4. Westward Bound

The next morning, Blaze was still perturbed about their choice of destination.

He argued, "A hundred unguarded roads cross into Canada up in New Hampshire and Maine. Once we got to Montréal, Ottawa, or even Toronto, we could go to a US consulate and tell them you lost your passport."

Sarah raised one dark eyebrow at him, the sassy little minx. "But don't you need to have had a recent passport?" she asked. "My passport expired thirteen years ago, when I was ten."

Damn it, yes. "How do you run around at your age without a passport? How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-three."

"Jeez, that explains some things. I probably should've asked you that earlier. But how do you get to be twenty-three and walk around without a passport?"

She glared at him, her dark eyes fathomless pits of calling him a dumbass. "Never wanted to leave Iowa."

"Yeah, but didn't you ever need to—" He trailed off, looking at the cabin's rough-hewn ceiling beams.

"Need to what?" she asked.

Exasperation wound him so much that he waved his hands near his ears. "For work!"

Her dry tone left no question about her disdain for how stupid he was being. "Farming doesn't require a lot of international travel."

"Yeah, but you have to travel to exotic locations, meet new and interesting people, and—"

"And what?"

He grimaced. "—and kill them."

She snorted a laugh. "Nope, that's just you."

"It's just a joke. Well, an aphorism. Look, it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it." Jack Nicholson's speech from A Few Good Men blasted through Blaze's head for the millionth time. "So we can't go anywhere where you need a passport. However, we can covertly cross the Canadian border and stay for a few weeks without detection. Hopefully, Mary Varvara Bell will have forgotten about you by then."

Sarah rolled her eyes at Blaze, and he struggled not to think it was the cutest thing ever.

He also had the inclination to turn her over his knee.

She said, "First of all, with what money? Your friend Twisty drained both of our bank accounts, and you've got to be running low on cash with all those tolls on the toll roads where you have to paythe government money just to drive on the road, plus gas and food. We can't buy our way out of the situation."

"Yeah, but—"

"Second,my father's family forgets nothing. He left New York twenty years before he died, and he and his father never spoke to each other again. From what I gathered, the feud had been going on before that."

"Yeah, but the Malefactor was an asshole," Blaze said.

"Oh, there's more. If you didn't acknowledge someone properly at a dinner party, they would still be pissed off about it a decade later. Maybe their grandkids will still be pissed off at your grandkids a century later."

Blaze inclined his head to the side. "I can see that in Logan."

"Dodging my aunt for a few weeks won't even delay the inevitable," Sarah said. "It will all happen on her timeline no matter what we do."

"Then we'll go to Mexico. Again, lots of unguarded border crossings, and you don't need much money to get along in Mexico."

"If my aunt is who you say she is, surely a White Russian Bratva mob boss would have contacts in Mexico who will whack us."

A pang like homesickness soured into anger in Blaze's chest.

Micah had used the word whack to mean murder when they were in high school, back when the four of them were a squad. "But they will definitely look for you at your farm in Iowa. It's predictable."

"Maybe it's not predictable because we've already been there."

"By that logic, we might as well go to my house in Chicago. It's closer."

Sarah's phone chimed, and she glanced at it.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Nothing important."

His face smoothed to a dangerous focus. "Who was it?"

"Group chat. High school friends in Kalona talking about everything that's going on in Kalona, which makes my point that you don't even know your neighbors. Kalona is my community, so I have intelligence sources on the ground. I'll get the word out that some Easterners want to hurt me. Suspicious-Easterner sightings will be posted in the community forums so fast that we'll be able to track their progress across town like NORAD tracks Santa Claus."

The words jumped out of Blaze's mouth before he knew he was formulating them. "I just want you to be safe! I don't care what happens to me. I don't care what I have to do to make it happen. I just want you somewhere they'll never find or hurt you, and you'll be safe!"

Sarah tilted her head to the side and raised her hand.

Blaze braced himself to be slapped and not respond. He was, after all, sort of holding her hostage.

She cradled his cheek in her palm. "I know, but there is nowhere that's safe. In Kalona, at least I'll have other people around whom I can trust."

