Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(70)

“Baby, I’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. But I need you to trust me.”

“I do trust you, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about my faith in a story. I want to believe the Fearless and Bear story. I want it all to be true. It feels like it should be true, but is it fact? No, I can’t take a chance with your life. What I dreamed… You wouldn’t be able to come back from it. You’d be dead. I couldn’t live with myself if you died and I didn’t prevent it.”

He wanted to argue with her, deny her words, but he didn’t have a logical comeback.

She gripped his face with both of her hands and stared him in the eyes. “I don’t want to leave you. I have to leave you. Or else you could die.”

Pain swam dark and deep inside her beautiful eyes, and he knew some of it—his refusal to let her go—was caused by him. That almost broke him. He had sworn never to hurt her. He fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pressed the side of his face to her abdomen. He opened his mouth to apologize, but that’s not what came out. “I love you.”

The night insects, all the people around them, even the stars in the sky seemed to stop and pay homage to the words torn out of his soul.

“Xander…” She started crying, quiet sounds so filled with anguish that they punctured his heart. “I love you too. I always have. From my first dream of you. That’s why I have to go.”





Chapter 19


“I was a shitbox. Shouldn’t have acted that way. It just pissed me off that he scraped off Camille like she was a leech or something, and… I hope you know he doesn’t deserve you.” Kent started the truck. “Are you sure about this? Sure you want to leave.” He eased off the brake and pulled away from the main house. Killer whined and pawed at his carrier on the floor between her feet.

Isleen nodded, unable to speak through the knot of tears in her throat. For Xander’s sake—for his survival—she needed to be away from him. She twisted in her seat belt to see Xander out the truck’s back window. He stood in the driveway, arms hanging limply at his sides, desolation and loneliness wafting off him like greasy smog.

It tore her chest open, seeing him that way and knowing it was her fault. But she had to leave him tonight. If she stayed… She couldn’t take the chance. She lifted her hand to the glass, touching his image. Kent drove around the first curve in the driveway, and Xander disappeared from her sight. She stared out the back window for a few seconds, then faced forward again.

“You don’t have to do this. We could put extra guys on you both. Figure out something.” Kent glanced at her and then back to the driveway.

Her cheeks were wet. She palmed the wetness off her face, but the tears wouldn’t stop flowing. “No. The only way he’ll be safe is if we catch the person who killed Gran.”

“Jesus. You’ve got his blood on your hand and are smearing it all over your face.”

She didn’t mind. She’d wear Xander’s blood like war paint—a way to protect herself, ward off enemies, and carry him with her.

Kent leaned over, hand outstretched to the glove box. “I’ve got some napkins—”

The air fractured into an explosion of sound. The wheel jumped out of Kent’s hand. He slammed the brakes. Her head whipped forward, her torso slammed into the brace of the seat belt, stealing her ability to breathe. Tires locked, the truck skidded through the gravel. And then she watched as they headed straight for the tree-lined ravine on the edge of the driveway.

She screamed. Kent yelled something, but his words were muffled and muted under the weight of what was before them. The headlights illuminated their horrifying path straight down.

Xander. She shouted his name in her mind. Willed his image in front of her eyes and clung to it.

The truck crashed front end first into the ground with a cacophony of sounds. Weight smashing against solid earth. Metal crunching metal. The shrieking of bending steel. Her body’s forward momentum abruptly, painfully stopped by the seat belt securing her torso and hips. Breath expelled out of her as if she’d been gut punched. Her arms and legs flopped around completely at the mercy of inertia.

And then, sweet silence.

Something in the engine pinged and popped, and she realized her eyes were clenched shut. Had she blacked out for a moment?

The dashboard had been blown out by the air bags. The windshield dangled off the hood in a mass of crackled glass. Beyond the front window was grass.

“Kent?” Her voice came out quieter than she’d meant. She cleared her throat.

He hung in his seat belt, arms on either side of the wheel, chin touching his chest. Seeing him gave her brain a framework for how she was positioned in the truck. She was suspended over the dashboard, facing out the hole where the windshield should be.

“Kent!” She shouted his name this time. He didn’t move. Adrenaline pumped through her. She had to get him out of the truck. He needed a doctor. She probably needed one too. A quick body scan revealed that—yep—everything hurt.

Her hands shook so violently they practically blurred the air. Calm down. Caallmm doowwnn. She sucked in a slow breath and reached for the seat belt release. Her fingers trembled, and she couldn’t figure out where to press—

Her body went weightless, her head smacked on the roof, and she tumbled out of the truck and down the hood, landing in a messy jumble of arms and legs. She rolled onto her back. Overhead, the night sky was brilliant in its dark beauty. Starlight pierced the black velvet, winking and glittering like the facets of exotic jewels. If this had been another time, another set of circumstances, she would’ve enjoyed just lying there watching the show.