Page 166 of Lone Star

Eden had her helmet snapped into place before she slid onto the bump seat behind him. The rumble of the Harley coming to life beneath her was familiar, but Walsh’s waist was not as she wrapped her arms around him and held tight.

She sent a fleeting prayer across the distance that separated them for Fox to hurry up and get himself un-arrested. Whatever awaited them at the end of this ride, she feared it would require Fox’s expertise more than anyone’s.

Forty-Nine

The steady throb of pain at the back of her skull woke Michelle. Her head weighed heavy on her neck, a sensation that dragged at her, left her feeling like she was falling. She had no sense of her limbs, only of her head, and the terrible pain, drumbeats in time with her pulse.

It was a long moment before she could crack her eyes open, and even that hurt, eyes tender and bruised-feeling.Concussion, she thought, dimly, her first coherent realization.

The next wasdon’t panic. That wasn’t her way, wasn’t how she’d been raised and trained; panic drowned out thought, and thought was the key to staying alive in situations like these.

A few blinks, and her vision had cleared enough to reveal her surroundings – or some of them.

They weren’t what she’d expected. She glimpsed a bit of blue-painted wall, and a pair of sturdy wood-and-leather chairs set at angles across from one another, a table between them: a seating area set in a bay window, sheer drapes letting in diffuse light.

She wet dry lips and tried to move.

Pressure at wrists and ankles. She was flat on her back, her head turned toward the window, and she could roll it, look up at smooth, clean white ceiling, but she couldn’t move her arms or legs. Tied, then. Hand and foot. Spread-eagle like all the victims.

Like a star.

She let out a long, slow breath. Not panicking, not panicking.

The surface beneath her felt soft, and supportive. A bed, then, and not a hard table like Benny had described.

She wet her lips again, for all the good it did; her mouth felt full of sand. “Axelle?” she croaked.

Silence a long beat. Long enough that Michelle thought–

But then: “I’m here.”

Thank God. They were together. If Michelle could orchestrate an escape –Ha! You’re tied up, stupid– she wouldn’t have to go hunting for the other girl.

“Are you okay?”

Another hesitation. Axelle’s voice came out very flat, save for a hitch at the end, like she was trying hard not to give in to fear. “I can’t move.”

“Me neither.” Michelle rolled her head the other way – the heaviness turned that simple movement into an effort, left the room spinning.

She was in fact on a bed, and there was a second one next to hers: clean white sheets and even a pillow, Axelle star-fished out just as she was, secured to the bed posts with cuffs on her wrists and ankles.

Axelle turned her head, so they faced one another; her eyes gleamed like blue glass in the wash of pale evening light. She looked frightened, but not, Michelle noted with approval, panicked.

“I don’t know. A house, think.” Beyond Axelle’s bed lay another stretch of wall, this one adorned with a watercolor print, a pastoral scene in soft colors. Under it sat a dresser, the same heavy wood as the chairs, and a small, flat-screen TV. The room didn’t look lived-in, but the furnishings were too fine for a hotel. “Have you got a bump on your head?”

Axelle shifted again and winced. “I figure that’s why it hurts so bad.”

“Yeah.”

Being taken was a blur. She remembered an explosion; a crash of sound, and things flying, shouts, and a roar like a train. Remembered being thrown to the floor – throwing herself to the floor. After Benny… But there had been another noise, after the gunshot. It hadn’t been a bomb; she’d heard too many of those in her life to mistake them for anything else.

She closed her eyes, struggling to remember. “I think…I think someone drove through the wall of the clubhouse.”

“Shit. I thought I dreamed that.”

“We both did, then.”

Michelle took a deep breath, but could smell only laundry detergent, and, faintly, her own dried sweat. She heard the twitter of birdsong somewhere beyond the window, and the low hum of a house with working lights and HVAC and appliances plugged in.

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