"They'll track us."

"They won't. You wiped everything off your phone that might track us, and my phone's so old that most of the apps don't work anymore."

"They'll find out. They'll track us somehow. Social media, maybe."

"We won't get online. I'll tell my friends not to mention me. Several of our high-school friends have gone full-metal prepper, and we aren't allowed to mention their names or even that they exist on social media. My friends won't slip, not after the Easter Dinner Incident of 2021. There was a lot of yellin' after that."

Trepidation swarmed around him. "All right. I guess the better tactical choice is Iowa, then." At least going there was sound military tactics. "You almost sounded like a SEAL Team operator."

Sarah dropped her hand, and her sardonic smile was infuriating. "I read."

After making the bed so tight that a quarter would bounce off the blanket and switching off the well pump, Blaze left a C-note for the owners' trouble in one of the kitchen drawers and packed their few bags into the Vantage's hatchback.

Sarah was already sitting in the passenger seat when he got in. She asked, "Any more dithering about our destination, or should I set the GPS to go to my farm?"

"The plan is to go to Kalona," he affirmed, though reluctantly.

She thumbed his phone, typing in the address. "Even though the plan never survives first contact with the enemy."

"But as Eisenhower said, ‘Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.' So, that's why we plan."

"Right," Sarah snarked. "And we should always do what the military quote tells us to."

Blaze leaned over and caught her chin in his knuckle, dragging her head over so she was looking at him. "Bratting so early in the morning, are we?"

Her warm brown eyes widened. "Um, no?"

"And how do we say that?"

"—No, Sir."

He kissed her until the stiffness left her body.

He almost stripped her pants off, dragged her across the car, and shoved her onto his dick to ride him right there, but they had a sixteen-hour drive ahead of them, halfway across the continent.

So Blaze loosened his arms, and Sarah sat back, her eyes softer. He settled himself down even though his frustrated libido itched under his skin, which was not how a power exchange relationship was supposed to work.

Taking responsibility for any kind of a submissive, even a brat, usually included blow jobs whenever you felt like it. It was quid pro quo for being their executive functioning skills.

And yet here he was, ready to cram his dick in the rotted-out knot of that oak tree over there to get some relief.

To hell with it.

He tightened his fingers in the silky braid on the back of her head and unbuckled his belt. "Change of plans."

Every Dom craved that frightened unease in her eyes, knowing that she would let him make her do it anyway.

The blood left his skull so quickly that dizziness filled the void.

He grated out, "Tell me your safeword, little kitten."

"My safeword is red," she whispered, her small voice breathy.

"And the stop gesture?"

"Hands on my ears."

He unbuttoned his jeans, waiting for two heartbeats in case she used one of those consent revocations, and his cock was already swollen so tight that his skin felt sunburned. "Open your mouth, little kitten."

She did, and Blaze muscled her head across the car and pressed her face over his dick.

The hot wetness of her mouth engulfed him, and her suction pulled more sensation into his erection. Blaze's spine arched, his fist clenching tighter. His thick fingers buried in the darkness of her hair as he lifted and shoved her face down over his cock, her ear just barely missing the steering wheel while her other cheek rubbed against his shirt and abdominals, ramping up the wild energy and concentrating it, the muscles in his lower back and pelvis tightening already.

With just a few more thrusts, the bliss overtook him and spread through his mind and soul, a moment of floating and nothingness, and then his balls pumped and he spurted into her mouth, holding her head down. "That's a good girl. Swallow it all like a good girl."

A few minutes later, Blaze backed the car out of the parking lot in front of the log cabin and drove carefully down the dirt road in the daylight, avoiding the rocks he hadn't been able to see in the dark the night before.

Sarah clung to the door handle and her seatbelt, panting to catch her breath.

Which was also something every Dom craved.

Blaze ground his teeth rather than smirk at how ruined and frustrated she looked. God, that was such a turn-on that his dick was already thickening in his pants again.

A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step, but it also started with resisting the temptation to throw the brat across the hood of the car and fuck her senseless.

