Chapter 4
Leslee
“Kid, let’s get moving,” Parks says, nudging my shoulder. I haven’t even removed my seatbelt as I study the area around us. “We’re here.”
“Where’s here?” I ask him, reaching for my large backpack as he climbs out and circles around the front of the plane.
He opens my door to help me out, then takes the bag, holding it so I can easily get my arms through the straps.
“North Carolina,” he answers, after making sure the bag is snuggly fitted on my back. That single motion tells me that whoever is picking me up will be on a bike.
Looking around, I don’t see anything but fields before this airstrip, that leads up to an old hangar. There’s a small plane parked inside of it, and I realize it’s probably a crop duster.
“That’s weird,” Parks sounds distracted as he looks around. “The owner said he’d have a fuel truck out to meet…”
I barely register the gunshot as he suddenly crumbles to the ground at my feet.
Looking up, I see three men striding out of the hanger, with the largest of them pointing at me. Scrambling backward without remembering the bag, I nearly bounce off the side of Parks’ plane, before I hear the roar of a bike approaching.
A couple of bullets hit the ground at my feet, but I duck and waddle until I’m on the other side of the plane. Running to the bike seems like my best chance; the biker turns, aiming for me, and slides into a U-turn right in front of me.
“Sorenson! Move it, jump on!”
I barely register the words over the gunfire around me and don’t even recognize the man calling out to me—the fact that he knows my last name is enough to get me moving in the direction of his bike. Seeing his cut confirms that I made the right decision.
Sliding on behind him, I wrap my arms around his body, and he doesn’t waste a second before he guns it. There’s a quick cramp on my left side just before I feel the biker heavily exhale. We swerve as the mirror is shot off, and I hold on tighter.
That’s when I smell him. Beside the dust and the leather, I know, with every fiber of my being, that Joe’s my savior. I nuzzle my face into his back and deeply inhale.
A flood of memories from every important moment of my life hits me and I grin to myself, Mom was right.
Honestly, she usually is, but one time we met someone who was born without a sense of smell. Afterwards, when we were talking about it, Mom was genuinely sad at the thought.
I didn’t understand then what she meant about smelling her Gram’s perfume, or how she’d fish out Dad’s T-shirts from the laundry, wearing them when he’s out of town. I crack a grin, thinking of the look on her face when she said there were times she wanted to strangle Xander and me as babies, but she’d bury her face in our necks and take a deep breath.
There are scents that I’ll always equate to love, she had said.
Honestly, I figured she had taken a deep breath so she didn’t end up in jail.
Today, I throw my head back and howl, just like Granny Bree’s dog, Ragnar, used to. The helmet turns, as if the man is throwing me a glance before looking forward again.
He’s here. When I needed him most, he was the one who came for me.
I have no sense of where we are, but after a while on the road, we slow down until he veers off into a service station. The bike has barely stopped when I hop off and stand beside him, bouncing with excitement as he reaches up to remove his helmet.
My breath catches when I see the face I know so well. His skin looks pale and there are more wrinkles around his eyes, but it’s my Joe.
“How you doing, kiddo?” He’s shutting down his bike and pocketing the keys as he asks the question like no time has passed since he’s seen me.
“Fuck you!” I see red when he so casually calls me that and I smack his shoulder, barely registering his grimace as I drop my bag to the ground beside his bike.
Okay, I might have some anger issues.
His right arm snakes out, pulling me against his side, just before I was going to head inside the store.
“Are you okay? You didn’t get hit, did ya?” he asks as his eyes slowly pan down my body, his hand tight against my hip bone.
“I’m fine,” I answer stiffly, hoping he doesn’t hear the thumping of my heart as I try really hard not to melt against his chest.
“We gotta about a forty-minute ride ahead of us, I’m going to gas up,” he tells me, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and pulling out some cash. “Go inside and get a bottle of water, disinfectant, and whatever gauze they have, plus an ace bandage.”
“What? No!” I squawk out the words, shaking my head in confusion until I pull his cut open and see that the lining on his right side is stuck to his T-shirt.
“Get moving, Le-Lee. We don’t have much of a lead and I need to get you safe.” Joe cuts me off, and I grip the front of his cut, giving him a stern look before turning to follow his directions.
The grunt he lets out, acknowledges the implicit threat my look was meant to convey. That he damn well better be alright.
I’m quick once I’m inside the store and not seeing a bathroom, I ask about the location. Hurrying back outside, I hand the bag of supplies off to Joe and while he seems frustrated at the idea of leaving me unattended; he knows better than to try to drag me to the men’s bathroom.
