25 Ford

Ford

“Reed, I don’t know what to do,” I admitted as I raced down the narrow dirt trail, leaving Austin’s house half-covered in flames behind us.

I’d given Reed the quickest rundown of what had just happened, clearly ending the whole thing sounding completely at a loss at what to do next.

Austin was in the passenger seat, head bobbing like he was struggling to hold onto consciousness but failing hard. I thought it wasn’t a good idea to let someone with a concussion sleep, but what the fuck could I do about it right now? It was a bit of a tight situation, The house was going down in flames and we’d killed more people than I wanted to think about. We were in a stolen vehicle and had nothing, again.

How had this become my life on repeat?

This phone I was on wasn’t the one we’d been using. I knew we had to ditch that one. Our location was compromised. The phone was compromised. I thought we were fucked. That was until I found another phone on Austin’s unconscious body while patting him down for the original one. There had only been one contact added, and instead of a name, the number two was used. When I checked the call log, I’d found it empty, which either meant the phone had never been used or he’d deleted it. Who knew? Austin did, but he hadn’t been with it enough for me to question him about it. And I had so many questions.

I had no other choice but to use it, and was grateful for my memory when it came to numbers. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to call Reed. With Austin currently down at the moment, Reed was the one thread holding me together.

I was sure Reed also had some questions when I’d called him from it. Or maybe he knew about the phone and why Austin had it. Then again, it was customary to switch phones a lot when you tended to work in the shadow of good, so to speak. Vigilante justice wasn’t exactly cool when it came to the eyes of the law.

Honestly, the whole thing left me feeling shaky. I didn’t think Austin had outright lied to me since we’d been… together in the sense of being on the run, but this felt like there was something big he was hiding. I just hoped I was wrong. Hoped I was letting paranoia get to me because of the situation.

“Were they FBI?” Reed asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

“No,” I said. “Mercenaries, I believe. Likely sent by Lipton, but I can’t confirm it.

“The guy didn’t say?”

“No. He didn’t seem to know much.” I sighed in frustration. He made it seem like Violet had given up my location, but I refused to believe it. There had to be something else. “I think Lipton’s plan is to have me killed so I can never defend myself. I won’t be able to tell anyone I’m innocent.”

How the hell did Lipton know where to find us? That was the one question burning in my head. Violet hadn’t sold me out, there was no way. But I had to admit, it was hard to think of how else Lipton knew where I was.

“Shit,” he swore under his breath. “This is bad.”

“I agree,” I said flatly. “But right now, I’m worried about Austin.”

“I’ve got a safe house outside Memphis. It looks like it will take you about eleven hours to get there. Do you think you can make it to Tennessee?”

I chanced a glance at Austin. We didn’t have any other options.

“Yeah,” I told Reed.

The air sat heavy around me as a moment of silence stretched out between us.

“The guy didn’t have any idea where to find Lipton?”

“No. And I believe he didn’t know much. He wasn’t the one running the team.” I blew out a long breath. “He pretty much shut his mouth and accepted his fate.” Saying it like that made a knot form in my stomach. I was never eager to kill or hurt anyone, and when I had no other choice, it stayed with me long after.

“Do you… know where he might be?” Reed asked, the hesitation in his voice ringing out like an alarm. But I wasn’t mad at him for asking. I knew he wasn’t accusing me of anything.

His question gave me pause.

Did I?

Lipton had been fooling me for years, but that didn’t mean I was clueless about him.

I’d been to his house. I knew his family. I knew his hobbies. I knew his habits.

Shit, why hadn’t I thought about it before?

“You don’t think he’d be somewhere that I know about?” I asked back because I couldn’t believe it would be that easy. The fucker couldn’t have been hiding right under my nose while I was running for my life, could he?

“You tell me,” Reed said.

I was silent for a long time.

“Listen,” he cut in, clearly taking the silence for what it was— confusion and exhaustion, “you head to the safe house. Some of the team and I will meet you out there. I’ll bring Dune to look over the two of you just to be on the safe side, and we’ll figure this out.”

“Yeah,” I said, voice a bit raspy. I was choked up with too many emotions.

I was angry about being betrayed by someone I thought was like family to me. But here I had Reed, ready to have my back even when I didn’t expect him to. Looking out for me as well as his team. He was more like family than Lipton had ever been. Reed wouldn’t ever lie to me. He was truly a good person.

