Page 18 of Hyde

Looking around, I don’t see anything but fields before this airstrip, that leads up to an old hangar. There’s a small plane parked inside of it, and I realize it’s probably a crop duster.

“That’s weird,” Parks sounds distracted as he looks around. “The owner said he’d have a fuel truck out to meet…”

I barely register the gunshot as he suddenly crumbles to the ground at my feet.

Looking up, I see three men striding out of the hanger, with the largest of them pointing at me. Scrambling backward without remembering the bag, I nearly bounce off the side of Parks’ plane, before I hear the roar of a bike approaching.

A couple of bullets hit the ground at my feet, but I duck and waddle until I’m on the other side of the plane. Running to the bike seems like my best chance; the biker turns, aiming for me, and slides into a U-turn right in front of me.

“Sorenson! Move it, jump on!”

I barely register the words over the gunfire around me and don’t even recognize the man calling out to me—the fact that he knows my last name is enough to get me moving in the direction of his bike. Seeing his cut confirms that I made the right decision.

Sliding on behind him, I wrap my arms around his body, and he doesn’t waste a second before he guns it. There’s a quick cramp on my left side just before I feel the biker heavily exhale. We swerve as the mirror is shot off, and I hold on tighter.

That’s when I smell him. Beside the dust and the leather, I know, with every fiber of my being, that Joe’s my savior. I nuzzle my face into his back and deeply inhale.

A flood of memories from every important moment of my life hits me and I grin to myself, Mom was right.

Honestly, she usually is, but one time we met someone who was born without a sense of smell. Afterwards, when we were talking about it, Mom was genuinely sad at the thought.

I didn’t understand then what she meant about smelling her Gram’s perfume, or how she’d fish out Dad’s T-shirts from the laundry, wearing them when he’s out of town. I crack a grin, thinking of the look on her face when she said there were times she wanted to strangle Xander and me as babies, but she’d bury her face in our necks and take a deep breath.

There are scents that I’ll always equate to love, she had said.

Honestly, I figured she had taken a deep breath so she didn’t end up in jail.

Today, I throw my head back and howl, just like Granny Bree’s dog, Ragnar, used to. The helmet turns, as if the man is throwing me a glance before looking forward again.

He’s here. When I needed him most, he was the one who came for me.

I have no sense of where we are, but after a while on the road, we slow down until he veers off into a service station. The bike has barely stopped when I hop off and stand beside him, bouncing with excitement as he reaches up to remove his helmet.

My breath catches when I see the face I know so well. His skin looks pale and there are more wrinkles around his eyes, but it’smyJoe.

“How you doing, kiddo?” He’s shutting down his bike and pocketing the keys as he asks the question like no time has passed since he’s seen me.

“Fuck you!” I see red when he so casually calls me that and I smack his shoulder, barely registering his grimace as I drop my bag to the ground beside his bike.

Okay, I might have some anger issues.

His right arm snakes out, pulling me against his side, just before I was going to head inside the store.

“Are you okay? You didn’t get hit, did ya?” he asks as his eyes slowly pan down my body, his hand tight against my hip bone.

“I’m fine,” I answer stiffly, hoping he doesn’t hear the thumping of my heart as I try really hard not to melt against his chest.

“We gotta about a forty-minute ride ahead of us, I’m going to gas up,” he tells me, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and pulling out some cash. “Go inside and get a bottle of water, disinfectant, and whatever gauze they have, plus an ace bandage.”

“What? No!” I squawk out the words, shaking my head in confusion until I pull his cut open and see that the lining on his right side is stuck to his T-shirt.

“Get moving, Le-Lee. We don’t have much of a lead and I need to get you safe.” Joe cuts me off, and I grip the front of his cut, giving him a stern look before turning to follow his directions.

The grunt he lets out, acknowledges the implicit threat my look was meant to convey. That he damn well better be alright.

I’m quick once I’m inside the store and not seeing a bathroom, I ask about the location. Hurrying back outside, I hand the bag of supplies off to Joe and while he seems frustrated at the idea of leaving me unattended; he knows better than to try to drag me to the men’s bathroom.

“How did you know it was me?” Joe asks on his return and I tilt my head, continuing to evaluate his stride for any sign of pain. “On the bike, when you howled. You knew it was me, didn’t you?”

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