Lily's Outlaw (Once a Marine, Always a Marine Book 2) (2 page)

And she hadn’t been that girl for a long time.

Engines whined as the two vehicles got closer to their hiding place. The dust thickened as they approached the mouth of the canyon. It looked wide enough to move in farther, but since Jesse already had the truck in reverse Lily figured it was a dead end up ahead.

“Is this where we die?” She hadn’t really thought about it until this moment, but she was more scared now, this close to freedom, than she had been tied up in that roach-infested warehouse.

“Not today.”

He was solely focused and she didn’t say anything else, not wishing to distract him from saving both their butts. But his confidence made her feel better.

“This is it,” he said, almost to himself. “Hang on tight.”

A car passed too quickly to see what the make was or how many people were inside. One second later, a truck whizzed by, with at least one man standing in the bed hanging on to the roll bars with one hand and holding an automatic weapon in the other.

Jesse’s foot hit the gas spitting debris and rock up the canyon walls as they flew backward out of the ravine and into the desert. He spun the wheel and they were behind the car and the truck as he slammed the gears into drive and hit the gas again.

“Why are we following them?” she yelled over the noise.

“Got to disable them so they can’t follow us across the border.”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“Slide over and take the wheel.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just reached up under the dashboard and pulled out the biggest handgun she’d ever seen, which was saying a lot since she’d been raised around guns.

She slid over fast, thigh to thigh with Jesse and took the wheel with both hands. He leaned out the window just as the driver of the truck realized they were being followed. He hit the brakes and the horn at the same time, signaling the car in front.

Jesse started shooting, and combined with the noise of the squealing tires, the loud rapport of the gun was going to make them both deaf. He’d eased off the gas and the old truck slowed immediately.

Jesse continued to fire.
 

The man in the bed of the truck had a brown jacket on and a bright red bandana covering the lower portion of his face. He swung the big automatic rifle in their direction as Jesse shot out the two back tires of the truck.

Already in the middle of a hard turn, losing those tires caused the truck to flip, throwing the man in the bed out before he could fire. The vehicle rolled a couple of times and settled in the sand amidst an enormous enveloping cloud of dust.

“Keep the wheel steady,” Jesse yelled and hit the gas again.

Lily held on to the wheel as it bucked and bounced and she wasn’t sure how Jesse managed to hit anything as he fired. The car in front of them U-turned and headed toward them in some sick game of chicken, with the passenger hanging out of the window mirroring Jesse.

She heard more loud pops right before their windshield cracked and spider-webbed. There was a large hole in the glass where she had been sitting in the passenger side.

“Keep your head down,” Jesse yelled.

“I can’t keep my head down and drive, idiot,” she yelled back. She thought she heard him chuckle but she couldn’t be sure. Her ears were ringing from all the gun shots.

Jesse ejected his empty clip, reached into his back pocket and had a new clip in place faster than any gunslinger in those old westerns could have managed. If she wasn’t terrified of being shot or dying in a head-on collision, she would have told him how impressed she was.

“Keep straight at them, Lil. Don’t flinch.”

“We’re so going to die.” But she kept the wheel steady. He’d told her one time that the hardest part of playing chicken was knowing when to flinch.

“We got this.”

Then he started firing again, just as bullets were whizzing back at them. The hard ping of the bullets ripping into the truck had her sliding down in the seat until only the top of her head and eyes were visible over the dashboard.

The radiator of the car took several of Jesse’s shots before there was a loud crack and jets of steam hissed out. He concentrated on their windshield, peppering shots into the glass. The car jerked hard to the right and Lily kept the wheel straight as they roared past.

“Keep down and slide back over,” Jesse said. She moved quickly as he took control of the wheel and stowed his gun under the dash again. Throwing his right arm around her shoulders, he squeezed tight. “You did great.”

“Can they still follow us?”

“Nope. Unless they want to do it on foot.”

Lily sighed, all the pent-up tension draining out of her body as her hands began to shake and tears she hadn’t realized were there streaked down her face. “I hate crying.”

“It’s the adrenaline. That’s all. You did better than some of the men in my unit over in Baghdad. A real trooper.” He pulled her closer, plastering her body up against his.

“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Nah, remember that time you lost the bet with me and had to streak through the boys’ locker room in nothing but your panties? That was way worse.”

The memory of her in nothing but her undies and bra running through the locker room, singing “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett at the top of her lungs, made her laugh and hiccup through the tears.

“True. That was worse than this.” That time she had burst into hysterical laughter once she was safe. Well, until her mother had heard about it. Then she’d been grounded and on house arrest for an entire month.

“That’s my girl.”

With Jesse, Lily was free to be herself. And because of Jesse, she was free. And as soon as she could, she was going to have to get away from him. Because she needed to finish what she started. She was on a mission to do the right thing and prove something to herself in the process. And Jesse was more than a complication.

He was a game changer.

Chapter 2

“I’m not going in there,” Lily said, staring at the trapdoor surrounded by miles of endless, empty desert.

They’d been walking for at least thirty minutes after abandoning the truck on the Mexico side of the border. How Jesse even found this place boggled her mind. But worse, he wanted her to follow him down into that dark hole that was probably infested with God-knows what.

“We have three hours to kill until we’re extracted and we’re not doing that in the sun. It’s over one hundred degrees out and neither one of us needs sunstroke.”

“But what if there are snakes down there? Or worse?” Spiders. She shivered.

