Page 30 of Don't Let Go

A low growl escaped me and I wasn’t sure who it shocked more. Me or Locke. Still, one corner of his mouth quirked up into a hint of a smile.

“That was a fierce sound,” he teased. At my bland stare, his grin grew a little wider.

“I’m frustrated.” Not that he needed me to announce it. As it was, I shrugged off the contact and paced away.

“I got that.” He wasn’t letting me get far, which was fine. I was already pivoting to head back to him. The last thing I needed to do was yell or rage—even if it was exactly what Iwantedto do. We were supposed to be hiding, and making a scene at a rest stop was not exactly the thing camouflage was made of.

“When you guys run ops, I’m usually in the chair, I am there if you need me. Right now, I’m nowhere.”

“You are whereweneed you to be though,” Locke said, the firm insistence in his voice offering me more in the way of a tether to this moment.

“In the middle of nowhere?” It wasn’t quite the retort I wanted to fire back at him, but the simple truth of the matter was that I had never felt quite as useless as I was right now. I was running, and hiding. I was the passenger princess—and that was a term I hated—without the full weight of the plan.

This was where we were supposed to meet with Remington and McQuade. But what happened if they didn’t make it here before dawn? Wouldn’t we be noticeable if we just stayed here? I liked having a plan, as well as the backups for those plans. The only bad plan was the one you didn’t take the time to make.

“Yes,” Locke said slowly, curling an arm around me and pulling me closer to him. “But not quite the middle of nowhere so much as out of the line of direct fire. The last time we went into a live fire situation, you got hurt.”

Hurt.

Almost as an afterthought, I raised a hand to touch the area of my temple where it was still a bit tender. The bruising there had been deep. The laceration, thankfully enough, had been shallow. It had also compromised my memory and left me with more nightmares—or maybe just new ones.

I sighed. “I know,” I admitted. “I’m sorry I’m being difficult.”

With a soft chuckle, Locke guided me back toward our rig. “I don’t think you’re being that difficult.” Instead of climbing up directly into the cab, he opened a door on the side that I hadn’t even realized was there. “You’re frustrated.”

I snorted. “Well, at least I know you can listen.”

“It’s one of my talents,” he teased lightly with a wink before putting a hand to my elbow and nudging me up the steps that had dropped down from the door. Was this access to the backof the cab where we could sleep? He’d said there was far more room than I realized.

The interior felt…bigger? It wasn’t until the ratchet of the stairs being pulled up and the door closed behind us that a light came on. A light and…

“Holy shit,” I whispered, as the lights turned on down the long hall formed by the container we were hauling. It wasn’t just gear back here. There were bunks, weapons, a workstation for me—I assumed me anyway—and more. As I moved down the narrow aisle that bisected the container, I tried to take it all in. “This is insane.”

“Maybe,” Locke said, turning to something on the wall near the door and a dozen monitors came to life. It gave us 360 degree views all around the rig. “But we wanted a mobile unit that would let you rest, allow us to work and still protect you. 18-Wheelers are ubiquitous on the open roads in the U.S. It might not work as well in Canada or Mexico, but we’ll deal with that if we end up going that far.”

That was even more insane. I twisted around to study the monitors and then he was holding out a phone toward me. The monitors on the wall were reflected on the screen of the smartphone. All I had to do was tap one of the screens to enlarge it, or pinch it to make it smaller. Logical programming. I liked it.

“Won’t people notice we went inside?” I really hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings. The lack of peripheral awareness was not a good sign.

“If they were looking,” Locke said. “However, we moved into the side of the truck and when I opened the backdoor, the side door on the passenger side also opened. So unless they were right on top of us, they’d think we climbed up to sleep in the cab.”

What he didn’t add was, like all the other rigs parked around us. Not that he needed to point it out. Trying to summon some spit to my mouth, I ended up coughing.

“C’mon,” Locke said as he moved up behind me. Hands on my shoulders, he walked me forward. Then we were in front of a wall of cabinets. When he reached past me to flip a switch, I goggled at the cabinet doors sliding open and a counter pushing out. A counter with an espresso machine on it and a small fridge. The espresso machine wasn’t as large as the one at the house but it was more than sufficient. “Surprise.”

I twisted to look at him. The soft smile on his lips was hard to resist. “You guys… you really meant roaming mobile command unit?”

Granted, I wasn’t sure how many operations needed espresso the way I did but still.

“You needed it,” he answered with a mild shrug. “What you need, you get. We’ve got bunks and a proper bed down here can be pulled down. We can pull out a table and chairs.” As if to demonstrate, he slid round me and flipped another switch that transformed another set of cabinets.

I didn’t mean to goggle but the last time I’d seen anything like this… “Tiny spaces.”

He flashed a real smile at me. “You may have mentioned that a time or two.”

In some Asian countries and in larger cities where the population density resulted in smaller footprints for homes, space was at a premium. They used items that could serve multiple functions for tables, chairs, and beds.

“How did you put something like this—” I stopped mid-question and met Locke’s steady gaze. The deep, olive green of his eyes seemed almost opaque with all the secrets he kept housed in there. “I helped design it.”

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