Chapter 4
Four
Iwake with a gasp, my body jerking against the bindings. The dream fragments scatter: blood-soaked sand, screaming, laughter, flames. For a moment, I don't know where I am.
"Are you all right?"
Reality crashes. The tent. Montana. The beautiful fugitive holding me hostage.
Naomi sits cross-legged a few feet away, watching me with eyes that tell me I may have revealed something to her in my sleep that I didn’t want her to see. The Glock rests on her knee, but it's not pointed at me anymore. Her face in the dim morning light shows something I wasn't expecting—concern.
"Fine," I grunt, shifting uncomfortably against my bonds. My shoulders ache from the awkward position. "Just a dream."
She nods but doesn't press. Something's different about her this morning. Sleep has dulled that desperate edge slightly. She studies me, head slightly tilted.
"You were talking in your sleep," she says finally, confirming what I thought.
I look away. "Just a dream,” I mutter. But neither her face nor my tone shows that we believe that. The small blessing is that if she heard anything, she'll at least know I was telling the truth about being military.
The rain has slowed at least. Only a trickle pelting the tent.
"You hungry?" Naomi asks, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She doesn't wait for an answer, just rummages through my pack and pulls out a granola bar. She tears the wrapper open with her teeth, her other hand never far from the gun.
"I can feed myself if you untie me," I say.
She shakes her head, scooting closer until she's right beside me. "Open," she commands, holding the granola bar to my mouth.
I hesitate. This is too intimate. Too close.
I have gotten used to her scent. But her hand smells more intensely of that dangerous cocktail of rain, earth, and sweat that makes my chest tighten in a way that I can’t believe.
When was the last time someone was this close to me?
When was the last time anyone touched me with anything resembling gentleness?
I part my lips, and she places the granola bar between them. I take a bite, hyperaware of her fingers just inches from my face. Our eyes meet as I chew, and that sparks like electricity and shocks us both, forcing us to look away.
I swallow. "Thank you.”
She nods, still not looking at me. "We should get moving soon. I'll let you go as soon as I can borrow your vehicle."
"Where are you going?" I ask between bites as she continues this strange, intimate feeding.
Naomi hesitates, then gives me a half smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Away. Better that you don't know."
"So they can't ask me?" I push my luck, referring to whoever she accused me of being with last night.
She stiffens, the momentary softness vanishing. "Finish up."
I don't push further. Not yet.
I finish the last bite of the granola bar, chewing slowly—buying time to think. My shoulders are burning now, the circulation to my hands compromised by the bindings. The pressure in my bladder has been building since I woke up, and it is impossible to ignore any longer.
"I need the bathroom," I say quietly, watching her expression shift from cautious to alarmed. "Number one," I quickly add when I see the panicked look spread across her face.
She hesitates, clearly weighing her options. Her eyebrows draw together as she considers the logistics of this situation.
"I'll have to untie you." She states the obvious.
"Yeah."
Part of me hopes she'll just untie me and turn her back. The other part—a part I barely recognize—wonders what would happen if she leaves me bound and has to assist. When did I become such a fucking pervert? Maybe isolation has warped me more than I’ve realized.
Or maybe it's just her, something about the way she moves, the way her damp prison uniform clings to her body.
She unties my ankles first. "Don't try anything," she warns, circling behind me to work on my wrists.
The rope falls away, and I groan involuntarily as blood rushes back into my hands. I flex my fingers, wincing at the pins and needles.
"Slowly," she instructs as I rise to my feet, ducking to avoid hitting my head on the tent ceiling. "I'll be right behind you."
The morning air hits my face as I step out of the tent.
"Over there," she directs, nodding toward a cluster of trees a few yards away. "Where I can see you."
I walk stiffly toward the trees, conscious of her eyes on my back. Standing at the edge of the small clearing, I realize she's going to watch the entire process. She keeps her distance but maintains a clear line of sight, the Glock steady in her hands.
Unzipping my pants with tingling fingers, I try to focus on the task at hand rather than the beautiful fugitive observing from twenty feet away.
When I finish, I zip up and turn to face her. For a moment, we just stare at each other across the clearing; predator and prey, though I'm not entirely sure which one of us is which.
