Wolfe (9 page)

If only this was real. If only he was a lover and not...whatever he was. I had to remember not to trust him.

“Your grass necklace is gone.”

“Mmm.”

I felt the bed rock as he climbed out.

“Guess I’ll have to make do with this.” A moment later, his belt was cinched around my neck – not tight though. Then he settled behind me again and grunted in satisfaction. Drowsily, I put my hand up to feel the leather. I could tell his hand held the loose end, between us and partway down my back.

“Sleep.”

I snorted softly and heaved in a breath with my nose in the fresh scent of the pillow. Already, I was going...my eyelids became heavier and I exhaled...

There...

Wolfe

The drive had wearied both of us. I’d made her drive while I napped and vice versa, but two days of being in the car for over twelve hours each day had been sapping. Avoiding being seen by surveillance cameras, or anyone I couldn’t control, had made my mind slowly turn to mush.

It wasn’t easy, though I never let on to Kiara.

I’d stolen gas, food, motel rooms, and most of all, people’s sanity. Some of them would have explaining to do with their spouses, though I’d tried to minimize the splash impact of my manipulations. Best to stay close to invisible.

Just using the BMW for several days made me uncomfortable.

Could I make that woman be quiet and never tell she’d gifted away a vehicle like this? I prayed so, but I wasn’t certain.

We’d gone near the lift bridge at Duluth a few hours back. A massive ship had passed beneath after the whole damn bridge lifted above it. It’d impressed on me how petty my life was, how much I owed due to simply being alive.

Once upon a time, everyone had seemed to want me dead.

The bullets had left me shattered and the pieces were still coming together. One bullet had gone into my brain. Yet I was here. I wasn’t normal, like Kiara said, and I wasn’t sure I wanted all those pieces back.

People screamed and turned into blood in some.

Details were elusive, but feelings ate their way through into my head: the awful loneliness, the hunger, the desperate need to survive. How long had I been in that pit? Memories gave hints but the worst scenes were in darkness. Maybe it was all imagination, scoured from some place in me that brought nightmares not truth?

Maybe I just thought I’d been in Hell because half my brain had been turned to mush.

A man just didn’t grow that back. What the fuck was I?

I shook my head, gripping the wheel with white-knuckled hands, then I realized my hair had stayed in place. I smiled grimly. Kiara had helped tie it together.

Currently, she snored gently with her head in a pillow wedged to the door.

She wanted me to let her go.

The faintest smile formed on her lips despite the unladylike snore. Every time I saw her, I yearned to sketch her again, in a million different poses – in some she’d be the most precious and fragile girl ever, sprawled in a sea of flowers or washed by a stream. In others...she’d be tied up and at my mercy...or at the mercy of a vile-toothed monster with a blood-streaked body, and a blood-streaked whip in his hand, and spikes, and all manner of shiny evil instruments. And she writhed before that monster, chained and leashed to a pole.

I shifted to relieve the pressure on my cock. Letting her go was definitely not a priority.

I slowed and pulled over to the side of the road to take a break. The mountain soared to the heavens from the earth ahead. Even through the windshield, I could feel the drop in temperature. Never was there anywhere that felt so clean and pure as being high on a mountain with a cold wind in your face and nature abounding.

I’d loved this when I’d come here in the past. This freedom to think away from pressure and people must be why I’d felt the urge to come. Why the memories had surfaced. The cabin owned by Magnus was half fallout shelter, half ode to nature. Solid. It’d be up here still, even if he wasn’t home. I couldn’t recall much about the man but he’d been a close friend, and his main abode was in New York.

That memory had come back. Others would too, given time, peace, a safe place where no one could disturb me.

The little town of Ely wasn’t too far – down a road on the other side of the cabin. I’d go there after I’d found how the cabin had weathered the years – leave Kiara behind with instructions and go get some supplies. I’d be careful and not take too much from whoever I chose.

I closed the door of the BMW carefully, trying not to wake Kiara. Bees flitted past. The scent of the flowers and the tang of leaves and dirt was strong. Something big floundered through the bushes on the opposite side of the road, where the slope dropped away. Bear or moose, perhaps.

Peeing on flowers seemed wrong, so I aimed at the tufts of grass instead.

I’d get well here. I knew it.

This small road was narrow and flanked by scrub and scattered cascades of wildflowers. I’d parked the BMW so as to leave room for others to pass, which made it surprising when a white sedan pulled up behind us. I zipped up and turned, wondering if they thought us broken down.

Only to face a gun pointed at my face. The bearded, red-eyed man, in faded jeans and hunter’s jacket, had a wobble to his gun-aiming arm.

“Don’t say a fucking word!” he rattled off, spit flying.

I halted, raised my hands.

His girlfriend sauntered along behind, long blond hair wisping in the breeze. Her swagger gave the impression she enjoyed this. One hand was hooked in her waistband and the other was wrapped around a second pistol that she dangled at her side. A Glock.

Her fidgety boyfriend had a Beretta.

I had nothing except me. It’d do.

“Hmm?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Keys. Hand them over. And get her out!” He pointed through the window then whacked the glass. “Tell her if she grabs anything she gets shot. Then you.”

And he’d just said don’t speak.

The keys were in the car but he seemed too jittery to notice.

Girlfriend grinned and raised her gun. Her red-edged eyes matched those of her boyfriend’s. As did the track marks on her arm. Her pink T-shirt had
F##ck me, do I care?
emblazoned across the front. “Yeah. Money, keys, your girl, your car, if you wanna live.”

Her sneer was a work of art as deep as her T-shirt words.

