AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A girl in a robe. Bruised and beaten. Sore and tired. Messy hair, no makeup. Unable to run away to save her own life. And despite my ravenous hunger just seconds ago, I now sit with my fork held above my plate; my mouth empty and my stomach silent.
I swear, the way he stares is almost like he’s trying to read my mind. Like he’s attempting to probe my thoughts and guess what it is I won’t say.
Stalking away from the door and across to me, he takes a second weapon from somewhere on his body and places it on the table beside my tray. “It’s loaded. It’s easy to use. I clicked off the safety, and there is a round in the chamber. You aim, you fire. And if you have the extra brain space, you keep a firm grip so you don’t drop it when it recoils. Okay?”
I swallow a painful lump of… I don’t even know. Nerves, maybe. Anxiety. Terror. Adrenaline. But I don’t nod. I don’t accept this new reality of me shooting a gun and trying to hurt someone with it.
“Aurora?” He comes to sit on the table so we’re almost face-to-face and bends to look into my eyes. “Thirty seconds. I need to close it up and give us the best chance of a head start if someone comes looking for you. It’s extremely unlikely anyone knows we’re here. None of Vallejo’s cohorts will catch up this fast. And not even the cops know we’ve moved. You have nothing to worry about.”
“O-okay.” Not okay. Not okay at all. But I chew on the inside of my bottom lip and give him a small nod. “Can you get my clothes from the shower, too? I washed them.” I set my fork down and free my hands for shooting. Like I’d have any clue what to do or how to aim. “I meant to rinse them out and hang them up, but I didn’t get to that yet.”
“I’ll get them.” He flashes a playful wink that sends an odd bolt of electricity to the bottom of my belly and leaves my fat fingers feeling a little different. Tingling, instead of clumsy. Vibrating, instead of unusable. “Thirty seconds, okay?”
“Okay.” I draw a deep breath and surprise him as I stand and sway on aching legs. The fabric of my robe slips along my arm and reveals my shoulder, but Drake reaches out anyway and places his hand beneath my forearm.
“Wait.” He wraps his fingers around my wrist and scowls. “What are you doing?”
“I want to come to the door.” I turn on my feet and step away so his hand has no choice but to fall or yank me back. Thankfully, he doesn’t choose the second, which would be so friggin’ painful at this point. “I need to lock the door.” I limp across the room with no help from him, a walking stick, nor my crutches, and when I arrive at the door, I hold the handle and glance up to meet his eyes. “Please remember my crutch, too. It’s not a lot, but it…” I trail off. “Well, you know.”
“Make sure you unlock the door for me when I come back, okay?” He grabs the second gun from the table and strides across the room, and though I don’t ask for it, he places it in my hand and wraps my fingers around the cold, steel handle. “I could get back in again even if you don’t,” he warns, “but that would be noisy, and I’d really like to not call any more attention to our room tonight.”
My lips are bone dry. My tongue. My entire soul, I think, drier than the Sahara Desert. But I cough away the discomfort and give him a small nod. “I’ll unlock it again. I promise.”
“Good girl.” He chucks my chin and disappears through the door before my brain has moved past his easy use ofgood girl. Like I’m a child in the street, being rewarded for picking up stray trash. Or like I’m a toddler who drew an adequately pleasant rainbow. He’s gone before I can truly process the enigma that is Drake Banks, but though my thoughts lag on that front, they’re quick to shut the door and flip the lock as he disappears into the room we left behind.
I flip the lock back again, then reset it. To make sure.
I count in my mind, and every few seconds, out loud. And when I hitten, I check the lock again, just to make triple sure it’s secure the way it’s supposed to be.
“Twenty,” I murmur, all alone inside a two-bedroom suite with my eye pressed to the peephole and my left hand wrapped around a gun I’m more likely to throw at an intruder than I am to fire it. “Twenty-one. Twenty-two.”
My stomach rolls with nerves, and the pasta I ate already turns. The cream. The chicken. The white wine sauce. It all sours in my belly and leaves me nauseous as I reachtwenty-seven. Twenty-eight. My fingers flex around the gun’s handle, and the robe I shroud myself in absorbs the nervous sweat trickling along my spine.
Twenty-nine.“Oh god.” I bring my free hand up and press it to my mouth to hold in the gulp of despair working desperately to claw its way free of my throat. He promised.He promised!“Thirty.”
My breathing comes faster, and my heart pounds until I want to sink to the floor and pass out. But just when I think I might die from some kind of mystery stroke, the suite door he disappeared behind swings wide and reveals the cop with his arms laden with dripping clothes and a slightly bent singular crutch.
A ridiculous sob bursts from between my lips, and tears fill my eyes until they threaten to spill over. But I watch Drake through the peephole until his back is to me, the door is closed up tight, and the lock is engaged. Then, before he even has a chance to knock on ours, I unfasten the lock and swing it open to allow him entry.
Hell, to encourage a fast entry and put myself out of my misery.
I grab the sleeve of his shirt and yank him through the doorway, before slamming the door shut so it hits with a thud and rattles the walls.
Adrenaline pulses in my veins and those annoying tears spill over and wet my cheeks. I hate them. I hate the weakness. But I’m so unbelievably at my limit, I have nothing left to give.
I have no more emotional space to work with. No more nerves. No more ability to deal with upheaval. So I close my eyes tight and tip my head back to point toward the ceiling. I work on my breathing and hope, for once, I don’t make an idiot of myself.
“Aurora?” I don’t have to open my eyes to know he’s close. I don’t have to look into his, to feel his warmth just inches from my body. “You okay?”
I swallow dread and nod. But I keep my eyes shut. “Yep. Just taking a second.”
“You need to sit down?”
“In a second,” I repeat. “You promised thirty seconds, Detective Banks. I counted—”
“Drake,” he murmurs, close enough I feel his breath on the tip of my nose. “You can call me Drake.”
“I can also call you Detective Banks.” Drawing in a deep, noisy sniffle, I open my eyes and hold my breath when I find his face a mere two-inches from mine. He’s so close, I see the pores in his skin. Each individual lash above his eyes. I count stray brows and sunspots on his cheeks. My throat constricts, and my lungs refuse to budge. But my gun-holding hand twitches. Clinging to the handle the way I would a buoy in stormy seas. Like I might actually use the damn thing to shoot someone.
