Die for Me

by Nichole Severn

  Torrhent couldn’t keep sarcasm out of her voice. This is just getting better and better. She had to get control of the situation. Even though she’d sworn to uphold Taigen’s decisions, no way in hell would she saunter into Isaac’s house like a lamb to the slaughter. “Isaac wants me behind bars for life, or dead. He’ll kill me on the spot if I come within a mile of that house.”

  Chapter 8

  Taigen shifted the truck into the next lane, passing families on vacation and singles on road trips. Longing shot through Torrhent’s heart as she watched them. Their decisions were so simple and included only what to eat, where to get gas, and what music to listen to on the drive. Hers: life or death. She hadn’t done anything to deserve her fate, yet she’d spent a year in federal prison for a murder she didn’t commit and had broken out to satisfy her craving for justice. Life threw the most devastating curveballs.

  “Where did you learn to fight like that?” She hadn’t meant to ask and it shouldn’t have mattered, but if she could decipher Taigen’s background, she’d have the upper hand. His eyes crinkled around the edges and she imagined him trying to wrap his mind around her curiosity.

  “I worked security for a weapons manufacturer after my stint in the Navy.” Taigen glanced out the corner of the windshield toward the darkening sky and back to the road. The hard edge in his voice held a hint of warning.

  “Are there a lot of contract killings in that line of work?”

  “My primary job consisted of protecting the CEO.” Taigen looked at her, his eyes burning with regret just for a moment before he turned back toward the road. “Occasionally, he needed me to handle things when they got out of hand.”

  “By ‘handle,’ you mean kill people?”

  Taigen inhaled slowly, his chest shuddering on the exhale. “If Wren wanted a man dead, I followed orders. Sometimes it was a single person, sometimes a group. But never children.”

  “I didn’t know people like you had standards.” The words slipped past her mouth and she regretted them instantly. As his expression turned stone-cold, Torrhent’s heart plummeted into her stomach.

  “I struggle with what I’ve done every second of the day. You want a number? You want their names? The food on their breath? The color of their eyes?” His voice rose in volume and Torrhent cringed from the anger swirling in the depths of his eyes.

  “You remember all that?”

  “I remember all of that because I can’t forget, Torrhent. Now I’m trying to save lives instead of destroying them to make up for it. So yes, I have standards because I’ve seen what happens when I don’t.”

  Taigen’s labored breathing drowned out the beating of her heart in her ears. With every breath he seemed to calm a little more. The anger residing in his eyes cooled significantly as he turned his gaze on her, but Taigen no longer resembled the man she’d recruited to kill Isaac Rutler.

  The cold, calculating eyes softened dramatically, defeat taking its place. She’d never noticed the aged lines between his eyebrows until that moment and the sight made her heart skip a beat. Clearing her throat, Torrhent forced her gaze to lock with his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t think . . .”

  “That someone like me could be human?”

  “Yeah.” She turned her attention back to the window. Unable to focus on the scenery, Torrhent replayed his admission in her mind. Whispers of doubt slithered on the edge of her thoughts. She’d chosen him to kill a man, even to take the fall when this whole thing was finished, but his words struck a hardened chord in a place she’d assumed lost. Her soul.

  She felt as if she were on the edge of a nightmare, unable to wake, but not fully asleep. Swallowing past the lump forming in her throat, she forced her thoughts away from the disappointed echoes of her mother’s voice. “Save them from what?”

  “A monster.”

  Torrhent barely heard his answer over the growl of the pickup’s engine, but didn’t have the strength for any more of his revelations. The silence between them deepened to the point she didn’t care. Her plan to use Taigen against her stepfather dissipated with a few sentences as guilt surfaced. The agony she’d witnessed on his features left evidence of its presence in his eyes and she wondered if her face had ever shown such misery.

  “The man I killed last week had a two-year-old daughter.” Even thinking Richard Clemet’s name made her muscles tense. The burden on her shoulders lightened considerably with just a few words, but her admission would never make up for the damage she’d caused or take away the invisible chasm in her chest. “I see his surprised face whenever I close my eyes.”

