Chapter 28
AMELIA
“Jude?” I peered through the darkness, following his shadow as it danced across the cabin.
Last night had been the latest in a string of many late nights where I had done drill after drill of card counting and he had thoroughly rewarded me.
We had just fallen asleep a few hours ago, accidentally sharing the bed rather than him retreating to the couch like usual.
I didn’t mind in the least.
The temperatures at night had risen enough for us to be comfortable without a fire, but I slept better with the warmth of his body against mine.
Was that why he was up and moving around in the predawn hours—because we had fallen asleep together and he was trying to get some space?
I understood having boundaries and not having sleepovers after sex, but we were stuck in a very small one-room cabin.
Sleeping on the couch just to make a point didn’t hurt me. It only hurt his back.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in a hushed voice as he braced his hand against the wall and toed on his boots.
“What are you doing?” I grumbled as I rubbed my eyes.
After the first scare, when hikers got a little too curious about the cabin, Jude and I made a pact to stay inside.
To lay low. We let the shabby cabin exterior tell the story it needed to.
With the exception of two strolls down the tunnel to get some fresh air down at the river, we stayed invisible.
It was necessary, but no matter how much I tried to keep myself entertained, I was about to start climbing the walls.
“Gotta go into town. Need supplies.”
He was really just going to sneak out like that? Like last time?
So I had tried to escape once. Sue me. It was my first kidnapping, after all. I wanted the full experience.
Hurt stung my gut as I worked the edge of the quilt between my fingers. “You didn’t mention that last night.” I glanced up, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “You were just going to leave without telling me?”
Jude shrugged. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
It had utterly terrified me the last time he snuck into town. I woke up alone, thinking it was all a fever dream, then afraid that I’d been left in the cabin to die.
Jude grabbed his coat. “I won’t be long.”
That still meant he’d be gone at least four hours.
I had no sense of time since the cabin lacked a clock, but given that it was still pitch-black outside, it had to be before six in the morning.
We tried to keep the lights off as much as possible once the sun went down, which meant my body had adjusted to the circadian rhythm of waking with the sunrise. There was no way I’d be able to “sleep in” and he knew it.
“Can I come?” There was no sense in being shy about it or beating around the bush. If he was leaving, I wanted to leave too.
“No,” Jude answered shortly. “You need to lay low. People are looking for you.”
“They’re looking for you too.” I crossed my arms. “And we still have enough to eat for a few days, more if you count the MREs in the cellar as food. I don’t, but you do. So why are you really leaving?”
He was silent. Even though it was pitch-black, I could sense him staring at me. “We need supplies.”
“Bullshit.”
“Amelia,” he groaned.
Ire began to grow alongside annoyance. “Remember our conversation when I tried to run the first time? If you treat me like a hostage, I’ll act like one. If you don’t trust me with the whole truth, then I’ll stop trusting you. Simple as that.”
He huffed, and I just knew that he was pinching the bridge of his nose and cursing me in his mind.
Good.
“Get your fucking shoes on,” he grumbled before storming out to the truck.
I hurried to throw some clothes on, tie my hair in a ponytail, brush my teeth, and meet him out by the truck before he changed his mind and left me behind.
“Why are you in such a bad mood this morning?” I asked as he grabbed a split log and pinned down the tarp beside the cabin so it wouldn’t blow away while we were gone.
“I thought you’d be all sunshine and roses after last night. ”
Jude looked up, arching an eyebrow. “Am I ever sunshine and roses?”
“That smile you had when you came on my tits last night was sunshine and roses.”
Jude paused, his expression softening as if he was fondly remembering the moment, then he simply huffed. “I’d rather you stay here.”
“We’re leaving eventually, right? You have to get used to me not being stashed away on top of a mountain.”
Jude and I had been practicing relentlessly for Vegas, going over game strategy, evasive measures to stay unnoticed by casino security, and how we would work as a team. What we hadn’t covered was when we were going to Vegas and what exactly would happen when we left.
Jude had been very clear: we get in, win big, and get out. There was no dillydallying. The moment we left the cabin, Valentine’s henchmen would catch our trail. But what happened when we got the money? How would we make it back across the country and pay up?
And would this nightmare really be over?
“Yes,” Jude said. “We’re leaving soon.”
Well, that was news to me. “How soon? Today?”
