Page 52 of Hell In A Handbasket
My stomach clenches with dread. “But Sophia?—”
“Yeah. I know what Sophia is, and I know she’s beyond parking fines and speeding tickets, too. But my father is privy only to the things I tell him, and only to the records Soph allows to be published publicly. He understands Sophia’s entrepreneurial spirit, and he’s impressed by her portfolio. She’s a very successful woman, according to publicly available financial records. But he doesn’tknoweverything she does. Which means he doesn’t know everything I do. Or what Corey does. And though I can’t say with complete certainty that he’s clueless to your extracurricular activities, Doctor Mayet, I think it’s safe to assume he remains oblivious.”
“Because if he knew…?”
“She’d feel the full wrath of Justin Lawrence, attorney at law. Ouch!” She slaps Minka’s wrist and hisses in pain. “You’re hurting me on purpose!”
“Slap me again and I’ll stitch your lips closed.” She sits back and arches her spine, crackling the bones and tilting her head side to side. “I haven’t had to stitch a live person since my first year of residency. If you keep testing me, I’ll start cutting instead of closing. Ya know,” she hunches again and goes back to work, “muscle memory and all that.”
* * *
“It’s time to pack up camp.”
We have a three o’clock flight, according to Sophia, so Tim crosses from the circle of chairs in the dirt and passes the Bishop brothers hovering by the grill. He’s not like Felix, dressed in black and ready for a boardroom. Instead, he walks in jeans and a tank, already sweaty from the filthy heat, and when he passes Aubree, he snags her hand and keeps going.
“We’ve gotta get to that dinky ass airport and back onto a plane.”
“You can fly with us,” Micah rumbles. He, too, is ready to leave and get back to Tiia. “We’ll get you home faster than anything commercial anyway, then Felix, Christabelle, and I will head east.”
“You’re always rushing.” Rolling her eyes, Soph snatches a hot chicken leg straight off the grill, hissing when it burns her fingers. And yet, she goes back for more. “We have plenty of time, no matter which plane you use, and I’m still eating. Sit down and stop bitching.”
“Why’d you bring crates of weapons?” Felix folds the cuffs of his shirt along his forearm, sweltering under the heat of the midday sun. “If we were coming toward danger, like you said we were, I can understand. But it was all a load of bullshit, so why the firepower?”
“No one said we were packing. You assumed.” Kane pulls the latch on the side of the bus and tugs the wide door open. Revealing a crate made of what appears to be military titanium, he hits a button just inside the door, steps back, and beams as an automated system has the crate rolling forward. “In fact, I recall some pretty wild accusations about how we used you to transport illegal items halfway across the country. Something about bombs or drugs or…” Smirking, he releases the button and cracks the seal on the crate, icy fog floating into the air, only for it to be decimated by the heat. Digging his hand into the crate’s depths, he comes back again with a fist full of candy bars and random sugary things. “We gotta eat.” He tosses a sucker that slaps my chest and falls into my hands. “We gotta be prepared.”
“Are you freakin’ kidding me?” Minka shoves up from her camp chair and folds it with an aggressive snap of metal against metal. “Food? And not even good food. You brought candy?”’
“We have three crates,” Sophia counters. “We have enough food to keep us going for weeks if we have to. Protein is important. Candy is important-er.”
Behind her, Jay nods.
“Not even guns!” Minka fights with her chair, growing frustrated with its refusal to fold properly. “They’re unarmed! We could’ve killed them yesterday and gone home already.”
“You’re mad right now, but you’d miss me,” Soph taunts. “We’re going through a rough patch, but all relationships do. We’ll fix this soon and move forward, stronger than ever.”
“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” She tosses her chair to the ground, huffing and dragging air into her lungs. And because it’s so fucking hot, she tugs her shirt away from her sweaty skin, flapping the fabric to get a little breeze. “Pack up the damn camp and let us go home. I’m done with this bullshit.”
I drop the sucker into my pocket and turn in her direction. “Minka?—”
“I’m so fucking done! I’m fed up with all of this. I’m fed up with liars and cowards and drama and?—”
“Archer,” Aubree speaks softly. Gently. And yet, her voice hits my ears with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. “Go.”
“Yep.” My heart thunders and my head pounds. Sure, it’s hot. And yeah, Soph is a dick. But the tears in Minka’s eyes are completelyother. They’re more than anger. They’re more than frustration. They remind me of a woman sitting on the floor of a shower in the winter, shivering and broken. Devastated and tortured. “Hey?” I jog the dozen steps that separate us and stop between her and her view of Sophia, then, grabbing her shoulders, I bring her around, only to catch her explosive, choked exhale slamming against my face.
Stunned, I take her hand and wrench her away. Away from the circle of chairs. Away from the audience she loathes so much. I walk her all the way around the other side of the bus, and when that’s not good enough, I keep going to the other side of a massive tree trunk, three times wider than either of us. Combined.
“Shh.” I press her back to the smooth trunk. “Hey. You’re crying?”
“I want to go home.” She bats my hands away. Fussing. Panicking. And though I try to get under and meet her gaze, she refuses to look into my eyes.
Shecan’t.
“Archer, I want to go home.”
“I know.” I take her hands with mine, squeezing them between my palms and slowing the violent shake she long ago lost control of. “I know, Minnnka. We’re leaving soon.”
“I can’t stop being angry.” She chokes on her breath and twists to avoid my eyes. I chase her brown stare, folding and following. But each time I get close, she looks the other way. “It’s so dumb,” she groans. “I don’t even care that she’s an ass. Iknowshe’s an ass.”
