Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Reese paid for the overcooked coffee and was pleasant enough, but every nerve in him was a wire brush standing straight up.
Her distress was still ringing in his head, that acrid yellowish undertone laden with fear and adrenaline all over again.
He knew the man was in the bathroom, maybe taking another hit of whatever metallic drug he jacked himself on to stay awake on the road.
The reek was too harsh to be bennies, so probably meth.
What are you thinking, soldier?
Except he wasn’t, not clearly or calmly. He was very far indeed from either, running on nerves and the raw need to keep her protected.
He couldn’t let Holly out of his sight for thirty seconds, for God’s sake.
Maybe it was the vulnerability on her drawing predators to the water hole.
It was more likely his fault, bringing her here.
They stuck out like sore thumbs, her more than him, and the hag waitress’s knowing little smile mounted his fury another notch.
He palmed the bathroom door open, found himself in a sorry hole with three urinals and a boxed-in stall, its walls and door cut off at ankle instead of knee height.
The entire box could be hosed down with little trouble, and the half-formed idea in the back of his head subsumed under a hum of alertness.
The stall was closed, but he could smell the man through a reek made up of every other nastiness crawling through this room. A silver box attached to the tiled wall promised condoms and cologne, for just a few quarters per.
She definitely didn’t belong here, and he’d put her squarely in harm’s way.
Again.
There was a sniff, a guttural cough, a sound like a lowing cow, and the stall door swung open.
The man in the blue baseball cap blinked at him, rolling down his sleeve. He’d develop track marks before long if he was shooting instead of snorting, and lose a lot of that pudge. Reese’s lips pulled back from his teeth.
It took so little. Weight dropping, his booted foot flicking forward to hook behind the trucker’s knee and yanked forward just enough, a blurted sound from the man’s wet shapeless mouth lost under the formless thump of a nearby jukebox.
Another light strike, open palm on the chest, to get the target to fall correctly.
Backward, the angle gauged just right, and the target’s head hit sturdy porcelain with a sickening crack.
Another snap-sound was the shearing of a neck snapping, and the drug-fueled kicking of the empty body was easily avoided.
Death by toilet. Fitting.
Reese pushed the stall door closed with a toe-tip. The diner outside continued its usual, normal hum.
He ran his hands through his hair, checked himself in the mirror.
Just fine. The next person to come in here would assume the trucker had slipped and fallen, if they noticed him at all.
Autopsy would chalk it up to a drug-fueled accident.
Clean, untraceable and proof positive that he was still functioning at peak.
Good work, agent. Now collect your civvie and get out of here.
When Holly came out of the little girls’, pale and huge eyed, Reese had his thumbs hooked in his pockets and turned from the rack of newspapers near the door.
Winter Storm Approaching, the headlines screamed, and wasn’t that the truth.
They might outpace the bad weather, but the smell of impending snow outside was thick enough to cut with a plastic spoon.
“Let’s go.” He got close enough to put an arm over her shoulders, and the hag smirked behind the counter. For a moment the urge to step over, fold his hand just right and give the old woman a knuckle strike to the throat drifted through him.
Holly sniffed, as if she’d been crying in the bathroom, and the small sound cut through everything else.
You’re safe now, he wanted to tell her.
Even if it was a lie.
* * *
Two hours later she pulled back the covers, staring at the hotel bed as if she couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it. This place—on the other side of the damn city, found almost by touch as he navigated—was much nicer. There had even been mints on the plump pillows.
Holly had carefully set the candy aside on the nightstand, then just froze, looking down at crisp white sheets.
She was exhausted even after napping in the car, and he was starting to get foggy after being painfully, hurtfully awake for too goddamn long.
Even the little bastards in his blood couldn’t keep him going much longer, not with this sort of stress.
He was now reasonably sure they hadn’t been killed off by the gas, whatever it had been.
Lucky him. Once she fell asleep he could settle.
She stared at the pillow for a long moment, and when she spoke, the words didn’t immediately make sense. Soft and flat, her pretty voice a monotone.
“I can’t do this.”
What? “Sure you can.” So tired, even his hair hurt a bit.
I made it safe for you. Safe as possible, at least, and that jackass will never bother another woman again.
Probably made the freeways a little safer, too.
“Brush your teeth and lie down. Sorry about the fast food, but I thought you wouldn’t want to get out of the car. ” You didn’t eat much, anyway.
“No.” She turned, and there was a glint in her beautiful smoky eyes he didn’t like the look of. “Reese, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”
“Just lie down. Sleep will—”
“I don’t want to.” She picked up the backpack, and he heaved an internal sigh. Of course the situation would pick now to get difficult. “I want to go home.”