“End of the week. We’ll play Saturday night. We want casino security to be stretched thin. Crowds make it easier to hide.”
I paused because I wasn’t entirely sure what day it was. I did the math in my head, trying to count sunrises and sunsets, landmark events, and how many times we’d had sex, but I couldn’t calculate how long we had been here. It all blurred together.
Jude’s voice softened. “Today is Monday.”
I swallowed down the feeling of a pinecone being lodged in my throat. “Right. Thanks.”
He didn’t speak again until the two of us had buckled up and were lumbering down the mountain.
The headlights flashed across trees, making my heart jump in my throat every time one appeared out of thin air.
Jude knew the way like the back of his hand.
There was no road. Not even a trail or a footpath. It was all muscle memory.
“We’ll leave on Thursday, just before dark,” Jude said as he eased around a downed tree like it was an exit ramp.
“How long will it take to drive to Las Vegas?”
“We’re not driving to Vegas.”
“But I thought—”
“We’re driving to Chicago. We’ll dump the truck there, then take a train to Arizona.” He glanced at me. “You get carsick. Train’ll be more comfortable for you.”
“Good to know,” I muttered as I tried to ignore the butterflies that came to life inside of me because he remembered something so . . . so minuscule about me. And it meant everything. “Are we walking from Arizona to Nevada?”
“Taking a bus.”
“That seems overly complicated.”
“It is,” he said. “But if we can make it onto the train undetected, we won’t be seen until we get to Arizona.
If we drove from here to Vegas, we’d have to stop for gas, for food, to go to the bathroom.
” He sliced me with a sharp glare. “And I’m not giving you any more opportunities to climb out of a bathroom window. ”
“That was one time!”
He cracked a smile. “Once bitten, twice shy.”
“And you weren’t going to tell me this until you were stuffing me in the truck to leave on Thursday?” I pressed.
Jude turned his eyes back to the path ahead. “I’m not used to running things by other people.”
“We’re a team. You have to keep me in the loop. I don’t want you to keep secrets from me,” I said. “I need you to promise that you won’t.”
Jude swallowed. “No secrets.”
“Promise?”
He hesitated, peeled around a large stump, then nodded. “I promise.”
“So what’s the real reason we’re going into town?” I asked. “Because we have plenty of food to get us through until Thursday.”
The corners of his mouth tightened. I knew he wasn’t keen on sharing information that was on a need-to-know basis, but I was part of the need-to-know crew.
“Cole arranged a dead drop.”
“What’s that?” I grimaced. “Please tell me he’s not leaving a dead body somewhere. I don’t have a steel stomach around blood the way you do.”
Jude chuckled. “It’s where someone leaves something hidden at an agreed-upon spot. In our case, it’s fake IDs and tickets for the train and bus.”
“Is Cole here?” I blurted out before I thought better of it. If Cole was here, maybe Joel was too.
“No. He had an associate in the area deliver the package. I’m just going to pick it up.”
My heart fell just a little. “Oh.”
“But we do need to stop in town.” He glanced at me. “How do you feel about being a brunette?”
“Excuse me?” I shrieked as I clutched the ends of my hair. “Absolutely not.”
“Fine. A redhead.”
“Again—absolutely not.”
“Blue hair?” he asked.
I scoffed. “Why don’t you dye your hair?”
“I’m going to. Probably gonna go dark. Probably going to buzz it too.”
“Why?!” I shouted. Now he was just being ridiculous.
Jude cracked a smile as he raked his fingers back through his shoulder-length hair. “You like my hair or something, little fox?”
I crossed my arms and tipped my chin up. “Yes.”
He was way too self-satisfied at my confession.
The trip down the mountain was slow and lumbering. Once we got onto a paved road, we didn’t fare much better. The pavement was littered with downed branches and rocks from the torrential downpour last night.
After being sequestered for so long, it was strange to see roads and other cars. Since I had started college, my singular goal was to keep earning degrees, then teaching positions, and—someday—tenure. I had never stopped. Never paused.
But I had disappeared into thin air, yet life went on.
My degrees still hung on the wall in my office.
Collecting dust.
I was proud of them, sure. I had worked my ass off for them.
But in the blink of an eye, none of it mattered.
If I didn’t show back up by August, they’d be taken down. Maybe put into storage. Someone else would take my office and put their accolades in the exact same spot, and it’d be like I was never there at all.