  “What happened?” Taigen’s voice dropped an octave and she knew in that instant he’d most likely figured it out.

  “He was a guard at Bedford Hills. I used him to learn the structure of the prison because he was always so willing to tell me its history.” Torrhent directed her gaze out the window as she spoke, afraid to see the grief in Taigen’s expression. She didn’t need his pity. She only wanted the pain to disappear. “When I was finally confident I could escape, I tried to take his gun from his belt. It went off.”

  A single tear ran down her face. She wiped it away quickly, rubbing the liquid between her fingers. “Do you ever feel like there’s a void in your chest because of what you’ve done?”

  A hand reached for her, resting on her left knee. She jumped, unable to find comfort in a killer’s touch, but he refused to remove his hand. The warmth of him penetrated through her jeans. The first sign of Taigen Banvard being human scared the shit out of her. The second made it worse.

  “All the time.”

  Torrhent moved her leg from beneath his hand. “I left him on the ground like a piece of trash to save my own life.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself, but nothing protected her from the memory of so much blood. She gagged on the bile rising in her throat. “Pull over.”

  Taigen slammed on the brakes and the truck veered to the side of the road. He didn’t ask for an explanation and she silently thanked him for it as she threw the door open and stumbled into the dirt. She didn’t care if he thought she was trying to escape, but the sound of the driver’s-side door opening told her he’d prepared for the possibility. He followed her out, but his movements didn’t distract her enough to calm her stomach. A wave of bile forced past her lips and she doubled over.

  “Are you all right?” Taigen asked, casting a shadow near her feet. His hands pulled her hair out the way, soothing the physical symptoms slightly, but she feared nothing would ever heal the black hole growing in her chest.

  Torrhent tried to breathe around the sobs clawing up her throat and only nodded.

  She straightened and Taigen let her hair fall back into place. Sweat dripped down her chest and forehead, but she didn’t care. Wiping away the tears and snot with the back of her hand, she faced the man in front of her. Concern lay in the lines around his eyes and mouth and between his eyebrows. Her breath hitched in reaction. Nobody had shown concern for her in so long, not since the day her mother went into the city with Nicholas. The fact it came from a man she planned to use as a fall guy ripped a new tear in her heart. “Does this feeling ever go away?”

  Taigen’s shoulders rose on an inhale, but his eyes remained focused on her. His expression gave little evidence of his reaction to witnessing her weakness. “Not in my experience.”

  She sucked in the hot desert air, wishing it would relieve the tension in her chest. Leveling her chin to the ground, she mentally repaired her armor as if nothing had changed. She’d move on as planned. Taigen’s claims of regret, her admission. They meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. “Isaac Rutler took everything from me. And he’s going to pay for it.”

  * * *

  His knuckles crested white against the steering wheel of the pickup. Taigen stared at the dry cracks in his hands, but focused on Torrhent in his peripheral vision as she cleaned herself up on the side of the highway. A ping from one of his burner phones interrupted the silence of the cab. Retri
eving the phone from the dashboard, Taigen let his gaze flicker to Torrhent in a last attempt to replace the memory of her grief.

  She’d killed a man in cold blood and blamed her stepfather for the deed. Something had broken inside of her, ripped down her tough exterior and displayed the scared woman on the inside. He couldn’t take that pain from her, no matter how much he wanted to.

  She stared out into the desert, her eyes distant, body immobile. Anger had been the only way for him to cope with the loss of his innocence, and from the hard edge of her jawline, Torrhent seemed to discover the same mechanism to handle her pain. In truth, his heart went out to her. His training had programmed him to accept that the first kill would be the hardest. And it had been. Even now he remembered every detail, but he refused to face it, unwilling to take a walk down memory lane. He’d pay for his crimes and welcome the punishment when the time came, but not now.

