“You should,” she said calmly. “You don’t understand these people and what they’re doing.”
“There’s got to be a reason why they’re doing it though. What’s their endgame?” he asked curiously.
“Control,” she said instantly.
He nodded slowly, as if understanding what that meant. “Control of people, control of circumstances?”
“I don’t know. He has high plans, and I think he’s just looking bigger and bigger.”
“As in government bigger or law enforcement bigger?”
“All of the above,” she said quietly. “You don’t know how dangerous these people are.”
“All the more reason,” he said, “to put a stop to them.”
“And again, not that easy to do.”
“Maybe not …” His voice trailed off.
The smartest thing she could do was make use of his assistance and then leave him somewhere before he got caught. She didn’t want him to get hurt, not after he’d helped her, not since Stefan obviously cared about him. “You understand it’s a death wish to do anything with me, right?”
“I understand you believe that,” he said.
She smiled. “Yeah, well, that’s exactly what it is.” She shook her head and said, “I get that you think you have the answers and that you can do something that’s better than what anybody else has tried.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Have many people tried, or has he kept to the shadows up until now, while working on a game plan?”
“I think he has kept in the shadows,” she said quietly, “but that won’t last much longer.”
“And can he do things, like rob banks or coerce people into doing things they don’t want to do?”
“Well, they already have done the latter,” she said, staring at him. “Did you not understand all of what I said?”
“I think I understood it,” he said, “but a lot of criminal activity is out there, and we don’t know what people are up to.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but also a lot of people don’t want to know exactly what others are up to either. For them ignorance is bliss.”
“Very true,” he said. “So, what’ll it be? A ride in my vehicle or not?”
She nodded slowly. “I guess.”
He smiled. “In that case, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll walk you down to the road. Then I’ll go get my vehicle from Stefan’s place.”
“Will you tell them?”
“Pfft. Stefan already knows,” he said. “That’s one of the things about Stefan. It’s pretty hard to pull anything over on him.”
“I just want to keep him safe,” she said.
“He knows and appreciates that, but, at the same time, it frustrates him because he’s already in a certain amount of danger on a daily basis, so what you do won’t change or affect that.”
“It could make it a lot worse,” she murmured.
“Maybe. But it could also be something that ends up being not a big deal.”
She shrugged. “So go get the vehicle then.”
He smiled, nodded, and asked, “You’ll be here when I come back?”
Seeing the road ahead of her, she said, “I guess we’ll know when you get there.”
He hesitated and then, swearing, turned and bolted into the woods.
She smiled, and, as soon as he was on his way, she turned and disappeared again.
*
Hunter swore, as soon as he picked up the vehicle and headed down because he knew, in his heart of hearts, that she’d already left. “Damn it,” he said out loud. “I shouldn’t have trusted her.”
She was so determined to get the hell out of here, and he’d wanted to give her a place to go where she could at least hole up and heal long enough to be in fighting form. But she didn’t appear to believe in anybody. What a life had she gone through that this was her reality? It must have been pretty difficult in many ways. As he drove down the street, he kept hoping that maybe he’d see her.
Even though he knew she was gone, and her energy had somehow dissipated all around, he would find her. He wouldn’t give up. He got out of the vehicle and leaned against it, as he studied the darkness. She was here somewhere. Using his peripheral senses, he studied the hills, looking for shifts in the energy. If she’d come this way, he would see the traces that she left behind. Energy spores, so to speak.
But he found absolutely nothing, which meant that she had gone up instead of down. He shook his head at that. She was obviously much more comfortable in the night, in the bowels of Mother Nature, than being around two-legged humans.
As he studied the area up ahead, he saw a road winding up around the back of a hill. On a hunch he got back into the car and headed that way. When he got to higher ground that gave him a beautiful view down below, he parked off to the side and hopped out. And he smiled because he could sense her. He called out, “The offer still stands.”
She stepped out from behind a tree and glared at him.
He gave her a fat smile. “Did you think you could get away from me that easily?”
“Well, I tried,” she said, then hesitated and looked at the vehicle.
“I know you’re tired,” he said, “and you don’t have to exhaust yourself just staying hidden. It burns up a ton of energy. It’s not necessary.” He motioned at the car. “Offer stands,” he said. “Up to you.”
She shot him a look, walked toward the vehicle, and got inside without saying another word.
He hopped in, holding back his smile. Round one had gone to him.
Chapter 6
Three hours later Beth finally spoke. “Where exactly are we going?” She’d been pondering the route for the last few hours, wondering what their final destination was. She almost recognized part of the journey, but her memories weren’t serving her enough to place it.
“Well, I have a spot on the Oregon coast.”
She stared.
Hunter shrugged. “It belonged to my grandfather.”
“Will they track that?”
“We don’t have the same name, so I doubt it. He’s also been gone for quite a while.”
“Whose name is it under?”
He just looked at her and said, “You don’t trust much, do you?”
“I don’t trust at all,” she shot back.
As they drove, he pulled into a small gas station to fill up, and he said, “We will need to pick up groceries for the cabin.”
“Agreed.” She nodded. “So a store large enough that we can get lost in.”
As soon as the gas tank was filled up, he paid and hopped back into the vehicle.
Sitting in the passenger seat, she turned and asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I believe in you.”
The words were so shocking and yet seemingly so honest, she frowned, as she studied his profile, looking for any sign of deceit. She studied his energy, what little she saw. All of her abilities were completely decimated in direct proportion to her decimated energy. She couldn’t see or read much from people for a while. Even then, that wasn’t her strong point. She had to keep her energy focused on looking for the ones who were after her. She sagged into the corner. “You could be betting on the wrong horse.”