He watched her study the menu like there was going to be an exam. They gave their orders when the waitress came back.
He turned his mug around a few times before saying, “You want to tell me how you ended up crouching behind a Mountain Dew machine?” She shook her head. “You want to tell me where you’re goin’?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“I see. You from around here?”
“No. Are you?”
Her volley question caught him off guard enough to make him smile a little. She saw that he looked a lot younger when he smiled. “I’m the one askin’ the questions.“
NOMAD (Sons of Sanctuary Book 3) Page 1