  He turned his attention to the phone in his hand to give her privacy. Frozen in place as he read the message from one of his eastern seaboard contacts, Taigen repeated the words to himself.

  Subject confirmed. Location: New York City.

  Despite being short, the text spoke volumes. Adelaide had made it to New York, presumably in Rutler’s control, and the more time they wasted, the more people his sister came into contact with. He lunged across the cab and shoved the passenger door open. “Come on. We have to go.”

  Torrhent turned her face into the hot breeze, gray eyes squinting down the road, as if contemplating her chances of survival without him. She moved slowly but slid into the passenger seat without a single shred of evidence left of her agony, her expression cold. “We need more supplies if we plan to drive straight across the country.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” He shifted the truck into gear and pulled back onto the freeway.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a gas station. The truck heaved a sigh when Taigen stepped out onto the dirt parking lot. He’d parked close enough for a quick getaway but far enough away to avoid the store’s security cameras from catching their license plate. Only one other car sat in the lot and he assumed it belonged to whoever ran the joint, but tire tracks in the dirt around the store caught his attention. Most likely teenagers out for a joy ride. He filed the knowledge in the back of his mind. The gas pumps were ten yards away, positioned under a decrepit covering with flickering lights. The store wasn’t much, but held the promise of food and supplies. He followed close on Torrhent’s heels as she neared the door then held it open for her to enter.

  “Couldn’t find a five-star convenience store?” she asked.

  The inside was just as plain as the outside, like any other gas station he’d come across. Shelves lined the walls with more decorating the middle of the room in aisles. A small table had been pushed into the corner next to the wall of windows, but Torrhent went straight for the one refrigerator.

  He couldn’t help but laugh when she stuck her head inside.

  She turned on him, addressing him through the glass. “It’s hot.”

  Reaching toward the top shelf and pulling two bottles of water down, she placed one against her neck and offered the second to him.

  Taigen stepped closer, taking it from her, slightly distracted by the structure of her collarbones as she rolled the bottle over them. The refrigerator door automatically closed with a slap.

  “What do you feel like eating?” She reached for a bag of chips.

  Taigen took the chips from her and replaced them on the shelf. “We need nutrition, not junk.” His chest almost pressed against her back as he looked over her shoulder at the food in front of them. He felt her body tense and he liked it. She was still unsure of him. As she should be.

  “Sounds good.” Torrhent sidestepped him, her voice a tad husky. “What do you suggest?”

  “Fruit.” Tension built in his chest around the souvenir his sister’d left behind as he surveyed the store. The clerk had yet to make an appearance, but the car outside hadn’t moved. Taigen gave her a casual smile, following her around the store slowly, but kept his distance and his senses on alert in case he needed to move fast. Once Rutler’s hired guns realized he and Torrhent were headed east, they’d sound the alarm and do everything they could to stop their progress. Including using bystanders for their own purposes.

  Torrhent shuffled in front of him and stopped. Her legs seemed to go on for miles, lean, tanned. Perfect. He couldn’t make out the rest of her figure with the holey flannel shirt she wore all the time, but it didn’t matter. He had a good imagination.

  “Do granola bars count? They have fruit in them.”

  “I guess it’ll have to do.” His gaze flickered behind the counter at the sign of movement.

  An older man, late fifties, waited stiffly for them to approach. He attempted a small smile when Torrhent dropped their granola bars and sandwiches on the counter. With shaking hands, the cashier rang them up, his eyes shooting toward the door several times. “Eleven sixty-five.”

  Torrhent swung her pack around to get the money.

  “I got it.” Taigen pushed her behind him gently as he slipped a twenty onto the counter. Their skin touched, sending a pleasurable jolt into his chest, but the sensation disappeared, quickly replaced with warning. The cashier made slow, calculated movements as he reached for the cash.

  A bright flash caught Taigen’s attention as he gathered the food.

