Page 27 of Come Fill Me

“We’re already there.”

She regarded Zeke in the sudden brightness, her body weakening with need. He was so damn gorgeous…so seemingly kind, although that part of him was lost beneath pure male temptation. He was all muscle and hard angles that would have made Michelangelo’s David envious. The ends of his hair grazed his stubbled jaw, making him look deliciously mussed, as though he just rolled out of bed, having had a hell of a good time there. That was, if she didn’t consider the gouges she’d put in his chest and the piece of flesh Carreon had cut from his arm. In the unforgiving light, the wounds were an angry red, the edges black with dried blood. “You have a subterranean stronghold?”

How was that possible?

He glanced at the lights and walls whizzing by. Liz estimated the van was going sixty miles an hour or more.

“It’s built into the side of the mountain,” he said. “A leftover, if you will, from my ancestors.”

“Your people actually built this?”

He smiled at her obvious shock. “Not my clan, my ancestors, the Others. My people discovered the stronghold by accident decades ago, treating it more as a religious site than anything else. You know, making the yearly pilgrimage. Asking the Others to return and show themselves.

“That changed when Carreon came into power after his father’s assassination. He’s forced us to use it for shelter and protection. We explored its perimeters. There, we found holograms from the Others. When we played them, they were in our language. God, it was weird. They more or less explained how the stronghold operated…how to open doors, get lighting. What appears to be steel on the tunnel’s walls is actually an alloy we don’t have on this planet. My guess is it can’t be detected by any means as normal metal would, not even with the so-called sophisticated technology the Feds use. If that’d been possible, this place would’ve been studied and restricted by them, much like White Sands and Area 51.”

Liz’s head spun with any number of questions. “You and your clan live beneath a mountain range?”

“Within it,” he corrected. “A portion of the stronghold is between the peaks. It’s still shielded from aerial view, but there the children can play outside. We’ve set up an area with trees and flowers. We grow our own plants.”

That didn’t jibe with what he’d told her earlier. “You said Carreon’s men fired at Gabrielle and the other women and children at a birthday party you’d taken her to. Surely, it wasn’t here.” If it had been, Carreon would have already stormed this place, trying to win it for his own use.

Zeke’s good humor shifted to cold fury. “As I just explained, at the time of the attack we weren’t using the stronghold. We still lived above ground. The adults worked at local businesses they owned. Their children went to public school. There was no reason to do otherwise because no one in the recent pastdeliberately and coldly attacked the women and children. While Carreon’s father was in charge, we even had a truce. His men rarely set foot into our territory. His son finally changed that.”

And awakened the murderous rage of what Liz sensed was a truly good man. “Carreon thought you were at the party?”

Zeke spoke through his teeth. “My guess is he knew I wasn’t. He wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible to prove his power. That he’d go to any lengths to get what he wants. Being the coward he is, he probably thought I’d cave just as he would have done, begging him not to harm me, predicting the future for him if it meant sparing myself.”

“Have you tried to assassinate him before tonight?”

Zeke offered an icy smile, bringing to mind the predatory look Liz had so often seen on Carreon’s face.

“I wanted to,” he said without any shame.

“On the day your daughter died?”

He studied her. “Have you any idea what it’s like to lose a child? To know that she won’t have a chance to grow up, to become a person in her own right? From the moment Gabrielle could talk, she let me know what she thought, what she wanted. Her favorite color was yellow. Not pink. She called it a sissy color.” His smile turned wistful. Sudden tears sparkled in his dark eyes. “She nagged her mother and me for a yellow top and shorts to wear to the birthday party. We surprised her with them that morning.”

Liz reached out to touch him, to comfort, then thought better of it, bringing back her hand before he noticed.

Zeke drove his fingers through his hair. “By the time I saw my daughter again, her pretty yellow clothes were wet with—” He stopped and swallowed then drew in a deep breath. “While I held Gabrielle’s body in my arms, I was already picturing myself attacking Carreon. Not with a gun or even a knife; my bare hands. I wanted to feel that bastard’s bones breaking, histhroat collapsing. Jacob and my friends had to restrain me from hunting Carreon down that day. They reminded me that he’s like a snake or a rat, always hiding, moving from place to place to avoid detection. We were never certain where he might actually be or where his main stronghold was. As I stated before, his men taking me there tonight changed all that.”

Indeed it had.

Despite the mild temperature inside the van, a chill ran through Liz. Now that Zeke and his men knew of Carreon’s principal location, would they raid his stronghold, hoping to murder him and perhaps harming her father in the process?

Before she could beg him not to, the vehicle slowed.

“Here.” Zeke handed her a blanket.

Its beige and brown threads were woven into an abstract Indian design consisting of triangles, arches, and diamond shapes.

“Go on,” he said when she simply held it. “Put it around yourself.”

Right. The soft texture surprised her. While Liz wrapped the blanket around her as she would a sarong, Zeke grabbed a pair of worn jeans from behind the cache of weapons and got dressed.

The van stopped. Footfalls rang out. The back doors swung open. Two men Liz had never seen before stared at her, their black hair and coloring similar to Zeke’s, their ages somewhere between late twenties and early thirties.

Zeke scooted out and embraced both men. Siblings? No. He’d told her the only family he had left was Jacob. These men weren’t even Zeke’s cousins. She tried to picture Carreon greeting one of his lieutenants with such affection. As the image formed in her mind, Liz saw Carreon pretending to welcome the man then plunging a knife into his side, twisting the blade to ensure the greatest pain before death.

---