Page 66 of Burn

Chapter

Twenty-Four

GRACE

The flight lasted a couple of hours then we were descending. I had no idea where we’d flown. Wherever was two hours from where we’d been. I was pretty sure we’d crossed the Continental Divide though, and it seemed a lot closer than when we flew past it in a jumbo jet.

Landing was a lot bumpier than I cared for. While Bones had let go of my hand after a while earlier, he held it out to me when I was white knuckling my knees. I wasn’t too proud to refuse the offer. I held on tight to him until we were taxiing through a new, tiny airport.

I was pretty sure I left my heart up in the air somewhere. Bones gave my hand a squeeze before he let it go once the plane stopped. Then the doors were opening and the guys climbed out. Goblin followed Alphabet when the man whistled.

On shaky legs, I pushed out of the seat after I unlatched the buckle. Voodoo waited for me at the door and he lifted me right out and onto my feet. I held onto Voodoo when he would have released me.

“Need a sec,” I told him. The racing pulse and shallow breathing wasn’t helping. He didn’t move as I held onto his arm. The rubbery feeling in my legs didn’t just go away.

“You good, Gracie?” Lunchbox frowned at me. “If you were sick you should have said something.”

“She’s not sick,” Voodoo answered before I could. “Back off, and let her catch her breath. She just needed a minute.”

The air around them charged as Lunchbox shifted his attention from me to Voodoo. All the things they weren’t saying swirled around them and I forced myself to let go of Voodoo. The last thing I needed was to trigger a fight between all of them.

My gaze landed on Bones where he stood, sunglasses in place, and his face unreadable. “Lunchbox, get the gear and stow the plane. Alphabet, go get the car. Voodoo…”

“I’m fine right here,” he said.

“Wasn’t going to send you away,” Bones responded in a dry as hell tone. “Give Miss Black a hand. She could probably use a slow walk before we put her in another vehicle.”

“Actually,” I said, blowing out a ragged breath. “That sounds good. I don’t know why I’m off.”

“It’s fine,” Voodoo said. “It happens more than you think. We’ll just take it slow and easy so you can stretch your legs.”

“Thank you,” I murmured as I began to walk slowly. Yeah, I was definitely not steady on my feet. Bit by bit, I was taking deeper breaths and my feet were feeling more firmly connected.

Voodoo let me set the pace and I held his arm most of the way toward what looked like a warehouse. “We’re not going all the way,” he said as he shifted our direction. “Lunchbox is gonna park the plane, but Alphabet got the truck.”

“Okay.” I just let him take the lead. By the time we returned to where Bones waited with the biggest damn Ford truck I’d ever seen, right down to having four damn doors, I shook my head. We would definitely all fit.

“You good to get in?” Voodoo asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” I was feeling better and whatever that wild tightness inside my skin feeling was had passed. Voodoo openedthe door and then flat out picked me up again and set me on the step to climb into the truck. “You’re getting way too much fun out of that. I’m short, not infirm.”

At my scold, Voodoo chuckled. “Firecracker, you weigh next to nothing and right now, we want that cut on your back to heal. Any climbing requires grabbing onto something and holding on while you do it.”

I met his gaze when he said “grabbing onto something” and heat flushed through me. I’d had to grab onto him more than once the night before. “Right, I keep trying to forget it’s there.”

“Once it’s better, you can forget all about it. Now, in you go and scoot over to the middle.”

Instead of following me in though, he shut the door then turned to Bones. The intensity between the pair seemed to magnify. While they didn’tlooklike they were shouting, they definitely seemed like they were disagreeing.

“Hey, Pixie-girl,” Alphabet said and I blinked at him. Goblin sat in the middle of the front seat next to him mouth open in a wide grin that made me want to smile back. “You’re going to be fine. We have another drive, but once we’re back at base, you’re going to be secure and comfortable.”

“You guys keep mentioning that.” Well not really, but it had come up a couple of times. “Where is Base?” Was it a town? Some actual army facility?

“It’s home,” he said. “Once we’re there, we’ll get you settled, you can rest and you can heal.”

“I need to call Amorette.” The driving need to reach out to my sister had kept me going for the past however many days. “We’re going to be somewhere you can get me a secure phone, right? Voodoo was going to and then we got ambushed twice.”

In the grand scheme of things, the ambushes took precedence over everything else. But they’d all said we needed to be secure. If Base was secure, then I could call Amorette.

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