Page 80 of Wild Child
Reality slipped back into place as I frantically tried to catch back up. Forest. Ellie. Running. We had been running . . . but why? It’s like I lost time. The flashbacks occurred and I had no idea how much time passed while I struggled to find my mind again.
“Traitor!” Ellie shouted. “You’re a traitor, and I’ll make sure you go down for this, Neils.”
Neils.
Park ranger.
Danger to Ellie.
My mind snapped back into place. The sands of Afghanistan cleared out of my mental landscape. Within half a second, I had Ellie behind me, with my body between her and the men leering at her now with hatred in their eyes.
I’d seen that look before.
Hell, I'dfeltthat look before.
“Let us go,” I commanded as Neils skulked closer. “We’ll let you go. Mutual pass.”
Ellie held onto my shirt behind me, like she didn't want to be parted even a little. It grounded me to know right where she stood.
Neils scoffed. “Right,” he drawled with a dramatic roll of his eyes. “I completely believe that you won’t tell anyone what you saw here, nor what you did. That the authorities won’t be on me in half a second once you get back to your truck.”
“Who says they aren’t already?”
Neils scoffed, then reached into his belt. A black gun appeared with a flash. My instincts kicked in. I whirled around, bear-hugged Ellie, and threw us to the ground. The sound of shattered wood broke above us seconds later. Ellie let out a muffled groan as I rolled us down the hill, narrowly missing a sapling and plowing through a dense chokecherry bush that grabbed her hair. She let out a little mewl of pain when it ripped a lock of hair free on our tumble down. Gunshots rang behind, hitting the dirt just behind us as we rolled free. The hot ricochet of a bullet whizzed past my ear as I forced us over a crumbling log.
And I dropped right back into Afghanistan.
This time, I lay low in the sand. Night descended around us in utter darkness broken only by a thick band of stars. The whine of bullets sped overhead as we burrowed farther into the sand, plastering our bodies into the ground to get farther and farther away. The sand gritted against my cheek, painful against unwashed skin and the gritty beginnings of a beard. My heart thudded, heavy and fast, as the bullets whizzed by.
My thoughts pulsed like the drum of a heartbeat, an image of Ellie in my head.
I’m so sorry I left you. I’m so sorry I left you.
Amidst the focus and horror of the moment, when I tried not to think of bullets tearing hot through my body and what it would feel like to fade into death, Ellie appeared. Her laugh rang through my mind. Her green eyes regarded me with amusement that faded to concern. When we'd been together in Pineville, she'd always kept a hand near me, even though there’d never been anything implicitly romantic about it.
Always near.
Even before I died.
"Talk to me," I demanded. "Talk to me, Ellie."
“Devin!”
Shocked to hear Ellie’s voiceherein the boiling sands, my head jerked up. The sands melted away. I stared into her eyes with a verdant emerald backdrop of the forest behind and realized.
I’m not there.
Another shot rang out, followed by a scream. The memory stole me away again. This time, for good.
21
Ellie
His arm felt gritty beneath my fingertips when I touched it. "Dev, it's Ellie. It's me. I'm here. That isn't real."
He paused. "Quiet. They're shooting."
"Ellie," I whispered. "I'm real."
