Chapter 24

Chapter

Twenty-Four

GRACE

T he flight lasted a couple of hours then we were descending. I had no idea where we’d flown. Wherever was two hours from where we’d been. I was pretty sure we’d crossed the Continental Divide though, and it seemed a lot closer than when we flew past it in a jumbo jet.

Landing was a lot bumpier than I cared for. While Bones had let go of my hand after a while earlier, he held it out to me when I was white knuckling my knees. I wasn’t too proud to refuse the offer. I held on tight to him until we were taxiing through a new, tiny airport.

I was pretty sure I left my heart up in the air somewhere. Bones gave my hand a squeeze before he let it go once the plane stopped. Then the doors were opening and the guys climbed out. Goblin followed Alphabet when the man whistled.

On shaky legs, I pushed out of the seat after I unlatched the buckle. Voodoo waited for me at the door and he lifted me right out and onto my feet. I held onto Voodoo when he would have released me.

“Need a sec,” I told him. The racing pulse and shallow breathing wasn’t helping. He didn’t move as I held onto his arm. The rubbery feeling in my legs didn’t just go away.

“You good, Gracie?” Lunchbox frowned at me. “If you were sick you should have said something.”

“She’s not sick,” Voodoo answered before I could. “Back off, and let her catch her breath. She just needed a minute.”

The air around them charged as Lunchbox shifted his attention from me to Voodoo. All the things they weren’t saying swirled around them and I forced myself to let go of Voodoo. The last thing I needed was to trigger a fight between all of them.

My gaze landed on Bones where he stood, sunglasses in place, and his face unreadable. “Lunchbox, get the gear and stow the plane. Alphabet, go get the car. Voodoo…”

“I’m fine right here,” he said.

“Wasn’t going to send you away,” Bones responded in a dry as hell tone. “Give Miss Black a hand. She could probably use a slow walk before we put her in another vehicle.”

“Actually,” I said, blowing out a ragged breath. “That sounds good. I don’t know why I’m off.”

“It’s fine,” Voodoo said. “It happens more than you think. We’ll just take it slow and easy so you can stretch your legs.”

“Thank you,” I murmured as I began to walk slowly. Yeah, I was definitely not steady on my feet. Bit by bit, I was taking deeper breaths and my feet were feeling more firmly connected.

Voodoo let me set the pace and I held his arm most of the way toward what looked like a warehouse. “We’re not going all the way,” he said as he shifted our direction. “Lunchbox is gonna park the plane, but Alphabet got the truck.”

“Okay.” I just let him take the lead. By the time we returned to where Bones waited with the biggest damn Ford truck I’d ever seen, right down to having four damn doors, I shook my head. We would definitely all fit.

“You good to get in?” Voodoo asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” I was feeling better and whatever that wild tightness inside my skin feeling was had passed. Voodoo opened the door and then flat out picked me up again and set me on the step to climb into the truck. “You’re getting way too much fun out of that. I’m short, not infirm.”

At my scold, Voodoo chuckled. “Firecracker, you weigh next to nothing and right now, we want that cut on your back to heal. Any climbing requires grabbing onto something and holding on while you do it.”

I met his gaze when he said “grabbing onto something” and heat flushed through me. I’d had to grab onto him more than once the night before. “Right, I keep trying to forget it’s there.”

“Once it’s better, you can forget all about it. Now, in you go and scoot over to the middle.”

Instead of following me in though, he shut the door then turned to Bones. The intensity between the pair seemed to magnify. While they didn’t look like they were shouting, they definitely seemed like they were disagreeing.

“Hey, Pixie-girl,” Alphabet said and I blinked at him. Goblin sat in the middle of the front seat next to him mouth open in a wide grin that made me want to smile back. “You’re going to be fine. We have another drive, but once we’re back at base, you’re going to be secure and comfortable.”

“You guys keep mentioning that.” Well not really, but it had come up a couple of times. “Where is Base?” Was it a town? Some actual army facility?

“It’s home,” he said. “Once we’re there, we’ll get you settled, you can rest and you can heal.”

“I need to call Amorette.” The driving need to reach out to my sister had kept me going for the past however many days. “We’re going to be somewhere you can get me a secure phone, right? Voodoo was going to and then we got ambushed twice.”

In the grand scheme of things, the ambushes took precedence over everything else. But they’d all said we needed to be secure. If Base was secure, then I could call Amorette.

“We’ll take care of it,” Alphabet said, then the passenger door opened as the two back doors did. Bones slid into the passenger seat while Lunchbox climbed up to sit on one side of me and Voodoo on the other. “Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, sit back, and relax, we’ll be about seventy-five minutes to get to base.

Seventy-five minutes?

“You good?” Lunchbox asked. “I packed a cooler with sandwiches and wraps. I made a couple vegetarian in case you needed something lighter.”

I opened my mouth briefly, then closed it again. “Actually, that sounds great, but I don’t want to eat in the car. Do you have water though?”

“Water. Gatorade. Beer.” Lunchbox reached down and flipped open a cooler.

“Water. Please.”

He passed it to me after cracking it open with a twist. The area outside of the truck was just… raw and beautiful. It was wide open, there were areas of grassy fields and other areas where trees gathered together like they were gossiping.

Ahead of us though was a mountain.

