Fever (10 page)
Authors: Joan Swan
What now? Her brain wasn’t working. Couldn’t ever remember being so panicked. So damned scared.
Get yourself together, Alyssa.
Alyssa took one long, steady inhalation to quell her nerves. The pungent scent of eucalyptus cleared her head and invigorated her system. She couldn’t say she’d been through worse, but she could get through this. She didn’t have a choice, did she?
Careful to keep her hands out in front of her, she dodged trees as she made her way ... somewhere.
Just keep going. Just keep going.
An arm wrapped around her waist from behind.
“No!” She pried at his fingers, elbowed at his arm. Her wound tore and burned and stabbed. “Let me go.
Let me go!
”
Let me go!
”
Her mind flashed with violent images. Knives, fists, teeth, blood. She twisted out of his grip and ran. Harder. Faster.
Creek came after her again. Caught her again. This time his momentum took them airborne. When they hit the ground, the blunt force ripped through her from shoulders to knees. Pain swallowed her whole. She rolled onto her side and curled into a ball, unable to draw air. When her lungs kicked in, the expansion of her chest stabbed pain through her torso.
“Goddammit, Hannah.” Creek knelt over her, his hands pulling at her shirt. “Why do you have to make this so impossible? Lie flat. Hold still. Let me check your stitches.”
She blocked his hands, panting through the pain. “Don’t you dare ... touch me with ... all that blood ... on your hands.”
He stopped probing and sat back on his heels, chest heaving with hard, fast breaths. “You’re right.” He swiped at his face with his forearm. “You’re right.”
Fresh fear had her hands digging into the earth beneath her. She pushed herself into a sitting position and scuttled away from Creek. “You ... you ... Did you kill him? Is he d-dead?”
Creek’s eyes darted around the darkness. “We have to get out of here before someone finds him.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my
God
. You did. You
killed
him.”
God
. You did. You
killed
him.”
Creek’s hand snaked out and grabbed her ankle. “We don’t have time for you to freak out.”
She kicked her foot from his grasp and tried to crawl away. He yanked her back, dragging her along the rough ground until she lay at his feet. With one click he’d connected the dangling cuff to her free hand, imprisoning her once again.
“If you’d just do what I tell you to do, if you’d just keep your damn mouth shut, this never would have happened.”
Creek lifted her into his arms, quickly and easily, but not gently. The movement sent another slice of pain through her belly. She slapped a hand at his face, but didn’t have any strength behind the hit, and Creek simply shook her off with a growl. He was on fire, his body as hot as she’d ever felt it, burning through clothes and along her own skin.
When they reached the truck, he dropped her feet to the ground and fisted the back of her shirt. He lifted the rear door of the truck with one hand and shoved her in with the other. Her knees hit the metal floor. Her hands followed. The door clamored down, then slammed shut.
Alyssa collapsed onto the cold surface beneath her, torn between relief and fear. The space was completely black. No light eked in from beneath the door. She slithered to the side of the truck and put her cheek against the cool wall, catching her breath.
Taz’s face drifted into her mind. Then Teague’s words. Maybe she should have known better than to antagonize Taz as she had, but that wasn’t why the scum was dead. He was dead because Teague had a deep, compulsive urge to protect.
He doesn’t need you like I do.
More than ever she wanted to know what it was about this Kat woman that drove Creek to such lengths and what possible leverage Hannah could have over this Luke guy. Why didn’t Creek just run? Cross the border and disappear, for Christ’s sake? And why would Creek want Kat if he knew she’d been with Luke? Why would he want to be with a woman who would want a man who, by Teague’s own admission, jumped from woman to woman?
Alyssa just didn’t get it.
The truck’s engine ground, coughed and kicked over, and all Alyssa’s wondering faded. All that mattered was getting away. Getting out of this alive.
The metal rumbled beneath her as the truck moved backwards. She worked herself into a corner, bracing her back on the walls, her feet on the floor and found some stability.
