Chapter Six
Six
Keys woke knowing the enemy was coming. Lyric opened her eyes the moment he moved and instantly sat up.
“Have to go outside,” she said, already reaching for her shoes. “What’s wrong?”
“They’ll be coming after us today. We can’t outrun them, Wildfire. We’re going to have to wait it out here. My brothers will be looking for us. It’s a matter of holding out and staying alive.” He dragged on his boots.
“I know how to make quite a few traps, but we’d have to mark them and dismantle them before we left. We don’t want animals or some hiker to accidentally get caught in one.”
Very casually, right in front of him, she pulled off the flannel she’d been sleeping in and reached for her T-shirt.
It was dry. He stopped her, leaning close, examining the dark bruises over her breasts.
She’d been punched hard. The bruises extended below to her stomach.
He’d been so caught up in the bullet and head wounds, he hadn’t taken the time to really look her body over. She was a mess.
She hadn’t complained. He dragged her shirt over her breasts, covering the dark evidence, resolve forming.
“Let’s take care of business, woman. We just need to buy ourselves the time.
” He wasn’t about to tell her she couldn’t help him.
He knew it wouldn’t work anyway. Lyric Johansen wasn’t the kind of woman to sit on her ass when danger threatened.
She attacked with a blow-dryer and a pair of scissors.
Instead of laying down the law to her, he helped her into her now-dry jacket.
“At least the rain stopped.”
Ignoring her comment, he tipped up her face so he could examine it. “The swelling is going down. Is the headache better?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
That meant she still had a headache and wasn’t going to share that news with him. He didn’t need her to admit it. He could see she was moving her head gingerly. They were going to be in enough trouble without arguing.
He caught her face between his palms and kissed her swollen eyelids. The tip of her nose. The corners of her mouth and finally that lower lip he was a little fixated on. “Good morning. Nice waking up to you.”
Her green eyes met his. Green mixed with red.
Keys grinned at her. “You’re still giving off the vampire vibe, but I like it.”
“If you’re going to give me a bad time about my latest look, at least put the coffee on.”
“We don’t have coffee,” he pointed out.
“I pretend hot water is coffee.”
That made him laugh. “Does it work?”
“Do I sound like I’m in a good mood?”
“I can see this might be a problem for us if I don’t get up first and make coffee.”
She held up her hand. “We agreed not to discuss your strange behavior last night. I’m putting it down to your broken head and the brain cells that leaked out. You’ll be fine once we get you to a doctor, and you can go back to thinking like the Keys we all know and love.”
“No one loves me,” he said gruffly, all too aware it was true and had been since he’d been born. He wasn’t lovable and never would be.
“I do.” She said it so casually he almost missed it. He tried to turn it into something else because he was certain he hadn’t heard her right. A joke. She liked to give him a bad time.
She pushed past him. “I need to get outside. I’ve got a few ideas for traps, but I won’t be able to last too long out there. We’ll have to do it fast.”
He trailed after her, deciding it was best not to confront her with what she’d said. It was going to loop in his brain and make him crazy.
When he returned the night before, she claimed she was better, but she didn’t eat, and he had to push her to hydrate.
She slept more than she should have, and he didn’t know if that was good for her or if he should make certain she stayed awake.
He had gone to sleep, his body curled around hers, his arm at her waist, holding her close.
For a man who didn’t want anyone in his room, let alone his bed, he had done a complete about-face with his life choices.
He found he couldn’t get close enough to Lyric, and he slept far better with her tucked in beside him.
Lyric moved a distance away from him to take care of business. He always came after her to fill in the hole, because she was too weak to do it herself. He knew it bothered her, but he didn’t comment. He never did. He was just grateful that she wasn’t a complainer. He almost wished she was.
“You know, with your skills, Keys, you could turn the tables on these men. They’ll spread out looking for signs. That means there will only be one or two you have to deal with at a time,” she suggested as she moved outward away from their cave.
“I thought of that.” If he was lucky, he could turn the tables. He was far more predator than prey. “If I go hunting our enemies, I would have to leave you without protection. That doesn’t sit right with me.”
