We ate lunch on a gra.s.sy outlook near a gas station. Most of the structures in the area had long been burned to the ground, including what was left of the gas pumps. As the horses grazed along the landscape like living lawnmowers, we sat on the cool earth eating granola and ripe oranges we had picked along the way. The salty air of the ocean blew past us and into the hills, taking the wet scent of seaweed with it. As we listened to the crash of the waves along the sh.o.r.e, I closed my eyes and tilted my face upward to soak up the afternoon sun until my cheeks burned with warmth.
The horses had nibbled the gra.s.s down to the earth in places, moving from one spot to another to gobble up the white dandelion seed heads that starred the green landscaping. Sunny"s muzzle was covered with remnants of the weed as if she had rubbed her face along the plants before eating them.
Kris laughed as she used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the horse clean. In my mind, I took a picture of the two of them: the brown-haired girl with freckles and scars as she leaned against the gentle-eyed, honey-colored mare with tufts of dandelion seeds up her nose. It was a beautiful image of the two with the Pacific Ocean as a background. Sunny ran her mouth against Kris"s neck as a thank you before the two parted and we all climbed back up into our saddles.
The outskirts of L.A. were just a few miles away. I glanced at Connor, wondering if his thoughts were on the next day, like mine were. He smiled only the way Connor could - dazzling and perfect. I clicked my tongue to get Foxy on the move and we started back up the coast, leaving the ruined remains of Laguna Beach behind us.
By nightfall, we were in Newport Beach. The fading light cast an amethyst glow across the streets and just as we had seen in Laguna, many of the buildings had been burned or damaged from nearby military tanks. The wind picked up and whistled through the palm trees, rocking the narrow trunks softly from side to side. We continued down the weed-riddled sidewalks until we came upon West Newport Park.
"Seems like a good place to camp. Plenty of room for the horses to graze, plus we can secure them over there for the night." I pointed to the fenced in tennis courts.
We tied the horses to a tree next to the small playground and took turns breaking into the houses across the street on Seash.o.r.e Drive until we had enough food items for a feast. Connor also found a portable BBQ, so after an hour of settling in and warming a bag of coals, we had a dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, canned peas and carrots and chocolate pudding. Kris opened up the remnants of the cheese sauce packet and licked it clean while Connor and I watched. It was the closest thing to a full meal we"d enjoyed since leaving the lodge.
The horses drank from a large plastic tub that Kris and I found in a nearby garage. After dumping the Christmas decorations from it, we had carried it back to camp and filled it with several gallons of water. Almost every home had at least two full gallons of water. Like the people that lived there had prepared for the worst. Only a handful of the lavish homes actually had people inside - dead in their beds. Most packed what they could fit into their Mercedes and Land Rovers and fled the City. I wondered as I picked through the items they left behind, how far did they manage to get before the traffic stopped them? Which cars had we pa.s.sed on the nearby coastal highway came from that very street? It didn"t matter anymore. The dead were gone and we became scavengers of what was left of their previous lives. Like rats.
"No, I can"t eat any more," I said as I waved Connor"s plate away.
He set the rest of the pasta down and picked up the bottle of wine, swigging from it until he needed to come up for air. With a satisfied grunt, he set the half-empty bottle of red down on the gra.s.s between us and looked up at me with a goofy smile.
"That was great," he mumbled.
"Dinner or the wine?"
He smirked at me, his eyes glossy. "Probably both," he laughed.
Kris jumped up and grabbed the paper sack off the ground. "I almost forgot!"
We watched her rush over to the tennis courts with her bag of treats for the horses. The sack was filled with guavas and ripe, red pears - a treat we found in the fenced off yard of one of the beach houses. It was the only one nearby with citrus trees. The salty moisture must have kept the trees alive and blooming; both had scraggy branches that grew up and over the wall that bordered the neighboring property.
"Riley," Connor pulled me up against his side while we watched Kris feed the horses, "I miss you."
"Miss me? I haven"t left your sight in a week!" I laughed.
"I miss the feel of you," he whispered against my ear, his lips brushing along the curve of my skin.
"Oh," I sighed. Yes, I missed him too. I missed the feel of his strong hands between my thighs and the taste of his mouth. Judged on the wanting look he gave me, the desire was inside him, too.
"Soon," he whispered after kissing me softly.
"Yes...soon."
The flames licked at the gla.s.s teasingly, dipping down below the windowsill before launching back up, high above my line of vision. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. The fire burned all around me, filling the open room with smoke. It roiled and curled beneath the wide door like it was alive.
"Help!" My raspy scream bounced off the columns of the empty warehouse.
