by Tate, Harley
Chapter Sixteen
Emma
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay a little longer? No harm in it.” Irma held a bowl full of drop biscuits out for Emma, but she shook her head.
“I’m sure. Gloria needs me. We’ve already taken longer than we should have getting there.” It didn’t seem like two days since she’d been trapped in the elevator and Zach was murdered. Two days without power and the prospect of many, many more.
Ever since Gil confirmed what Eugene had told them earlier, she hadn’t been able to think about anything else. No more electrical grid? What did that mean for a city as large as Atlanta? The state as a whole only had a population of ten and a half million, but three quarters lived in the Atlanta metro. Thanks to the warm weather no one would freeze, but how would they eat?
Apart from a patio tomato, no one she knew grew a single vegetable or raised animals. Everyone relied on the grocery store. What would happen when they couldn’t keep the produce cold or the meat from rotting?
“You all right, hon? You look a little pale.” Irma snapped Emma out of her spiraling thoughts.
“I’m fine. Didn’t sleep real well.”
“I’m telling you, a few days here wouldn’t hurt.”
If you only knew. “I appreciate it, I really do, but I need to reach Gloria.”
Irma held up a hand. “Understood.”
The back door banged shut and Gil stomped into the kitchen followed by John, Holly, and Tank. “Got the old girl up and running. Like I said to John, I don’t know how long she’ll last, but hopefully she’ll make it to your friend’s place.”
Irma smiled. They were too generous. “Are you sure it’s not a problem? You might need a truck around here.”
“Nonsense.” Gil waved her off. “I haven’t driven that thing since I stopped the farmers market routes a few years ago. It’s good to free up the space in the barn.”
Tank wove between the chair legs and the table, rubbing his side against Emma as he thumped his tail against the wall. She ran her hand down his fur before offering to clear the last of the breakfast dishes.
“I can manage, honey. You tend to packing.”
Emma smiled and set off to strip the guest beds for Irma to launder. She still couldn’t get over how normal their lives were here even without electricity. Thanks to the propane and wood heat, they were living almost as well as anyone with a working grid.
As she bundled the last of the sheets, Holly stepped into the room. “I got all the clothes out of the dryer and folded them. Hope you don’t mind me adding yours to my bag.”
“Not at all. Beats carrying them under my arm.” Emma sat down on the mattress and patted the space beside her. “Take a seat.”
Holly did as asked and eased down beside Emma. She looked so young in her baggy sweatshirt and jeans.
“I was thinking about everything Eugene and Gil said about the future.” Emma paused. She’d spent a long time in the night thinking about Holly and what was best for her in this new situation. “And Irma and Gil have it pretty good here. Plenty of food. Heat. A guest bedroom.”
“What are you saying?” Holly’s hands slipped inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No!” Emma rushed to paper over the misunderstanding. “Not at all. But I know I’m no substitute for your dad, Holly. I don’t even know if it’s safe to be with me. You could do a lot worse than to stay here.”
“They’re strangers.”
“And I’m not?”
Holly focused on the floor as she ran her thumb over the fraying edge of her sleeve. “You are trying to get rid of me.”
“No.” Emma bent to catch her eye. “But I don’t want to drag you somewhere you don’t want to go. Especially if it isn’t safe. I haven’t even talked to Gil or Irma about it. They could easily say no.”
Holly softened. “So I don’t have to stay? I can still come with you?”
Emma reached out and patted the girl’s arm. “Of course you can. But I wanted to give you the choice.”
She shook her head. “I’m good. I want to go with you.”
“If you’re sure—”
“I am. You might not be family, but you’ve been coming to the house for years. I’ve known you since I was ten, at least. It beats staying with a stranger.”
Emma smiled, warmed by the sort-of compliment. “Okay then, it’s settled. We go together.”
They headed out to the big teal beast of a truck together and found Irma placing a package wrapped in freezer paper on the front seat.
