Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(24)

I back into a spot in the corner of the parking lot, kick my seat back and sit up.

“This is all greasy,” she says as she unfolds the paper wrapper. Her voice shrinks. “Jack, I’m going to have trouble eating this. My mouth. It’s hard to take big bites.”

“Wait here.”

I run into the place and come back out with a plastic fork, and cut the burger into four pieces for her. She nibbles at it slowly, taking small, carefully placed bites, but starts to eat faster and faster.

“Good,” she mumbles through a mouthful of food.

I grab a spoon and offer her a blop of Frosty. She gives me an odd look and then takes it right off the spoon with her mouth.

“Remember when I used to feed you when we were on dates?”

“Yeah. You were more worried about putting food in my mouth than in yours. If I wasn’t a moonstruck teenager I’d have thought you have some kind of weird fetish.”

I wiggle a spoonful of ice cream at her. “Maybe I do. Eat.”

Without protest, she takes the little blob of ice cream off the spoon. I end up using only the one spoon, eating off it and feeding Ellie off it, alternating between bites. She doesn’t even seem to notice that we’re sharing the same soda.

When her burger is gone she fumbles with the napkin. I sit up, take her hand, and wait. She nods with approval and I clean her hand for her, wiping away the grease. She can’t do little things like that; it takes both hands.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

“It’s okay. How was it?”

“Good. I’m all sleepy now.”

“Let’s get going. We can make your uncle’s place by tonight if we drive straight through.”

After we drive for a while, Ellie nods off and almost drops her phone, but grabs it before it falls to the floor. She props it up on the console and lays the seat back, and her head stars to bob. After a while she’s clearly asleep, and falls back into the seat.

I almost grab her when she shifts to the side, afraid her head will hit the window, but she turns in her sleep and her head lands on my shoulder.





Ellie





I wake up to Jack-smell. Silk brushes my cheek.

Wet silk. I drooled on his dress shirt. I snap upright and try to talk, but end up yawning instead, my mouth twinging as it stretches. I shake my head and try to process where I am.

I’m in a car, sitting next to Jack, and we’re driving through the middle of nowhere on a two-lane, sloped road, with trees right up against the shoulder, their branches reaching out like grasping fingers. It’s full dark, but the clouds have hidden the stars.

Oh my God, this is actually happening.

“Where are we?”

“Phone says another twenty minutes. We’re on the right road. Your uncle likes his privacy, huh? We’re about fifty miles from nowhere.”

I lick my lips and rub at my mouth with my sleeve. It gets so damn wet when I’m sleeping, but feels dry when I’m awake. I take a long pull on the watered-down dregs of the fast-food Coke. At least it’s sitting well in my stomach.

“I have to pee.”

“Okay, jeez. We’re almost there. Um, is that it?”

He points up, and I have to lean over to see up the slope. There are some lights on top of the hill, amid the trees.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t been here since I was twelve, Jack.”

He shrugs. “This must be it. There’s nothing else out here.”

The road up the hill is all gravel. Jack takes it slowly, navigating the turns and leaning forward to eye the road, to keep from driving off it. I tense up when the leaves cover the path, but it finally starts to even out.

The cabin is bigger than it looks from below, and much more solid, not some ramshackle structure but a solidly built country retreat. Jack parks in the gravel out front and steps out.

I check my phone, but it’s lost its signal and just shows a blue dot in a grid. That’s useful.

My door swings open and Jack takes my hand. I stand up and stretch, wincing when my shoulder pops a little too hard, and yawn.

“I’m glad to finally get out of that car,” Jack sighs. “Come on, let’s see if we’re in the right place. Are you sure about this? This cabin looks like the Evil Dead live here.”

The porch light comes on.

I pull my hood down and walk up the stone steps to the front door. Jack stands behind me, hands at his sides, shivering a little. He didn’t plan this out very well. He could use a jacket.

The door unlatches with a heavy grinding sound and swings open. I blink a few times.

“Ellie?”

My uncle is a giant bear of a man, thick around the waist and thick in the arms and shoulders and thick in the hair, with a big, shaggy mop of brown curls shot through with gray and a wiry black beard with stray white hairs around his mouth.

He steps back. “Come in. What are you doing here?”

“It’s complicated. We needed a place to stop.”

“Who’s we? Who’s the boy?”

“Boy?” Jack snaps.

“This is Jack,” I say hurriedly. “He’s with me. Can we come in?”

“Of course.”

Jack looks warily at the shotgun propped by the door. Inside, the smell brings back memories. The cabin smells like wood glue and fresh baked bread, with a stale undercurrent of beer. Uncle Rod closes the front door, bolts it, and turns on the lights in the living room.