She poked her head out the door. The coast was clear.

With a sharp, indrawn breath, she ran for the tunnel. The supplies on her back clanked with each pounding step, her heartbeat hammered in her chest.

She plunged into the tunnel and skidded to a heaving stop. Darkness curled around her,

black and suffocating.

She reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a candle, lighting it. The candle cast weary gold light along the sandstone walls, but even with it, she couldn't

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see more than a foot in front of her face. In her shaking hand, the light danced and writhed in snakelike patterns on the damp stone.

Slowly she crept down the black pathway. The dank smell of a place unseen by the sun clogged her nostrils. She dragged her fingers along the rough sandstone wall and kept moving forward.

She didn't care how scared she was, how lonely she felt. This was the only way out, the only way back to Kelly.

She'd find her way back or die trying.

Good-bye, Viloula. She focused her thoughts on the words, tried to send them through time and space to the old woman. It was all she could do, and she wished it were more.

Good-bye.

Killian stood at the rear of the tent, his hat drawn low over his eyes. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the floor in easy reach. Something about him?his eyes, his stance, something?must have warned people to stay away from him, because not a single person came near him.

Raucous laughter and hoarse voices exploded in the small tent; the pungent smell of unwashed bodies was almost overpowering. People were a blur of movement all around him, dashing, shoving, jostling their way to a makeshift dance floor. In the corner, Purty played the fiddle?poorly. The whining screech of the bow on loose strings vibrated above the din.

Killian watched the action without seeing it. He stood stiff and unmoving, his body held rigidly in check. At his sides, his hands were balled in tight fists, ready.

He wanted to punch something, someone, anything.

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Anything to release the anger that seethed beneath the surface, made him feel restless and uneasy and tense.

He didn't know what to do, how to exorcise the emotions that swirled through his mind like a hot, red mist. He wasn't used to feeling this way. Hell, he wasn't used to feeling at all anymore. For years he'd been cold and calm. Always calm.

Now he was anything but calm. It felt as if there were a bomb inside him, sitting heavily in his gut. Tension radiated beneath his skin, tightened his muscles until they ached.

He leaned back against the sagging canvas wall and forced out a steady breath, trying to bring his raging temper under control. But no matter how hard he tried, or how much he drank, he couldn't forget.

Help me, please . . .

Her soft-spoken plea came back to him, hitting with the force of a hammerblow. He winced, felt a sharp pain in his chest. He yanked up the whiskey bottle and took another long, dribbling drink. He wanted?needed?to get rip-roaring drunk. Anything to make him forget what she'd asked of him, and how he'd felt when she asked it. But he couldn't forget; that was the hell of it, that was the reason he stood here, alone in the middle of a crowd of people, his emotions a turbulent, seething boil in his head. For a second, when he'd looked down into her watery, desperate eyes, he'd wanted to help her.

As if he could. Christ.

He told himself it meant nothing, that stupid, useless desire to help her. Hell, he would have said?or thought?anything right then, anything to make her stop looking at him like he was a goddamn hero.

But deep down, he knew the truth, and it scared the hell out of him. He'd wanted to reach out to her, to offer a side of himself he'd thought he'd discarded a life-

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time ago. Something about her brought out a renegade remnant of the man he'd once been, once thought he'd be forever. The man who believed in love and honor and commitment; the idealistic lawman who was going to save the world and make it a safe place for innocent people.

It had ruined him, that idealism. When he lost it? buried it in a lonely grave in a nothing little town?he'd been left with only a searing emptiness, a dark-edged regret. He'd spent years running from everything and everyone, trying to escape from the hatred eating inside his heart like a cancer. But there'd been no escape, not from himself.

Now those days were a hazy blur for him. He could barely remember what it felt like to actually want something, to care about something.

Tags: Kristin Hannah Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net