Page 35 of The Heat is On
Darryl nodded, a flash of dread on his face.
“Except”—Rio looked to her—“I have no idea where to go.”
“I saw a map when we were flying in, and I got a pretty good look at the lay of the land when I was watching the fire. There’s a river to the west, and beyond that, a highway. Maybe three miles from here.”
Rio nodded. Then he looked at Darryl. “Start walking.”
Darryl stumbled forward, a glance over his shoulder at Rio.
And just like that, Rio changed. From broken, humiliated prisoner to the guy in charge. The guy whocouldsave the day.
A guy she could, and did, trust.
The heat of his hand sparked through her, right to her core as they put the cabin and the fire behind them.
I'm sorry, Tucker.
Rio pushed Darryl through the brush, his other hand in Darryl’s back until they came out to a narrow path that looked like a deer trail.
“Follow this,” Skye said. “It’ll probably lead us to water.”
Rio gave her hand a little squeeze. He didn’t need to hold it—after all, they’d ditched March—but she tightened her hold anyway.
Somehow, just being around him made her feel less overwhelmed. Kept her head above water.
“I promise, Aggie was the absolute truth,” Rio said suddenly, quietly, beside her.
“I believe you.”
He glanced down at her, so much emotion in his eyes— Wait.
“You’re tired of this, aren’t you?”
He looked away. “Tired of what?”
“Lying. Being undercover. This…whatever it is you do for the FBI.”
He was silent a few steps, then, “Yeah. I’m tired of it. When I got out of juvie, I swore I’d change my life. And Idid. Something happened to me in juvie. There was a chaplain there who listened to an angry kid and didn’t give up on him. And somehow in there, the darkest place I’d ever been, I found light. I found hope. I found forgiveness.”
“You found Jesus?”
He nodded. “I started thinking that maybe I could do some good in the world, you know? I joined the military and did some time in Afghanistan. When I got home, I…well, there were still the same gangs doing the same thing to girls like Aggie, so I joined the FBI. They liked that I had experience working in the penal system, and we began to use that. I’d insert into a prison, get close to the person I needed to get information from, and we started unraveling organized crime. But…”
He took a breath. “Prison life is…brutal. And I started to wonder if the lines I was crossing still made me the good guy.”
Oh, Rio. She wanted to stop him right there, to pull him close. To tell him that she saw the good inside him—had seen it from the first. “There’s still light inside you, Rio. I see it. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Not trials. Not circumstances—”
“I don’t know, Skye. I’ve done a lot of bad things in the name of good. Fights. Lies…” He looked at her with a rueful smile.
She shook her head. “Not even that.”
They’d come up to a ridge where the trail ducked down between a fall of rocks and granite cut out from the forest. Darryl tripped, and Rio grabbed his arm.
Darryl sank down right there, on the path.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Skye said, crouching next to him and touching her fingers to his jugular. “His pulse is fast and a little thready. Let’s get him into some shade and let him rest for a bit.”
Rio grabbed his good arm and muscled him into the woods on the edge of the ridge, propping him under a trio of birch. Darryl leaned his head back against a trunk and closed his eyes.