Page 12 of Along for the Ride

“Mouthy,” the man beside me says with a laugh. “I like them with some fire. Then again, we could get rid of you and just take your car.” He whips a knife from somewhere in the darkness and puts the metal to my throat.

When I swallow, my skin tenses beneath the blade. “It’s not even my ride. I took it.”

The man cocks his head, and a low growl leaves his throat. He turns toward the man in the back seat. “What do we have here, G? Seems like we caught a little thief.”

I’m not in the mood. My insides are about to become my outsides, my skin is crawling, chills are setting in, and now I have to deal withthis. I only wanted to get away from my abuser, and now I’ve landed myself with two psychos who will probably gut me. Or worse.

The thought of what they may do to me is enough to send my stomach into a full roll, and I get the door open in time to puke all over the pavement. The man beside me lets out a disgusted groan, but the big one in back seems more pissed than grossed out. He opens his door, comes around the vehicle, and lifts me by the back of my shirt like a momma cat carrying a kitten. With minimal effort, he tosses me into the back seat.

He gets in the driver’s seat, and I lean back to gain control of the waves of nausea threatening to drown me.

The passenger’s attention rushes back to me with a sharp turn of his head. “Do you know what we do to thieves?”

“Kill them?” I say.

The driver’s deep voice echoes through the SUV, feeling louder with my eyes closed. His words are silky smooth. “No. We take them along for the ride.”

ChapterSix

Gentry

“Pull over!” she says from the back seat. The desperate edge to her voice tells me there’s no questioning the validity of this urgent demand. I pull to the shoulder, and she nearly leaps from the car to vomit in the grass.

I get out and walk to the hunched form. She’s fallen to her knees from the sheer force of her squeezing stomach, but she’s brought up little more than bile. When I squat down, she drops her gaze.

“What’s the matter with you?” I ask. “Are you knocked up or something?”

“You never ask a woman if she’s pregnant, asshole,” she snarls, wiping at a line of drool hanging from her lower lip. “But no. I’m not pregnant.”

It’s night, but the headlights cast enough glare to make the goose bumps visible on her skin. Sweat collects at the small of her back, where her shirt has risen enough to reveal a patch of pale skin.

I reach for her forehead, and she’s too shaky and weak to fight my unwanted touch. My fingertips connect with clammy skin. “Are you sick?”

“A kind of sickness, I guess,” she says, turning her head to vomit once more.

My eyebrows furrow. She looks rough—clearly homeless, but not entirely like a dope head. Even so, I’ve seen someone in her state before and I can’t deny the similarity. Our father was a junkie, and I spent many hours of my childhood beside him as he shivered and puked. When an addict goes without their addiction, they’re reduced to what I see before me now: a helpless, quivering husk.

“Are you dope sick?” I ask, hoping she has an alternative reason for her current state.

She drops to her back, careful not to land in her vomit. “Yes, and I think I just purged my soul from my body.”

Fuck. The last thing we need right now is to care for someone going through withdrawal. “Do you have any more drugs on you?” I ask, hoping she does. When my father would get sick, only a fix would stop the downward spiral.

She shakes her head, and her messy blonde hair rustles against the grass. “Negatory.”

That’s unfortunate. It means we’ll have to tend to her while she rides out the withdrawal.

What the fuck am I thinking? It would be better to end her life. She’s a liability at this point—has been since she saw our faces—and we have a long way to go before we reach our final destination. What do I plan to do with her at the end of the road? Even if she were well, there’s only one answer to that question.

My hand goes to the pistol on my hip.It’s no different than putting down a dying deer on the side of the road, I tell myself.

But I can’t do it.

I feel a bit of sympathy for her. As stupid as it was, she stopped when she saw a broken-down van, and now she’ll have to pay the ultimate price for an act of kindness. It doesn’t seem fair to end her life now. Right now, she looks broken. And I recognize brokenness like that. I’ve seen enough of her snark to know she’ll be a fighter when she’s better, so maybe we can wait until she gives us a reason to kill her.

I scoop her trembling body into my arms and carry her to the back seat. Her head lolls to the side, but she doesn’t fight me. Surrounded by my massive frame, she seems so small and fragile, like I could break her if I squeezed too hard. Despite the sickness infecting her mind and ravaging her body, I can see the low glint of a dying fire in her blue eyes.

I force myself to look away. After what happened with my wife, I refused to get sucked in by a woman again. This helpless girl in my arms won’t change that. She’s beautiful and I admire her attitude, but I won’t let her shake my resolve. I’ll let Karson end her once she’s better, but she deserves to die when she isn’t strung out and miserable. That’s how I’ll repay her kindness.

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