He reached for patience with every mental hand he possessed, and all the feet too. “That’s not a good—”
“I don’t care what they do to me. I don’t care what happens.” She skirted the bed, and yes, friends and neighbors, she was heading for the door, hitching the backpack onto her shoulder. Did she have a plan? Not likely. “I just want to go home.”
“That’s rabbit-talk, Holly.” His nerves pulled taut as guitar strings, Reese took a deep breath and stayed where he was, next to the tiny mass-produced table. There was no way she was getting out of this room, but if he could avoid upsetting her, if he could just defuse her verbally, maybe—
“I don’t care. I’m going home.”
“You think you can just hop on a bus and go back to working at the diner? They’ll nab you before you cross the state line, Holly, and then—”
She just shook her head, a tendril of black hair falling free, and was almost in the critical zone, passing the door to the bathroom.
Stop it, he pleaded silently. Don’t make me do this.
“I won’t tell them anything, Reese. Just—”
Moving, sliding past her faster than a normal human being could see. The thing about using that kind of speed was how it made the rest of the world seem so goddamn clumsy-slow—and the friction could erase skin, if you weren’t careful.
Holly gasped, staring at him; Reese now stood with his back to the door, his hands loose and easy. The look of frank openmouthed surprise might have even been funny in another situation. “How did you do that?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Another deep breath, struggling to bring his pulse down. “I can do a lot of things, babe. You are not leaving this room.”
“You can’t watch me all the time.” Scowling now, a line between her eyebrows, and with her mouth puckered up that way all he could think of was getting his hands on her and—
She flinched, because he’d moved again. Her backpack slid; he caught it, snapping her hand down neatly as she grabbed. They ended up nose to nose, Reese holding the goddamn pack and mirroring her stumbling steps as she backed up.
“Try me,” he answered, very softly. Her smell wrapped around him, delicious and warm and comforting. “I am not going to let you do anything stupid. You’re with me now, and it’s going to stay that way.”
Those big, depthless blue eyes, now full of crystalline tears. The faint lines beginning at the corners of her eyes—even her wrinkles were pretty, goddamn it all, and she was shivering again. Not with cold; he’d turned the heat on in here.
Probably with fear.
“I’m going to have to teach you to trust me,” he continued, searching for the right thing to say. “I’m sorry I left you alone in there, but I won’t do it again. I have never...”
What was he trying to express?
I have never really had anything in my entire life.
Maybe he could say that. Or, They made me.
I was a lump of meat and they turned me into this.
I’m not even human. He could follow it up with, The only time I feel like a human being at all is when I look at you, for Christ’s sake.
Because you’re so goddamn naive and sweet, and you’re more than worth fighting for. More than worth protecting.
How would she take that? The words balled up inside his chest, all the things he wanted to say, and he lost his chance when she shut her eyes and inhaled as if to scream.
The backpack hit the floor, he clapped his hand over her mouth, and her frantic backward motion to escape him turned into him pushing just enough to tip her balance.
They landed on the bed, Holly suddenly struggling, and it ended with both her wrists pinned overhead, his other hand still over her mouth. His knees on either side of her thighs, and her thrashing softness underneath him threatened to blow every circuit in the jumbled mess his head had become.
How in the hell did I get here? Reese went still, simply letting her strain against his hold and greater weight.
That smell all over, bathing him, and the physical contact had its effect as well.
An iron bar with its roots sunk into the lowest part of his belly, everything that could make him a man instead of a killing machine narrowing to a single still point—she was sweating now, and the urge to lean down, flick his tongue against her throat to taste it, almost drowned him.
“Calm down,” he whispered. Please. I don’t want to hurt you. Ever.
That was the problem, though. He probably would before this was over.
God knew he already had, just by existing near her.
When she finally went limp, tears sliding down and soaking into her tangled hair against the twisted pillow crammed sideways under her head, it got a little easier to exert self-control.
Only a little.
He peeled his hand away from her mouth, cautiously. Hopefully he hadn’t suffocated her. “Let it out,” he managed, his voice a husk of itself. “Let it out, Holl. Go ahead and cry.”
“I w-want to go home,” she whispered.
It was enough to break a man’s heart, if he had one. Was that why his chest felt so tight? The exhaustion made it difficult to think, and Christ help him, if she moved the wrong way he might add another goddamn reason for her to want to do something stupid to escape.
“I know.” His throat, dry as the Sahara, all but clicked as he swallowed hard. “I know, baby. I’ll make you a home. A nice one, whatever you want. We just have to get through this, and I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I know I can.” I’d better. It’s the only way to make up for all this.
Will I feel human then?
Her eyes flew open, and she stared up at him through that welling screen of tears. Her lips, reddened by the pressure—oh, fuck it all, had he bruised her?—parted just slightly, and she twitched as if to try to throw him off.
Reese lost the engagement, the battle, the entire damn war. His hand tightened around her wrists, his entire body threatened to explode... and his mouth met hers.