Chapter 16 #3
I took a step away from the car, back toward the inevitable fight.
“Go!” Logan shouted as he pulled another of the makeshift smoke bombs from his pocket.
“But...” I hovered with my hand on the door to the car, unable to decide what to do.
Logan twisted off the cap of the aerosol can. “Just go while you can. We’ll catch up.”
He threw the canister at his own feet, and a second later the air in the garage filled with an opaque cloud of billowing gas, blocking off everyone’s vision.
I couldn’t help hesitating for one more moment, watching the vague shapes of humans moving through the smoke. Then I heard the sound of a fist meeting flesh, and an unrecognizable voice shouting in pain, and knew the fight had begun.
Every instinct I had begged me to go back and help the others, but then I looked over at Jordy, huddled in the passenger seat of the car with my briefcase still clutched to his chest.
“Damn it.”
Biting my lip and clenching my fists, I shoved myself behind the wheel of the car.
The keys were waiting for me right on the dashboard, in such easy reach it was as if this whole desperate escape had been planned.
Starting up the car, I peeled out of the garage, barely remembering to hit the button for the outer garage door in time to keep from driving right through it.
Within a matter of seconds, we were out on the open road, the two of us quickly leaving all the chaos behind.
After days of living in the artificial environment of the underground bunker, the sight of real sky and plant life was a shock to my eyes.
The bunker’s lighting system had been set to night, but out in the real world, it was only late afternoon.
The sun hadn’t fully set yet, but gray clouds covered the sky in a bleak atmosphere.
A light rain pelted the car, just enough to make the windshield wipers necessary, but not enough to impede visibility on the road.
Neither Jordy, nor I, said anything as I kept driving. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just picked a random direction and didn’t stop, turning only when the road gave me no other choice.
An hour passed in silence. The light rain turned into a heavy downpour that even the windshield wipers struggled to keep up with. We were completely alone on a nameless back road that I couldn’t have found on a map to save my life and there wasn’t another single pair of headlights in sight.
Figuring we’d driven far enough, and there was no point risking our safety driving though the rain, I pulled the car to a stop under the shelter of a small bridge.
Even after the rumble of the car’s engine died, I continued to grip the steering wheel hard enough that I could feel the stitches holding the old leather together.
“Jordy, I...”
Whatever useless words of comfort I’d been about to offer died on my tongue when I looked over at the other man.
He was curled up on the seat, knees pressed to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs, making him look even smaller than usual.
The sight would have been pathetic enough, but he was also shivering so badly that he seemed in danger of biting his tongue.
While the weather wasn’t very cold, it also wasn’t that warm, either, and he was wearing very little. Not even shoes. The skimpy boxers and tank top he’d chosen to wear earlier were certainly eye catching, but he was paying for that choice now.
In contrast, I was sitting here still mostly dressed. The only clothing I was missing was my tie.
I slipped off my jacket and draped it around his shoulders, appreciating the way it practically swallowed him. His hands gripped the lapels and pulled the jacket tighter around him like a blanket.
“What do we do now?” he asked when his shivering finally stopped.
“Now?” I repeated.
Oh, right.
What were we going to do now?
No, I needed to think. I had a plan for this. I remembered talking about it with Logan and the others when we were first organizing this whole operation.
Searching the car, I found my briefcase sitting on the car floor at Jordy’s feet.
“Now, we’re going to have to wait.”
Opening the briefcase, I started looking through its contents, but I was stopped when Jordy suddenly grabbed my arm.
“Oh my God. Kitt, you’re hurt. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What?”
Looking down at my arm, I found blood soaking through the white material of my sleeve.
I hadn’t even noticed the pain, and the thick material of my jacket had hidden the evidence of my injury.
I tried to tell Jordy that it was fine, that it didn’t hurt and was probably just a scratch, but he insisted on removing my shirt, even going so far as to yank it off me when I didn’t act fast enough.
A bullet must have grazed me at some point during our escape, carving a bloody line right across by bicep.
It looked bad at first, but rinsing the wound off with some rainwater revealed that it wasn’t very deep.
Barely more than a scratch. We didn’t have much first aid on hand, so we just ripped up my shirt into a few strips that Jordy then tied around my arm in a rudimentary bandage.
“I wish we had something better,” he said as he tied off the knot.
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “The muscle wasn’t damaged at all. It’ll heal quickly. Now, hand me my briefcase again.”
Jordy still didn’t look so sure and eyed the wound on my arm with skepticism but did as I asked and handed the briefcase over.
Inside the briefcase was a stack of files as well as several flash drives, along with a compartment in the upper lid that held three cellphones. Each represented a different backup plan, with their own set of instructions written down nowhere except in my head.
As I reached for the correct phone, my hand shook. I clenched my first, then flexed my fingers, shaking out the tremor and hoping that Jordy hadn’t seen my moment of weakness.
Luckily, the lid of the briefcase blocked his view, and he was still busy having a staring contest with my arm, so he hadn’t seen a thing.
Pulling out the third phone from the compartment, I closed the briefcase and stored it back under the seat. Then, I turned on the phone and texted the only number programmed into its contacts.
The message read only a single word.
“Here.”
“What’s that?” Jordy asked as I placed the phone on the dashboard.
“It’s a secure line with a special kind of drop box,” I explained. “It’s like the digital version of leaving a note hidden under a rock. I’ve let the others know that we’re safe. Now, we just have to wait for them to contact us.”
“Great, more waiting.” He sighed before sliding off my jacket and handing it to me. “Here. We used your shirt for bandages, so you should wear this.”
I pushed it back toward him. “But you’ll be cold without it.”
“And you’ll be naked without it. I’ve at least got a shirt.”
I eyed his tank top and shook my head. That thin piece of fabric barely counted as clothing and would do nothing to keep him warm.
“How about we share?”
Jordy gave me a confused look.
Rather than explain, I just picked him up, slid myself over into the passenger seat where there was more room, and placed him in my lap.
Then, I wrapped the jacket around both of us so we could both share in its warmth.
It was a tight fit. The jacket had been tailored specifically to fit me and didn’t have much extra room, but we managed to make it work.
As we sat there, with him safely tucked in my arms and his back pressed flush against my chest, I decided that this wasn’t such a bad way to wait. It wasn’t how I wanted the night to go, but things could have also gone a lot worse, and I’d learn to be thankful for the blessings I could find.
Another hour passed as the two of us sat together in that car, neither of us talking much as we listened to the rain and the sound of each other’s heartbeat. As the minutes dragged by, Jordy’s breathing grew softer and his head bobbed on his shoulders.
His blue eyes had just fluttered closed in the beginning of sleep when the phone on the dashboard rang.