Authors: Rebecca York
Dark Warrior (29 page)
Looking up, she expected to see Jason coming after her. He stuck his arm through, but his shoulders were too big to fit. Withdrawing, he began pulling at the boards again.
She could hear him coughing as he worked, and her heart leaped into her throat.
“Take a breath through the hole,” she called out.
He did as she suggested, then went back to trying to dismantle the door. Scrounging around for some way to help him, she found a large rock. But when she raised it to pound in the door, she stopped herself. If she started making noise, Cynthia and the others might find them. All she could do was wait with tension singing through her while Jason worked.
Finally he enlarged the opening enough for his shoulders to fit through.
When he disappeared again, she wanted to scream, but he reappeared quickly. “Stand back.”
After she did, he threw out the pack he’d dragged with him, even when he was half choked and blinded by smoke. Then he wiggled out, and she kept him from hitting the ground hard by easing him down.
She crouched beside him, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding on tight. They rocked in each other’s arms, both thankful that they had made it out of the cabin and out of the tunnel.
After a quick kiss, she murmured, “I was so scared.”
“We’re safe now.”
“Do you have another car stashed somewhere?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
“I guess that was too much to hope for. What are we going to do?”
“For starters, we’ve got to get out of Sedona before they find us again. It was a mistake to stay here.”
“My fault. I should have realized they’d zero in on us.”
“Let’s not waste time on blame. We’ve got to focus on getting away.”
“Won’t they think we’re dead?”
“Not when there are no bodies inside the cabin. And not if we try to contact Tessa.”
He sat up, bringing her with him, and brushed dirt from her shoulder. “Burning the cabin didn’t work out quite the way I expected.”
“Did we have a better option?”
“No.”
“Okay, but . . .” She flapped her hand in frustration. “We still have no idea who took Tessa.”
“But we know where the guy lives. And we can find him. And find her.”
“Before it’s too late?”
“Too late for what?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know. But the Ionians do have some sense of the future, and I can’t help worrying that something horrible is going to happen.”
“We’ll stop it!”
The determined look on his face made her heart melt. He was doing this for her. For the Ionians. And they kept trying to stop him.
He started walking through the woods, and she followed him, glad that he knew where he was going.
“Did he drive her to Santa Barbara, do you think? Or did he fly?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t know. But we’re going to drive. Less chance of someone figuring out where we’re going.”
“What happens when we get there?” she asked as they skirted around a large boulder.
“I guess that will depend on what we can work out.”
She nodded, wishing they had some kind of concrete plan. But that would have to wait until they had a better idea of the situation.
Jason turned toward her. “When we get to the road, I’ll leave you somewhere safe and get a car.”
“How?”
He patted the backpack. “I brought more than a flashlight and water. I’ve got money—and credit cards in another name. Also a matching driver’s license.”
“You were prepared.”
“I guess it’s a Minot trait!”
“You’ve got more than Minot traits. You’re an extraordinary man who overcame his background.”
He shrugged. “You’ve heard of nature versus nurture?” “Of course.”
“My mother made the difference. Without her, I would have been like the rest of them.”
She had trouble believing that was the only factor, but she wasn’t going to argue. Not when their lives were in danger.
As they approached the road, he slowed. “Will you be all right alone?”
She wanted to say, “Yes.” But she heard herself say, “I wish I could come with you.”
“So do I. But I’ve got to make it fast. And I don’t have the strength to carry you this time.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t want to make this harder for you. How long will you be?”
“I’ll be back as fast as I can.” He got out a bottle of water and gave it to her.
She reached for him, and they clung together. She had the awful feeling that if he left her here, she was never going to see him again, but she didn’t voice the thought. Had he heard it anyway?
Finally, he eased away. “Let’s get you comfortable.”
He found her a place to sit that was sheltered from the road where she’d have her back to a tree trunk. Together they gathered a bed of leaves for her to sit on. When they were finished, he hugged her again before fading back into the woods.
Settling down, she leaned her head against the trunk and closed her eyes. She might be here for hours. There was no way of knowing.
At first she tried not to check her watch, but as time crawled by and the sun dipped low in the west, she started sneaking peeks at the dial. It would be dark soon, and she hadn’t been out alone at night since the incident on the road.
But that guy who’d assaulted her wasn’t even here. He’d taken Tessa to Santa Barbara—if Jason was right, which she didn’t even know. Still, going there seemed like their only option. Too bad they didn’t dare to join their minds until they were away from Sedona.
She pressed her back against the tree trunk, wishing she could get a little sleep, but she couldn’t doze off. And she couldn’t shake the notion that someone was stalking her as she listened to the wind in the trees and the sounds of branches crackling nearby. She tried to tell herself it was just little animals in the underbrush, until she realized she must be listening to footsteps moving closer.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she peered into the darkness.
If it was Jason coming back, why didn’t he call out to warn her?
She sat as still as possible, her heart pounding, wondering if it would do any good to run.
When a black-clad figure glided into view, she gasped. It was Ophelia.