Only the sound of popping wood and twisting metal answered as the fire ate its way through the curved galvanized metal sheeting above, dropping chunks of burned roofing at my feet. I jumped in fear as shadows twisted and writhed in the corners, a chorus of screams and shouts louder than the fire itself ringing out into the smoke and ash-filled air.
And then silence.
I was kneeling on all fours, struggling to breathe in what little oxygen was left in the room when the fire died down to embers and the shadows disintegrated. Daylight streamed in beneath the door in a thin strip and I crawled toward it, caring not what was on the other side as long as there was air - clean, fresh air.
Soot coated the inside of my nostrils and the rank odor of it burned down my throat, drying me out from the inside. My throat screamed for moisture, refusing to work as I attempted to swallow what little spit was left in my mouth. When I reached the door, I shoved my face against the slit at the bottom and greedily sucked in air, feeling the hotness of it fill my lungs. Too weak to stand and push the door open, my head fell down on the cold concrete with a soft thud.
This was it. This was how I was going to die. Stranded inside a burning building with no air. Abandoned even by the ghosts of the past. Completely and totally alone.
A girl"s soft voice whispered inside my ear and I felt ash slide down my cheeks as my lashes fluttered open. I knew her voice, but when I parted my dried lips to speak, no sounds came out of my parched mouth.
Shannon"s voice tickled the inside of my ear. "Mommy...they are free now. The fire, Mommy don"t you see...it set them free."
I sprung up from my sleeping bag with such force that I ripped the zipper open clean down to my knees. Kris stirred beside me, turning in my direction with a sleepy face. I scrambled onto my knees and practically sat on Connor, shaking his shoulders until his own eyes flew open and he sat upright to face me.
"What the h.e.l.l, Riley? What"s wrong?"
"I know what they want," I breathed heavily into his face.
"Who...what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"The dead...I know what they want from me." He stared at me in the darkness, confusion on his face, exhaustion embedded into the wrinkles around his eyes, but I kept talking until a look of partial understanding registered in his gaze. "I know what they need. Connor, I know how to set them free."
CHAPTER sixteen.
"We"re not far. The 5 is just a few more miles ahead. Are we staying on the trail?" Kris asked. She folded the wrinkled map until it was small enough to fit into the front pocket of her shirt and stretched both feet out in front of her, flanking my thighs with her dusty boots. We were all restless, the sooner we found the gas station where Jacks discovered Kris, the better. From there, we would work our way back up the highway until she remembered the warehouse her captors had taken her. Once we found it, we planned on stashing the horses somewhere safe and staking it out for a few hours to see if they were still using it.
"Yeah, we"ll stay along this till we hit the highway and then go north. Why, are you getting tired of the scenery?"
She laughed and rolled her ankles, flexing them from side to side before lowering her feet to secure them in the stirrups again. The last few hours were spent walking along the Santa Ana River Trail and even though we knew we were on a golf course, the only thing to a.s.sure us of that was the symbol on the map. The manicured lawns and neatly trimmed trees grew wild, encompa.s.sing the hills with weeds and tall gra.s.ses. Summer had been harsh however, killing off most of the green and replacing the softly rolling hills with a yellowish color. The horses tried to stop every few feet and snag a bunch of gra.s.s to munch on, which meant Connor and I were constantly pulling at the reins - something we weren"t accustomed to. The extra effort at keeping the horses moving was wearing on us, but we continued along the trickle that time reduced the river to at a somewhat steady pace, stopping once for the horses to drink. I let Kris take the reins for a bit and became the navigator behind her with the crinkled map opened up between my chest and her back.
With proper upkeep, the trail must have been a gorgeous one to hike on in the middle of the residential areas of Orange County. In some places, we were completely surrounded by growth. It blocked the fencing and rooftops from view, almost making it seem like we were riding through the mountains of Laguna again, except for the funky smell of rotting bones.
A pang of sorrow rippled through me as we neared a street underpa.s.s. I missed Zoey and the others. The dog must be confused after being left behind. With Kris and I both gone, I hoped the men were taking her on lots of walks and swims in the lake. It was this daydream world I was lost in when the first rifle shot rang out.
Clumps of dirt sprayed up into the air and showered down on us in dusty chunks. Foxy skittered to the side and nearly bucked me off her back before bolting. Instinctively I wrapped my arms around Kris and held on tight. There wasn"t time to look for Connor behind us as we rushed into a small grove of trees. Within seconds, we came out the other side, exposed in the open landscape of the river bed. Shots rang out all around us, echoing around the golf course. It was impossible to pinpoint the shooter.
