Grace
He pulls the tarp back, frowning down at me, and the cold comes in with the dark.
I get one breath of it—pine, wet ground, nothing that smells like civilization—before he lifts me out of the truck and up onto his shoulder.
“Hey!” I yelp. My wrists are still tied in front of me. The rope bites where it’s been biting for an hour. “Where is this? Where are you taking me?”
Trees. That’s all I can see. No lights. No fence. No shape of Aurora against the sky anywhere.
“This isn’t Aurora. Where the hell are we?”
He told me he was taking me back. In the truck, before the tarp, he said it flat, like it was already done, and I spent the ride bracing for a gate and a room that locks from the outside.
This is none of that. This is a mountain I don’t know, and not knowing where I am is worse than the gate would have been.
“Put me down!” I throw my weight sideways, hoping to unsettle him. Nothing. He starts up a path I can’t see the top of, and I might as well be a load he’s shifted to carry easier. “I said put me down, you… you… big thug!”
I twist. I go limp. I get a boot into his hip. He climbs.
“Where is this?” It comes out higher than I mean it to. “You said Aurora. This isn’t— Where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Please. Just tell me where we are.” A branch drags across my back. “You said you were taking me back. So either you lied, or you changed your mind, and I need to know which. I need you to say something—”
Nothing.
“You son of a bitch!” I’ve never been much for cursing out people, but I find all of it now, low and useless against his back. “You can’t just haul a person off a mountain and not say something. Say anything. Bastard!”
Still nothing.
I scream. Threaten. Call him things that should make me blush.
He climbs. My voice gives out before the path does, and by the time the twilight gloom becomes something darker—a mouth in the rock, the air dropping colder as we cross into it—there’s nothing left in my throat but breath.
He sets me down on stone.
The only light is what leaks in behind us, and it’s going fast. He steps back and looks at me. Not angry. Not anything I can use. A man studying something he hasn’t worked out yet and isn’t in a hurry about.
“Listen.” I keep my voice even. Screaming at his back got me nothing, and I’m done spending myself on nothing. “Whatever you think I am—whatever Aurora told you—you don’t know all of it. Tell me what you think you know, and I’ll fill in the rest.”
He looks at me.
“What would change this?” Another way in. “What do you actually want?”
He crouches, reaches forward, and runs his hands down my sides to the top of my pants. My breath catches.
No. No, not this.
“Please,” I gasp. “Please don’t…”
Don’t what? The warmth of his palms soaks through my shirt, and the heat that follows doesn’t match what my mind is screaming. Because my body likes the heat.
His hands skim my hips, thumbs gliding over my hipbones, then down my thighs—the outside, then the inside. My heart stops as they move higher. I clench my legs together.
“Please,” I choke out. “Don’t… don’t hurt me.”
He glances up with a frown. “Why would I hurt you?” His hands are over the top of my jeans. He pats my pockets and pulls out my burner phone. Flips it over, pulls out the sim, and tucks it into his back pocket.
My breath comes out in a rush.
He was just patting me down.
He takes my wrists, works the knot loose. The rope falls away, and the blood comes back into my hands. I rub them.
“You going to run?” he says.
I hold his eyes. “No.”
He releases me.
I’m up and bolting for the mouth of the cave before the word’s finished leaving me.
I don’t make it. His hand closes on my arm, and I spin into it—no plan, just the last of me trying—and then I’m against him, both hands flat on his chest, shoving at something that doesn’t move and doesn’t seem to feel the shove.
He’s warm. Warmer than a person should be.
Standing this close makes my head swim, and I hate it, and I shove harder anyway.
He grips both my forearms in one hand and walks me back to the wall.
I don’t go quietly—I drag my feet, I twist, I get my teeth near his forearm, and he lifts me off the ground long enough that I can’t reach anything, and that’s all it takes.
He sets me down. He picks up the rope and reties my wrists, one hand pressing both of mine flat while the other works the knot.
His hands are big. Warm. That’s not a thought I want to be having. I’m having it anyway.
He steps back.
“What the fuck am I going to do with you?” Low, mostly to himself.
What?
Did he just take me on a whim? Like some kind of psychopath?
I look at my hands, firmly bound. There is nothing I can do to this man with my body. I knew it in the truck. I know it better now.
“Let me go,” I say, doing my best to sound reasonable. “That’s the thing you can do.”
He doesn’t answer.
I let it sit. Then: “Why did you bring me here?”
He looks at me a long moment. “I wish I knew,” he says.
I keep my face still, and I hold onto that. A man who doesn’t know why he’s done a thing can be worked on. I hope. Because I have to get out of here. I have to find Serenity. After what happened today, the deal with the Syndicate is off.
What if she’s already gone?
I can’t think that way.
