Page 42 of Guarded By Them

I frowned, my features pinching. “You think someone might be following us?”

“It’s unlikely, but it’s possible, yeah.”

“Maybe we should get off the main road,” I suggested. “Make a move they’re not going to anticipate.”

“Shit.” Kodee slammed his fist onto the steering wheel. “We don’t even know who ‘they’ are. Were those Nettie’s men, or the Capellos’?”

I shrugged. “Does it even matter?”

He sucked air through his teeth. “We shouldn’t have killed them right away. We should have injured them and tied them up and questioned them to find out what they knew. They could have told us who they were working for and if there were more men coming.”

“We had to kill them,” Ryan said. “If we hadn’t, they’d have killed us.”

“Maybe,” Kodee pursed his lips, “but dead men can’t speak.”

Ryan sighed. “We can’t do anything to change that now, but we can do something about my need for coffee, even if it is just some kind of brown piss water that comes from a vending machine.”

I chuckled. “Your meal descriptions are making things sound so appetizing, Ryan.”

“As long as it’s got caffeine, I’m past caring.”

It was still crazy early in the morning, and the rude awakening, followed by the adrenaline burst, had left us all feeling flat. And that was before we took into account the ‘people wanting us dead’ situation that was hanging over all our heads.

“Okay, fine,” Kodee relented. “We’ll find somewhere, but we’re getting it to-go. I don’t want to stop anywhere for any length of time, at least not somewhere as obvious as a gas station, where we might get spotted from the road.”

I agreed. “Makes sense.”

We didn’t know who might be waiting for news from the two men we’d killed back at the cabin. When they didn’t get any, suspicions would be raised, and then they’d go to find out what had happened. Our mercy toward Timmo, leaving him alive, meant he’d be able to give them information about which car we were driving, and what direction we’d gone in. They’d be some way behind us for all of that to happen, but Kodee was right. It was better that we didn’t stay in one place for too long—especially if that place was visible from a main route.

“That okay with you?” I asked Rue. She’d been particularly quiet since we’d left the cabin, and I was worried about her.

She gave me a tight smile in return. “Sure.”

We’d made it out of the dense forests, and were back on a highway heading north, toward the Mackinac Bridge. The area was becoming more built up, but around here, that didn’t add up to much. The topography still mostly consisted of trees. We drove for another half hour before we came across a small gas station on the side of the road.

I leaned forward. “Pull over here, but go around the back, so we can’t be seen from the main road.”

“We’re not stopping for long,” Kodee warned us. “We’ll get in, grab whatever we need, and get back out again. Got it?”

We all nodded obediently.

Kodee pulled the car over, and instead of heading to the pumps, he drove behind the gas station building, where there was only a cleared area of land before it gave way to trees again. There were a couple of large refuse cans, and a rear exit to the gas station, plus a couple of plastic seats where it looked as though the employees might come out for a cigarette break every now and then, though I didn’t think smoking so close to the pumps was a wise idea for anyone.

Kodee and Ryan climbed out, Ryan wincing as he stretched. His leg didn’t seem to be bothering him as much as it had the previous day. I was the one with the bad leg now. We were going to look like quite a pair, both of us limping around.

Rue remained sitting in the car beside me.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. “You seem really quiet.”

She gave a small shrug. Was this just about her fear, or was something else underlying her silence?

“Tell me,” I encouraged.

She let out a sigh. “You know, when we were at the cabin, before everything went down, there was this moment where things felt so easy. Even though we were on the run, I actually felt free. Like my life was my own again. I thought I’d never want to live in the middle of nowhere, but I understood it for just a little while. No stresses or pressures. Just me and you guys, surrounded by nature. It would be a simple life, but a happy one.”

I rubbed my fingers over my mouth. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“But then those men showed up, and the whole thing shattered. I was dreaming if I thought that was ever going to be my life. I’m never going to escape it, am I? This is just who I’m meant to be, and I need to stop kidding myself that things will ever be any different.”

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