Secrets (The Secret Series Book 1) (7 page)

“I think you might be hallucinating. There’s no way that they could find us out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“I don’t know how they did, but they did.” I saw something click in his head and then he came over to me “Is there anything that you have on you right now that you did when you were trying to help the Japanese lady?” I wasn’t wearing the same thing as I was that time, but then again I did have my purse. That had been with me from the very beginning and was something that I would never leave home without.

“The only thing I have on me that I had on that street is my purse.” He grabbed it off of the floor, opening it and rummaging through it trying to find something that would explain how they found us. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but that has never been out of my sight. I keep a careful eye on that, because I don’t want anybody getting a hold of my credit cards and trying to take my identity.”

“It doesn’t matter that you had it on you the entire time, only that it was near the person that was searching the Japanese lady. We all have a unique skill set of sleight of hand and it wouldn’t take all that much to put a tracking device onto your purse. I was so caught up in all of this that I didn’t take that into account that might be what gets us caught.” He finally showed me a small silver circle, which she summarily put it down on to the ground and stepped on it with his foot. “We won’t have to worry about that anymore, but it might already be too late.”

Something smashed against the house, coming through the window and landing on the floor with a terrible crash. It was a glass bottle filled with liquor and lit at the top with a fuse. I watched horrified as the flame that the alcohol had now produced was now spreading across the floor. It immediately engulfed the curtains and whatever else it came in contact with. Two more were heard coming through other windows and they were essentially leaving us here to burn to death.

“What do we do, Jason?” I felt lucky that I didn’t strip down to nothing when I had sex with him, because getting into my clothes was the least of my worries.

“I don’t know. They must think that this approach is better than to come at us with a frontal assault. They know my reputation and doing this is probably better than the alternative. I could easily dispatch at least three guys at a time, although they probably think that I can do a whole lot more than that. My legendary status is a little exaggerated, but is the only thing that is stopping them from coming in with guns a blazing.”

“Come out…come out…wherever you are. Jason, we just want the girl and if you send her out, we will forget this blatant betrayal.” Even I knew that they were lying through their teeth, because there was no way that they were going to allow Jason to live after all of this. He hadn’t done his job and had made more of this than it had to be, so they were going to want to make an example out of him to the rest. “You know that it didn’t have to be like this, but now you have taken it out of my hands. You could've easily told us that you couldn’t do it and we would’ve sent somebody else to take your place. Unfortunately, you thought that you had to ride to her rescue and that’s going to cost you. However, if you were to see fit to bring her out here, I’m sure that we could let bygones be bygones.”

“That’s Devlin. He’s in charge of this mission. He chose everybody on his team including me, although I bet that he’s regretting that decision now. It’s too bad that it had to be him, because he’s almost as good as I am. I don’t say that lightly either. Very few people can match my skills, but he’s definitely a rare breed.”

“I don’t care if he can shoot an apple from 500 yards and the only thing that does matter to me is getting out of here. Do whatever you can to grab their attention and I might be able to go out there and get to the minivan.” I couldn’t believe that I was actually proposing such a thing. My hands were shaking and my stomach was full of butterflies.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think that we have to try to lure them in here. With the smoke and the flames, I can use that to mask my approach and they probably wouldn’t see me coming.” I heard footsteps on the porch, and it appeared that they weren’t going to wait until the fire did the job for them. “It sounds to me like we already have company. Why don’t we give them a welcome that they’ll never forget.” He dragged me into the next room, where I saw him pull the stove from the wall, grimacing with the pain that was radiating towards the wound in his stomach.

Taking out a pocket knife, he cut into the propane line, which immediately made this hissing sound and gave off this sickly sweet stench. It suddenly dawned on me what he was trying to do, but it would only work if we were out of the building.

The front door crashed open, as we went into a stairwell leading to the basement. At the same time, he was flicking his lighter and tossing it behind him. He gave me a push that sent me spiraling down the stairs and then I saw Jason go flying over top of me, as the upstairs of this house exploded.

He rolled to a stop, struggled to his feet and pulled me to mine and then made a beeline for the cellar stairs leading to the outside.

I was terrified beyond words, but I didn’t have the time to dwell on it. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see that the fire was now spreading into the basement and I could hear the anguished cries of those that had been caught in the blaze upstairs.

