Chapter 15
JUDAH
My shoulder hurt like a bitch. My bicep was numb, and every tendon and nerve down to my fingertips stung.
But Amelia was asleep on my arm, so I wasn’t fucking moving.
She had, reluctantly, fallen asleep against the door while using the jacket I kept in my go bag as a blanket. Somewhere around the dip into Northern Virginia, she had shifted over to rest her head on my arm.
I knew she was exhausted and probably still felt the waves of sickness that came and went after inhaling chloroform. Frankly, it made her little escape attempt at the gas station all the more impressive.
The truck’s fuel gauge was dipping too low for comfort. I needed to pull off, gas up, and take a power nap if I wanted to make it the rest of the way without crashing.
And food.
We both needed something more solid than the single soda and bag of pretzels we’d shared.
Traveling with cash was tricky. On the upside, it meant no credit card transactions to clue others into our location. The downside was that it meant I had to go inside and interact with another human being who would see my face and be able to identify me.
Amelia and I didn’t exactly blend in. She was a lithe little sprite of a thing—gold-spun hair, big blue eyes, and a brilliant smile when she wasn’t threatening to run away from me.
On the other hand, I was six and a half feet of overgrown hair, tattoos on every inch of exposed skin, and had been called “menacing” on more than one occasion.
At the Four Horsemen, it worked for me.
I wasn’t the kind of guy who lit up a room. I was the one who bathed it in darkness, then turned it red. I was the one people cowered away from.
I didn’t blame them.
But that first night when she showed up, smelling like booze and crying about a fiancé that didn’t exist, Amelia smiled at my darkness.
Hell, she might as well have patted me on the chest and called me cute.
She seemed like the type to spot a rabid dog on the side of the road, coax it into her car, and take it home just to give it a bath, put it in a sweater, and call it her “goodest boy.”
. . . I wanted to be her goodest boy.
I flicked the turn signal and eased over to take an exit that let off into a small town. It sported a single gas station and an old diner that looked like it used to be a house.
The truck bumped and wobbled as I pulled into the gas station lot. I was half tempted to see if I could run in, pay for the tank of gas, fill up, and get back on the road before Amelia woke up.
But she was right. I couldn’t treat her like a hostage.
“Amelia,” I said gently as I jostled my arm, trying to slide her off without startling her.
She mumbled, her eyelids fluttering, but didn’t quite wake.
I smoothed my palm over the crown of her head and down the back of her neck. “Amelia, I’m stopping for gas. Do you need anything?”
“Huh?” she mumbled listlessly as she peeled her cheek off my arm.
“I’m stopping for gas. We need to get back on the road. Do you need anything?”
She blinked, then shook her head.
“You sure?” I pressed. “We’ve still got a ways to go.”
“I highly doubt you’re going to let me go to the bathroom alone after last time, and I don’t feel like having you watch me pee,” she grumbled. “Besides. I don’t have shoes.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Amelia’s glare was razor-sharp.
“Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll be quick.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You do realize that you’re leaving me alone in here, right?”
“Yes,” I said honestly as I reached into the bag and pulled out a wad of cash. “I know you can run. But I don’t think you’re going to.” I cocked my head to study her eyes. “Can I trust you to stay in here and lay low?”
Amelia hesitated, then nodded. I didn’t fully believe her. Once bitten, twice shy, I supposed.
“You hungry?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I still feel sick.”
“It’ll ease up soon,” I promised as I pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Keep your head down and go back to sleep.”
I made my way across the lot, keeping my strides even. Running was suspicious. I wanted to be forgettable.
I offered a wordless chin-tip to the old-timer behind the register. He clocked me immediately, looking me up and down, but didn’t say anything more than, “Good morning.”
An apparel rack caught my eye. I raided it, then snagged a few protein bars from an endcap, grabbed an energy drink and bottle of water from the fridge, and paid up at the register.
The cashier gave me an odd look when he rang up the things I had gotten for Amelia, but I just cracked a smile.
“My girl likes getting things from all the places we stop on road trips,” I said with a sheepish, lovestruck smile.
The man’s weathered expression shifted to wistfulness. “My wife collects mugs.” He chuckled. “I had to build a whole new cabinet just to hold all of ’em. Been married fifty-six years now.”
I took my change and grabbed the haul. “Hell of an achievement. Have a good one.”
I studied the truck cab as I walked back to fill up the tank. From a distance, it looked empty. But as I drew closer, I spotted Amelia curled up in the passenger’s seat like a cat.
She hadn’t run.
I shoved the gas pump into the tank to start filling up before I opened the door and dropped the haul into the front seat. Surviving on protein bars and energy drinks wasn’t pleasant, but I had certainly been in worse situations.
My body hummed with the clash of adrenaline and fatigue.
