“You look like you’re in love,” she said with a smile.
“Maybe.” The boss pickup would stay where it was. He grabbed his rifle and bowie knife. “I’ll check out inside. See if we’ve got any company. Wait here.”
“No.” She threw off her seatbelt and jumped out of the vehicle before he could grab her. “We do this sort of thing together from now on.”
“Ros, wait in the truck.”
“You’re not taking all the risks on your own, Nick.” She flicked off the safety on the gun and strode toward the nearest room like she was Clint Eastwood. “That’s not a partnership. Are you coming?”
“Roslyn,” he hissed.
Up onto the pavement and tugging on the door handle with a gun in her hand but no clue. The door didn’t open. He took a deep breath. It was locked, thank fuck. She’d give him a heart attack before she was through.
He fell in line beside her at the next room along, number three. “Alright. But we stick together.”
“Sure, Nick.” Her ready smile didn’t soothe.
“And you stay behind me. That’s the rule.”
She flashed him a frown, but moved back a step. Exactly how the hell he would keep her in one piece he did not know. That was what kept him up at night. Not her bad dreams and talking in her sleep, but his concerns for her safety, plus his fear of losing her. Combined, they were more than enough to give him cold sweats.
The next room’s door opened. Inside everything sat shadowy cool. On the far side of the room the curtains were open and dust particles filled the sunlit air. Nothing else moved. He lifted his rifle, just in case. Ros came up so close behind him she jostled his arm.
“It looks okay,” she said.
“Shh.” He held up a hand, motioned for her to stay put as he took a few steps inside. It was your standard motel room. Small table and chairs with a big bed and a built-in cupboard. He threw that door open, but there was only a few wire hangers and a neatly folded blanket inside. The bathroom waited down the end with its door ajar.
“Stay here,” he said.
White tiles and mold. He pushed back the gray shower curtain with the end of his rifle, half expecting trouble but happy to be let down.
“We’re clear,” he said.
“Okay. So, we do the next room?”
“No. We only ever look where we need to.”
Roslyn sat on the edge of the lime bedspread. “Well, we need food.”
A mini-bar sat beneath a side table. Inside were neat little bottles of alcohol, lined up. Tiny cups of long-life milk and a couple of individually packed chocolate chip cookies. In the drawer above were sachets of nuts and some small boxes of breakfast cereals. Fortunate, seeing as the couple of petrol stations and one small supermarket they’d passed had been picked over already.
He tossed her a cookie. “Here.”
It flew past her and she scrambled after it.
“We’re going to be living rough for a while,” he said. “Get used to it.”
“We could look in the restaurant.”
Yeah, they could. He probably should. But the chances of her agreeing to stay behind were shit. “We’ve got energy bars from the drugstore. That’ll do.”
She sat back on the edge of the bed and tore into the cookie.
“I’ve been thinking about what we should do next,” he said.
She nodded and munched away. A crumb sat at the corner of her mouth, messing with his thinking. The urge to lick it away was distractingly strong. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “As your former captive, I just wanted to say how much I like this use of the word we. Especially when you actually mean it. Go team.”
The pistol sat beside her on the bed, silently accusing him. “Ros …”
The smile she gave him turned him inside out and upside down. She’d clearly been a happy person before everything had gone to shit, you could tell. He’d never imagined ending up with a chirpy chatterbox. Nothing had worked out how he’d imagined. But to see her smiling despite everything and no matter the state of the world did something to him.
“So what are our choices?” she asked.
“There is somewhere to go.” Not a place he could go, but for her Blackstone would be perfect. The alternative would be to have her running amok in a world she couldn’t handle. A world likely to kill her if he didn’t watch her every second of every day. He didn’t trust himself that far, not now. What if he fucked up? What then? She died.
Nick stretched out his hand, splaying his fingers. All of his choices sucked. He hated each and every one of them. Her safety came first, but he didn’t know if he could do it. He didn’t know if he could give her up and he didn’t know if he could give her what she needed.