Foxy flew along the embankment as fast as her legs could take us. Something whizzed past my right ear and for the briefest of moments, I imagined it was a bird. A hummingbird racing us along the nearly dried-out river. But it wasn"t. A bullet struck the top of my shoulder and just a fraction of a second later a small explosion erupted in my hip, sending me flying off the horse in a mid-air somersault. I landed hard in the dirt and rolled too many times to count before I came to a stop in a thick patch of flowers so purple that it hurt to look at them.
Struggling to inhale, I heard Kris scream, followed by a loud shout from Connor. What happened next became a blur. Sunny went down not far from me. Her front legs collapsed, sending her muzzle straight into the dirt. A cloud of dust bloomed out around her like a mushroom as her body flipped once and landed at an awkward angle. There was blood, a lot of it, coming from her crest and shoulder area. She didn"t move again.
My voice wouldn"t work. I couldn"t call out to Connor - I couldn"t return his cries of my name. The more he screamed for me, the more frantic he became. He couldn"t see me. I was so close and he couldn"t find me buried among the overgrown flowers. More rifle shots boomed from nearby and all went quiet. The only sound became the ragged catch of my breath in my throat and the subtle shift in the flower stalks as the slightest of breezes eased through them.
Alone. The word had a new meaning then. Connor wasn"t coming. He wasn"t going to save me this time. My right side was sloped at a downward angle. So that"s the direction I rolled in, until I made it to my stomach. There wasn"t any pain - not yet. I pushed through the flowers, following the slope of the embankment until it dropped out from beneath me and I tumbled down the sand, landing face first in a dried mud hole. It smelled of dead gra.s.s and old water.
I stayed still, breathing raggedly through my mouth, watching a dark pool of blood gather beneath my shoulder. The cracked mud soaked it up greedily, spreading my burgundy life force out along the shallow crevices in little streams. As I watched my blood flow away, I became aware of the heat on the back of my neck. The sun burned something fierce. An overwhelming urge to lather my neck with sunscreen came over me, but a bottle of SPF 50 didn"t materialize in front of my face.
An unfamiliar pair of dusty-black combat boots did.
Bubble baths and sateen sheets. Vegetable broth and crackers washed down with flat ginger ale. And sleep; days and days of it.
I walked around the lavish bedroom during the day twirling my full-length nightgown, giggling at the soft feel of the expensive silk as it danced around my freshly shaved legs. At night, I dined on salads full of every kind of vegetable, drenched in olive oil and vinegar. For dessert, I had wine - with a side of lemon gelato.
How glorious it was - this house. At least two stories, though I seemed only to wander around the same floor. In fact, I never left the bedroom or the attached bathroom with the whirlpool tub. But it didn"t matter. I twirled the nightgown. I danced. I slept. I ate. And then I did it all over again until the rain came.
Like a child, I cowered under the blankets every time the thunder boomed in the sky. I yelped in fear when white light flashed outside the windows. I was alone in this room and the storm wanted in. The windowpanes shook as hail pelted the gla.s.s from outside, threatening to break through with every gust of the vicious and unrelenting wind. I knew it wanted me.
The storm was coming. And I was all alone.
The pillow was the first thing I recognized as I drifted out of my watery dream and back into reality. It was soft and squishy and even though I knew what it was, it felt unlike any pillow I"d ever rested on before. For a moment, I rolled my head from side to side, enjoying the plush feel of it beneath my scalp. But it wasn"t my pillow. The thought was enough to startle my eyes open.
I was lying on the right side of a ma.s.sive four-poster bed with sheer curtains eloquently draped around each mahogany post. It was dusk, or dawn. At least according to the pale lighting that peeked through the slatted windows. Orange curtains with a paisley-like white pattern flanked each of the floor length windows to my left, just beyond the wide expanse of the mattress.
"So...she lives." A gravelly voice beside me purred into the quiet room, making me jump under the sheets.
A man lounged in a deep armchair next to the bed, with his bare feet propped up, heels resting just beside my covered legs. His face was all shadows but I was certain of one thing - he was not Connor.
His jeans rustled as he lifted his long legs off the bed and lowered his feet to the carpeted ground. When he leaned toward me, with his hands casually draped across his knees, I flinched and tried to push up onto my elbows but my left shoulder throbbed in painful protest from the movement.
"I wouldn"t do that," the stranger said with a soft chuckle, "Unless you want to tear your st.i.tches."
I let my head fall back into the pillow and tried not to lose myself in the luxurious feel of it. My side hurt too, just as bad as my shoulder. Worse, actually.
"Where am I?" Hearing my voice was startling. The sound came out strained and dry like my vocal chords hadn"t been used in months.
"You"re safe. For now," the man answered.
"And...who are you?"
"A friend."
"For now?" I asked, glancing nervously in his direction. He leaned back into the chair, obscuring his face once again in the shadows. After a pause, he laughed and I couldn"t decipher if it was meant to calm or frighten me.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"How long have I been here," I asked, lifting my hips as far off the mattress as they would go. This was only about half an inch.
