Page 54 of Shane
She’d used his first name, not his title. For some dumb-jock reason he didn’t want to examine too closely, he liked the sound of it on her lips.
“Sure, yeah, but we need to find Everlee, and we won’t be able to do that if you’re in police custody or if I’m in the hospital. Understand?” He hoped she did because Shane wasn’t sure why he was suddenly relying on a baby killer to help him locate his partner.
The light of their dire situation finally dawned in Smart’s eyes. “Oh. Okay, sure. I guess you’re right. Everyone still thinks I’m a killer. Got it.”
Shane had the good sense to withdraw his hand from her warm cheek. Like it or not, they were not friends and determining her guilt or innocence was not his job. This mission was a pick-up and deliver order, and he was the delivery man with a missing partner. “Come on, let’s get rolling, Ms., err, Tuesday.” He gave her that much.
“Thanks for using my real name, Shane. It helps to know you at least want to believe me, like maybe we can help each other. Where to?” she asked, her voice nothing more than a whisper in the hot, dead air between them.
Interestingly, this woman didn’t do a thing for Shane’s libido. There was no desire to kiss her or push her onto her back beneath him. Despite her very obvious feminine charms, a definite sadness shadowed everything Tuesday did and said. An unabated loneliness. That was what had initially drawn him to her. Tuesday Smart was a kindred spirit, a person who had, like him, suffered unimaginable loss at a young age. Also, like him, she was alone in the world. No family. No roots to go back to. Not a castoff. More like a solitary ghost nobody missed, ached for, needed, or saw. Until that debacle at TEAM HQ, Shane had been exactly like Tuesday. He had no idea how to help her. Hell, he couldn’t even help himself. But he believed he honestly had a family now, or at least, the makings of one.
He’d never been in Arkansas before. Guess this was as good a time as any to fade into that new crop of baby corn and disappear. He glanced over her shoulder at the miles of lime-green rows running alongside this stretch of highway. “East,” he told her with conviction. “We’ll go east as far as we can today. Once we’re a few miles away from this accident, we’ll take a break and assess our injuries. I’ll contact my office while we walk. Can you make it that far” —again he chose to use her first name— “Tuesday?”
“Yes, Shane. I can do anything you need me to do. Let’s go.”
God, he hoped she wasn’t a liar.
Chapter Nineteen
Everlee woke in the dark again, upright and sitting this time, her forearms tied to the armrests of a chair, her poor butt flat and dead on a narrow wooden seat. Her muscles screamed for a bit of get-me-the-hell-out-of-Dodge exercise. There was no bag covering her head, not like she could see anything in this pitch-black darkness anyway. The rags in her mouth were gone. So were her boots. Her lips and tongue were still as dry as cotton, but breathing was easier without smelly fabric mashed over her face and mouth. But without light, her eyes were useless. She couldn’t make out any points of reference, and there was no way to know which way to go or how to escape. Or if someone was in this dark hole with her. She didn’t think so. She’d at least hear them breathe, right? She strained to pick up any other hints of life nearby. Usually, she could sense vibrations of other bodies. But now? Nothing. Until…
Plop. Something landed in her hair. Spiders!
Oh, hell, no. Fighting indescribable panic, she shook her head, needing that thing off her head, out of her hair, and far, far away. Maybe having a bag over her head wasn’t a bad idea.
After a good shiver and a few minutes of head-tossing wiggles, Everlee stilled, more hyper-alert than before, in case whatever landed on her was now building a nest in her hair or sliding down the back of her shirt or—
No, no, no!She tossed her head harder, back and forth, side to side, shaking her hair to make sure she’d lost the unwelcome hitchhiker. At last satisfied it was gone, she listened again, striving to detect her kidnappers. The dirtbags, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, possibly Mr. Asshole, too. Nothing came back to her, not a squeak or rustle, not the murmur of a television from another room. Just the panting sound of her breathing. No conversation, no defining, stinking, manly smells, no crickets chirping, no flies buzzing, either. Nothing but stark empty silence that almost hurt her ears, it was so loud.
Dare she trust it?Hell, yeah.
