Page 6 of Montana Freedom

Nuts, peanut butter, some small boxes of pasta, and a couple cans of sauce. Oatmeal and Pop-Tarts. I grabbed a loaf of bread and a few pieces of fruit too, knowing I would have to eat those first.

I was a small person. If I was careful, the food I had in the baskets could last me two weeks. Three, if I was very, very careful. And I would be. The food in the cabin had probably only been meant to last for three months, and I’d stretched it to double that time.

Putting the second basket by the back door, I swallowed the knot in my stomach and went to the counter. I’d worked enough retail in college to know how to work the cash register. There probably wouldn’t be much in the drawer since they were closed, but a girl could try.

Wincing at the pull in my side, I silently promised I would find a way to pay them back once Simon was out of the picture and I wasn’t a target anymore. Whoever owned this store didn’t deserve this.

But then again, neither did I.

I was right—there wasn’t much in the drawer, but it was enough. Maybe a hundred dollars in petty cash, which I could use to actuallybuyfood the next time I needed it. I was still hopeful I could somehow crack the puzzle of where Simon had gone and not need the money, but I was trying to be realistic too.

Shoving the cash in my pocket, I groaned when I picked up the baskets. Fuck, my side hurt. I was glad it wasn’t too far of a drive back to the cabin. I needed to clean it and get a bandage on it.

The back door let out a shriek when I pushed it open, the alarm finally activating with a noise that was too loud and too shrill. Adrenaline burst through my system, and I sprinted to the car, barely stopping to shove the baskets into the back seat before I was sliding behind the wheel. I drove straight forward down the alley and to the next road, doubling around in a different direction before turning back toward the cabin—and safety.

By the time I heard the sirens, I’d already reached the edge of town, and for the first time since I stepped out of the cabin, I felt like I could finally breathe.

Chapter3

Emma

Everything was hazy.

I tried to roll over on the couch, but I’d already forgotten that was a fucking terrible idea. The cut in my side was so sensitive, just having any clothing on it was too much. Right now, I was in my jeans and the only bra I had, trying to minimize the agony.

When I’d gotten home from my thieving and brought all the food inside, the first thing I did—besides immediately opening a protein bar—was clean the cut and put one of the big bandages on it.

The medicine helped the first night to take away the pain, and yesterday it had seemed okay, until it started getting worse. A sharper pain, and my skin growing hot around it. I put on more cream and a new bandage, but nothing helped.

Now it was red and angry, aching and stabbing, and I knew I had a fever. Ever since I woke, I’d been shifting between hot and cold, and I was shivering no matter what temperature I felt like.

The wall of clues swam in front of my eyes, allowing me to pull out pieces I’d seen but never noticed before. Payments and shipments to Chicago and Detroit. Some of the repeating phone numbers were from there too—I Googled the area codes. Was that where he’d gone?

Maybe he had someone willing to take him in if he was shipping guns and drugs there. But the whole reason he was here in Montana—and the northern states in general—was the desolation. There was so much empty space out here, as well as a bunch of people who would rather mind their own business than anything else. He’d said as much. So I didn’t think he would go to a city.

I shook my head and got dizzy. What was I thinking right now? I wasn’t smart enough to figure this out. It was the same crap every time. I could recite anything I’d ever seen in full from memory, but when it came time to actually analyze it, it slipped out of my grasp like a live fish.

A shudder took me, chills running from my scalp all the way down my spine. I didn’t have a thermometer, but I felt the fever getting worse. My body wasn’t quite moving the way I wanted it to.

The laptop.

I blinked. It was on the floor where I guessed I’d left it, but I didn’t remember putting it there. Medicine. I searched for medicine. I needed some sort of antibiotic. Would they sell that to me without a prescription? Hopefully. I didn’t have another choice.

Fear gripped my lungs as I thought about going into the town in full daylight. But if I didn’t do this, it would be too late. In the same way I knew the initial cut wasn’t life-threatening, I could sense this situation was. I hadn’t cleaned the wound well enough, or whatever had been on that rusty piece of metal had gone deeper than I’d been able to reach.

It was infected. I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, but given the way even television shows and movies treated infections, I knew it was bad.

I found a list in my search for natural antibiotics. Honey, garlic, and a bunch of things I didn’t think your average grocery store might have.

Were they looking for me by now? I couldn’t walk into Arrowhead Grocers and buy medicine with a side wound without giving away who I was and what I’d done. But the town had at least one other grocery store, and no one knew my face. It would be fine.

It had to be fine.

As if I was outside of myself, I recognized I was only so calm about it because I was becoming delirious, and the delirium was stronger than my fear.

I didn’t bother to be quiet when I slipped on a clean dark shirt. All the clothes here were for a much larger person, and a man, but I couldn’t wear the shirt that was torn and bloody. The cloth drifting over the wound hurt so bad I almost screamed, and having this much fabric on me only made my skin hotter. I pushed up the sleeves as much as I could and fumbled with the car keys.

They fell to the floor, creating an incredibly painful journey for me to bend down and grab them again.

---