Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
July 27 th
8:07 A.M.
Something was different between them this morning.
A tentative truce.
Cole would take it. Any step forward was a positive as far as he was concerned.
Progress.
Baby steps but that was okay. His whole focus seemed to have shifted to earn Susanna’s trust. He had no idea why it had suddenly become so vitally important, but it had. Something about the woman called out to him and he seemed powerless to do anything but answer the call.
How he’d managed to do such an about-turn in such a short time told him that all this time, he’d been more invested in his pretty neighbor than he’d thought. His siblings always accused him of being obsessed with her, and he’d always denied it, insisting that he just didn't like her because of who she was and what she did.
But he’d been wrong.
His siblings had been right.
He’d been obsessed, and the only thing holding him back had been his misplaced perceptions of Susanna that had him thinking she was the same as the last woman he’d fallen for.
Now that he knew he’d been wrong, he had to make it right somehow. Protecting her and keeping her safe from his enemies, from his life that had reached out and touched her in the worst possible way, was a start, but it wasn't enough.
Nothing could ever be enough.
Cole was well aware of that. No matter how hard he tried, not even if he had the entire rest of his life, could he ever completely make up for hurting her. Those memories would live forever in her head, her opinion of him would always be tainted by the cruel words he’d thrown her way, and he hated that. But it was the price he would have to pay for taking out his anger at his ex on an innocent stranger.
Aware that Susanna’s breathing was becoming harsher, Cole decided it was time for a break. They’d managed to put enough distance between themselves and the men who’d tried to kill them because instead of keeping them close to the road Cole had done the opposite. He’d taken them deeper into the woods, well away from the search area he was sure the men would be checking.
It meant they’d walked for hours, meant they’d had to spend the night out there, and meant there would be hours more walking before they hit the road he was aiming for, but knowing they were safe made it more than worth it.
“Break time,” he announced.
There was no protest from Susanna, she immediately sunk to sit on the ground, resting back against a tree. Tipping her head back to rest against the trunk, she let her eyes fall closed. Her cheeks were stained pink from exertion, but beneath that, she was paper pale. The bruises from her assault had been layered with bruises from the fall yesterday. Bright red blood had crusted around the wound on her head, they’d be lucky if it didn't get infected. Since his first aid kit had gone over the cliff with the rest of his car, he hadn't been able to clean and restitch the wound, and he couldn’t deny he was worried about it.
When he got her back home, he’d clean and stitch the wound himself. While he wasn't a doctor, he’d been a medic with his Green Berets and he was Charlie Team’s medic. He had enough skills to take care of the gash himself. Given that the stitches had split back open and had gone so many hours without being tended to, not even the best plastic surgeon in the world could close the cut in such a way it wouldn't scar.
“How you doing?” he asked, sitting down beside Susanna, close enough that their thighs touched.
Her eyes popped open, glanced down at their legs but she didn't say anything. “I'm tired, hurting, and thirsty. But I'm okay. I can do what we need to do to get out of here. And I don’t think they’re going to find us.”
This time .
Those words went unsaid, but they hung heavily in the air between them.
He and his family had stirred up a hornet’s nest. They hadn't anticipated this much blowback when they took down Tarek Mahmoud, but whoever the Egyptologist had been involved with seemed to be prepared to go to any lengths to keep their secrets.
At first, they might have been prepared to issue threats, but in just a couple of days, they’d progressed from having Susanna raped as a warning to trying to kill them both several times over.
This was a mess.
One he wasn't sure he knew how to fix.
The best way to keep everyone safe was to back down and give in. Stop trying to find answers about what happened to their parents.
But there was no way they were going to do that.
So, the only other option was to keep pushing as hard as they could and finally break open this conspiracy once and for all. It just meant that for the foreseeable future, the entire family would have to be on high alert. Just because the attention seemed to be focused on him and Susanna didn't mean they wouldn't try targeting someone else.
Probably would keep targeting until they found a weak link.
The problem was, the Charleston Holloway family had no weak links.
They were united, solid, and there were no cracks. Regardless of their rocky past, Susanna was part of them now, she was under their protection. Cole didn't know what the future held, but he knew that, if nothing else, he’d like to be friends with Susanna. They’d been through a lot together and he owed her so much for setting aside her trauma to help his family. A debt he could never repay.
“Will you tell me how you got your nickname, coal Cole?” Susanna asked, an amused glint in her big green eyes. He wasn't used to seeing her like that. Usually, when they interacted her gaze was closed off, not quite angry but definitely defensive. He liked this better.
“I’m the youngest. Cade is the oldest, the twins, Cooper and Connor, are in the middle. Cassandra is so much younger than the rest of us, six years between me and her, and ten between her and Cade, so she was too young to be involved in a lot of our shenanigans. Being the youngest boy was rough. I wanted to do what the others were doing but they liked to tease me, tell me I was too little to join in, basically do all the things big brothers like to torment their little brothers with.”
