The Escape (10 page)

“Pick up a gun, Clarissa,” Barker said, and she did, but she held it pointed to the ground instead of at Roy.

“We should take him with us,” Jenna said quietly. “If the soldiers find him, they’ll get him to tell them where we went.”

“Do you really think they’ll find their way all the way up here?”

“I don’t know. But there was a reason you didn’t want us parking that truck here, right? In case they found it.”

“It’s a long shot. It was just . . . a precaution. Is it really worth bringing a potentially dangerous man into our group?” he asked.

“He was friends with your dad, what more do you want?” she asked. “You barely knew me and Clarissa, and yet you took us.”

“Things change, like you said. It’s been a long time, and good men have gone bad since the Pulse. Good men, good women . . . We’ve done bad things. He was ready to hurt Clarissa to save his life. We can’t forget that, even if he knew my dad.”

“And you, once upon a time.”

“I was just a stupid kid back then.”

Jenna’s blue eyes looked up at him. God, she was so beautiful, even covered in dirt and grime and blood from the men she’d helped him kill. She was so strong, so fearless. If she wasn’t concerned about Roy, why should he be?

But still, the idea of putting her in danger turned his stomach.

“There’s a very good possibility that the Colonel will send more soldiers looking for us, especially after what we did,” she said. “We weren’t planning on staying at the marina. We planned on setting sail as soon as we got here, getting away. Fast.”

“I need to check under the boat. See if he was telling the truth about the damage. If he was, then . . . then we can take him. Okay?”

Jenna smiled and kissed his cheek. “Okay.”

They boarded the boat again, and Clarissa glanced at Jenna, an unspoken question hanging in the air.

“I have to check some things,” Barker said, and he stepped past Roy and down into the cabin. It looked different from how he remembered it. It no longer held the comforting memories of his childhood. Instead, Roy’s presence was everywhere. He’d made himself quite at home.

Barker grabbed two life preservers and came back up to the deck.

“Jenna, hold on to this,” Barker said, handing her one, and putting another on her, strapping it on tightly. “I’ll need you to toss it to me when I ask you to. I’m going in.”

“Put it on first,” she said, confused.

“I have to check under the hull and I can’t do that with a flotation device.”

Barker stepped off the boat and onto the dock, and then took his boots off, leaving them on the wooden planks. He’d go in with his clothes on, since they needed to be cleaned anyway. He had fresh clothes in the pack. His head had stopped bleeding, so he unpeeled the bandage.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Jenna said, as if reading his mind. “Just a big scrape.”

“I got lucky.”

Before he could change his mind, he jumped in. The water hit him like a wall of ice, making him gasp as his lungs constricted.

He waited until he’d adjusted to the first shock of the water before he ducked his head under, the coldness nullifying the sting from his scalp wound. Barker felt along the bottom of the hull until he reached the rudder at the stern. It wasn’t just broken, it was completely crushed, as if someone had dragged the boat onto shore and knocked the whole thing off.

He stuck his head up for a breath and went back under, finding the keel with his hands, and feeling for the centerboard under the boat. His breath was tight, and he needed air.

The centerboard was destroyed as well. Just like Roy had said.

Barker kicked his way back to the stern and took a breath at the surface, the water chilling him to the bone.

“Roy was telling the truth. The boat’s fucked up,” Barker called. Understatement of the year.

He didn’t need the life vest after all. Instead, he climbed back onto the dock, and lay there for a moment, catching his breath.

“I want to go in, too,” Jenna said.

“No, you don’t. It’s too cold. You’d be better off grabbing a bucket of water and washing with it,” Barker said.

Jenna tossed him the life vest. “I’m going in. Please save me if I start to drown.”

He watched in amazement as she stepped off the boat onto the wooden dock, kicked off her shoes, and jumped into the freezing water below.

“Holy shit, you
weren’t kidding!” Jenna screamed when she hit the icy water.

“Do you need help?” Barker asked.

“Gimme a moment.” Jenna had to get the blood off of her. Ever since she’d killed those men, the scent of their blood had lingered on her, haunting her.

She dipped her head back, letting the cold water rush through her hair, rinsing it, cleansing it.