“How did you know it was me?” Joe asks on his return and I tilt my head, continuing to evaluate his stride for any sign of pain. “On the bike, when you howled. You knew it was me, didn’t you?”
“I just did,” I answer him, with a shrug of my shoulder. There’s no way on Earth that I’ll ever admit that the smell of him brought back a flood of memories. “Where are we going?”
“Yanceyville.” The single word means absolutely nothing to me, so I wait for him to add on to it. Then I wave my hand in frustration and he finally continues. “Still so impatient.”
“I doubt I’m not the only one who’s never heard of the booming metropolis of Yanceyville.”
“Bite your tongue, booming metropolis. The locals would probably burn down any chain store that tried to open there. We can hole up for a while at Alex’s place,” he finally answers me before sliding on his bike.
We’re pulling out of the gas station before I realize he’s talking about Silver’s niece. It’s been years since I’ve seen her and my nostrils flare at the thought of the beautiful woman, about ten years my senior who’s apparently still in touch with Joe.
During the ride, I enjoy the guilty pleasure of riding without a helmet on. Most of the time, I simply rest my cheek against Joe’s back—happy to be plastered against him.
Pulling up to a completely overgrown driveway, he flips his mask up and tells me a code to punch in on the pad near the gate. When I hear the lock release, I push it open far enough for him to get through before securing it behind us and climbing back on the bike for the short trip up to the cabin.
“How did you know where to find me?” I ask him the question that started bothering me about a half an hour ago.
“Flint asked me to pick you up, since I was in the area,” he answers. Pulling his helmet off he looks paler than I’ve ever seen him, and I don’t miss how he keeps his arm tucked against his side. “Come on.”
Joe braces himself on the railing as he reaches up to the overhang and feels around until he clicks his tongue and wiggles a key at me. I take it from him and proceed to open the door to see what we’re dealing with here.
“Woah!” I exclaim, sliding my bag off as I spin, looking around the main room. I’m impressed by the surprisingly modern interior in comparison to the dilapidated exterior.
“Yeah, there was, well, a problem here a couple years ago, so Alex had it gutted. She keeps swearing she’s gonna sell the place, but I doubt she will.” His familiarity with Alex is feeding this little green demon that seems to have taken up residence inside of me.
I look back to see him grasping the doorframe, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing keeping him on his feet right now.
“Let me take a look at your wound,” I demand, taking a step toward him, trying to figure out how to support him without causing him more pain.
Naturally, he waves me off, walking over to sit on the coffee table. Shrugging his cut off of his shoulders, Joe gingerly starts to pull his T-shirt off, but the dried blood is holding it in place.
“Stop,” I instruct him, striding directly to the kitchen sink and looking in the cupboard below it.
Just like at the cabin in Idaho, there’s a medium sized First Aid bag stowed underneath, and I tug that out.
Turning to kneel in front of Joe, I open the kit and dig around until I find a pair of scissors and quickly slice his shirt open from the hem to the collar.
“That was my favorite shirt,” he deadpans, as I’m digging for a pair of gloves to put on. It belatedly occurs to me that I need to wash my hands first, so I double back to the sink.
While I know there are more important matters at hand, all I can think is that he isn’t wearing the necklace I gave him. Somehow, I’ve always pictured him with it on and just hope he didn’t toss it along the way.
“So, you were close by?” I ask him and he tilts his head before lifting one shoulder instead of answering me, pulling the gloves on as I walk back to him. “This is going to sting.”
That’s his only warning before I start dabbing at the deep furrow with an alcohol-soaked cloth. The catch of his breath is the only acknowledgement he gives of any discomfort, but mostly he stays still, studying my face.
“Do you and Alex spend much time here?” Knowing my attempt to keep my voice neutral utterly failed when he lets out a chuckle, I mentally berate myself.
“Yeah, I’ve joined her and her Ol’ Man to do some hunting here a few times,” he answers, effectively squashing my jealousy with that last little tidbit. I look up at him, raising an eyebrow in his direction even though I know he’ll be smirking at me. “She told me you’re every bit as smart as Riley and finished up high school early.”
“Did she also mention that I lack Mom’s ambition?” I respond, dismissing my surprise that she kept track of my accomplishment—especially since I didn’t know she had an Ol’ Man now.
“I doubt that,” he shakes his head at me. “Especially since Danny mentioned how intricate your carvings are at your dad’s business. And Marc said you’re going to start working for his mom.”