“Must be nice to have a big family like that, always have someone around,” Susanna said with a wistful sigh. Cole only knew she was an only child because her family was so well known. She was supposed to be the heir to the Zangari fortune, but she didn't work in the family business so he had no idea if she intended to take over one day.
“A blessing and a curse, the pranks we used to pull on one another would blow your mind.” They’d been good days, though, and if he’d known how abruptly they would come to an end, he would have treasured them more than he had. “The last summer before my dad died, he took us camping out here in these woods. Of course, I wanted to be involved in everything, but my brothers kept giving me all the boring jobs because I was the youngest. Mom and Cass had stayed home so it was just us five guys.”
That camping trip had been only five months before his dad’s team was ambushed. The last thing they’d done all together. When he had kids of his own, he wanted to take them out there and recreate those memories. It was a way to keep his dad alive.
“What chores did you get stuck with?” Susanna asked.
“While Dad and my brothers went fishing for dinner, I have to stay in camp and set up the tents. I was mad, and decided I could contribute something more, so I started the campfire. I had no idea what I was doing, and because I’d put the tents too close to the flames, they caught alight. I ran around in a panic getting water from the river and putting out the flames. The fire was controlled by the time my dad and brothers got back, but all that was left of the tents was a pile of ash.”
“Was he mad at you? Your dad?” Susanna asked, and he noticed her entire body had gone stiff.
“Nah. My dad was more into teaching us lessons than yelling at us. But he did sit me down and explain to me that even with the smallest of jobs it’s important to do your best. The job of setting up the tents was an important one, but because I didn't think so I could have started a forest fire. I learned a lot that day. My brothers started calling me coal after that. They would sing at me that all Cole was good for was making coal. I hated it. The nickname stuck. Unfortunately. But unless you know the story you’d never know that they weren't just saying my real name.”
“You were lucky to have a dad who cared enough to teach you,” Susanna said softly.
Cole couldn’t agree more. He’d learned a lot from his dad, his mom, too, which was why it was so important to him and his siblings to finally prove that their mom had nothing to do with her husband’s team being ambushed and killed. She was no traitor, and no matter the risks none of them would stop until they cleared her name.
“Come on, we better get walking again, we’re almost out, another hour or so at the most,” he told Susanna as he stood and held out his hand to help her stand.
After a brief hesitation, Susanna took it, and he pulled her up.
As they started walking again, Cole tried his best to ignore the stab of guilt in his chest. His driving need to clear his mom’s name had already gotten Susanna hurt. Could he live with himself if that obsession wound up getting her killed?
July 27 th
9:49 A.M.
“Need a lift?” the driver of one of those huge SUVs asked as he pulled up beside where they were sitting at the side of the road and opened his door.
“About time,” Cole returned as he grinned at one of his brothers.
Susanna thought it was Connor, the twin with the blue eyes, because from what she’d seen when she’d spoken with the family the other day, the gray-eyed twin Cooper was joined at the hip with his new girlfriend, Willow. It was sweet. Must be nice to have someone believe the trauma you’ve been through and want to be by your side while you worked through it.
How different would her life have turned out if her trauma had been validated?
It was almost painful to think about because she knew the answer.
If her trauma had been validated and believed she’d have scars but not open, festering wounds all these years later.
“Hop in,” Connor said, and Cole reached out to take her hand and pull her to her feet.
She let him.
Felt weird but she fought against the urge to pull away.
Just because the bravado of yesterday was slowly wearing off didn't mean she wasn't going to fight to hold onto it.
“You two look rough,” Connor said sympathetically as Cole helped her into the back.
Surprisingly, he climbed in after her. She’d expected him to get in the front with his brother and explain in more detail what had happened to them than he had when they waved down a motorist’s car earlier and asked to borrow a cell phone.
“We feel it, bro, believe me,” Cole returned. “First aid kit, please. Susanna’s stitches got busted open and I need to get that cleaned up ASAP.”
“Here you go.” After rifling through the glove compartment, Connor handed over a small kit. “If you need something more it’s probably in the bigger kit in the back.”
“You have two first aid kits?” she asked, surprised. She didn't even have one in her little car let alone two.
“Never know when you're going to need one.” Connor grinned at her, and she relaxed a little. These people weren't her family, weren't even her friends, and yet they’d been nicer to her than a lot of people she’d known in her life. It was nice and she wished, not for the first time, that she had a family like this. Full of people, of life, of laughter, of love.
When Connor started driving, Cole reached over and buckled her in then did up his own seatbelt. Then he opened the kit and started looking through it. Pulling out a square bandage, he opened one of the water bottles Connor pulled out, handed over, and wet it. Then, leaning in, he began to clean away the dried blood and dirt from her wound.
