Page 40 of Guarded By Them

“You okay, Kodee?” Rue’s sweet voice came from behind my shoulder.

“Yeah, Rue. I’m fine. Just getting used to the vehicle.”

She sat back in her seat. “Sure.”

The other two didn’t say anything. They knew the turmoil I was going through, and that I just needed a moment. Maybe that was one thing men understood better than women—that need for space. Just a second to take a breath. A pregnant pause of silence. They were always encouraged to talk—a problem shared was a problem halved. Only sometimes the problem didn’t come from anywhere outside of us, and it was simply something we had no choice but to deal with ourselves.

Come on, come on. You can do this.

I blinked, forcing the world around me to grow solid again.

I’d just been shot at by unknown men, had jammed the muzzle of my gun under a man’s throat, yet it was the simple act of driving that was sending me into a blind panic.

I understood what it meant to find something triggering. All those feelings from the moment of the crash had come back to me. It was like being hit full force in the chest, every internal organ dropping out of my body, my blood stopping in my veins. It was being filled with the utter horror and certainty that the same thing was going to happen again.

I remembered how it had been when I’d learned both my wife and son had died, and yet, somehow, I’d survived. Deep down, underneath the disbelief and grief, and the desperation of wanting to go back in time and change things, to wake up for a second time that morning and make different decisions that would have led to a different outcome, I’d known my life had flipped. There was a line drawn down the middle now, dividing me in two. I was the person I’d been before, and the person I was after.

Now, sitting behind the wheel of this car, I felt like I had to blur that line. I’d never be the man I was before that loss, but I could start to leave some of the blame behind.

Taking another deep breath, I put the car into gear, reversed it out of the bushes, and onto the road.

Chapter Fourteen

Dillon

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THE GUNSHOT WOUND IN my thigh hurt like a bitch, but I didn’t want to say anything. Ryan was missing an entire leg, and he barely liked to even mention it. The injury I’d sustained was merely a scratch in comparison.

It felt strange being in this car. Too conspicuous, as though everyone who saw us would know it didn’t belong to us, and that the people it did belong to were now lying dead in a bush.

Beside me, Rue trembled, her hands clutched tightly in her lap, her face pale. I hated that she was going through all of this. I’d have given anything to take her out of this situation and deposit her in some wholesome, happy environment, but instead she was stuck with us, and with even worse men after her. I ached with my need to keep her safe, but there was nothing more any of us could do for the moment.

Kodee put the car in reverse, did a three-point turn to get us out of the bushes, and drove back down the lane that led to the road. I twisted back to see if there was any sign of Timmo following us out, but the old man had stayed quiet. Wisely so. We’d outnumbered him four to one, and he probably figured he was better off staying out of it. Even with his shotgun, we’d be far more likely to shoot him before he got the chance to shoot one of us. Besides, he hadn’t struck me as a bad guy, just someone who’d said a little more than he should. Perhaps that was— in part, at least—our fault too. We hadn’t told him that there were certain people he wasn’t allowed to contact. We hadn’t told him who we were running from. We’d thought we were protecting ourselves by keeping our mouths shut, but right now it seemed the more secrets we had, the more we were getting ourselves in trouble.

Ryan leaned forward in the passenger seat and clicked open the glovebox. He rifled through the contents. “Completely clean,” he announced. “Not even a service history.”

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