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There will be an us. There’ll be an us. Tres will come get us.
At the one-hour mark, fighting rising frustration she tripped over her own feet and went to her knee and from there got a good look at the underside of a shipping container, loaded on a semitrailer. She’d searched every shipping container she’d come across, including this one, all of them unbolted and empty. But now this one was locked and looked like it was ready to go somewhere.
There was a lockbox protecting the bolt and her stolen keys didn’t fit it. She could shoot it out, but someone might hear. Picking it was as good a use of her time as anything else and focusing on something would keep her from the rising nausea.
Her lockpick tool kit was disguised as a pocket-size manicure set and she never went anywhere important without it. She went to work. That spreadsheet she’d taken from Orrin’s was dollars, maybe an estimate of the contributions from the new recruits due to arrive. Millions of dollars. He didn’t trust the outside world, and they’d never been able to put together a decent paper trail on him. Their own contribution had been paid in dozens of large cash drops. What if Orrin didn’t hide the contributions he collected from Continuers in an untraceable bank account. What if he kept them in a portable vault while he forced austerity on the settlement?
Fifteen minutes later, she had the bolt undone, the smell of money in her nose and the
truth in her hands. The container was stacked with plastic-wrapped bundles of money. The bank of Abundance. Money-laundering doomsday-prepper style. Orrin’s days of running his own world were fast decaying.
But nailing Orrin would mean nothing if she couldn’t get to Zeke in time.
If she’d been a nail biter she’d have been down to her wrists when she finally heard the truck approach. When the barn doors opened, she had a choice, use the shotgun and gamble on not having to shoot anybody or—yeah, that was the choice.
She stood in the shelter of the semi rig and braced. Six men climbed out of the truck.
“Home sweet home. Can’t wait to hit the sack.”
“Did you say hit Zack?” That got a hearty laugh. “We did that about four hours ago.” That was two hours out, two hours back. “Guy can sure take a punch. Do you think he’s still tripping?”
“I think his brain is probably damaged and he’s fallen into the canyon by now.” The canyon. A landmark.
Six on one, terrible odds. She couldn’t bluff this like poker. She wasn’t Jessica Jones and she didn’t have any supernatural powers. And if she failed to get away, Zeke had no one.
Along with the spruce forest and the mountain range, the canyon was a major feature of the land Orrin had bought up. She knew roughly what direction to head in. She made a decision that her chance of successfully taking a hostage with her was poor and stayed hidden.
The men cleared out quickly. She fueled up, checked the mileage log, loaded up. Made herself wait another twenty minutes sitting in the cab of the truck to make sure everyone who should be in bed was. She had a heading and timing, and halving what was on the trip meter, she had mileage.
She leaned out of the truck door and threw up, retching even when her stomach was empty. Zeke could already be dead, and she could drive all night and not find him. This was way outside of her comfort zone, calling for skills she had in theory but had never needed to use.
You can do this. You can find him. There will be an us. Reach out to him and he’ll reach out to you. He knows you won’t ever run without him.
Did he know that? She’d abandoned Cal in the middle of a job and left him deliberately exposed. She’d done it in anger to punish him. She’d rather die than make that kind of mistake again. Zeke felt like she’d turned from him over and over. There was no way he could trust she’d come for him after having told her to run.
That knowledge cut so deep, her eyes burned, and she tried to barf up a lung.
Hold on, Zeke, hold on. She got out of the truck and opened the barn doors. Once she cleared the territory around the settlement, she pointed the truck in the broad direction of the canyon and laid on the gas, driving into the middle of the night with no moon to speak of.
It got cold in the cab despite having the heat on. Zeke would be freezing but she’d packed a space blanket that would help warm him up. She had to keep thinking about what she would do when she found him because the idea of not finding him was shoved behind the remade partition in her brain.
If he was unconscious, check his airways, place him in recovery position, assess for broken bones and concussion. Call Tres for help.
If he was conscious, give him water, assess his injuries, get him the hell somewhere safe while they waited for the cavalry.
Touch him everywhere, his runner’s legs and dancer’s hips, his soft heart in his strong chest, his capable shoulders that never failed to support her. Tell him everything about how she felt, how it was real and right, and they were both ready to be together.
Put her cheek against his and breathe him in, say the words she should have always known to shout aloud. Love him and never let him doubt.
Never let him go.
An hour bled into ninety minutes at the wheel and her eyes were stinging from peering through the high beam, scanning for any sign of movement of life that wasn’t a part of the desert.
At the two-hour mark, with no mileage left on the clock and finally in sight of the canyon, after taking a wrong turn somewhere, she cut the engine and got out to scout on foot. If Zeke was injured, and on the ground, she might drive past him. Flashlight in hand she shouted for him, heart in mouth she yearned for him. If there was a way to locate him by the pull of their unspoken love alone, she’d find it.
And all the while that partition in her brain threatened to shatter. All that separated rational Aurora Rae working a search and rescue scene from freaking the fuck out because she might’ve lost the love of her life before she’d had the chance to be honestly, completely with him, was her professionalism—and it was cracked and split, stretched veneer thin.
She took a deep breath, pulled the night air into her lungs and let it mix with all the longing and lust and need she felt and then she shouted at the moonless sky and the mocking stars.