If only the water could clean away the guilt she felt, despite knowing, logically, that it was a kill-or-be-killed world now.

She took a deep breath and put her face in the water, rubbing her hands over her skin, getting herself as clean as possible.

“Okay, get me outta here,” Jenna gasped, and she reached up for the dock.

Barker helped pull her up, his muscles standing out in his soaking-wet clothing.

Her nipples tightened in the cold, beading under her shirt. “We better get changed. Clarissa,” she said, “are you okay up here with Roy? Barker and I need to change our clothes in the cabin.”

“Well, Roy?” Clarissa asked. “Am I okay?”

Roy smiled for the first time since they discovered him, revealing straight, white teeth. “Yes.”

“How do I know?”

“I’m going to sit over there,” Roy said, pointing to the cockpit at the bow of the boat. “There’s cushioned seats if you want to join me. You can bring the gun, if you want. I’m unarmed.”

“I’ll take the rest of the guns and supplies down into the cabin with us,” Barker said.

“Tell me, Barker, do I trust this man?” Clarissa asked, looking down at the gun in her hand, her finger held cautiously outside the trigger guard. “Do you?”

Jenna looked over at Barker. If Barker wasn’t comfortable leaving one of them alone with the man, there would be no point in taking him along with them. And after what they’d experienced that morning with Lanche’s soldiers, they needed another set of hands.

Because at some point, you had to trust someone. How else could America rebuild, if every survivor just shot each other on sight?

Do I trust him?
The question whirled in Barker’s brain like a mantra.

If he answered yes, and Roy turned out to have changed for the worse since the Pulse, turned out to be a bad guy, then he would have sacrificed Jenna’s and Clarissa’s safety for loyalty to his father’s memory. Losing Jenna—God,
losing Jenna
—nothing was worth that.

But if Roy Nolan was still a good man then leaving him behind wasn’t right. And then Barker would be sacrificing all of their own security by refusing to bring on an able-bodied man, one who was ready to kill to protect. He’d certainly proven that, even if his territoriality was misdirected.

Barker thought about the damaged boat Roy had told the truth about, about the many times, so many years ago, when Roy Nolan and his dad would stop and chat on the docks while Barker ran ahead so he could get the
Marjorie
ready to sail.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I trust him.”

Clarissa nodded, and followed Roy to the built-in bench seating at the bow.

Jenna started picking up all of their supplies and the rest of the guns and ammo and tossing it down the stairs into the cabin. Barker followed suit, but kept one rifle in his hands.

“Let’s go,” Barker said.

To his surprise, he heard light conversation coming from the cockpit.
Roy Nolan always was good for the small talk
, he mused. He could even take a girl hostage one minute and have her laughing the next. Amazing.

“I’m freezing in these wet clothes,” Jenna said, rubbing her arms as she descended the few stairs down into the cabin. “Wow. It’s like a little house in here!”

“More like a trailer than a house, but yeah, I suppose it is,” Barker said. “Stateroom is down there,” he said, pointing to the forward cabin. “That’s where my parents used to bunk.” He pointed to the smaller quarter berth hidden away near the port side. “And that’s where I’d sleep.”

“It’s like fancy camping,” Jenna laughed. She grabbed one of the packs and unzipped it. “I’m gonna have to wear men’s camo, apparently,” she said in dismay.

“You’d look good in anything.” Barker grinned and pulled her wet shirt off, so drenched it clung to her skin, her nipples visible beneath the fabric.

“Think we have time?” she asked breathlessly, and pressed her body against his, unbuttoning his wet uniform as she spoke.

Clarissa’s light laughter sounded from above, and Barker raised his eyebrows. “I think she’s forgiven him. And she’s got the gun. We’re only a few feet away, after all . . .”

He wrapped his arms around her, clasping her to him, unable to remove their wet clothing fast enough for his desire. Jenna’s mouth was hot, her lips warming every spot of skin they covered, kissing, licking, caressing.

“Is this weird?” she whispered. “To want to have sex, after everything that’s happened?”

“Hey,” he said, tilting her chin up so she looked into his eyes. “When we’re together, when we enjoy each other like this, that’s all we’ve got. This is the only part of my life right now that makes everything else worth it.”

She smiled. “Let’s go to the bed. Berth. Whatever you call it on a boat.”