Later.

Yes, later, when she was weepy from frustration and bratted so thoroughly that she required correction, then he'd give her what she wanted and deserved.

Blaze stroked his fingertips over the laces of the Vantage's leather-clad steering wheel warmed by the June sun crawling toward the apex of the blue sky, mainly to keep himself from rubbing his hands together like a gleeful cartoon villain.

Being a brat tamer might be more fun than he'd imagined.

As it was late on a Saturday morning, the Manhattan commuters were sleeping or coaching soccer games, so the multi-lane toll roads of upstate New York and New Jersey were comparatively empty, which meant traffic was crowded but not stop-and-slow. Thus, the quickest route was I-287 to New Jersey, west to I-80 near Hanover, and straight on to Iowa.

The phone call came when they were speeding along with the other New Jersey drivers on I-80 near Blairstown.

Vets in Crisisappeared on the Aston Martin's curved dashboard screen.

"That's weird. Answer it," Blaze muttered. "Hello?"

Staff Sergeant Jackson's silken voice, so smooth that it was buttery, emerged from his speakers. "Lieutenant Commander Robinson, I am so sorry to call you, but we have been swamped with clients needing help today. That attack in the Red Sea last night has been all over the news, and of course, it's a weekend."

The only thing worse than the twenty-four-hour bad-news cycle was the damned Fourth of July fireworks that traumatized every battle veteran anew. Some of Blaze's clients rented cabins in the woods situated miles from anywhere for that so-called patriotic weekend.

He said, "I am currently driving, and I am not alone. A civilian passenger without HIPAA standing, counseling training, or a security clearance is in the car with me."

"Damn,"Staff Sergeant Jackson sighed. "What if I got a client to waive those?"

The irregularity of that request cast shivers over Blaze's skin. "That is not within the regulations."

"This person with you, are they reliable? In your opinion, would they be a security risk or likely to violate HIPAA?"

"I am putting you on hold, Staff Sergeant." Blaze tapped the big gray mute button on the car's screen. He told Sarah, "They've never called me with a request like this. They must be getting slammed. Would you be comfortable if I took a phone call or two while I drove?"

She said, "It's fine with me, but isn't counseling supposed to be private?"

"You wouldn't be counseling. You would just be in the car. I agree it's irregular, but this must be an emergency."

Sarah pointed to a green sign speeding past the window. "There's a rest stop in a mile. We can pull over there and switch. That way, you can concentrate on the people you're talking to, and I'll drive."

That was absolutely logical.

Blaze didn't like it at all.

He said, "I counsel people all the time while I'm driving. We don't need to switch."

"But those other times, you probably didn't have another driver with you. It must be safer for someone else to drive so you can concentrate on your clients and their problems. I mean, if you trust me."

It was especially perturbing when the brat was right.

The rest stop exit veered away from the highway, and Blaze drove the car down the ramp to the parking lot and un-muted his phone. "Jackson?"

The staff sergeant's smooth voice held a sarcastic twinge. "Did you talk it over?"

"Yes. She's a US citizen, and I have found her to be trustworthy in every way," he said. "Her character is above reproach."

Sarah's sharp glance at him from the corners of her eyes, defensive like she thought he was making fun of her, struck pain in his heart.

A pause on the phone line. "She, Lieutenant Commander Robinson?"

"Affirmative."

"Why, Blaze, are you in a relationship?"

He didn't dare look at Sarah. "Affirmative, Staff Sergeant, and I assume this conversation is covered by our non-disclosure agreement and HIPAA."

"Mmm-hmm. Of course, it is. Hearts will be breaking, and people will be losing their paychecks on wagers, but I'm sure this conversation is privileged."

Blaze shifted in his seat, not amused in the damn slightest that Sarah was sitting right there in the passenger seat. "That is not reassuring, Staff Sergeant."

"It wasn't meant to be, Lieutenant Commander. How about this: I'll pre-screen the vets on the line, ensuring they understand another person is in your vehicle who is not a volunteer with the VC hotline."