With her elbows settled on her knees, Alyssa rested her head in her hands as morbid thoughts traipsed through her mind. Maybe he was taking her to some remote location to kill her and dump her. Maybe he would abandon the truck somewhere and leave her inside to suffocate or starve to death.
She tortured herself for at least another twenty minutes with similar ideas before the truck slowed and turned. Alyssa lifted her head, and listened. The engine cut out and the driver’s side door slammed. Her heart pounded harder in her chest. Her muscles tightened.
A loud click sounded at the back door, then the metal rolled up with an ear-ripping screech. Creek stood silhouetted at the opening.
“Get out.” His voice was a low, flat void, as dark as the landscape at his back.
Los Banos had been a metropolis compared to this place. She couldn’t even call it a town. A handful of lights shone in the distance, broken by miles and miles of dark as far as she could see, the night air thick with the pungent odor of fertile farmland.
Cautiously, Alyssa scooted toward the door on her butt and paused at the end of the truck bed with her legs hanging over the edge. They’d stopped in some kind of parking lot. Dim lights dotted the small space and across the asphalt, a flashing neon light signaled: VACANCY.
Another motel.
“Where are we?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Creek reached for her hands, stuck the key in the lock and popped the metal open. This time she didn’t feel any sense of hope, only fear for what would come next.
Without looking her in the eye, he wiped blood off her arm with the bottom of his T-shirt. And his hands were shaking.
His fingers slid around her upper arm and bit into muscle as he walked her toward a small room at the front of the motel labeled OFFICE. At least his body temperature had returned to something closer to human. “You’re going to get a room. One room, Hannah. Do you understand me?”
No, she didn’t understand him. She didn’t want to understand him. She also didn’t want to get a room. “Why are we here?”
“Because I can’t stand this blood on me another fucking minute.” He pulled her alongside the office door, where warm light poured through the glass, and shoved cash into her hand. With his eyes directly on hers he said, “I’ll be watching. If that desk clerk picks up a phone or looks the least bit confused or shocked by something you say to him, I’ll walk in and shoot him in the face, right in front of your eyes. Got it?”
She considered arguing with him, but there was something in his eyes, something determined and desperate and dangerous. Alyssa turned and put her hand on the doorknob.
“Hannah,” he said from the shadows. “Don’t fuck this up.”
She took a deep breath, pulled open the door and stepped inside. A bell tinkled over her head. The front desk stood empty, but a television played somewhere in an adjacent room.
“Yeah, yeah. Just a minute.” The grouchy voice emerged from the same direction as the television monologue.
A woman came through the doorway of what appeared to be a break room. She looked about as well cared for as this shack of a motel. And about as old, too. Alyssa had to fight the urge to look over her shoulder to see if Creek was really watching. The thought of taking a chance terrified her, yet her instincts screamed to ask for a phone.
She was trying to think of a way to do that when a young boy wandered out of the other room. Straight, dark hair, big, dark eyes, round little face. About eight years old.
I’ll walk in and shoot him in the face, right in front of your eyes.
Thoughts of crossing Creek evaporated, along with the remaining sliver of Alyssa’s hope.
“Can I get a room for the night?” Alyssa’s voice didn’t sound like her own. Deep and rusty and flat. “Two beds please.”
“Grandma.” The little boy tugged on the woman’s arm. “I’m hungry.”
“Two beds? Who the hell ever wants two beds?” The woman reached for a key on a hook by the register. “All the rooms got one bed. Take it or leave it.”
She’d like to leave it, but one more look at the little boy and she realized that wasn’t an option. The idea of taking two rooms separately was completely out of the question. Creek would never let her out of his sight.
“Do you have roll-a-ways?” Alyssa asked.
“What does this look like? A Motel Six? Make up your mind, lady. I got a hungry kid here.”
“Fine. How much?”
“Sixty-two including tax. Pay now.”
