Chapter 14
Freya
His sharp tone cracked like a whip, making me flinch. I grabbed the duffel bag and hurried to the bathroom. Once inside, I leaned against the door, trying to calm my racing heart and get air into my lungs. This was no time for a panic attack.
The bag, the clothes. Changing into them would give me something concrete to do. Something else to react to. Activity was good. It would ground me.
I pulled out the contents, piece by piece, marveling at how butt-ugly every item was. Selected for ugliness. Heavy, awkward, vomit-tinted shades of wool, waffle weave, fleece. I guess it made sense, in a way. They made the wearer invisible.
I pulled on the items that worked the best. I had to cuff the pant legs twice, and my wrist cuffs three times. There was a pair of boots, two sizes too big, but more functional than what I had. I pulled on both pairs of socks, and laced them up tight.
The pants were three inches too big in the waist but too tight in the ass. I rolled up the cuffs and pant legs and cinched up the belt to keep it all from falling off my body. And I quietly dissolved into tears the whole time. Oh please. Not now. Fuck.
I kept it silent, more or less, but I couldn’t stop the gasping, doubling-over, mouth-wide-open ugly-cry.
Where was my inner sneaky femme fatale commando bitch when I needed her?
She’d bugged out and left me sobbing in the bathroom…
all because I’d gotten my tender feelings hurt by Jed-Fucking-Clearwater.
I didn’t understand why I was having these feelings. As if I cared what he thought of me. Was it some freaky psychological process I couldn’t control? Something inside me wanting to bond with him just because we’d had sex?
Please, please, let it not be that. I absolutely had to make that shit stop.
Because oh, dear God, that would not end well.
I finally got the sobbing to ease down, and rinsed my face in the sink.
Yesterday’s mascara stubbornly resisted every effort made to get rid of it.
I was going to need an industrial solvent to get it off.
I made another halfhearted attempt to deal with the hair, but there was a gray knit cap in the bag.
I shoved my hair into it. Problem sorted.
But when I looked at myself in the mirror, oh, God help me. I looked like a ragbag on legs. My pallid, scared face with smudgy, shadowed eyes peeked out from under the oversized gray cap. I looked like a war refugee, fleeing terror and trauma.
Looking bad was dangerous on a psychological level. If I had to face the powers of evil, I preferred to look like a bad Bond girl while doing it.
But Jed was the boss right now, so no. Suck it up, Masters.
No, goddamnit. Suck it up, Sandee. Keep your personae straight, girl.
My next challenge was to work up the nerve to open that door again. After my sob-fest, I still felt raw. Not ready to face the intense energy emanating from that man.
When I finally pushed open the door, Jed turned and looked at me.
He didn’t say a word. But the look in his eyes made my breath catch, and my heart speed up. As if I’d walked out and displayed myself in a slinky sequined gown.
The outfit was hideous, but he knew every detail of what was underneath those baggy clothes. He’d touched and stroked and licked and fucked it. He’d claimed it, repeatedly. And I’d loved every minute of the experience.
The way he looked at me was making me wet. I almost hoped he’d just rip all of it off me and fuck me again right this minute. Or maybe I’d rip off his.
The microwave dinged, which broke the spell. Jed grabbed a plate from the cupboard, tossed a couple of paper wrapped things onto it, and set it on the table.
“Breakfast burritos,” he said. “And coffee. Come eat.”
Food. What a concept. My first reaction was a nasty flop of nausea, and then my common sense kicked in. This stuff was hard, scary, extremely dangerous. It burned calories. I had to eat something if I wanted to keep going.
I sat at the table. Jed poured out a cup of coffee and set it on the table in front of me. “You do look different,” he commented.
“I’ll say,” I muttered sourly. “Like shit, you mean?”
“That’s what I was going for. I don’t want you to shine. I don’t want anyone to notice how fucking pretty you are.”
I blushed at the compliment, which I absolutely was not braced for, and hid my confusion by unwrapping a burrito. I forced myself to take a bite, and Jed got right to work, hauling boxes out to the Jeep. That was interesting. Maybe we were on the move.
When he came in for another load, I spoke up. “Are we leaving? Where to?”
He gave me an “are-you-kidding-me-bitch” look, grabbed another armful of stuff, and went back outside.
I guess that should have put me in my place, but I was raised by two bossy, overbearing brothers, and I am stubborn to the point of idiocy. So when he came back in, I tried again.
