Page 93 of Break for Me

She didn’t argue at all. There weren’t any snarky comments or smartass remarks. She only nodded her head, and I hated everything about it. I took her hand and squeezed it.

“Stay right behind me. And remember every step of the route that we take between here and there in case we end up separated,” I said. I turned to head into the woods as soon as she nodded, but I stopped again just as quickly. I faced her again and tapped the gun on her belt with my fingers.

“If you use this on me, I will make you regret it, Fancy Face.”

I didn’t realize she was the thing that had been holding my lungs hostage until she smiled and I could suddenly breathe again. I leaned down to kiss her cheek before I led her into the trees. It didn’t take long before we happened across someone else who was trying to move through the woods quietly; no doubt trying to hold their own perimeter around the house to keep watch for me in case I tried to do exactly what I was doing. I stopped to put my hand on Trista’s shoulder and pushed her down gently until she was crouching behind a tree. I put my finger up to my lips to tell her to stay quiet and I pulled my knife from its sheath before I snuck off to follow whoever else was out here playing in the woods in the dark. He wasn’t difficult to find. Carrying a flashlight out here only doomed him further. Sneaking up on him wasn’t any harder since he did actually sound like the human wrecking ball that I imagined Trista being out here. I caught him from behind, slapped one hand over his nose and mouth, and dragged the knife all the way across the front of his neck. I laid him on the ground while his body shook and I kept my hand over his mouth until he stopped moving. I heard a branch snap behind me as I was standing again and swung to face it with my gun already pulled, only to find Trista standing at the other end of the barrel. Her sharp intake of breath was the only other sound in those woods in that moment, and if silence wasn’t the key to our survival out here, I would’ve already been screaming at her.

“I could’ve fucking shot you,” I whisper-shouted at her.

“I assumed Marines had a decent level of trigger control,” she whispered right back.

“That’s a risky fucking thing to bet your life on, Triss.”

If hitting a woman was something I didn’t have a problem with, I would’ve smacked the shit out of her the second that she shrugged her shoulders like it was no big deal.

“Is this the kind of thing that you had to do when you were a Marine?” She asked quietly, and then she covered her mouth when she looked at the body below me.

“A lot more people are about to die. Make your peace with it now. I’m getting Memphis away from here and I don’t really care what it takes.”

I waited for her to nod at me again that she understood and I turned back toward the direction that this house would be. Everything around the house was still pitch black, too. I imagined it was because there was no electricity to the building anymore. They weren’t planning ahead and leaving it dark to cause problems for me. They didn’t have any other choice. I could see slivers of uneven light through what appeared to be makeshift curtains over a few of the windows throughout the main floor of the two-story building. I didn’t know if that light came from flashlights or fires, but that would make things at least a little easier once we found a way inside. I had to kill two other men on the search around the outside of the house and Trista seemed a little more uncomfortable with each one. I had a brief moment of hysteria when the thought blew through my head that she really might not actually want anything at all to do with me after this adventure. I couldn’t imagine many women would just willingly overlook several murders being committed directly in front of them. But that would just have to be addressed later. This absolutely required all my focus while we were here.

Whether she really wanted to be there or not, Trista followed right on my heels until we came across the dilapidated wooden doors over a cellar entrance. The padlock was still in place on both handles so the people inside hadn’t bothered guarding it any harder from the outside.

“Get your gun out,” I whispered to her. “Watch behind us while I get this open.”

“How do we know it leads inside?”

“We don’t,” I said. “But I’d rather find out for sure than the alternative of having to waltz right in through the front door to an army waiting for us.”

She sighed, but she pulled the gun from the holster and turned her back to me. I couldn’t break through the padlock itself with any of the equipment I had on me, but it took almost no effort to break the hinges off one of the doors. I stood and stared into that dark pit for longer than I cared to admit just because I felt terribly unsure of myself about taking this woman into the house with me. I almost convinced myself to tell her to just run. Pick any direction and sprint until she found civilization again. But the unfortunate fact about it was that I would probably need her help once inside.

There wasn’t any noise coming from within the cellar, and I couldn’t see any light at all that would suggest someone else was waiting for us down there. I pulled my own flashlight out and motioned to Trista to follow me. I stopped on the steps and waited for her to crouch next to me before I pulled the broken door back over the opening. When I was convinced there were no other people near us, I turned the flashlight on to look around the space. By the grace of something unholy, there was a set of stairs across the cellar that led to another door.

“Jersey,” Trista choked out beside me.

Because the most discomforting thing about this cellar was the smell. Between the set of stairs we were waiting on and the set across the room, were dozens of body bags. Body bags that no doubt had contents in various stages of decomposition. I had a strong stomach, but this was foul. I should have known the President wouldn’t have picked some random ass abandoned house in the middle of the woods. Someone who worked this area for him still got plenty of use out of the place.

“Come on,” I whispered and took Triss by the hand.

“J, I don’t think —,” she paused to gag. “I can’t go through there.”

“No other choice, baby. Hold your breath.”

I pulled her along behind me and hurried through the maze of bags. Having to navigate it by a flashlight wasn’t the easiest of tasks but I wasn’t about to take the chance of tripping or falling into the kind of mess that was spread across this ground. I paused when we reached the bottom of the other stairs and Trista immediately grabbed my shirt to turn me back toward her. She smashed her face into my chest to breathe in as deeply as she could. I chuckled, but I gave her a minute that way to get herself back together.

“I never used to like cinnamon,” she whispered against my chest.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You ready?” I asked. Her grip on my shirt tightened for just a second before she shook her head. I still had the flashlight on and it illuminated just enough of her face for me to see pure fear in her eyes.

“Whatever happens up there,” I said and kissed her forehead. “Just stay alive, Fancy Face.”

sixty-five

TRISTA

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