This close she could feel his warm breath on her skin, each puff of air feeling like a soft caress. His touch was so gentle, and she was so lost in studying his intent brown eyes, with little flecks of gold speckled throughout, that she didn't feel any pain as he worked. The wound would leave a scar, there was no avoiding it, it had been left open too long to be able to stitch it so it wouldn't leave a mark. But she didn't care. It wasn't like she had plans for the whole fall in love joke of a fairytale, so it hardly mattered, she wasn't trying to attract a man’s attention.
“I’m going to butterfly bandage it closed,” Cole told her as he took out some antibiotic cream and smeared a liberal amount over the gash.
Susanna just nodded.
She seemed to have lost her voice. When she was around Cole, she seemed to be busy feeling to do much thinking. Unusual for her. Normally she lived inside her head. While not a warm and cozy space, it was at least safe. Nobody could call her a liar and a troublemaker if she kept them at arm’s length and was her own company.
“Are we stopping at the hospital on the way?” Connor asked, glancing at them both in the rear-view mirror.
“Up to you, sprinkles,” Cole said. “I don’t think either of us have any serious injuries, but if you want to get checked out, or you want them to bring in a plastic surgeon to try to work on the cut on your head then we’ll go straight there.”
“I don’t care if it scars,” she said. Going to the hospital would only bring back memories of her assault, and she was doing a pretty good job of ignoring that entire mess and pretending it hadn't happened. Not a sustainable option but she was clinging to it for now. There was no way she could deal with being raped and having someone trying to kill her at the same time. The someone trying to kill her thing had to trump everything else, so for now, it could live in her head and her assault could just hide in the background.
“So, you want to go home?” Cole asked.
What she wanted was to have a home. A real one. Like the kind Cole had grown up in. She wanted people who would be there for her through good and bad, who would always have her back, who would believe her and care if she was hurt. She wanted a place that was safe, where she could finally relax, because living the way she had been, all constantly on edge and attentive was wearing her down.
“Yeah, let’s go back to the apartment building,” she said, catching the note of weariness in her voice.
“We’ve bumped up security there,” Connor told her. “We put a camera facing your apartment that will alert one of us if anyone sets it off, so no one will be able to get to you again.”
Those words should reassure her, but they didn't.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her twenty-nine years it was that things could always get worse. When you thought you’d done everything within your power to keep yourself safe that was usually when you were at your most vulnerable.
Susanna couldn’t foresee any future where she ever felt safe. Truly safe. Her father’s abuse, her teacher and a police officer’s refusal to believe her cries for help, they’d caused too much damage.
But she was grateful Cole’s family were trying when they didn't have to. They had to know that Cole didn't like her, he had never been shy about it, and there had been encounters where they’d crossed paths in the hallways and one of his siblings had been with him, and he’d been his usual rude and condescending self.
Mustering a smile for Connor she nodded her appreciation. “Thanks, you guys didn't have to do that.”
Connor frowned back at her. “Hey now, there’s no way we’d leave you hanging, not when you're going out of your way to help us when you have no reason to.”
“We’ve got you, Susanna,” Cole said, giving her hand a squeeze. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
Offering him a smile, again she nodded even though she didn't quite believe those words. Everybody left you hanging, even the people you thought you could trust. “Thanks, coal Cole.”
A surprised laugh barked out of Connor. “You told her the burning down the camp story.”
“We were talking about nicknames and it came up,” Cole said with a shrug as he leaned in and pressed her wound closed, making her wince, as he placed a strip of bandage across it.
“Coal is a better nickname than sprinkles,” she muttered as he added another strip of tape.
“Sprinkles is pretty cute,” Connor told her, clearly amused. “I didn't know you guys had progressed to the nickname stage.”
“Cole’s been calling me sprinkles for years,” she said with an eye roll that turned into another wince when Cole put another strip of tape over her wound.
“Huh. I never knew that.” Connor said it like that meant something, only she wasn't sure what was running through his head. The nickname Cole had for her had started out as a mocking insult, maybe it had morphed into something more affectionate these last few days, but it wasn't anything more than that.
“There we go,” Cole said as he applied one more piece of tape. “All done. We’re going to have to keep an eye on that, though, make sure we watch for any signs of infection.”
Susanna wasn't sure if he’d done it consciously or not, but he’d said we instead of she. We’re going to have to keep an eye on that. Make sure we watch for any signs of infection. Only he wasn't going to be there. Was he? She’d given them all she knew about Vinny, all the places she thought he might hide out. There was nothing more for her to contribute to the Charleston Holloway hunt for answers. Which meant there was no reason for her to spend time with Cole.
While she was sure they’d come and protect her if someone came after her again, she wasn't expecting any more than that.
Couldn’t.
Yesterday’s bravado had faded enough that if there were going to be any more interactions of a more personal note between her and Cole, they were going to have to be initiated by him.
There was no way she would ever put herself on the line again when she knew how painful it was to be rejected.