Trembling with a burst of adrenaline, Everlee leaned to the left, then to the right, as far as she could without tipping over. Thank God, the chair wasn’t bolted to the floor. It moved. Good enough. It was just wood; she was invincible. It wouldn’t take long to smash this piece-of-shit furniture to smithereens against the nearest wall and be long gone before anyone missed her.
Despite the need to hurry, she froze as the oppressive lack of sound wrapped around her like an iron fist. It was so quiet. Too quiet. She couldn’t detect anything, no distant street noises or sounds of kids playing or dogs barking. No hum of planes overhead. Just the dull thud of the chair’s legs digging into what now felt like packed dirt, not solid flooring. Not even concrete.
Man, she wished she had her boots. “Where on earth am I?”
Panic slithered up her spine like a slimy cold rattlesnake at the hollow sound of her voice. This wasn’t a shipping container. Couldn’t be. But a deep, dark well in the ground would explain the lack of ambient noise, well, except for her too fast heartbeat and highly anxious breathing. Stashing a kidnapped victim in an abandoned hole in the middle of nowhere made sense in a frighteningly scary way. Her kidnappers could leave her there until they got what they wanted—which wouldn’t be much if they were after ransom. Or they could simply walk away if their demands weren’t met, and who would know the difference? Who could find her then? This might very well be a grave. Her grave.
Which made no sense. Why kidnap her just to let her die? She didn’t come from money or fame, and maybe that was her fault, too. Blame that and a million other character defects on her father and her ADHD. She’d never been able to sit still and do nothing; didn’t intend to now. But it’d sure be nice to be able to see or hear. Or run.
Her toes wiggled with anxiety. She wasn’t sure if the GPS locator hidden inside her TEAM phone worked below ground level. Would it? Could Mother find her? Could Alex? Was her cell phone even in her pocket for them to track her by? Everlee used to know important minutia like that. Anything that had to do with her job, she was on it. But between the oppressive darkness and that damned spider attack, panic had lifted its ugly, unreasonable head, and she was running on pure adrenaline.
It struck her then. Mother might’ve been able to track her TEAM phone, but that was smashed back at that convenience store. Shane’s too. There was no way Mother could track them now. Shit!
“I’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” she told herself. Would’ve sounded better if her voice hadn’t trembled. If that expletive hadn’t sounded so weak. “Settle down and think, Everlee.” Wasn’t that what Alex always told her to do?
“I am thinking, Boss,” she whispered.
But there reallywerespiders in this place with her. She could hear them. Not the cute littlespee-i-derthat landed onMegamind’seyeball in that Dreamworks Animation movie, either. But real, no-kidding, black widow arachnids that came with poison in their fangs and bright red, telltale hourglasses stamped on their bellies. The kind that lived in dark places, like wells and caves. The kind that spun man-sized webs to catch their prey before they sucked it dry and—
Shivers raced over her shoulders. All the more reason to… “Hurry,” she hissed. “Come on, girl. Get your fat ass moving. Get out of here!”
Leaning her cheek down onto the binding wrapped around her right biceps, she felt rope, just simple, scratchy jute, not smooth nylon. Which was a good turn of events. Lifting the chair off the ground, she tilted forward and planted her feet, which, thankfully, weren’t tied together. With baby steps, as in really quick baby steps because of her hunched-over posture, she toured the limits of her confinement with her butt still stuck in the chair. The first square corner she came to brought a wave of relief. Corners were good. Curved walls were bad. Another good thing, these walls sounded like wood. Not concrete. Jute and wood she could work with.
Walking faster, she mapped the boundaries of her prison. Four ninety-degree corners. Four straight walls. She was inside a square room. She’d counted her steps. Each wall was ten steps long, which equated to a ten-foot square wooden box. Approximately. Kinda like a coffin.
Whatever. Not one to wait and wonder, Everlee planted her feet, dug her bare toes into the dirt, and prepared for war. She turned her body as far to the right as she could go. In her mind, she was a pitcher in the World Series, using her weight, winding up to deliver a fastball—her chair and her body—into that wall.