Scrambling to her feet, Sophia prepared to flee.
“Don’t. We’re not here to harm you.”
“ We?”
Eugenia stepped forward, and Sophia had to press her back against the tree trunk to keep from swaying.
“Are you here to drag me back to the spa? Where I won’t be under the influence of the evil Jason?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“No,” Eugenia answered.
“Then what? Kill me out here so I don’t cause you any more trouble?”
“We’ve had a close relationship since you were a little girl. You think I would do that?”
She turned her hand palm up. “I don’t know anymore. Not after the way Cynthia attacked us.”
Eugenia sighed. “A group of us is hoping you can find Tessa, and bring her back.”
As she tried to take that in, she asked, “How did you find
me?
”
me?
”
Eugenia gave her a sympathetic look. “You’re nervous and upset, and you’re giving off enough vibrations to take down a major rock formation.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Most people wouldn’t pick them up.”
“But you’re not most people.” She looked at Ophelia. “A while ago, you were working with Cynthia, making my head feel like it was going to split open. Is she waiting around the corner?”
“No. She doesn’t know I’m not back at the spa. And she’ll be angry when she finds out I’m missing.”
“Why didn’t
she
find me?”
she
find me?”
“She called in the incident at the cabin,” Eugenia answered.
“The incident!”
“And she’s busy with the fire marshal and the police.”
Sophia kept her gaze steady. “Why are you defying her?”
“Because we don’t want to leave one of our sisters in the hands of a Minot, and we think you have a chance of bringing Tessa back,” Eugenia responded. “You said three Ionians had disappeared. One was Jason’s mother, Julia. We don’t know anything about the others.”
“I thought you might.”
Eugenia shook her head.
“What about them?” Sophia asked.
“We need to know if they were . . . captives. Or if they lived happy lives.”
“With a Minot?”
Eugenia shrugged.
Sophia raised her chin. “I’m with a Minot.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately. “He could have left me. He could have hurt me. He could have tried to mess with my head. He hasn’t done any of that. Instead he’s been trying to help us. And look what he’s gotten for his trouble.”
From the darkness, a deep, male voice said, “I’m glad to hear the vote of confidence.”
It was Jason. She ran to him and clasped him tightly, not caring what the other two women thought. “Thank the powers you’re back.”
“And I see two of your sisters have joined the party.” He pressed her against his side as he faced the other Ionians.
“Do you know where to find Tessa?” Eugenia asked.
“We think we know the city. That’s as far as we got.”
“We’d like to help you rescue her.”
Jason kept his voice even. “I think we have to find her first. And I think our best chance of that is if we’re alone. Because the more people involved, the more likely Cynthia will find us.”
Eugenia pressed her palms against her thighs. “I was hoping to go with you, but you may be right. If the four of us were together, Cynthia might be able to track us.”
“Thank you for not arguing,” Sophia said.
“But if you need our help, I hope you’ll ask for it.”
“Maybe,” Jason answered.
“I understand why you might not trust us.”
“At least you’re insightful.” Jason’s voice held the same sarcasm that Sophia hadn’t been able to repress earlier. He took her hand. “We’d better split.”
Without a backward glance, she walked with him out of the forest. When they reached the road, she saw the car he’d parked in a turnoff. It was a midsized Ford only a few years old.
They climbed in, and he headed away from town.
“Where did you get the car?” she asked.
He laughed. “Craigslist. For a nice fee, the guy agreed to keep it in his name for the time being.”
“Is that legal?”
“Well, I’m just borrowing it. He’s getting a good deal.”
They headed for Route Forty, then west.
“I think we can make Lake Havasu City,” Jason said.
Sophia had never been to the resort area, but many of the spa guests had spoken about it. Some had combined trips to the Seven Sisters with visits there. “Isn’t that almost two hundred and fifty miles away?”
“Yeah.”
“You can run fast, but if you try to do a hundred miles an hour on the road, you’ll get a speeding ticket. In a car that’s registered to someone else.”
“Point taken, but I want to get far enough from Sedona so they can’t tune in to us.”
“If that’s possible,” she answered.
He looked toward her, then back to the road. “Do you trust Eugenia?”
She thought about everything that had happened. Wishing she could be more positive, she admitted “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-ONE
“ YOU THINK THEY’RE telling the truth about wanting to get Tessa back?” Jason asked in a gritty voice.
Sophia clasped her hands together in her lap. “If you had asked me last week, I would have said ‘yes’ with no hesitation. Now I’m not so sure.”
Jason had been expecting the answer. “So we’ve got to do this by ourselves.”
“That’s probably right.”
He dragged in a breath and let it out before saying, “And our first job—if we can get back into contact with Tessa—is to convince her that I’m on her side.”
She reached to clasp his arm, holding on tight. “We’ll do it.”
“Maybe.”
They rode in silence for several miles.
When he slowed, she gave him a questioning look. “Now what?”
He gestured toward a fast-food restaurant. “We haven’t had much to eat today. We’d better grab some burgers.”
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