Mountains. Plural.

I kept scanning the area around the truck as the ride lulled me. My eyes kept trying to drift closed, but I would force them back open. I needed to know where we were going.

The last thing I wanted was to be trapped somewhere I didn’t know where we were. Base was secure, I reminded myself. Secure was good.

The drive up the mountain was long and winding, we didn’t pass many places along the way but when we flattened out again, I was leaning forward to try to see more.

“Come here, Firecracker.” Voodoo unsnapped my seatbelt and lifted me, then he set me in his lap. “Better view from here.”

He wasn’t lying, the view was incredible. What I didn’t see any of were other houses, stores, or frankly people . I didn’t even see other cars. What was up here?

“Dude, not safe,” Lunchbox muttered.

“We’re fine,” Voodoo said, dismissing him.

Then we were coming around a curb and my breath caught in my throat. It was a huge valley spread out below, but the land rippled with hills and more as it led to another mountain and another.

“Welcome to the Crazy Mountains, Gracie,” Lunchbox said and I swung my gaze back to the mountains again.

“Do I want to know why they are called that?”

“Maybe,” Lunchbox said. “We’ll tell you the story later.” The valley disappeared around another curb, then the road kind of flattened out, leading us straight to somewhere.

So weird, we hadn’t seen a single other car. Maybe it was some kind of military base. Didn’t they take huge tracts up? That seemed reasonable.

It wasn’t until they slowed that I realized there was a huge gate in front of us. Alphabet hit a remote that was pinned to the sun visor. The gate opened smoothly and then we were passing through.

The drive to get to “Base” was another eight minutes, but we weren’t racing up the road. A house appeared in the distance. It was a big sprawling rambler style with a fat porch, railings and an overhang. There were empty paddocks off to the side near a barn.

Everything was a cherry-colored red wood—maybe an oak. It was like the house itself had been constructed as a log mansion rather than a cabin. It was incredible. I didn’t get long to gawk at it before we were pulling into the garage.

It was one of the larger ones I’d ever seen. There were four other vehicles, not counting the one we were in already, parked inside. A pair of motorcycles were parked at the front. A third one, maybe, but it was under a tarp. The sunlight vanished as the door closed behind us and left us in shadows. The overhead was a yellowy light.

“One sec,” Alphabet said and he had his phone out. No one moved to exit as he checked something on his phone. The light above us brightened and there was a panel on the wall that went from all red to all green.

The doors opened at once. Bones and Lunchbox were out. Lunchbox circled around to help me down. Voodoo handed me over like some damn package.

I could laugh or I could cry about it, so I just decided to laugh. Once I was on my feet again, I stretched my legs and fought the urge to stretch my arms and back. At the moment, that would just cause pain. Alphabet was out and he and Goblin were at the backdoor.

Bones, Lunchbox, and Voodoo had all grabbed bags and the cooler, then they were motioning me to follow Alphabet. It was two short steps up into the house.

The cherry wood extended to the interior floors. There were also fat, thick rugs in varying shades of browns, creams, and reds decorating the hall. I turned out from what had to be a mudroom to find a huge kitchen with a pair of double ovens, a massive farmhouse sink, and a bowl of fruit.

The bananas were beginning to go a little brown, so they were real. For some reason, the bowl of fruit struck me as odd. I couldn’t quite figure that one out. Goblin trotted after Alphabet as he made his way through the kitchen to a sunken living room. The windows here stretched all the way up to the second floor ceiling. The space was massive.

The view was just incredible.

“Come on in and make yourself comfortable. Plenty of space. We’ll get the gear distributed and I expect Lunchbox will want to start on dinner. But I can make you coffee if you want? Or more water?”

It took real effort to glance away from the view to turn and look at Alphabet. He stood near the steps that led back up to the kitchen, his expression assessing. Goblin had sat down right next to him.

Voodoo passed through and then headed up the stairs with two of the bags, followed by Bones with the third bag. Lunchbox was in the kitchen washing his hands.

“Yes, I do want to make dinner. I’ve got some ideas I’ve been wanting to try out.” He flashed a grin at me. “You like chicken, right?”

“Um, yes.”

“Fantastic, so we’ll do some Chicken Piccata, maybe a little garlic butter pasta—fettuccine I think. Garlic bread. Maybe some grilled broccoli or brussel sprouts. Have to see what looks good.”

That was a lot of food. But he was already on the move hustling around the kitchen.

“I’m going to get a little work done,” Alphabet said. “There are remotes there on the table for the tv if you want. We don’t get local networks, but we have tons of movies and shows downloaded. Help yourself.”

“I want to call my sister.”

Alphabet paused and then he looked to the kitchen and when I followed his stare, I found Lunchbox watching us. His gaze shifted and a sound on the steps alerted me to Bones and Voodoo descending again.

“You said when we were secure, you’d get me a phone so I could call her. We’re secure here, right?”

The longer it took them to answer, the uneasier I grew.

I shot a look at Voodoo. “You promised.”

“I know, Firecracker. I did.”

“But he can’t keep the promise,” Bones said. “None of us can. So, do what Alphabet said, get some rest. We need to debrief and then we can get to work.”

Anger struck a match inside of me as Bones began to walk away. I seized the nearest thing, ignoring the twinge in my back, and flung it at him.