“Thanks,” I said. “Send me the address.”

“Will do. See you soon,” he said and ended the call.

I sighed as I sagged back in the seat. Both hands still had a death grip on the wheel, and I didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

My mind spun. I was leaving behind a burning house and a bunch of bodies. Likely mercenaries, but still. With the recent snow, I was almost positive the fire would be contained to the house, and once it burned itself out, that would be it.

All we had was what I’d raided off the dead people, which hadn’t been much. They must have not been the type to used debit cards because I had gotten a little over three hundred dollars in cash off them. I’d also found an opened pack of gum. Not to mention all the weapons. Taking their stuff felt like a really shitty thing to do, but I had no damn choice. I hoped that when Austin woke up and found out what I did, he wouldn’t hate me. I was reaching new lows being on the run. Nothing was making me think otherwise. Not even when I reminded myself they were horrible human beings, and tried to convince myself that they’d probably killed more people than we had tonight.

Could I ever come back from this?

I reached the end of the dirt road and stopped. I had no idea which direction I was going.

I didn’t really want to use the phone, especially not for directions. Did I think Austin wasn’t trustworthy? No. I trusted him. But there was a little nagging voice in the back of my head whispering that this was bigger than a backup phone. The weight of it and all the unanswered questions hung thick in the air.

My eyes cut across the space, taking in Austin’s limp form. His head was against the window, hands in his lap where I’d put them after I’d buckled him in.

I couldn’t resist the urge to brush the hair off of his forehead. Yeah, it was just an excuse to touch him. It was stupid and silly, but at this point, I didn’t care. Things might change completely when he woke up— when I got some answers. I didn’t want them to, but there was this thing hanging over us and I wouldn’t be able to move forward until I knew why he had this phone.

With a hard sigh, I checked the text Reed had sent, then typed the address in to get directions.

Turn left.

All I had to do was turn left.

Just one turn.

It should have been simple enough.

But my eyes glanced over at Austin again. Did I really want to go on this journey with him? Did I really want to ride in this vehicle while I was teetering on anger’s edge with Austin unconsciously fueling the flames?

What the fuck was I going to do? Leave him on the side of the road and drive off without him?

Of course, I wasn’t going to do that shit.

I turned left.

And tried not to let my irritation grow.

I didn’t trust easily. Neither did Austin. But for some unexplained reason, some magical aligning of the stars, we had been thrown together. He didn’t want to trust me, yet he did. He didn’t want to open up to anyone, but he opened up to me.

There were so many things about him that would have triggered some sort of alarm in my brain, and made me take caution and look at him with a sharper eye.

He was reserved and cocky. Soft with hard edges. Messy and calculated.

Plainly put, he was a disaster. A perfect disaster. A jumble of contradictions put together so elaborately he couldn’t be anything other than beautiful.

Austin was everything I would have stayed away from. But maybe… he was also everything I needed.

The phone started to ring, snatching me from my thoughts.

I answered without even thinking.

“Hello?”

“You’re not Austin,” the voice on the other end said. Male. Young, late teens to early twenties. Thick Southern drawl.

“No, I’m not. He’s… napping. Is it an emergency?” I tried to keep my voice calm. I had to get as much information out of this person without him realizing that was what I was after.

“Uh…” He sounded hesitant. “Have him call me when he gets up.”

“And who am I supposed to say you are?”

“His brother,” he said flatly, which made me cringe. I could tell this wasn’t a call he wanted to be making. In fact, that tone said he’d rather be calling anyone else. He’d rather be anyone elses brother. I hoped some of the edge I’d heard was because he was annoyed that he got me instead of Austin and not so much the other stuff.

“I’ll have him call you when he wakes up,” I assured him.

“Yeah,” he grunted before ending the call.

If Austin’s brother had the number for this phone, it couldn’t have been that he was hiding things and being shady. Logically, that made sense in my head. Or was I trying to convince myself of that because I’d developed feelings for him, deep ones?

I stared at the long stretch of road ahead of me, most of which disappeared at the end of the glow from the headlights.

This was going to be another long day. Well, more like a long night that was going to turn into a long day.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” I whispered.

I drove on, silence my only comfort.