She had been examining the ground and then the trees, but she turned to face him.
“Isn’t that the big talk we had last night about guns?
You made it very clear you wanted me to pull the trigger without hesitating if I got into trouble.
I gave you my word that I would. I thought you were preparing me for when you went off alone hunting them. ”
He could see how it might sound that way.
She was intelligent, and she liked to plan in advance.
Just because she had a vicious headache, it wouldn’t have stopped her from looking at their situation from every angle.
That was one of the things he loved most about her.
It was also one of the things that drove him nuts.
He liked that she had a brain and she used it. He didn’t like that she was so willing to put her life on the line with his.
“I know you like the idea that I’m going to be sitting around our little happy home with a gun in my hand, waiting for my hero to return.
” She made a face at him. “That sounds so like me.” Before he could reply, she indicated the tree.
“This would make a good trap. It’s right on the game trail.
That slender tree is perfect to use. I think this is one of the ways they might access our cave. ”
“Nice that you finally have admitted you think of me as your hero,” he said as he studied the game trail.
She was right. He would follow that trail through the woods if he was searching for someone.
It was clearly used often by larger animals and would be easy for anyone attempting to get off the mountain to traverse.
She gave him that little laugh of hers, the one that always got him right in the gut. “I think I just keep feeding your enormous ego.” She swayed, reached out a hand to him and gave him a little moue of regret. “Sorry, partner. You’re going to be on your own for this one. I need to lie down again.”
Alarm crashed through him. He needed his club to get there fast, and it had nothing to do with those coming after them and everything to do with the woman he swept into his arms and cradled against his chest.
“You like me carrying you, admit it.”
She turned her face into his throat without hesitation. “You guessed my secret. The light’s hurting my eyes.”
He hurried back to the cave, uncaring that he might be leaving tracks.
He’d erase them after he got her comfortable.
“You going to be able to stay awake if I leave?” That was imperative.
He realized he would have to hunt the men who would be coming after them.
“I can’t take the chance that my club won’t find us. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“I want you to go, Keys,” she whispered. “You have a much better chance out there than hiding out with me.”
There it was again, Lyric putting him first. She was quite capable of manipulating the situation if she believed they weren’t going to make it. She would do her best to separate them. Just like what was happening. But they had a much better chance if he was hunting the enemy.
He settled her on the sleeping bag, placed water, gun, and ammunition beside her. “I won’t be gone long. Please don’t fall asleep, Lyric.”
“I won’t. I’ll pretend I have coffee. Just the thought will keep me awake.”
“This isn’t a game.” He needed reassurance.
“As long as you’re in danger, Keys, I’m not about to fall asleep. Just get it done as fast as you can.”
He tipped her face up and went through his routine, dusting featherlight kisses on each swollen eye, the tip of her nose, and the corners of her mouth before he tasted her lips.
He didn’t want it to hurt, so there was no pressure, but it was his claim on her.
He didn’t know if she felt it, but he did.
“You stay alive, Wildfire.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it if for no other reason than to prove you wrong.
I’ll never fit in with your family, but I told you when this was over, I’d go with you, and I will.
Occasionally, it’s good for you to know you get things wrong.
In any case, Caspar is close to the Lost Coast. A great place to backpack. ”
He heard the resolve in her voice despite the teasing. She’d stick. He knew her better than anyone else ever would. And that was just fine with him. Lyric Johansen was a woman of her word. She would be alive and waiting for him.
“Got everything you need? You know you’ll have to do without the fire. They’ll smell it and come straight here.” He took his time putting it out, making sure very little smoke escaped when he did.
She looked around. “Best place I’ve lived in a while.”
“You never took me to your apartment. All the nights we had dinner, you always went back to the salon. Now that I think about it, I just assumed you had a little place over the salon.”
“I had a bed in the back room of the salon. I travel light. I keep a bag ready. I’m not a collector. It takes minutes to disappear. My equipment is packed up and put in storage by a friend until it’s safe to get it out.”