Chapter 10
The day had long since turned to night by the time Damon directed Cain up a steep and narrow mountain road somewhere in eastern Tennessee. At a guess, he’d put them maybe two hours away from his parents’ mountain cabin, but he was so turned around he could hardly tell.
Damon had insisted on them taking the longest possible route this side of the Mississippi, detouring into lots of deliberate switch-backs and local roads, turning what should have been a nine-hour trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee into a two-day odyssey that had involved a stop at a crappy motel in West Virginia where no one but Molly had dozed for more than a few minutes at a stretch. It had been a pain in the ass and tiring as hell, but Damon had sworn it was necessary and Cain wasn’t going to argue. The incident yesterday - seeing Damon and Molly on the ground, wondering for just one second if they were dead - had been scarier than anything Cain could remember.
For hours, Cain’s head had been pounding in syncopated rhythm with the hot pulse of the cut on his upper arm. The initial adrenaline rush had burned off quickly yesterday, and the lack of sleep from the past two nights had caught up with him. He was running on Diet Coke and determination.
In the back seat, Molly was zonked out in her car seat, Chelsea still leaning over her just as she’d been since yesterday morning. It had been hours since their last rest stop - a five-minute pause at a drive-thru and a chance for Damon to check the bandage he’d tied around Cain’s arm. Damon had looked grim. Though the blood flow had mostly stopped, the cut occasionally reopened when he moved too fast, and Damon thought he might need stitches or a tetanus shot. Unfortunately, heading to a hospital was too dangerous.
“Just a mile or so up the road,” Damon said now, looking over at him in concern.
“M’kay. How’s your leg?” Damon had managed to fuck himself up pretty thoroughly in his fall, and though he had been hobbling around somewhat, he needed Cain’s help.
“Still attached.”
“Want one of your pain pills?”
Damon snorted. “No thanks. I’d rather not pass out in the car.” He looked at Cain. “I still can’t believe you thought to grab those off my kitchen counter.”
Cain shrugged tiredly. “I thought you might need them. I still can’t believe you left them behind deliberately, or that you’ve refused to take them up to this point. Not sure why your stubbornness should come as a surprise, though.” He shot Damon a glare.
“Funny. Speaking of stubborn, how’s the arm?”
“Also still attached. It’ll befine.”
“Hmmm. I want Eli to look it over when we get there, anyway.”
Cain’s ears perked up. Damon hadn’t said where they were going, and given the man’s trust issues, Cain hadn’t wanted to be too demanding. He’d resolved to just follow Damon’s lead and help out as much as he could. But he was pretty fucking curious about the place Damon would choose to stash his sister and niece.
Cautiously, he asked, “Eli?”
“Yeah. Eli Davis. He’s the man we’re going to see. The man I’m hoping is going to agree to have Chelsea and Molly stay with him.”
Cain frowned as he navigated the rutted, packed dirt. “Hoping? Why didn’t you call him last night after you let Bas and Drew know what had happened?”
Damon chuckled. “Eli doesn’t believe in phones.”
Well. Okay, then. Curiosity surging wildly, Cain demanded, “Why not?”
“First of all, because the reception up here is for shit. And second of all, because that’s how the government gets ya.” Cain shot him a look that made Damon laugh softly again. “Oh, Eli’s got a whole list of ways the government will get you. Internet, credit cards, banks, social security numbers, satellite imagery…” He ticked the examples off on his fingers.
“So he’s, like, one of those separatist people? With a room full of guns and a plan to never pay taxes again?” Cain frowned at the innocent girl sleeping in the backseat. Was this really the safest place to take a three-year-old?
“No. He’s not planning to declare his independence from America,” Damon said, clearly amused. “But he doesn’t trust the government either. He hasn’t thinned the trees around his house at all, so drones can’t get through, and he pays for everything in cash or by bartering.”
“That’s odd.”
“It’s actually pretty cool,” Damon contradicted, and Cain shot him a glance again. He had a fond smile on his face, and he was shaking his head with amused exasperation. “Eli is… he’s a special person.”
Cain’s stomach twisted sharply. “Special?”
“Yeah.” Damon’s eyes were focused on the road outside the window. “You’re gonna want to bear right up here. Yeah, near the tree.” He continued in a soft voice. “Eli’s a stand-up guy. The Seavers’ plane crashed into the mountain about twenty miles south of here. Eli saw the whole thing happen. Said he was in his truck before he even saw the smoke, and he was the first person on scene. He used to be in the military,” he said, shooting Cain a quick glance. “Sniper. But he was discharged a couple years ago.”
Cain nodded, the terrible twisting in his gut stealing his ability to speak. What would it feel like to be someone Damon thought was special?
“He’s huge - taller than me and stronger, too. And it’s a damn good thing he is,” he mused. “The plane was on fire when he got there, but I’d been thrown a fair distance away. I was making a lot of noise, I guess. That’s how he found me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.”
There were many things Cain disliked in this story - the fact that it had happened to Damon at all was paramount, of course, because Cain wasn’t a total asshole. But not far below that was a poisonous feeling he recognized as jealousy. Jealousy of this big, tall, strong man who’d saved Damon’s life. Jealousy of the reverent way Damon spoke of him. Jealousy because this Eli person was someone Damon trusted absolutely, while Cain was… not.
