Cruz

Appalachian Mountains, 2018

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THE CABIN WAS TOO QUIET. The realization came to me between the slipstream of silence and peace—neither which I’d ever had too much of. My dreams that night had been of Lia and the curve of her naked body as she rested against me. My hand fit perfectly against the slope of her lower back, my fingers pressed tight as I held her. In that place I couldn’t name, there was only the two of us, existing in a world that invited nothing but the rhythm of our hearts and the fullness of our bodies coming together.

She was mine and no one could take her from me.

I’d kill anyone who tried.

That thought alone jerked me from sleep. I sat up in a riot of movement—arms shooting out, gripping for the empty space around me, legs kicking as though something loud and invisible punched me awake to drive home the point that Lia was gone.

“Shit...” I muttered, jumping to my feet, attention around the small cabin, to the dimming fire and my Zippo thrown haphazardly onto my discarded jeans across the bottom of the sleeping bed.

Lia wasn’t in the back, that much I could tell because the make-shift toilet was empty and the curtain separating the closet that held it was pulled back. No one sat there. “Lia?” I said, even though something brutal and mocking in my head told me it was pointless to call out to her.  

My chest felt tight as I moved around the cabin, upturning the pillows, ignoring the whiff of her perfume that came off one when I kicked it aside. The duffle bag near the counter was unzipped and I darted for it, noticing how it held less bulk than it had the night before.

“Come on...” I said, wondering where her clothes were, wondering why she’d move so quietly, so swiftly to get dressed and away from me. Her jeans were gone, so were her underthings. The thickest sweater and socks I’d packed for her were missing from my folded shirts and light flannels.

A careful glance around the cabin and I refocused, squinting, focusing on how she’d left the place. What I saw only confirmed my suspicions that she’d left on her own. The missing clothes from the duffle wasn’t the worst of it. The faucet jutting out of the wall was left on in a slow drizzle, like she hadn’t had time to make sure she turned it off completely. There were several dropped protein bars and one of her elastic hair ties near the bag of supplies Johnson had thrown together for us when we’d first made our contingency plans for getting Lia out of D.C. and away from the threat so focused on her. They’d wanted to make me worry. They’d wanted me to understand how much danger she was in.

I’d counted our groceries before we turned in the night before. Three bottles of water were now missing and the stack of protein bars in the back of the bag were about six light.

It just didn’t make any sense to me. Lia didn’t get spooked. She’d handled the president’s assassination like a true soldier, scared, but calm. She’d been at my side when we were in college and some asshole carrying a nine millimeter stuck the gun in my face and took all the cash and cards we had on us. Even then, after the guy took off and she locked her legs around me to keep me from chasing after him, Lia still handled the situation with composure.

So, what in the hell had... My phone was open next to my jeans and the image over the screen was clear.

“Fuck.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me to lock my phone, something I always did on instinct. But Lia distracted me with her mouth and smile and...other things. Besides, she’d never been a nosey woman. Lia had always trusted me implicitly. No need for me to monitor what she saw or overheard. It had been the nail in my coffin. The floor was cold when I kneeled next to my jeans, pulling them toward me to grab the heavy weight of my phone that was laying near the open fly. She must have thrown it and the Zippo when she read the messages.

There were four.

Two unopened that made bile bubble in the back of my throat. There was only one sentence proceeding the images, and they damn sure made things worse.

Does she know who you really are? 

It always came back to Lia with these assholes. She was the prize they dangled in front of me, keeping me in line, expecting me to do their bidding with no argument. She was always in danger. She’d always be my weak spot.

I smoothed my thumb across the screen, unable to steady myself the more I saw. My ass hit the floor with a thud and I leaned forward, arms around my knees as I scrolled through images the night of Harris’s assassination.

In them, I looked guilty. I looked ashamed, holding that gun, staring down at Lia and her husband like I’d just ripped their lives, and the lives of our nation, apart with one bullet through that man’s body.

But I hadn’t been guilty, not of murder at least and the memory of that night rushed forward, beyond the thick walls I’d constructed in my head to keep them at bay. It wouldn’t work now, not with those damn pictures mocking me, telling me what a failure I’d been.

Not when I knew Lia was scared of me.

Her faith in me was gone.

There was nothing I could have done to keep myself out of the equation that night. Suspicions led to doubt. Doubt to worry. Worry to fear and by the time I’d made it to the rally and snuck behind the stage, up into the rafters where I suspected the shooter would set up, the last bullet had shot through the crowd and landed dead center in the president’s chest.

I’d been set up. They’d told me where I was expected and then had someone else do the job. I’d been made, marked as a sucker, and I’d been unable to save a damn soul.

The last messages hadn’t been read and carried a timestamp. Lia hadn’t read them, hadn’t seen the images of me running away, of the fear and worry paling my dark skin. I was glad for it but then I noted the time, relieved that she’d only had about twenty minutes on me. Lia had likely seen the images and made assumptions, probably moving around in a silent panic as I slept, thinking I had a job to do, maybe that I’d brought her here to kill her.

If that’s what she assumed, she was only half right.  

My jeans were like ice against my skin as I pulled them on, but I ignored every sensation except for the rush of adrenaline that pumped through my body as I dressed. Shirt, socks, flannel, because the temperatures had dropped, then my heavy boots. A glance out of the window made another rush of worry come over me as I imagined Lia, so unaccustomed to the mountainous trek or the hike through the woods, on her own with no real gear or supplies to sustain her.

It had only been twenty minutes, but Lia was a runner and she probably thought I’d been sent to kill her. She could move. She’d make catching up to her a challenge.

I pushed down the dred in my gut and threw together some supplies, grabbing the bag I’d packed the night before with ammo. It felt...light. Too light and my stomach coiled and twisted as I clawed it open, sinking to the floor when I found only my knife and two pistols, both missing magazines. All the ammo, all my fucking magazines were just...gone.

Outside, I caught the squeal of tires, then the sound of several doors closing, and Nelson’s rushed commands to the men that followed him. Fear bubbled in my gut at the realization that I was a sitting duck. I slinked to the back of the cabin and left through the window, tossing the bag to the ground after I pulled free the large knife. I ran from the cabin, not stopping until I came to a thick line of trees and leaned against the largest.

My fingers shook, and anger curled like boiling water in my stomach, realizing I had nothing but my own common sense and the Fairbairn-Sykes knife my buddy Chris had given me as protection. He’d lifted it from a drunk British Special Air serviceman we’d run military games with in Afghanistan.

Lia. 

God, what had she done? She left me helpless with Nelson and his goons on my tail. I wanted to curse her, hoped I could find the strength to muster up some small measure of hatred for her, but it was useless.

Instead, I rested against the tree, inhaling through my nose and let one quick thought of Lia wiggle past the fear and irritation I felt. I kept her warm eyes and beautiful smile at the forefront of my mind before I took hold of the knife, gripping it tight. The footfalls were slow but steady as I stretched my neck, squatting low next to the tree when those steps came closer, watching, waiting, ready to finish the job I’d started the night Harris was murdered.