After taking a moment to get the emotions in my voice under control, I ask, “How did you know Cecil?”
JR waits a beat before signing, “He took me in when I had nowhere else to go.” He scrubs a hand down his recently trimmed beard, his brows inching when his trek is far shorter than usual. “He saved my life.”
“After that?” I query, too curious for my own good.
Once he’s yanked down the sleeves of his winter jacket to hide the slash marks on his wrists I just pointed out, he reluctantly shakes his head. “Before that.”
I flex my hands against the steering wheel when he scoots across the bench seat of the truck. Although he’s spent most of the last hour and a half running, he smells delicious. His scent is so manly, I wish I could bottle it up and sell it. Then I’d be able to donate as much money as Isaac does to ensure disadvantaged families receive the same level of medical care as everyone else in the country.
My breaths become heated when JR pushes away the bangs curtaining my face. They’re not the short, chopped style I got when the Bureau changed my identity and instigated my parents’ early retirement to Hawaii. They now hang to my ears, but they still hide the scar I wanted gone even more than the Petrettis wanted to bury me under six feet of dirt.
When JR’s thumb traces the lightning-shaped burn partially hidden by my hairline, pride shoots through me instead of disgust. For almost a decade, I’ve hated that blemish. Only now am I realizing it’s there because I consistently put other people’s lives before my own. I help strangers every single day, but that day, a stranger returned a favor that inevitably saved my life.
I’m so choked up with emotions it takes the B-Double we’re veering toward to sound his horn for me to notice he’s flashing his lights.
With a squeal, I yank on the steering wheel before slamming my foot on the brake.
We skid across the asphalt in slow motion, the truck’s bounce routine as jutted as the word JR screams before he wedges himself between the steering wheel and me. “B-Back!”
ChapterSixteen
JR’s back, hip, and buttocks endure the full impact of the truck’s collision with a tree siding the freeway. I don’t feel a single thing except the shredding of my heart when a mangled roar escapes his lips. I should be in the process of being crushed to death, or at the very least, pinned to my seat, but his quick thinking saved my life. He put his body on the line for me, and I don’t know whether to relish his devotion or sob about it.
I lose the chance to do either of those things when the truck comes to an abrupt stop. We only sailed partway down the terrain, so we’re close enough to the road to hear the calls of frantic motorists asking if we’re okay and the sirens wailing in the distance.
“Please don’t move. You could have spinal injuries,” I beg when JR’s response to the sirens is to immediately commence exiting the twisted remains of his truck.
His flight mechanism is activated, and although I’m only one step behind him, he could be seriously hurt, so I must shut it down.
After grunting like my worries are unfounded, JR rams his elbow through the blistered glass next to my head then climbs through the crack his shove caused. My stomach gurgles when his dip back into the cab to assist me out exposes multiple cuts and abrasions to his ears, neck, and arms. He shouldn’t be walking in his state, much less bobbing down to offer me a piggyback once he helps me climb through the skin-ripping opening.
“I can walk,” I assure him, confident my wounded foot will look like a scratch compared to the bruises and contusions I suspect are on his back.
After gathering up his duffle bag, wallet, and the photograph of Cecil and Rosie resting on the bench seat like we didn’t just roll down the side of an embankment, he hooks me onto his back like I don’t get a say in the matter before he races us deep into the woods.
Since I trust him with my life, objections only fire through my head when we arrive at the back entrance of one of the many hotels dotted along the freeways on the East Coast several painstaking minutes later. “I don’t think this is a good idea. We should keep moving.”
It dawns on me how selfish my suggestion is when I take in JR’s slow stalk to a dark sedan at the back of the lot.
He’s in a heap of pain.
If memories of Cecil’s unjust incarceration weren’t playing through my head like a movie, I’d march JR to a hospital right now. Since it is, I switch tactics like I need to book an appointment with a psychiatrist to have my head examined.
“Maybe we should get a room. Lay low until the heat dies off.” When JR immediately shakes his head, I push out, “Cutting your hair and hacking off your beard isn’t enough to get us past however many goddamn barricades they’ve placed between here and Ravenshoe. We need time to sit down and devise a plan.” I step closer to him before gathering his uninjured hand in mine. “A plan that will get usbothout of this alive.” I thrust my hand at the hotel. “Here is as good a place as any.”
His late grunt of disapproval adds more stacks of wood to the fire in my belly. It’s obvious he wants to protect me, but when there’s a chance his dedication could be his undoing, it’s morally and ethically impossible for me to let that happen. It goes against everything I am and who I hope to still become one day.
JR eyes me with suspicion when I unzip the duffle bag attached to his front and pull out the medical bag he stuffed inside before we left the cabin. With my heart in my throat, I dig through the contents dislodged during our travel down a previously untaken road.
It feels like Christmas morning when I find what I’m seeking.
“I have this.” I show JR the medical license a federal agent supplied me during transport to my new life. I wasn’t in witness protection as such. I was merely gifted a new life I didn’t want. “It’s a photo ID. That’s all a place like this needs.” I once again thrust my hand at the hotel. “And no one in my life knows about this alias. It was given to me by an agent who was killed over seven years ago. We will be safe here.”
JR takes in my pleading eyes for a couple of seconds before dragging his wary gaze across the empty lot. When it dawns on him that it is as desolate as my heart feels from drinking in the pain swamping his alluring blue irises, he reluctantly dips his chin.
Ignoring my immature jig, he digs a bundle of notes out of his dusty wallet, hands them to me, then hooks his thumb at an emergency exit door at the back of the several- stories-high building.
Not needing words to understand his request, I nod. “I’ll meet you at the emergency exit as soon as I have a key.”