He couldn’t stop kissing her, couldn’t keep his hands off her luscious body, and they banged into every piece of furniture in the small space on their way to the bed.

The queen-sized mattress took up almost the whole room. He bent her over the mattress, not caring that this was probably where Roy had been sleeping. Not even caring that Roy and Clarissa were, at this moment, right above them.

“Fuck yeah,” Jenna gasped, as he reached around and found her clit, rubbing the little nub until it swelled under his touch.

“Are you ready for me?” he asked, positioning himself between her legs. “I don’t think I can hold back.”

“Fuck me, please, fuck me, I need it too,” she whispered, arching her back, pushing her round ass up, until he pressed his cock into her pussy, pushing slowly, mindful of his size.

She moaned, and gripped the wrinkled bedsheets, and the sound urged him on. He thrust inside her again, and again, keeping a steady rhythm with his hand on her clit.

Her hips circled, as if she wanted to both meet his thrusting cock and grind against his fingers all at the same time. He collapsed on top of her back, pinning her to the bed with his hand still on her clit, so there was no more wiggle room.

Now he could ram himself into her and play with her pussy as hard as he wanted to, as hard as she needed it.

“Fuck, fuck, oh my God,” she moaned with pleasure. “You’re killing me, Barker, don’t stop.”

But her words brought on his climax, and he came hard, grunting, biting back a scream of ecstasy as his come spilled down her legs. He kept rubbing her clit, though, waiting for that sound, that sound she made when she came.

Jenna buried her face in the mattress to muffle her cries, her entire body spasming under him.

“Think they heard us?” she asked softly.

Barker laughed. “Yeah.” He helped her up, using her sea-drenched underwear to wipe up his seed from her thighs.

“Thanks for warming me up,” she said. She grinned at him.

He felt her arms, which had been freezing and covered in goose bumps when they first entered the cabin. “You warmed me up too.”

They walked back to the galley naked, and pulled fresh clothes out of the packs. The pants fit Barker all right only after he tightened the belt, but the shirt fit well.

Jenna put on the man’s camo pants and rolled the top over several times until it stayed on her hips, and rolled the pants legs up. The T-shirt was large on her, except for over her breasts, which seemed to stretch the material. She tucked the shirt in, which showed off her feminine waist, and pulled on one of the long-sleeved camo button-downs, leaving it open.

“You look like GI Jane,” Barker said.

She sighed. “Wish we didn’t have to dress like soldiers. Anyone we meet is going to think we’re out to get them.”

It was a good point. “We’ll keep an eye out for civilian clothes.”

“If I were GI Jane I’d have to shave my head too, like in that movie,” Jenna said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Then we’d be twins.” He laughed and touched his own shaved head, wincing when his fingers grazed the scrape across his scalp where the bullet had whizzed by. “But I’m gonna grow this out. I miss my hair.”

“What’s your hair look like, when it’s not shaved, I mean?”

“Dark. Straight. Plain old hair, I guess. Nothing special, not like yours,” he said, running his fingers through her damp locks, carefully detangling them.

“Or Clarissa’s,” Jenna said.

Barker shrugged, as if Clarissa’s flaming red hair hadn’t even occurred to him as being special. It almost sounded like Jenna was a little jealous.

“Speaking of, let’s go make sure everything’s okay. We’ve been down here longer than we should have been.”

Jenna laughed. “We were warming up. It’s totally a valid use of time.”

Up on deck,
Jenna peeked over at Roy and Clarissa, who were sitting and talking.

But Clarissa still kept her gun in her hand, resting on her lap. Apparently the recent memory of Roy’s hand on her throat hadn’t left her so easily.

Jenna had her rifle slung around her body too. She’d helped Barker carry the guns and supplies back out of the cabin, so they were always in sight.

“You know,” Roy said, “now that I’m around people again, I should probably make myself presentable.” He ran his hand over his facial hair. “Do you guys mind if I go down and shave?”

Jenna shrugged.

“Maybe I could come with you,” Barker said. “I want to talk about my parents.”

An uncertain look passed over Roy’s face. “Sure.”

Jenna opted against taking Roy’s seat when he stood, and instead sat next to Clarissa.