“I found an old paper map in the house that might help you stay off the highway and I packed you some sandwiches for the road. It’s not much, but it should do for the rest of the day, at least.” Irma smiled.
“You didn’t have to do that. I’m sure we could have managed.”
“Don’t be silly.” Irma reached for Emma’s hand. “You take care of them, now, will you?” She dipped her voice so only Emma could hear. “That man of yours might be rough around the edges, but he’s got a squishy heart. I can feel it.”
Emma glanced at the barn where John and Gil were locked in conversation. “If you say so.”
“I do.” Irma pulled back and spoke over the hood of the truck to Holly as she hoisted her bag inside. “And you mind what your elders tell you, young lady.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Holly hurried around the front and reached out, wrapping Irma in a tight hug. “Thank you for letting us in and giving us a place to sleep.”
Irma laughed and dabbed at her eye with a wadded-up tissue. “Don’t you mention it. And there’s no ma’am, remember?”
“Ready?” John strode up to the truck, keys in hand.
Emma nodded. “Thank you for everything.” She hugged Irma, who reciprocated with quite the grip for a woman her age, before turning to Gil. Against his protests, she hugged him, too. “Next time we’re down this way, we’ll stop in.”
“As long as you don’t need a place to stay.”
Irma swatted her husband’s arm and Gil let out a chuckle. “Keep out of trouble, you hear?”
“Will do.” She climbed into the truck and Holly slid in after. It was a tight fit, three across, but they could manage. It beat walking any day.
Tank hopped up into the back of the truck and John cranked the engine. The old machine sputtered and groaned to life, sending a vibration straight through to Emma’s bones. Holly rolled down the window and waved as John shifted into drive and turned toward the road.
Thanks to Irma’s map, it didn’t take long to find a less-congested route toward Gloria’s cabin. She noted the route on the map, marking with a pen from her bag the roads she could remember. The Sanchez cabin sat on a forest service road, off any map, but Emma could get them within a few miles before she needed to remember the way by sight.
The truck wasn’t the fastest vehicle on the road, but it kept on rumbling down the road with not too much complaining. Emma stretched her feet out beside Holly’s in the oversized passenger floorboard and closed her eyes.
A jab to her ribs woke her up. “I’ve got a signal!” Holly prodded her again. “Check your phone!”
Emma wiped the sleep from her eyes and plucked her phone from her pocket. Sure enough, she had one bar. “Maybe I can reach Gloria. Tell her we’re coming.” She scrolled her contacts and clicked on Gloria’s cell.
It rang. “He—o?”
“Gloria?” Emma could barely hear her friend on the line. “It’s Emma.”
“A—okay?”
“I’m fine. How are you? Are you safe?”
“Ray’s here. We—good. You?”
“I’m coming to you. Are you still at the cabin?” Emma couldn’t understand Gloria’s response. “Are you still at the cabin?”
Three beeps sounded in her ear and the line went dead. She pulled the phone away and frowned. “I could barely understand her.”
“At least we know she’s alive.” John squinted out the driver�
��s side window. “Must have been a cell tower around here with a backup generator. Surprised it still had any juice.”
Emma glanced at John. If it weren’t for his body heat sitting next to her, she’d have forgotten he was even in the car. Irma was convinced he had a good heart, but Emma couldn’t read him at all. First, he’d saved her in the elevator, then he’d offered to drive her to Zach’s and now to Gloria’s. This trip was more of a boondoggle for him than anything. She should be grateful and take him at face value, but something kept nagging at the back of her mind.
Gloria had a way of reading people; she could always tell if someone had an ulterior motive. It’s how she knew CropForward was up to no good months before Emma’s tests turned up problems. Emma hadn’t listened then, but if they could make it to her cabin, maybe she could suss out John.
If she approved, then Emma had nothing to worry about. But if she didn’t, then Emma would need to thank him and send him on his way. Part of her hoped it didn’t come to that. John might be gruff, and a bit hard-to-read, but he had saved her. She couldn’t discount it.
