Chapter Four
Luke
Thanks to the Colorado mountain stream, the wind is an erratic bitch with mood swings, punishing everything in its path, including me and Ana. Compliments of my shared earbuds, Blake barks out commands in both our ears: left at one street, right at another, left, right. Stop. Stop now. Run East! Run now!
Neither of us ask any questions. We run and keep running, with Blake back to spitting out commands. Our mad rush ends in a parking lot that’s too empty to offer anywhere near a comfortable level of coverage. For now, our best shot at safety is to hunker down at the butt end of an old Buick, but any safety offered is a façade.
“Find a car and get the hell out of there,” Blake orders. “Call me when you get to the safe house.”
“Copy that, boss,” I say, and when he disconnects, I’m already glancing at Ana and patting the rear of the Buick.
She offers an approving nod and sixty seconds later, we’re sealed inside the four-door green beast of a car. From there, it takes me another thirty seconds to hotwire the ignition, the clunky chug of the engine far from encouraging.
“She’s not going to be fast,” I say, “but at least she’s a tank if we need to roll over an asshole or two.” I hand my phone off to Ana. “The address for the safe house is in my text messages with Blake.”
Ana tabs through my phone and quickly offers directions. “211 Monroe Street,” she says, and then adds, “If I’m correct, this isn’t far from that Italian place we used to love.”
I’m instantly reminded of a night not long before that dreaded mission with Kasey when Ana and I had walked down a cozy Cherry Creek sidewalk, her arm linked with mine, her chin tilted upward as she’d offered me a sweet smile. It was a calmer time. We’d been happy together. I’d been happy in a way I’d once thought only flying could make me. Now I’m not. And she’s not.
It sends me into a flashback yet again, this time Kasey’s funeral, where the smile on her mouth and in her eyes turned to hate, a memory that stabs at my heart, a blade that just won’t stop coming. My jaw clenches, anything I might have to say about the past lost in the bloodbath that was our ending. I don’t need to go there right now, I tell myself, and yet, as I eye the rearview mirror, finding no cars behind me, the gleam of headlights transports me to a memory from one month after I met Ana—dinner at her stepfather’s place.
He’d greeted me at the door and shook my hand. “You know what I like about you?” he asks.
“I used to think it was my ability to do my job, sir.”
“It still is,” he replies. “And at some point, if my daughter decides you’re a keeper, one day, when I’m no longer around, your job will be to protect her.”
This even as Ana grumbles, “I can take care of myself,” her stepfather’s eyes meet mine, a challenge in their depths, one it doesn’t take me long to accept.
I’d met Ana at a time in my life when I had no interest in forever and yet zero ability or desire to walk away from her. Funny how one person can change everything we think we know about ourselves and others. Kurt wasn’t a man I expected to invite me into his daughter’s life, but he’d done that and more.
Kasey had been a different story, and right out of the gate, he threw darts my way any chance he’d had.
He barely spoke to me, or anyone for that matter, during that first dinner at Kurt’s place, casting me condemning scowls. He was going to be a problem, I’d decided then and there. I just didn’t know how soon. I didn’t know it would be that very night when Kasey and I would have our first confrontation.
I turn us into the residential area of Cherry Creek, where restaurants, shopping, art galleries, and salons are all walkable. At this point, we’re a few blocks from the house, and it’s time to focus on delivering us to the safe house without any slime slithering along for the ride. The incessant nagging of the past and whatever it’s trying to tell me will have to wait.
When I’m certain we haven’t been followed, I pull us into the safe house, and thanks to Blake no doubt, the garage door opens automatically, allowing me to pull us inside. Once I’ve killed the engine, Ana and I sit there in the dark, the air heavy with history, our history as future husband and wife.
I can almost taste our first kiss. I can almost taste her right now. I want to kiss her so damn badly, it’s a physical burn.
“When we fuck, we’re fucking good,” I say. “When we’re not, we used to be just as good. Since we’ve both agreed we can’t fix what’s broken, we might as well just get naked and fuck like rabbits.” I glance over at her.
“That’s your answer to our problems? Just get naked and fuck?”
“Right now? Yes, it is.”
As if the universe wants to fuck over my plan to fuck, my cellphone rings and we both know I can’t ignore it the way I’d like to ignore our problems.