“What is this place, anyhow?” I asked. “Did you stock it beforehand? It all seems so well organized, you know? I mean, for a jailbreak hideout. The electronics, the clothes. Breakfast burritos in the freezer, even. Like, what gives?”
“Not interested in talking about it.”
“But I just wanted to know if we—”
“You don’t need to know shit. Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
He grabbed a couple of black molded plastic cases that looked like they could contain guns, or some other sort of weaponry, and toted them outside.
I just sat there, freshly seething. I knew it was totally illogical. I had invited the guy to see me as a bubbleheaded ding-a-ling, so I shouldn’t get huffy about being treated like this. I was getting Sandee and Freya mixed up again. So dangerous.
A shrill beeping from one of the machines on Jed’s security setup started to drill at my ear. I circled the table before I checked out the monitors. In one of the viewscreens a big black SUV was going by, wallowing in the snow. Another identical one followed it.
Yesterday’s attack at the Dew Drop parking lot filled my mind, in full sensory detail, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I hurried to the front door. “Hey! James!”
Jed turned, frowning. “Get back inside, Sandee.”
“Your thingie is, um, beeping? And I saw cars on the road in one of the viewscreens. Two big black SUVs.”
Jed shut the Jeep and ran back to the house, straight toward the monitor. A new alarm beeped. The SUVs were passing another sensor. “Fuck me,” he muttered.
“Who is that?” My voice went up into a panicked squeak, and I wasn’t even faking it.
“Yesterday’s assholes, taking another shot at us. How they found us, I don’t know. Nobody saw us go, nobody followed us, nobody could have tagged the Jeep. Nobody knew about this place but me and my team.”
My teeth were starting to chatter and my vision went dark, as if I were flat on my back in the snow again, with that huge guy crushing me, bleeding all over me.
Goddamnit, Masters. Pull yourself together. I took a deep breath, gulped. “So shouldn’t we just, um…leave?”
“In the Jeep, you mean? Sure, if we want to meet them head on.”
“We can’t drive the other direction?”
“There is no other direction. This the end of the road. After this, it’s just a logging track that peters out into nothing. The only other way out of here is a thirty-mile hike over rough country, in thigh-deep snow. And it’s below zero out there.”
“So…shouldn’t we get started?”
Jed looked me up and down, a sharp, appraising look. “No,” he said flatly. “I saw six people. They’ll be heavily armed. They would run us down. I need to choose my ground, thin them out. And leave at least one of them alive to interrogate.”
Something hard and implacable in his eyes chilled me to the bone.
“I think we should just run,” I offered. “Like, right now. As fast as we can.”
He shook his head. “We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and we don’t have enough lead time. I could do it alone, maybe. But not with you.”
My chin went up. “I am not a weakling,” I told him. “I can move fast.”
He shook his head. “We’ve only got a few minutes, so don’t waste my time. Get this on.” He pulled a dark green winter coat off a hook and tossed it at me.
I caught it. The only thing I could do to help was to not be a pain in his ass, so I put it on and zipped it up. It hung to my knees. Way too big, but I had several layers on my top half, so it didn’t slide around too much.
Jed rattled around in the kitchen, shoving various things into a knapsack. He slung it onto his back, grabbed a coil of rope out of a box, and took me by the arm.
“Where are we going to—”
“Shut up and hurry.” Jed dragged me out the door, pulling me off my feet.
I scurried to get my feet under myself. “Hey! Dude! Slow down!”
“Listen up,” he said. “We’re going toward that tree, the twisted one near the edge of the canyon, but we can’t leave any footprints. So stay on the rocks, where the snow’s been blown off. Don’t leave tracks in the snow. Understand?”
I nodded. It was more or less what I’d done when I made the phone call.
“You said you were fast,” he said. “Show me. Put your feet where I put my feet.”
I followed him, leaping from exposed rock to exposed rock. The wind was still whistling, blowing the snow that was as fine and dry as dust.
Jed slowed when he got to the twisted tree. He slid the coil of rope off his arm, looping it swiftly around the bottom of the tree, knotting it securely. What the hell…?
“James?” I said carefully. “Ah…what are you doing with that rope?”
“I can’t have you with me when I’m hunting them.” His voice was cold and distant. “You’ll slow me down, make noise. You’ll make me into a target.”
Panic exploded inside me. Oh, shit. He was going to throw me off the cliff, to make his chances better. Oh fuck. Fuck.
I explode into action, but he grabs my arm with his huge hand, trapping me.
I never even got to say goodbye to Holly, to Ethan. They would never know what happened to me. I was such an arrogant idiot. Playing hero. In over my head.