The truck slowed and Emma glanced up. Ahead, an older sedan blocked both lanes of the road. “What’s going on?”
John eased the truck to a crawl as they neared. “By the looks of it, nothing good.”
Chapter Seventeen
John
Sunshine glinted off the rear window of the late nineties Ford Taurus as John slowed. A man leaned deep into the vehicle, jean-covered butt wriggling in the air as he fought with someone inside. A second man stood outside the car, greasy hair, three-day beard. His hands dug into the shoulders of a boy no older than eight or nine.
Tears streaked down the kid’s face and a purpling bruise swelled his left cheek. From the look of his button-down and clean khakis, he hadn’t been with the man for long.
It was, as he’d told Emma, not good. And, unfortunately, all too familiar. How many scenes just like it had played out in his childhood? A jealous boyfriend of a foster mother. An ex out to score a few dollars to get high.
He angled the truck toward the grass, about to drive around, when the kid standing in the road lashed out at his captor, kicking him in the shin. As one hand dislodged from his shoulder, he tried to run, heels digging in the dirt and weeds. It was no use. The man reared back, grabbing the kid by his hair and wrenching so hard, he screamed.
Tank spun around in the bed of the truck and barked. Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. Holly reached for the door handle.
“Do not get out of this truck.” John kept his voice even and controlled. “You so much as touch that door handle—”
Holly spun on John. “He’s hurt! You saw what that man did and you’re just going to drive on by?”
John let the truck idle. That’s exactly what he should do. Now that they had a map and John could navigate to the general area of Gloria’s cabin without Emma’s help, he should shoot her right there and send Holly and Tank on their scarred-for-life way. But something held him back.
Was it Gil? Emma’s kindness? The determined look in Holly’s eye as she wanted to right the injustice playing out in the street. Damn it. He was going soft.
He shifted the truck into park and reached for his Sig. “I never said I’d keep driving.” He racked the slide. “Stay inside.” He turned to Emma. “Understood?”
She nodded, eyes wide and afraid.
As he opened the door, Tank rushed him, leaning so far out of the truck bed, his breath fanned across John’s cheek. “Stay,” John ordered. The dog whined. “No complaining.” He rounded the front of the vehicle, gun pointed at the ground.
“This ain’t any of your business,” the man with the kid called out.
“Get your hands off him.”
“Whatcha gonna do, make me?” The man flicked his head, and a clump of dirty blond hair cleared his eye.
This wasn’t John’s fight. They could navigate the truck over the grass and weeds and keep going. It’s what he should do if he only cared about the mission. But he didn’t.
Not anymore. Maybe not ever.
John lifted the gun and aimed smack at the man’s forehead. “I can, if that’s what it takes.”
“Hey, Donnie!” He leaned over, barking at the man half-swallowed by the car. “We got company!”
The butt shimmied and a string of curses flew from the car, followed by a veritable twin of the first man. Same greasy blond hair, same sallow complexion. Only Donnie sported a jagged scar running cheek to chin. Behind him, a woman struggled to right herself, brown hair wild and tangled around her face. Thanks to her pale skin, John could make out the black eye from across the road.
“This ain’t none’a yer business, buddy.” Donnie spat and a glob of spit landed on the broken asphalt halfway to John. “How ’bout you and your family take that beater and keep on drivin’.”
“They aren’t my family.” John shifted ten degrees to aim at Donnie. “And you need to leave.”
The first guy eyeballed Donnie and then John. “He’s got a gun, Don. Maybe we should git.”
“For chrissakes, shut up, Luke.” Donnie jerked his chin in John’s direction. “How ’bout you put that away and we talk about this like men.”
John glanced around him, pretending to look for something. “Men? I’m sorry, I only see one.”
Luke twisted his face into a question. “He don’t think we’re chicks, does he?”