Kiara must’ve heard, plus the guy tapped the glass again with his gun and aimed it at her, at me, at her, at me again. Indecisive bastard.

I pulled open the door to let her climb out and backed away as she did so, going right and a little closer to the guy, to widen the area he’d need to cover. His aim wibble-wobbled between us.

“On yer knees!” He spat. “Both of you. Woooo. What a preeetty girl you got.”

All the while, I grappled for the right signs in his girl’s mind, or lack of mind. I needed her. I could kick the shit out of her boyfriend but someone would get shot. Maybe Kiara.

Kneeling would make it hard to move fast enough.

Kiara was shuffling to her knees, with her hands up.

“Now!” His Beretta muzzle grafted to me.

Girlfriend raised her gun too, but she left that other hand on hip in a casual, we-can-both-fuck-you-up way. If she fired, she’d likely hurt her teensy wrist.

“Now!” he screamed again. “Do it now!”

“Ooo, Greebo. Love it when you’re mad.”

I bent one knee as if about to obey.

He twitched a grin in her direction. “You ain’t seen nothing, yet, baby. This slow-as-fuck cocksucker just made me decide to get her to suck my cock.” He nodded at Kiara, his grin widening. I’d paused in movement. “Still slow! Do it, you fucker!”

I pretended I was confused, though at most it would give me a few seconds. Then I didn’t care anymore.

Things
clicked
.

I had her sidestep nearer to the car, kink the gun around to aim at him with a slight upward angle. I didn’t want blood on the car or us. She fired.
Boom
and brains blew out spray-splattering the shrubs and the road surface with liquid gobbets. Color – red.

He flatlined to the road, puddling and bleeding.

Kiara screamed. The girl mugger screamed and clutched her wrist. Knew it.

Though she sobbed, I had the girl walk into the bushes. Once she was knee-deep in plants, she raised the gun, put the muzzle to her mouth, and slid it in. Cross-eyed, she fixated on the gun.

The hate inside her...I couldn’t let her live, even if I could stop her telling. Possibilities of doom ratcheted past – she mightn’t keep her mouth shut; forensics, if fresh, might find something. What though? Didn’t have time to figure that. Needed to get this done before someone else arrived. Their car was here too. Leave it. Leave it and don’t touch a
thing
.

Number one future possibility, the one that spun in circles in my thoughts, was her finding Kiara and killing her. That wouldn’t be right.

It would be disastrous.

Kiara turned her head and looked at me, eyes wide with fear and disbelief.

I sent the command.

Kiara

I could see in his eyes that he meant to follow through.

My
nooo
came at the same instant as the gunshot and I turned to see her falling, straight down, as if her knees had been severed. She vanished into the bushes. Gone, bar for the spray of blood spattering down like rain. Then there was him, the man, heaped on the road with a pool of red surrounding what was left of his skull.

“You didn’t have to.” I gulped.

“I did. You didn’t see in her mind.”

Fuck no, I didn’t. Funny that. I shut my eyes, climbing to my feet by feel with my hand on the car. He’d killed two people so easily. And her? I understood having to kill the man but her? She’d been an ugly fool but she didn’t have to die.

“She didn’t have to die.” Like, if I repeated it enough, maybe she might resurrect from the bushes.

It wasn’t her hate-filled mind, it was Wolfe. He hadn’t wanted us discovered.

“Get in the car.”

Wolfe’s hand on my elbow made me flinch and I shook him off.

“In.”

This time it was a compulsion and I mounted the step and hoisted myself in despite my shaking hands and legs.

He climbed in the other side, started the engine, and we rolled forward.

“You’re not...” I blinked and looked over. “Not hiding them.”

“Best to make it look like it was just them. She killed him, then herself. Less fuss that way.”

“Uh-huh.” Whatever was out there, past the windshield, I didn’t see it for a while.

Just seen two people die. I mean...I’d seen death many times, but this was different. Making someone else die just because you could and it was convenient? Jesus.

My knees were all strangely squished-in from kneeling on the road. That was the sum total of
my
injuries. I ran my fingers over my right knee, remembering how cold it was outside. I’d need jeans up here. Sweaters. Though my goosebumps and shivering wasn’t just from the weather.

“They would’ve shot us, or done worse to you.”

“What?” I mumbled. He glanced at me then went back to watching the road. “Made me give him a BJ? I could’ve survived that. Hell, you think you’re better? You could’ve twisted her mind until she was Mother Theresa’s clone.”

“No. I can’t do that.”

“The hell you can’t. God.
Fuck
.” I hit the dashboard with my fist. Useless, this was all so useless.
I
felt useless.

“Swearing doesn’t change anything. Stop doing it.”

“Or what?” I blurted. My scowl deepened.

“Do you really want to find out?”

His matter-of-fact tone, combined with what I’d just seen him do, made me pause, but...he was driving and couldn’t do anything.

“Fuck you,” I grumbled.

I may have been suicidal saying that to him, a man who killed as if it were no fancier than sucking a lollipop, but I was past caring. If he’d wanted to shoot me, he’d had plenty of opportunities.

I’d abducted him, nearly sold him to the Russians. I’d also been his carer for months, and I’d liked him, once. Helped him. Now? I didn’t know. It was all too raw and it hurt my chest to think about what had happened.

I shifted my butt, finally remembered to fasten the seat belt, then planted my head into the headrest.

They were dead as dead could be. Wolfe was right, I couldn’t change anything. I should try to sleep. But always there were questions. What if the other agents turned up? If riled, Wolfe would happily go beyond the limits of the law or an average person’s morals. Who would end up dead?

I had an inkling he’d chew them up and spit them out then keep on walking, as if nothing had happened.