She didn’t even ask to be taken home. She didn’t know where she wanted to be right now. But there was one thing she needed to set straight. “There is no us.”
He paused in clipping his seat belt in the passenger seat to observe her, probably trying to ascertain whether she meant them as a couple or them in this situation.
“There is an us.” He clipped the belt as though that made everything final. “Damen shooting at you made that a certainty. You’re staying with me now.”
She jerked the gear into Reverse and turned the truck around. “I cannot believe this.”
“I’ll make it right.”
“Like you did in there?” She jerked her thumb toward the back window, where through the rearview mirror the cabin disappeared as the thick forest swallowed them.
“Collette was Damen’s girlfriend,” Korbin said. “He killed her after she met with me.” He explained everything about the meeting and the hit-and-run and then finding Collette.
Nauseated to discover two people had died before he’d fortuitously found his way to her remote road, Savanna drove white-knuckled, pale and cold.
“Didn’t you notice anything off about Damen before now?” There’s something wrong with a person who was capable of murdering people. A staged hit-and-run? He had to have noticed something.
“He wasn’t always like what you saw in there. I told you the truth about him. And me. We stole from the wealthy. It was a game. Until now.”
Now it was no game. Damen would kill to preserve his dangerous association with a man named Tony.
“And yes, I have noticed the change in him before now. That’s why I was getting out,” he said. “After I found out about Bear...”
She was almost afraid to ask. “Who is Bear?”
“A drug dealer.”
She gaped at him as long as she dared while she drove. “You make it sound like you were a member of a street gang.”
“It was starting to feel like that.”
She didn’t know how to handle all of this. Part of her said drive somewhere safe and get away from him. Another sensed he was an innocent man who needed some help.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” Korbin said.
She said nothing, unwilling to encourage him or let him think she was going to go along with any of this.
“I would have taken a bullet for you back there,” he said. She glanced at him because she heard how much he meant it.
He turned from the window. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
She glanced over at him. Then looked forward at the curving highway ahead.
“Collette was someone special?” she asked.
“Not romantically. She had a rough go as a teenager. That led her to Damen’s door. But she was trying to better herself. She was a nice girl, wouldn’t have hurt anyone. She deserved more than what she got.”
His wife had died. His friend. And a stranger. All because of his association with Damen. All but his wife...or was she included in that stat?