I step forward but Fallon puts her hand up. “Check his restraints first, he may have managed to undo them during the night.”
Right. Of course.
Aaron is clever, he could have done anything without us knowing.
I walk over, keeping my eye on Aaron the entire time. I go around behind him and see he’s still tied and hasn’t managed to loosen them any. Exhaling with a smidge of relief, I walk back around and carefully lean down next to him, reaching out and placing my finger on his neck. I can feel a steady pulse, so he’s not dead, but his breathing does seem shallow. God, I’m not a doctor, I have no idea what I’m looking for.
“He’s not dead,” I say, “but his breathing is off.”
“What do we do?”
“I’m not untying him,” I tell her. “It’s too risky. You need to walk and try to find some service and call for help. I’ll stay here. It’s the safest option.”
“You want me to leave you alone with him? What if he has something planned?”
I shrug, even though I feel incredibly uneasy. “We’ll have to take that risk. It’ll be okay, I promise. Just go as quickly as you can and then come back when you’re done.”
She nods, handing me the gun. I take it, having no idea how to shoot the damned thing. “The safety is on. You can turn it off by flicking this.”
She shows me how to turn the safety off and how to shoot it, just in case. Now all I have to do is aim and pull the trigger. Right, that doesn’t seem so hard. Then she goes and gets Aaron’s phone out of his bag. She turns it on and then glances back at me. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine, go.”
With one more fleeting glance in our direction, she walks away from us. I watch her go and then turn and look back to Aaron. He’s still out of it, and I’m praying he’s just asleep. Maybe I should take the tape off, what if he can’t breathe properly? I decide that’s a good idea, and walk over, reaching down and taking the tape in my fingers. I rip it off and that causes his head to fly up, his eyes to open and a scowl to cross his face.
He's pale, and he’s looking a little worse for wear, but he’s alive and I can only hope that’ll be the case by the time Fallon gets back.
“Rip that shit off my face again and see how it ends for you,” Aaron growls, but his voice is drawn out and scratchy.
“Last time I checked, you were the one tied up. I’ll give you some water, but if you try anything, it’ll be the last time I’m nice.”
He nods, sharply.
He must be thirsty if he’s not even attempting to fight me on it.
I take his bottle of water and walk over, putting it to his lips. He guzzles it down, and the kinder part of my soul feels a little bad. He deserves to not drink, of course, but I don’t have it in me to watch him suffer, not to that degree anyway. Also, if he dies it’s on me and I’m not going back to that hell hole, so he can have some water.
I pull the bottle away from his lips, and he actually looks a little relieved.
He’s clearly starting to feel it now.
The injuries, the thirst.
“Not feeling the best, huh?” I ask, putting the bottle down.
“You hit me on the head with a rock, and I’m dehydrated. How do you think I’m feeling?”
I raise my brows. “If you’re looking for sympathy, you won’t find it here. You took my friend, and you were going to kill us.”
“I wasn’t goin’ to kill you,” he mutters, “I was going to bring you out here and leave you behind. It would take days for you to get back and by the time you did, I will have dealt with the problem.”
Yeah, I don’t believe his bullshit.
“See, I don’t believe you. You were never going to let us talk, or the ranchers, I’m not stupid. You had every intention of killing us, because whoever you work for is far more powerful than you and you’re just doing what you have to do. I’m not stupid, dude.”
He grunts. “But you are, because you think you’re going to just make this go away because you’ve got me. The thing is, Willa, you can take me out but you’re right, I do work for someone far more powerful and if they get word that you know...you’ll be dealing with a lot more than me.”
I try not to show him that his words bother me, but they do.
Because I know he’s right. If he is working for someone bigger, and they find out how involved we are, then we’re going to end up in the kind of trouble we can’t escape from. How do we hand Aaron over, without brining ourselves right into the limelight?