"Three days," he said, standing from the chair fluidly. His form towered over me and I recoiled as a hand reached out to pull the sheet up to my collarbone.
"And my friends...are they here too?"
Instead of answering my question, he crossed the room, lifted something off a long dresser, and brought it to the foot of the bed, holding it up for me to see. Kris"s pack. I tried to remember the last few moments of our ride. The golf course. The gunshots. The horses. Sunny down in the dirt - b.l.o.o.d.y and broken.
He tossed it into the center of the bed and turned to walk away, saying over his shoulder, "I found this but there wasn"t time to stick around and hunt through the weeds for bodies."
I stared at the pack and the bright red stain along one strap, not noticing him walk from the room, leaving me alone in the bedroom with my thoughts and all that was left of them. Kris and Connor. They were right - all of them - I lost the two most important people left in my life before we even reached downtown Los Angeles.
"I"ll find you," I whispered into the silence, "I"ll find you and make sure your souls rest. I promise."
The surprising thing about losing Connor and Kris is that I accepted it immediately. I cried for one day and then the anger set in. It was the kind of anger that you can taste on your tongue and feel coursing through your body like an untapped electrical current. It was the kind of anger that kept me alive and fighting. For days, it was all I could think about, all I focused on. It festered inside me like a parasite until my need for revenge became stronger than my will to eat. Even despite the chip in my hipbone from a bullet graze and the one that was yanked out of the back of my shoulder after I pa.s.sed out from the blood loss, the revenge was strong and alive inside me.
As soon as I could walk, I started doing crunches on the carpeted bedroom floor and push-up"s against the wall. Using water gla.s.ses and then shampoo bottles, I did bicep curls, and lunges from one side of the wide bedroom to the other. And I disa.s.sembled and rea.s.sembled the handgun that was stuffed inside Kris"s backpack until I could do it with my eyes closed.
I counted my bullets and touched them every day, making sure my DNA was left along the tip of each shiny point. I did this because one day soon I"d be firing each of those bullets into the heads of the people that took my family from me.
I was going to empty my clip into their thick skulls until their bodies stopped twitching.
"You coming down for food, or staying up here again?" His gravelly voice vibrated through the heavy bedroom door.
"I"m not hungry, Drake," I said, ignoring the involuntary twitch of my stomach.
"Liar," he answered placidly.
I stared hard at the doork.n.o.b, expecting him to turn it and enter the room. He didn"t, of course. Frozen in a sit-up, I waited for him to retreat down the hallway, but heard nothing but silence.
Cursing and groaning I rolled onto my side and stood up, ignoring the fuzzy feeling in my head as I stomped over to the door and flung it open. He leaned comfortably against the outer portion of the frame with a knowing smile on his face.
I didn"t trust his hazel eyes just yet, regardless of the fact that he saved my life. There was a darkness hidden there, and his lack of free-flowing information didn"t ease my doubt about his intentions. After spending two solid weeks holed up in the two-story house, I knew nothing about my rescuer other than his first name. Though he stood silently before me, the arrogant expression of triumph was spread smoothly across his face like a b.u.t.tered slice of bread.
Pushing past him, I sauntered down the hallway and took the stairs slowly, as if I wasn"t salivating at the idea of eating. By the time I was half-way down the stairs, I finally heard him descend behind me.
Canned vegetables. Canned fruit. Homemade bread with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. Lunch never looked so good. My tongue curled and twisted in my mouth as I served myself a humble amount of food and poured a gla.s.s of what looked like fresh lemonade before carrying my loot into the next room to sit at the expensive wooden dining table. My meals had mostly consisted of oatmeal, over-ripe fruit and tons and tons of water. It wasn"t until a few days before that my appet.i.te came back. Drake could tell but I didn"t want to eat around him, or serve myself food that he had scavenged or prepared. It was obvious, even to myself that I had lost a considerable amount of weight since leaving San Diego. This reminded me of the conversation I needed to have with the man that sat quietly opposite of me, eating his lunch as if he was the only person in the room.
With a soft clank of metal against ceramic, I set my fork down and stared at the sheer curtains that obscured my view of the backyard. Having something to stare at while talking made it so much easier. It was hard to look at Drake. Something about his thick, arched eyebrows unnerved me. And his smile...it tweaked at the corner of his mouth, exposing his canine teeth, reminding me of a cougar.
"I need to know where the closest department store is," I said.
His silverware made a similar clanking sound on his plate before he spoke, "Why?"
I finally looked at him and shrugged nonchalantly. "I need stuff. Especially clothes that fit."