Jesse grinned and planted his hands on his hips. “Don’t tell me you are still afraid of the dark.”

Lily huffed. “I’m afraid of getting snakebite and depending on you to suck the poison out.”

The grin widened and he gave her a quick once-over. “Well now, that all depends on where I’d have to suck.”

Normally, a sassy comeback would have immediately sprung to mind, but her already overheated brain and body couldn’t cope with his brief, but scorching look. She was taken aback for a moment because he’d never so much as glanced at her in that way. Ever.

“It’s twenty degrees cooler down there and I promise a mostly varmint-free environment.”

“If I get bitten or stung by anything, or if the walls cave in and we die, I will haunt you forever in the afterlife. And I plan on being mean-spirited.”

Jesse shook his head and let out a chuckle as he descended into a dark that was so complete that it was like being blind. But he was right, it wouldn’t help if they got sunstroke or so dehydrated that they couldn’t defend themselves if someone came looking.

“I think I hate you,” she yelled down into the dark.

“Stop being a girl.”

“I am a girl.”

“You used to be totally fearless, but clearly you’ve been wussified.”

She used to be a lot of things, most of which wouldn’t have blinked at following Jesse on an adventure. But she’d grown up, and her invincibility meter had shifted dramatically toward merely mortal.
 

She closed her eyes, said a quick prayer and then climbed down the ladder.

“Jesse?” She couldn’t see anything.

“Hang on,” he said and then a spark of light appeared and grew brighter.

He’d found a lantern of some kind and the soft glow of the light showed that they were in a tunnel. The walls were reinforced with lumber that looked almost new. And it was cooler. Not as cool as Jesse said, but still better than outside.

“Let me shut that door.”

Lily stood to the side as Jesse went back up the ladder and shut the trapdoor. Once he was back down he picked up the lantern and the backpack he’d retrieved from the truck before they dumped it and took off down the tunnel.

“Where does this lead?”

“Nowhere really. It’s a smuggler’s tunnel that was dug as a temporary hideout and storage for drugs or people. There’s another trapdoor on the other end, which is our rendezvous point. In the meantime though, I have a surprise for you.”

“As long as it doesn’t have fangs or too many legs, I’m game.”

“You’ll like this, I promise.”

They walked a little farther and the narrow tunnel opened up into a large cavern. This didn’t look man-made though. This was Mother Nature’s doing. Stalagmites and stalactites jutted from the floor and ceiling of the large limestone room and the temperature really did drop to an amazingly cooler climate.

“How did you know about this?”

“Southern Arizona is known for its labyrinth of natural caverns. It’s a nightmare for Border Patrol to keep track of. Especially with the smugglers digging their own tunnels everywhere out in the desert.” He paused and pointed. “Look over there.”

Lily glanced over and saw a cot and makeshift table, but what caught her attention was the pool. The glow of the lantern bounced off the surface and made shadows dance on the walls. The water was probably freezing cold, but the thought of washing off some of the dust and grime was more than enough reason to squeal.

“Is that water safe?” She was about to jump up and down with joy.

He nodded. “I thought you might like to wash up a bit before we have something to eat.”

“You have food too?”

He shot her a disgusted look. “A Marine is always prepared.”

It was hard to believe her good fortune. First the rescue, a bath, and he was going to feed her. She threw herself into his arms again and hugged him as hard as she could. It didn’t matter that they both stunk or were covered in filth.

“Marry me and have my babies,” she said.

“I think maybe your mama explained things wrong to you.”

Lily laughed. “I don’t care. You are the most wonderful person in this cave.”

He gave her a shove and she let go, dropped her leather bag onto the cot and kicked her sandals off. She had her sundress off and thrown to the side as she hit the water, still in her underwear. And it was cold. So cold it raised all the hair on her body and her skin was covered in goose bumps.

“I never thought freezing water would feel so good.”

“A hot shower with soap is in our near future, but I figured you might like a little refresher after what you’ve been through.”

“It’s heavenly.”

“Did they hurt you, Lil?”

She turned in the water to face him. It was deep enough to hide her assets, not that she was well endowed. The look on his face was hard and his normally twinkling blue eyes were as still as the water she was in. She covered her small breasts anyway and shook her head. She knew what he was asking.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she finally said.

“I tried not to think about it while we were getting the hell out of there, but if they hurt you, I’ll go back and kill them all.”

“They didn’t rape me, Jess. I’m okay, really.”

***
 

“Dinner will be ready in three minutes. I left one of my T-shirts on that rock for you.”

Jesse turned away to start their meal. He could feel his body loosen up at her words. And he meant what he said. He’d send her off with Shadow and go back, international incident be damned. A man who raped a woman deserved to die.

If anything like that happened to one of his sisters, he’d be rotting away in jail right now for killing the bastard.

He pulled out a couple of MREs, some portable cooking gear and went to work, making sure to keep his back turned to give Lily some privacy. He’d seen a bit too much already and found his body reacting to her in a way that was new. And heated.

“I almost feel human again,” she said, coming into view.

Jesse had to grin. His black T-shirt hung down to her knees and swallowed her form. Her sundress was wrapped around her head, turban style, and she had her sandals back on. Plopping down on the cot with a sigh, she smiled back at him.

“I must look like something that crawled in here to die.”

“You look great for having gone through an ordeal.”

“Didn’t your mama use to say that?”