Alyssa paid and took the key. As soon as she stepped out of the office door, Creek skulked out of the shadows and grabbed her arm. One cuff clicked on, then the other. He took the key from her hands and led her toward a row of rooms.
“Wait,” she said, “let me get the Gatorade from the truck. I’m dying of thirst.”
“I’ll get it. You’re not in any condition to carry anything.”
A black number three stared at Alyssa as Creek unlocked the door. He pushed it open and shoved her inside, then dragged her toward the bed and yanked on her arm.
“Sit,” he instructed.
“You treat me like a dog.”
“A five-year-old or a dog? Which is it?”
“Both.” Alyssa perched herself on the edge of the bed and peered around the sparse, dingy room. Creek uncuffed one of her hands and closed the free metal around a lamp base secured to the nightstand. “Don’t make a sound. Anyone who comes in here to help you will end up just like Taz. I’ll be back in sixty seconds.”
Creek’s footsteps crunched on the asphalt, then slowly faded. Obviously screaming was out of the question. She couldn’t risk him following through on his threat. But whatever she did, she had to do fast. Fifteen of her sixty seconds were gone.
Alyssa’s gaze honed in on a phone sitting atop a dresser ten feet away. She held her breath against the pain and stretched the distance allowed by the cuffs, reaching for it, but came up four feet short. Neither the nightstand nor the lamp budged. She braced her feet on the floor for leverage, brought her other arm around, curled her fingers through the cuff and pulled.
Pain stretched through her side. The metal lamp base bent. Just a fraction of an inch. The effort made fresh sweat slick Alyssa’s face. She gritted her teeth, refastened her fingers on the cuffs and pulled again. The metal groaned as it bent a little more.
Alyssa tried for the phone again. Managed to catch the spiraled cord between her fingers. Yanked the receiver off the base. It hit the floor with a
kerplunk
just as the door to the room swung open again.
kerplunk
just as the door to the room swung open again.
“Goddammit.” Creek dropped two armfuls of supplies on the floor and kicked the door closed. “Can’t you hold still or shut up for one minute?”
Alyssa recoiled as Creek picked up the receiver and slammed it back onto the base, then raked his fingers across his head and paced. She watched every step, her emotions toggling between fear, anger, guilt, frustration and empathy.
Without warning, Creek swung around and approached her. In automatic defense, Alyssa’s hand came up. But he didn’t strike. He released the cuff around the lamp and pulled her into the bathroom. Her heart rate spiked again as his angry gaze scoured the small space. With a hand on her shoulder, he pushed her to sit on the closed toilet lid and dragged the free cuff below the sink. The ratchet of metal signaled its closure around an exposed drainpipe.
“What are you doing?” She twisted her wrist against the metal, trying to position her body to alleviate the strain on her side.
Creek stripped off his shirt, balled it up and chucked it into the corner, then pushed the curtain aside on the shower / tub combination and bent to flip on the faucet. The muscles beneath his skin flexed and rolled. That’s when a fresh form of anxiety wedged in. She couldn’t sit here and watch him get naked and shower. She really couldn’t.
“I can’t sit like this,” she complained, hoping to play on the sympathies she’d seen. “It hurts my side.”
Without acknowledging her, he moved his hands to his waist, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans and shucked them so fast Alyssa didn’t have time to look away. And, okay, yeah, maybe she could sit here and watch after all.
He wore burgundy boxer briefs that clung to his muscular ass. He was tan everywhere but for a pale line mid thigh where he’d obviously worn shorts. She could swear every muscle was outlined in perfect relief. Her gaze traveled over the lines and dips and swells and curves. God, he was beautiful.
A beautiful, racist, murdering, escaped convict.
Alyssa grimaced. Before he took off his underwear and Alyssa lost her last shred of human decency and ogled the beautiful, racist, murdering, escaped convict, she laid her elbow on the edge of the sink and pressed her eyes to her forearm. “Why couldn’t you just leave me in the other room?”
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