Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

“Looks like we have a few choices here,” Lucas announces. “Personally, I’m for just leaving him here with the snakes. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.” A large bruise is blooming on the side of his face, and he’s cradling his left wrist.

Connor groans. He has elbowed himself out of the hole, but his foot is twisted and caught in the pile of broken planks. Two telltale spots of blood are spreading through his shirt sleeve.

“Lucas… Vivian… please. I’ve been bitten. You can’t just—”

“We can’t just leave? Sure we can.” Hostility jolts through my body like lightning. “You had no problem sending his mom—or my brother—off to die!” I hold the lantern, glaring at him and keeping my feet safely out of his reach. There’s already a big, satisfying lump forming where the lantern cracked into his forehead.

“Your brother?” Connor tries to sound mystified and fails. “What are you talking about? I told Viktor to take him down to the rest stop and leave him there. I would never hurt Brian.”

“You would never hurt Brian. You would never hurt my mother,” Lucas spits. “Who else are you not hurting while you destroy their lives?”

“Mom was sleeping all this time because of him. He was trying to get her out of the way so he could get to Brian.” Saying it out loud pisses me off even more, and I wonder if just leaving him here would be enough. Would anything be enough payback for the lives he’s destroyed?

His gaze latches onto mine, searching for something he knows is there, digging into my thoughts like he did in Déjà Vu.

“She’s just sleeping,” he says. “She’ll be fine. I took every precaution. Believe me; I would never put Summer in danger.”

Lucas makes a wild noise that is half laugh, half growl. “There’s that never again!”

Connor’s breathing is faster, shallower. He’s bleeding, broken and bitten—an awesome trifecta of pain—and I couldn’t be happier. But he hasn’t stopped watching me, hasn’t stopped digging. His eyes narrow as he finds what he was looking for and asks, “Was sleeping? Did you—is Summer awake?”

I meet his uncertain gaze for two expressionless heartbeats. He doesn’t look away, but something makes his eyes waver. I hope it’s a whole lot of pain. I turn away, feeling his eyes on me as I walk back to my hiding place in the shadows. As if I’m telling him anything. He can just wonder about it, but though I have a feeling he knows.

Even if it was a twenty-year old memory, Jackson Connor saw me in his fortress window.

“There must be something in the first aid kit to tie up your wrist.” I kick my backpack away from the porch before picking it up.

The rattlesnake may have slithered away from the cabin, but everyone in New Mexico knows rattlesnakes often have friends. Lucas retrieves the other lantern from inside the cabin and perches on the far end of the porch, flexing his swollen hand and wincing.

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” he decides and removes an ace bandage from the box with his good hand.

Connor struggles to sit up. “You can’t just leave me here. I know you think I deserve it, but Elina was a terrible accident, and I’m sorry. Leaving me to die would be murder.”

“Shut up!” Lucas roars, leaping to his feet. “Don’t you say her name again, not ever!”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I won’t, I swear.” Connor moans, falling back to the ground, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

“You better quit moving around so much,” Lucas informs him. His eyes are cold, narrow slits. “It just makes the poison travel faster through your body.” He sits back down, breathing hard as I help him bandage his wrist.

“Lucas,” I whisper, holding his hand gently in mine. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we can’t just leave him here.”

He shoots a venomous glance at the man on the ground. “The only way I’m helping that murderer is to throw him off that cliff over there, so he can die faster. A life for a life.”

“But he’s right. We have to do something, or we’ll be just like him. Worse, even.”

The wounded look on his face hardens. “You actually want me to help the man who killed my mother? He’d have no problem killing your mom, or Brian, me, you—anyone who gets in his way. And you’re okay with that?”

My head spins as I choke out the words, “Of course I’m not okay with that. But Lucas, I keep thinking about my dad. Your dad too. How they found us, wherever they are. They brought us together to save Brian. Maybe to save all of us.”

I take his other hand, leaning in close so Connor won’t hear. “I keep wondering what they would want us to do. It’s like I feel my dad watching. After all we’ve been through, they'd want us to be strong together and do what’s right. They wouldn’t want us to let him die.” I raise my voice and turn in Connor’s direction to say, “No matter how much he deserves it!”

Lucas drops both of my hands. “My dad was a Marine, a warrior, and this guy is the enemy. I know exactly what he’d do.”

“Connor’s the enemy, but he’s also a government agent. If he dies because of us, we’re as good as dead ourselves. We have to do something.”

“You go right ahead, then. I won’t stop you. But I won’t help you either.”

“What? I can’t.” I stare at him, incredulous. “You’re the one who knows how.”

He lifts his wrapped hand. “I’m left-handed. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

“You can tell me while I do it then.”

His gaze burns into mine, two fiery coals of misery. The dark bruise shadows his face like the secret that has shadowed his whole life—the secret of Jackson Connor and Stargate.

“I’m sorry, Vivi. I just can’t.”

A hot wave of anger breaks over me. “Fine, then, I’ll do it myself! You can just sit here and wait. I’ll probably screw it up, and he’ll die anyway, but at least I won’t be a murderer.”

I grab the first aid kit and the lantern, spinning toward Jackson Connor, half expecting Lucas to follow. He doesn’t. I shove the rotten boards away from Connor’s foot, grab him under the arms, and yank him a few groaning inches before letting go and plopping backwards onto the ground.

Lucas perches on the other end of the porch, his back to me. Panting for air, I peel off my jacket and drag Connor a few more feet, until he’s clear from the precarious wreckage. I glare at Lucas’s back while I catch my breath.

“Thank you, Vivian—” Connor rasps.

“Shut up,” I instruct him grimly. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me. I hate your guts, and I would rather be doing anything else besides helping you.”

I take out the coiled snakebite tubing and dig out the microscopic directions by the light of the lantern. Tears blur my vision, and I don’t see the tiny blade inside before it nicks my thumb.

“Ow!” I scream in frustration as much as pain, loud enough to echo across the ridge.

Lucas doesn't even look up. My chest tightens with fury. How can he abandon me like this? I squeeze my thumb hard to stop the bleeding, but that doesn’t help the stinging in my heart.

From out in the canyon, through the still, rain-washed air, my own voice comes back to me.

“Ow… ow-ow-oo-oo…”

It’s not my voice. It’s not an echo.

Connor turns his head. “What’s th—”

“Shh!” I stand up. A chill sparks up my spine, raising the hair on my neck.

A second, closer voice chimes in: “Ah roo-oo-oo!” The wolf song drifts up and coils around us, lifting into the trees, where unseen night wings rustle.

“Lucas,” I whisper, “is that the wolf preserve?” It has to be, but that’s at least ten miles away. This feels as if it rose from the canyon itself.

He is hunched over, shaking. Anger forgotten, I join him by the porch. His breath comes in harsh, rasping gulps, shuddering through his body as the past battles the present, until he raises his head and lets out an anguished cry, tears streaming down his face. A moment later a pair of wolf calls answer him, then fade away into the night.

He pulls me in hard and holds me tight, sobbing silently until the waves of grief subside. He takes a deep breath, throwing a bitter glance at Jackson Connor.

“Okay, let’s get this over with. Let’s save this murdering piece of shit’s life.”