I glanced at the old-school watch on my wrist. It was something that had long been ingrained in me.
Relying on a phone that could be traced just for the time was shortsighted.
The diver’s watch that I had owned for decades was as reliable as the sun.
“Amelia,” I said as I cleared the seat and tossed the snacks and drinks into the backpack.
“Huh? We’re leaving?” she mumbled. “That was fast.”
I pushed the folded clothes toward her. “Got you a present.”
That piqued her attention.
She sat up, rubbed her eyes, then took the clothes from me and set them in her lap. The foam flip-flops were first. She smiled softly as she dropped them onto the floorboard and wiggled them on her feet.
“We’ll find something more substantial once we get settled, but they’ll do for now.”
Amelia picked up the sweatshirt and studied the front. “The Honey Hollow Fighting Bees? I’m repping a high school I didn’t go to or teach at?”
I yanked the pump out of the tank when it cut off and set it back in the cradle. “Beggars can’t be choosers, little fox.”
She studied the matching sweatpants, then set them all in her lap. “Thank you,” Amelia said softly as I hopped back into the truck and shut the door.
“I need eight minutes,” I said as I settled into the corner between the driver’s seat and the door and closed my eyes. “Please don’t make me run.”
“Fine. Don’t peek and I won’t make you run.”
I peeked, only to find Amelia wiggling the sweatpants up and under her dress. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“That doesn’t give you permission to look,” she said as she slid the sweatshirt on over her dress, pulled her arms into the sleeves, and worked her dress off her hips and legs while staying fully covered.
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled as I closed my eyes and immediately drifted into a power nap.
Exactly eight minutes later, I opened my eyes, sat up, and buckled my seatbelt. I didn’t even need to look at my watch to know how long it had been. Eight-minute power naps, immediately followed by caffeine, kept me going for longer than a person should.
“How much longer?” Amelia asked.
I cracked open the energy drink and took a long sip, needing as much to hit my system at once as possible. “A few hours is my guess. Might be longer depending on the condition of the trails when we get there.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry—trails?”
“We’re not staying at a Best Western off the highway. We’re going to one of the most remote parts of the Appalachian Mountains. Safe houses are safe because they’re discreet.”
“I don’t do the outdoors.”
“Good,” I replied. “Stay inside and stay alive.”
As much as I could have used a relaxing mountain vacation, this wasn’t that. Not by a long shot.
“There aren’t bears, right?” Amelia asked as she fiddled with the sleeve of her new sweatshirt. It was a hideous bumblebee yellow that, unfortunately, matched the sweatpants, but it was probably more comfortable than the dress.
“There are bears. And not the adorable Hundred Acre Wood kind of bears.”
She cut her eyes at me. “Am I going to be expected to hike?”
That was one thing I was learning about Amelia—she flip-flopped between irritation and acceptance. One minute, she was cooperative, and the next, I thought she was a breath away from tucking and rolling out of a moving vehicle.
“Possibly.”
“Do you have a gun?”
The question was so out of the blue that it startled me.
“No,” I said honestly. “But there are weapons at the safe house.”
“But no guns?”
“There are guns at the safe house. They’re not mine. I’m not the only one who has access to it. I don’t like guns.” I tried to keep my tone as neutral as possible, but I could tell that Amelia didn’t believe me in the least bit.
“Who else has access to it?” she pressed.
“Cole.”
“Is this ‘Cole’ in the same line of work you are?” she asked with a rather accusatory tone that led me to believe she thought Cole was some kind of Bigfoot-Loch Ness monster lore.
I rolled my eyes. “His name actually is Cole. I’m not making him up.” I thought over my answer. “He works for a private security firm. High-end bodyguard shit. The firm he works for has their own network of safe houses, but it’s always best to have a place that no one else knows about.”
“Why not just put me and my brother in witness protection?” Amelia pressed.
“Because you were both supposed to be dead already.”
That shut her up.
“WITSEC creates a paper trail that’s very easy to trace. The Marshals aren’t as slick as they think they are.”
I could have shoved her in the direction of the Feds. I should have shoved her in the direction of the Feds. Valentine never had to know. I could have faked her death and gotten off scot-free.
Because now, it wasn’t just her life on the line. It was mine too.
Amelia swallowed as the reality of who she was sitting beside sank in.
I wasn’t a good guy. I never pretended to be.
The longer I was in this line of work, the more I realized that there are no good guys.
There are winners and there are losers. Whoever comes out on top the most paints the picture of what is right and what is wrong.
After being caught in the middle long enough, I had come to realize that it was all relative.
Saviors could be monsters just as easily as monsters could put on their suits, don their smiles, and pretend to be the hand extending help.
Until that hand wrapped around your throat and didn’t let go.