"V-I-C," he muttered, trying to reinforce the compromise the leadership committee had designated as the official abbreviation.

The initials were unfortunate. Vietnam vets often remarked on how it affected their trust. Purposely using a term that disturbed members of their already vulnerable community was a cheap shot.

Staff Sergeant Jackson said, "It's a plan. I'll pre-screen callers to ensure they understand the situation and gain their consent. Hold, please."

Blaze parked the car well away from the other vehicles in the wide parking lot and reconned the area.

The rest stop had a large building with a food court and a gas station. He asked Sarah, "You want anything to eat?"

Sarah was already taking off her seatbelt and reaching for her door handle, and she grinned giddily at him. "I can't believe I finally get to drive your car."

"It's just a car," he called through the interior as her door slammed and she sprinted around the trunk. "Do you want food?"

She was already tugging at his door handle as he unlocked the door and pushed the door open.

"Get-out-get-out-get-out," she chanted. "I can hardly wait to put this pony through its paces."

Blaze walked around the back of the car and stepped into the passenger side, grumbling to her, "If you get us arrested for excessive speed, we're not going to make it to your farm."

"Duly noted," she giggled as she zipped the car backward out of the parking spot, jammed it into gear, and floored it so hard that Blaze's brain shifted backward in his skull.

Riding in a sports car with roller-coaster acceleration wasn't nearly as exciting when one wasn't holding the wheel and controlling the chance of imminent death. "You don't have to go this fast."

Sarah didn't take her eyes off the road, and her arms were stiff-straight as if she'd been knocked back into her seat. "Yeah, I don't have to, but it will probably be the only chance in my life to drive a car like this. I'll bet I can get us to Iowa in four hours."

Sure, if she drove two hundred miles an hour, but the laws of engineering made that unlikely even for an Aston Martin. "Hey, I'm going to counsel traumatized veterans. Try not to turn me into one."

Too late on that front, but she didn't need to know that.

Her giggle as she reached eighty-five miles an hour was cute as hell.

Staff Sergeant Jackson's voice emanated from the car's speakers. "Lieutenant Commander Robinson, I have Warrant Officer Zhihao Fan here for you. She has been briefed and consented to another person being present during coaching. Do you understand and consent to this, Warrant Officer Fan?"

A woman's voice with a soft Southern accent said, "I understand and agree."

"Over to you, Lieutenant Commander Robinson."

Blaze heard the click as the Staff Sergeant signed off. "How are you doing today, Warrant Officer Fan?"

A sigh filled the car. "I did three tours in the Persian Gulf."

"I'm listening."

And for an hour, he did. Blaze had been trained to ask gentle questions and allow the person to come to their own conclusions. His own therapist had used that technique with him in the years since he had mustered out. It was a cliché that therapists constantly asked, And how did that make you feel? Getting people out of their heads to defuse their emotions like bombs was the point of therapy and the type of coaching that Vets in Crisis offered.

Within five minutes, Sarah had slowed the car to a reasonable speed and was meticulously driving along with the speed of traffic, so Blaze stopped paying attention to her and concentrated on Warrant Officer Fan.

They were well into Pennsylvania by the time he finally hung up with Zhihao Fan and halfway through the state when Senior Airman Calvin Williams was stabilized enough until he saw his regular therapist on Monday.

Staff Sergeant Jackson came back on the phone. "Do you want to do another one? We have a few other coaches who have come online now. I think we're going to be okay for the afternoon."

"That last call expended a lot of energy," Blaze admitted. "Plus, Sarah has been driving for nearly three hours. It's time to switch."

They hung up.

The rolling hills of the Poconos had risen around the road, the summer foliage enclosing the road in a dark green tunnel. As it was past noon, the sun was coasting down the sky, and the mountains cast torrents of shadow over the forest.

He said to Sarah, "You can pull over at one of these rest stops, and we can switch drivers again."

"I just passed one. It'll probably be another twenty miles until the next rest stop."

"You okay to drive?"

"Yeah, I'm fresh. You did all the driving the last two days and the first leg this morning. We can keep switching off every few hours for the rest."

