The Fall(29)

It had to be a dream.

The unidentified shooter, the car chase, trying to outrun the police—it couldn’t be real.

It was a nightmare—a horrible nightmare—and I just needed to wake up. I tried to will myself back to consciousness, but the heaviness remained. My throat constricted as scattered thoughts flooded my mind.

It wasn’t a dream.

It was my life.

“Get it together, Sofia,” he hissed in the dark, slowly removing the bags from the trunk of the car while I stood silently beside him. “You did good; don’t fall apart now.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.” I quickly blinked away the tears starting to pool at the corners of my eyes. “I’m fine.” My hands moved quickly to the last remaining duffle and pulled it out. “I’m fine.”

“Right.” The laughter bubbled up his throat, taunting me. “Just fine. Come on, let’s move.”

He was completely devoid of emotion. The coolness in his voice reflected in his steady hand as he strapped a bag on either arm and checked his gun. He didn’t bother holstering it, his hand doing a quick slide over its body, almost as if to offer it a caress. It would have been easy to have missed it, the subtly of his hand. Its kindness against the steel almost a contradiction to everything else.

The hue of the streetlight spilled its dirty yellow wash just far enough so it wasn’t completely black as the smell of gasoline and old rubber invaded my nose. I had no idea where we’d go from here, but I knew that the longer we stayed, the greater chance we’d be found.

“Where are we going?” I tried to push down my panic and get my head back in the game. Like it or not, we were a team and he’d gotten us this far, so I had to trust him. “Do you have a plan?”

He didn’t answer, his eyes throwing me the seriously? his mouth didn’t need to say.

Instead he pointed to the chain-link fence at our back, a dark empty back lot beyond its metal wall. “That way.” The two words served as the only indication as to where we were going from here.

I assumed we would climb, heft our bodies up and over the fence and hope to keep the noise minimal. The CPD would surely be doubling back soon, realizing by now we’d shaken them. There wouldn’t be that much ground to cover, especially if there was a helo in the air.

“What are you doing?” He grabbed my arm as I repositioned my duffle on my shoulder, my fingers grasping one of the links as I lifted my foot.

“You said that way,” I whispered. “Assuming you weren’t going to answer any more of my questions, I figured we’d leave.” And I was too exhausted to further decipher what he was thinking.

“And you were going to climb over?” His lips twitched at the edges, ridiculously finding something in the situation amusing.

“Well, unless you have a magical teleporter in your bag, the only way to go that way is over this fence.”

“I don’t go over. I go through.” He moved to the edge of the fence, pulling out a pair of six-inch side cutters from his bag. “Climbing is too risky, means your hands are occupied and you can’t hold your gun.” His hand moved methodically snipping through the metal like butter. “Also means your back is either in the direction of where you’re going or coming from. Opens you right up for attack.” He stopped when he got to the link a couple inches above his head. “Now you can go.”

With a steady hand he tore back the fence from the spikey edges the cuts had made, the sheet of curved metal pulling apart like a curtain. His face stayed stoic, watching me as I passed through the gap, not even a hint of the effort I knew he was exerting showing on his body.

I on the other hand, wasn’t as cool or collected, my breathing heavy as I replayed the car chase in my head. Seconds. That’s what had separated this outcome from something entirely different.

As soon as I was through, he followed close behind. His heavy boots leaving footprints underneath the thick grass. Unfortunately we would be leaving a trail, a roadmap for anyone to find us.

“Follow me and stay alert.” His feet stepped forward not bothering to check whether I did actually follow.

Instinctively, we both knew whatever happened in the next few days, I undoubtedly would be by his side. Not because it’s what I wanted, but because I had no other choice. Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford. That’s probably why he kept moving forward, the unspoken words enough.

He didn’t talk any more—which at least spared me his indifference—his large muscular frame moving silently through the darkness. Not an inkling of fear cracked through his rock solid fa?ade with his eyes covering as much land as his feet as we continued to where the vacant lot met the street.

I stayed close behind, the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up as a single parked blue Nissan Altima came into view. It felt ominous, the dead-end street virtually empty except for the sedan.

Michael stopped midstride, his arm reaching back signaling me to halt. Not that it was necessary, my feet stilled immediately not knowing if there was anyone in the car.

“Stay here,” he whistled through his clenched teeth.

“No. It could be an ambush.” My healthy paranoia reared its ugly head as I grabbed his arm. Touching him had been more to get his attention without raising my voice because let’s face it, he had at least a hundred pounds on me. Holding him back wasn’t going to be an option. “If we do this, we do it together. I can be your back-up, I’m not some bimbo who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”