Donnie fake smiled. “That’s funny.” He dropped the grin. “But I’m not. Now get out of here before you regret ever stopping.”
The woman in the car stared, frozen in fear and shock in the front seat. Her son, John presumed, chewed on his lower lip while Luke gripped his shoulder. This was going nowhere fast.
He lowered his head and took aim at Luke. “I’m going to count to three. If you don’t get your hands off the kid, I’ll shoot you. One, two—”
Luke lifted his hands in the air.
“That’s better.” He smiled at the boy. “Are you okay?”
After a moment, the kid bobbed his head up and down and snuffed back a load of snot.
“Do you know these men?”
He glanced at Donnie before shaking his head so hard his hair fell into his eyes.
John turned his attention to the woman in the car. “Do I kill them or just slow them down?”
Her mouth fell open, but no sound came out.
John exhaled, suddenly exhausted from the strain of the last few days and the drama playing out before him. “Your choice. Doesn’t matter to me.”
Luke fidgeted in place. “Yo, Donnie. We should go. There’ll be another car.”
“Shut up, Luke. He’s bluffing.”
“I don’t bluff. Ever. But I do grow impatient.” He lifted an eyebrow in the woman’s direction. “Last chance. You say nothing, I slow them down.”
She blinked. John took that as tacit approval. In one fluid motion, he shifted his aim and fired. The bullet sliced through Donnie’s lower thigh before burying itself in the dirt, blood spraying across the champagne paint job on the car.
Donnie crumpled to the ground, screaming as he clutched his leg. John turned to Luke. The man’s hands were back around the kid, clutching him like a shield. The boy began to cry, thick sobs that wracked his whole body.
John aimed at Luke’s head. “Run.”
Luke took off like a startled rabbit, hopping first one way and then another. Once he cleared the car, John aimed and fired. Luke fell forward as the bullet sailed through his calf muscle and out the other side. As he holstered his weapon, John strode forward. Grabbing Donnie by the hair, he wrenched the bleeding, whimpering man away from the car and dragged him to the side of the road.
The woman in the car scuttled back until she hit the passenger door, but John ignored her. He found Luke, half-crawling, half-dragging his bleeding leg away from the car. “Put some pressure on it. You’ll stop the bleeding. Raid a drugstore. Take some penicillin. You’ll be fine.”
“You shot me!�
� Luke wailed, face smeared in red clay dirt from his impact with the ground. “You f-ing shot me!”
“I gave you fair warning.” John turned to the boy.
The kid backed up, his butt bumping into the car as he stared in horror at John.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” John held up his hands. “Are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”
“Leave us alone!” The woman in the car finally found her voice. A high-pitched, whiny sound that had more in common with a cat than a canary. “You’re a monster!”
John didn’t disagree. “You’re safe now. They won’t hurt you anymore.” He nodded at the woman before turning back to the kid. “You don’t have to live like this. You can stand up for yourself. Make better choices.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned back to the truck. Holly and Emma sat ramrod straight on the bench seat, staring at him like he’d turned blue and scaly. He tugged open the driver’s side door as Tank shoved his nose toward his face. John ignored the dog and slid onto the seat before shutting the door.
He cranked the engine. “Let’s get out of here.”
They drove in silence for the next hour, John reading the map while Emma and Holly stared out the windshield. As they gained in elevation, the truck slowed, barely making it over thirty miles an hour before the RPMs climbed dangerously high.
Off the interstate, they wove through small town after small town, each with a spit of a Main Street, a handful of closed up shops, and more than a few stares from front porches. John kept an eye on the fuel gauge. They would need another tank soon. The old truck guzzled the gallons faster than he’d anticipated.
As they left the remains of the small town behind, the road grew steeper and the view opened up. Blue-tinted mountains framed the sky and weeds gave way to rocky outcrops and gravel driveways.
Emma shifted beside him. “Back there with those men, was that all military training? What you did?”
John watched her from the corner of his eye. She still focused on the road. “Mostly.”