"Hands behind your back."
“It’s going to be tough for me to walk on wet terrain with my hands tied. It’ll make the journey a lot longer.”
“Then it’ll take longer.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I relent and put my hands behind my back. She binds them again. Tight but not painful.
I walk ahead of Naomi. In the silence of our journey, I take stock of just how terribly I’ve handled the situation. I let her get the drop on me and didn’t disarm her immediately. I let her take me hostage, and given what I revealed in my sleep, she knows more about me than I know about her.
I trudge through the mud, feeling the squelch beneath my boots with each step. My bound hands throw off my balance, forcing me to walk slower than I'd like. The rain has stopped now, but water still drips from the pine branches above.
My mind races through calculations. From here to my truck is roughly forty minutes at this pace. Forty minutes to decide whether this ends with blood.
I've been here before. That knife-edge between life and death.
But it's been years since I've walked it with someone else, someone who might tip the balance either way.
I need to figure out who Naomi Barrett really is and what she's done.
Why a woman who handles a gun like law enforcement is wearing prison orange and running scared through the Montana wilderness.
There are only two possibilities, but both gnaw at me.
Either she's a cold-blooded killer who's already decided I won't live to see tomorrow, in which case she'll put a bullet in my head before taking my truck, or she's not.
Desperate enough to take a hostage but not hardened enough to execute me in cold blood.
She’ll only kill me if she thinks she has to.
If it's the first, nothing I say matters. If it's the second... well, that's more complicated. She suspects I might be connected to whoever or whatever is hunting her. She needed to be convinced otherwise.
I stay quiet. Waiting. Listening to her footsteps behind me, gauging her breathing, her distance, her attention.
Ten minutes pass in silence. Then fifteen. The forest breathes, coming to life around us, indifferent to our human drama.
"You don't sound like you're from Montana." She finally breaks the silence.
Well, that’s a good sign. If she were just going to leave a corpse next to my truck, she wouldn’t care where my twang came from.
I don't turn around, just keep walking. "I'm not. Texas."
"When did you move here?"
"Six years ago." I duck under a low-hanging branch.
"Why Montana?" She's fishing. Trying to build a profile?
I snort. "Why does anyone move to the middle of nowhere? To be left alone."
There's a pause. I can almost feel her weighing my answer, deciding whether it rings true or not.
“Is Barakesh where you deployed?”
I’m trained not to react, so I don’t. But it takes every scrap of it to keep my face from moving. So I was talking in my sleep.
I nod. “Yeah.” No use lying about that. Hopefully, she doesn’t know enough about that part of the world. That we weren’t supposed to be there. And if you look it up and read the official record, we never were.
“Thank you for your service.”
Well we're getting farther and farther away from the cold-blooded killer scenario. I wouldn’t expect a murderer to thank me for my military service. Though I suppose it doesn’t entirely rule it out.
People are strange.
But it does confirm that she’s not military. It also hints that she’s not used to being on the wrong side of the law. She seems a little more relaxed by my answers, which is also good.
I decide to press my luck. “Where are you from?”
I risk a look back, and she glances at me. Her face is a lot less severe than it has been. Damn, it's pretty. “Virginia.”
“Been there. It’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
“It’s normally beautiful around here too. Breathtaking, actually. We don’t usually get weather this bad this late in the summer.”
She sighs. It’s one of the heaviest I’ve ever heard, and it’s strange seeing it come out of such a small, beautiful thing like Naomi.
But it’s another positive sign she’s letting me see it.
“When it rains, it pours.” Letting the silence ride again, it has the intended effect.
"Why did you want to be in the middle of nowhere? "
I shrug as best I can with my hands bound.
"Wanted to get away. It's a great place to escape to.
" I indicate her prison uniform with my eyes, and I get a nugget of a laugh out of her. It comes with a small smile, and it’s glorious.
She was beyond pretty when she was scowling and barking orders at me.
She is something else when her lips turn up.
"What were you escaping from?" she asks.
"People, same as you."
She shakes her head, but that wonderful smile is still there. "Not the same."
"No, I suppose not." I smile at her. It feels like I'm getting somewhere.