“Sounds like you talk to a lot of people,” I say, pressing clean gauze against the wound, needing the pressure to stop the blood that had started to flow again. The hiss he lets out tells me that he definitely felt that. “But you couldn’t ever check in with me?”
The very moment he opens his mouth, his eyes roll back in his head, and I grab his bicep trying to steady him. Instead, he falls forward, hitting me hard enough to push me backwards as he lands half on me, half on the rug.
“Dammit, Joe,” I sigh after straightening out my legs. “Crap.”
Wiggling out from under him, I decide that I might as well secure the wound before trying to wake him up. Reaching back into the bag, I find some blood clotting powder and glue.
While I’ve seen others handle wounds like this, I’ve never been in a position to care for anything other than scrapes and sprains.
How hard can this be? I think to myself before pouring the alcohol over it, adding the powder, and dabbing it nearly dry before I add little dots of glue along the edge and press it together. Yeah, I’m not sure I did that right.
“You damn well better not die on me,” I mumble, as I secure a large bandage over my work and remove the gloves.
“I’ll try my best,” he whispers back.
My eyes fly up, meeting his dark gaze. Whether he wants me to or not, I don’t give a shit right now. I lean up and for the briefest of seconds, press my lips against his.
As chaste as it is, my heartbeat shoots into overdrive, and I’m pleased to feel Joe’s pulse pick up under my palm at the same time.
“Have you done that before?” he asks me in a low voice.
It takes me a moment to figure out he’s not talking about the kiss. I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face when I shake my head.
“No, but since it just creased you, I figured I could handle it,” I tell him, pretty darn pleased with myself. “Now, do you think you can make it to bed? Because there’s no way I can lift you.”
“The couch will do for now,” he responds, looking down at his torso. “Can you look in the closets to see if there are any shirts that were left behind? I’ll get my bags later, but I need to check in with Flint. He sure as hell wasn’t expecting any heat to be on you clear across the country.”
Now it’s my turn, I think, as I start to stand but suddenly feeling faint at the memory of Parks’ crumbled body back at the airstrip. I’ve known him since I was a kid, but haven’t had a chance to think about his death.
“You don’t have your phone with you, do you?” he asks, looking at me thoughtfully as he braces himself to slowly stand up to offer me a hand. “Or any other device?”
I shake my head, not trusting my voice as I suddenly wish Dad was closer to us.
“Sorry, I’m alright,” I say after a second and turn to the closest closet, quickly finding a button-down, flannel shirt that will be easier for him to put on than a T-shirt.
“Can you rummage through the kitchen a bit? I don’t know if we’ll have reinforcements before the morning, so look for any unexpired food and beverages that were left behind.”
I simply nod, silently pulling myself back together, but go to seek out the bathroom before starting in on that task. Just as I pull my jeans down, I feel a pinch in my side and realize that I have a furrow an inch or so above the top of my waistband. It’s not nearly as bad as Joe’s so I just dab at it with a cloth.
Inspecting my clothes, I can only guess that my jacket had gotten caught up in my backpack and the bullet slid along the exposed flesh under my crop top. I quickly rinse the blood away, but shrug off the minor wound, walking back out to hear Joe talking to someone in low tones.
Looking through the kitchen, I start pulling out various cans and smile to myself, thinking of the cooking show where contestants have to shop for items in a grocery store and make amazing meals, sometimes only using canned goods.
Thankfully, I’ve had a great teacher.
“Leslee,” Joe says my name as I’m struggling with an old can opener. Looking over my shoulder, I see him wave his cell at me. “It’s Gunner, make it quick.”
I snort at him, Dad’s not exactly known for long, rambling phone conversations. Crossing the room, I’m glad Joe’s playing it safe because the last thing I need is him tearing his wound open.
“Angel?” The worry in Dad’s voice is palpable and I hit the speaker button so they can both hear me.
“I’m here, Daddio,” I answer, trying to put him at ease.
“We gotta keep this short. How bad is his wound?” Dad asks me and my eyes meet the haunted ones of the man I’ve loved my whole life.
“I’ve had deeper paper cuts,” I answer, getting a chuckle from both of them. “How’d they know where I’d be, Dad?”
“Prez and I are gonna turn over every stone, until we answer that question. Right now, the Virginia Chapter is sending reinforcements to the cabin. I need you to stay strong and alive. Your Mom and I love you, sweet angel.” Dad’s voice has dropped to a whisper.
“Tell Bree not to worry about Hyde, I’ll keep him alive until the others get here,” I answer, trying to keep my panic from rising. “I love you both. Even Xanderdoodle on occasion.”