  Seconds before blood spattered over the counter, Taigen pulled Torrhent to the floor. He hit the linoleum hard, but wrenched her toward the door by her collar. The second bullet shattered the store’s window as they hit the pavement. The pickup truck remained parked more than fifteen feet away. They wouldn’t make it with the shooter at their back.

  Taigen let his body sink into the familiar patterns of a killer as he crouched down, his back to the brick exterior of the building. He pulled his 9mm, dislodged the clip, counted the bullets left, and reinserted it. Six shots. Six opportunities to get Torrhent to the truck safely.

  “When I tell you to, run as fast as you can toward the truck. Get in on the passenger side and start it. Do you understand?” Taigen locked his gaze on her, taken aback once again by her brutal determination. Cold, intelligent gray eyes gave him the confirmation he needed and he shoved the truck’s keys into her hand. “Good.”

  Cocking his head to one side, he listened for the exact moment to strike.

  Wet splatters hit the fake tile flooring less than ten feet away. The bullet to the cashier’s head had killed him instantly. The hot breeze blew the smell of the copper-scented liquid into his mouth and lungs. Taigen automatically held his breath.

  Off to his right, near the store’s entrance and now-broken window, glass crunched under a heavy footstep. “Now.”

  Torrhent bolted to her feet, lunging toward the truck as Taigen straightened. He turned his back on her, weapon aimed at the target following her with his scope. Without a second thought, Taigen pulled the trigger, embedding a bullet straight between the dark-haired shooter’s eyes.

  He ducked as another round of shots made bags of food and drinks explode around him and slammed his back against the brick. The whine of the pickup’s engine filled his ears but didn’t drown out the sound of the automatic weapon unloading in his direction. She made it. Bullets slammed into the brick over his head, dislodging shrapnel onto the asphalt. With a quick assessment of the direction the bullets had come from, Taigen surmised he had about a ten-second window to make it to the truck before the shooter got a good shot.

  He glanced toward the truck. Torrhent wasn’t visible, which meant she’d either ducked out of harm’s way or been hit with a stray. Praying to God the former was true, he found he didn’t have the focus he needed to worry about her and the shooter. Taigen convinced himself Torrhent knew what to do in either situation and gripped his weapon harder.

  The bullets stopped, the shooter presumably reloading. The instant silence descended, Taigen ran for the truck at full speed. The metal in his c
hest protested violently, taking the breath from his lungs as it bit into the soft flesh around the wound. He caught a glimpse of Torrhent on the floor of the truck and climbed inside. Slamming the door shut, he put the truck in gear and floored the accelerator.

  The small window behind their heads shattered.

  “Stay down!” The rain of bullet fire drowned out his words as the truck swung out of the parking lot and leveled out on the highway. Taigen didn’t slow, even when they’d put more than five miles between them and the store. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” Torrhent crawled up into her seat, pointing at his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

  He surveyed the damage. Minimal. Most likely from a falling piece of brick. The adrenaline in his system refused to dissipate. “It’s nothing.”

  He inhaled slowly to calm his racing heart. When he was wound up like this, he usually let off steam with his favorite dancers from the strip club, but those times were over. He pushed away thoughts of what he wanted to do to Torrhent right here in the truck. No time for pleasure. Besides, with a body like hers, he’d probably break her with how much energy vibrated through his hands alone. Despite his brain saying no, other parts of his body said yes.

  “Were those friends of yours?” She reached toward her feet and came up with two squished, wrapped sandwiches. Handing him one, Torrhent studied him, her eyes narrowing in curiosity. The weight of her gaze settled on him like a stack of bricks. “I didn’t recognize them.”

  “I did.” Taigen checked the rearview mirror for the hundredth time to ensure they hadn’t been followed. Gripping the steering wheel harder, he tried to ignore the moans escaping Torrhent’s mouth as she ate. He held back a laugh. “I take it this is the first sandwich you’ve had in a while?”

  She covered her mouth with a free hand. “Sorry. Prison food isn’t exactly the best in the world.”