Twenty minutes to the next rest stop was a while, and fatigue creased sore lines in the back of his neck. Reclining his seat back a little farther seemed like a good idea, and the muscles between his shoulder blades unknotted as he lay back.

She said, "Those people who called, your clients, they'd seen some pretty terrible things."

"That's the job."

"Have you seen some really terrible things?"

The ink under his skin itched from his neck down to his elbows and all the way to the backs of his knees. "Some."

"That must be why you were so good with them."

"Training."

"Have you ever thought about being a counselor for real?"

"I'm a bit brusque for most civilians."

"But those people really responded to you. You helped both of them a lot."

"As I have been helped. I owe a debt to my fellow veterans. We all owe a debt to each other. This is the least that I could be doing."

"Well, from the outside, from sitting here, you were amazing. I was concerned about that first lady, Warrant Officer Fan, but I think you helped her a lot."

Sarah's voice was retreating farther and farther away as Blaze answered her. "When we reach somewhere I can pull out my computer, I'll send her links to those resources. If she doesn't reach out to them, she'll slide backward until she calls the crisis hotline again."

Blaze listened to the air rushing outside the car window. "And even if she does reach out to those counseling centers, there's never enough beds, there's never enough counselors, there's never enough places, there's never enough resources, and there's never enough time."

"Doesn't Veterans Affairs help with that? There's a VA hospital down in Iowa City."

"No. The government doesn't fund the VA. I should say that one political party doesn't fund it. They talk a good game about cutting taxes and smaller government, but then they give all the tax money to their billionaire friends and send us to die for oil reserves. The country asks veterans to give their all, and then the government gives us nothing back."

"Is that—is that how it goes?" Sarah whispered.

Blaze's voice was being swept away by the growl of the road under his car's tires and the sandstorm whoosh of the air conditioning vents. "And everything in modern society seems to be designed to trigger the moral injury of warfare. Whether it's those stupid big black pickup trucks that belch smoke like the burn pits of Iraq or some military-cosplaying asshole carrying a gun at Starbucks, or the constant and unrelenting news alerts reminding you that the world is a horrible place and the psychopaths are in charge, everything is an assault and an insult."

It seemed like his eyelids were getting thicker, or maybe Sarah was driving through a valley where the looming mountains blotted out the sun.

As always when he closed his eyes, sleep did not come, just paralysis and deeper fatigue.

Finally, his dead surrounded him, their gazes sorrowful as they tracked where he stood, whether it was in his mid-century modern castle of a house or the sleeping bag he dragged out to the middle of the Wisconsin forest when civilized life was too much to bear.

They sat with him, each one tracing a finger over the ink under Blaze's skin with reproach in their pleading eyes.

Blaze's eyelids snapped open, and the fear of blindness startled him until the faint glowing marks of the car's instrument panel and wide dashboard coalesced out of the dark. "Jesus Christ, what time is it?"

Sarah glanced over at him as she piloted the car through the night. "You slept for a few hours. I stopped for gas twice. If you reach back there, one of your usual turkey submarine sandwiches is right behind my seat."

The lingering sense that nowhere was safe and everyone betrayed him needled through his body.

Blaze found the lever on the side of his seat and pressed it to sit up straighter. "It's dark."

"Yes, Blaze. It's dark," she said.

Oh, the snark in his little brat's voice. Later. "I slept for more than a few hours. How long has it been?"

"Well, we're in Ohio, so it was a while."

He grabbed his phone, checking the GPS app. If she'd betrayed him and set course for somewhere else— "And we're still on I-80?"

Panic rattled in her voice. "Why, were we supposed to turn? The GPS didn't say anything. I thought I-80 ran straight through until we turned onto the Blues Highway west of the Quad Cities."

"It does," Blaze said, settling back in his seat, tamping down the tremors that she'd driven to a police station and accused him of kidnapping her. "We're still on the right track."

"So, everything's okay?"

"Yes, kitten," he said, calming his breathing and feeling the car seat underneath his butt. "Everything's fine."