And I can’t go back to Aurora. That bridge is burned. They know I’m the mole, and the mole doesn’t get to go looking for anyone. I can’t hand him this. Not him. Not anyone.
He crosses to the far wall.
A boulder sits near the mouth, chest-high on him, though I’m sure it’s taller than I am. He sets his palm to it, pushes, and rolls it across the opening. It settles into a groove worn smooth for it. The sound it makes is low and final. The last of the outside light goes with it.
Then he comes back and unties my hands.
I don’t move. There’s nowhere left to go, and we both know it.
When the feeling comes back into my fingers, I press my palms flat to the stone and look at where he’s brought me.
This isn’t just any hole in a mountain. A cot stands against the far wall, a blanket folded at the foot and a heavy fur draped over the end.
He moves across the space, and within moments, a lantern throws warm light across a shelf cut into the rock—a small stove, tins, two cups set close together.
Firewood stacked with care, the pile even.
Gear on iron pegs, each thing on its own peg.
There’s a dark gap in the back wall where the rock keeps going, and the sound of water somewhere past it.
Somebody lives here.
He lives here.
What kind of person lives in a cave?
A bear does.
He’s brought me to his den. Why the hell would he do that?
He moves to the stove, and the air warms where he passes. I felt it in the truck too—the heat coming off him, soaking into me. The cave is cold rock on every side except the one he’s on, and I catch myself turning that way before I’ve told myself to.
I make myself look at the firewood, but my eyes keep sliding back to him.
Just like before, in that storeroom, I’m struck by his size. He’s big in a way the cave doesn’t shrink—wide through the back, thick through the arms below his rolled sleeves.
Low in my chest, something stirs. My wolf lifting her head, looking in his direction.
Him.
The word comes from her. She’s doing that thing again, and I don’t like it. Now’s not the time. I press my hand flat over my breastbone and shove her down.
It’s just terror. The crack on the head.
Both true, but not all of it.
The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m not getting out of here on strength. The path, the boulder, the ten seconds of him catching me from three steps off—that door is shut. I’m going to have to think my way out.
He turns back to me, and I flinch.
He sets food down in front of me. Jerky, a tin, crackers. Puts it in reach and goes back to his side without waiting to see what I do with it.
I don’t touch it. My stomach growls because breakfast was hours ago and adrenaline burns through everything. And I’ve been flooded with it today.
Don’t be an idiot, Grace.
I pick up the jerky and eat, because I’m starving and I need a clear head, and being proud about a strip of dried meat won’t buy Serenity or me a thing. I keep my face flat. I don’t look at him.
It’s the way he gave it to me that gets under my skin. No bargain, no watching to see if I’d break. I would know what to do with cruelty. This I don’t.
“Rest,” he says when I’ve finished.
“Rest?” I snort. “Are you serious? You just kidnapped me. How the hell am I supposed to rest?”
He nods toward the cot. “That’ll be more comfortable than the rock.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You snatch me off the street, drag me up to God knows where, for a reason you don’t know, and now you think I’m going to—what? Curl up and take a nap?”
“Yes,” he says. “Or you can sit on the cold rock and stare daggers at me. Your choice.”
I smooth my palms over the hard surface beneath me. Look over at the cot.
I stand and move there, then sink onto it. It’s surprisingly soft. I look at him, where he’s turned his back on me. He’s getting the stove going, and I realize there’s a duct that channels the smoke out. He’s set the place up for extended stays.
No way I’m staying here longer than I have to.
I lie back against the pillow and try to relax, even though it’s impossible.
I run a hand through my hair, fingertips exploring the gash on my head that knocked me out.
It’s almost closed up already, the wolf healing still functioning, even if nothing else is going my way.
I breathe in and go through what I know.
The boulder and the groove it sits in. The path, how steep it was, how far down the truck sits.
Whether there are keys in it, or a phone.
And I think about him. About how I might talk my way out of this.
Somehow, I just know I can’t.
The cave starts to warm, but my teeth are chattering. Fear. Stress. Fury. All of it. I wrap my arms around myself, then jolt when he crosses the room, lifts the blanket, and drops it over me.
“Here,” he says.
I stare at him. If he thinks I’m going to thank him, he’s got another thing coming. But for some reason, some quiet part of me turns toward him anyway.
I curl up and squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe when I open them again, this will all be gone, and I’ll be back in my cubicle, with Aurora still trusting me.
But that’s a reality that no longer exists. Aurora doesn’t trust me. The Syndicate has no use for me. What I have now is this. This small bed. The cold cave. The man across the space who gives off a heat I want to lean into.
You’ve been in worse places, Grace.
I cling to this as the chaos of the day takes its toll and exhaustion settles in.
My body sags. My eyes stay shut. The last thing I know is the warmth reaching across the cave, my own body turned toward it, and the thing I can’t say even to myself: that some part of me knows the only safe place left is with him.