Jason was thinking on the fly, grabbing onto a shotgun that had seen better days, pulling the trigger and sending a blast into the door in front of us. It blew a hole the size of the basketball where the lock would’ve been and he pushed out into the open to see that the shotgun blast had not only gave us an opening to the outside, but it had also put one of the bad guys down onto the ground.

We didn’t even stop, running for the cover of the trees, until we saw pieces of the bark beside our head begin to chip away. Those were bullets meant to kill us. Apparently they didn’t appreciate the explosion that killed some of their team.

“Jason that was pretty clever, but you didn’t really believe that was going to stop us. This woman has blinded you and we all know that having feelings for a woman is a weakness that we can’t afford. We’re going to hunt you down and kill you both. It’s inevitable. You may as well just stay where you’re at and we’ll get to you when we can.”

“I hope you know that they intend to make us suffer and maybe it would’ve been better and more humane that I killed you. At least I would’ve done it quick.”

“I don’t want to die at all. I think that you are allowing this man to get inside your head. I don’t care that you’ve changed your spots, but these people aren’t your friends. I don’t know how you could possibly believe anything that they say, because they’re obviously trying to make you feel like there’s no way out.” I couldn’t believe that I was the one that was telling him how it was, when these words should’ve been coming out of his mouth and not mine.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re being skinned alive.” That wasn’t a pleasant thought at all, but at least I had stopped him from wallowing in self pity long enough to get as far away from here as we could. We couldn’t exactly go back the same way we came, so the only option was to keep moving and hope that we came out onto some kind of road. That way we would be able to follow it back to civilization and hopefully to safety. “He’s like a dog with a bone and once he has your scent, there’s absolutely nothing that you can do to get away from him.” I was through trying to understand any of them and the only thing I wanted to do was keep myself alive long enough to walk away from this relatively unscathed.

“You forget that we’re both survivors and we should be acting like it.” I was running as fast as I could, keeping up with his long strides in the forest, while at the same time hearing voices in the distance getting closer. Suddenly, I heard dogs. It sounded like they had their own bloodhounds to track us down. It wouldn’t take all that much to find our scent, because we had probably left something for the dogs to track from the moment that we entered the house. “Just keep moving. Don’t even consider giving up.” Honestly, if I could’ve gotten away on my own and didn’t need him, I might have considered it. As it was, it wasn’t like I could survive on my own and the only way to do it was to keep him thinking that he needed to protect me.

I heard something in the distance, but I couldn’t place what it was. It sounded familiar…like something from my childhood.

Laughter began to permeate the air “That’s funny Jason. You really have no idea what kind of trouble is coming your way. If you think that I’m bad, then you’re about to find out that something is a whole lot worse than my bark.” I didn’t know what he was getting at, but it sounded like he had a bit of knowledge that we didn’t. “I would love to see the look on your faces when you see what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I suppose I’ll be able to see it soon enough.” That sound was getting louder with each movement through the trees and then almost inexplicably those trees began to disappear all together.

We were now standing in some kind of clearing and I was about to take a few more steps into the darkness, when he put his hand out across my chest to stop me from any forward momentum. “Don’t even move.” My foot was poised in midair, when he pulled me back a few steps and then tossed a pebble into the direction of where my foot had just been. Where I thought I was going to hear the rock bouncing off the ground, instead I heard nothing but silence, until the sound of the rock splashing down into the water down below. “We’re trapped and there’s no place to go. I don’t want to presume to know what you want to do. It’s up to you decide if you want to jump or stay here and face them.”

That wasn’t exactly my idea of fun and choosing from one catastrophe to the other wasn’t going to be easy. On one hand, I could stay here and definitely die at their hands, or I could take a chance on the unknown and hope for the best. It really wasn’t a choice and I knew in the back of my mind that the only way to do this was to take a deep breath.

“I don’t need to think about this and I would rather take my chances down there than with them.”

“Be sure of that, Larissa, because according to my calculations of how far the rock fell, I would say that we were up at least 40 feet or more. There’s no telling what we’re going to find down there and we could be jumping onto shallow rocks. There’s no way to know, but at least up here you have the capability of trying to fight back.” I knew that fighting these people was not an option, because I didn’t have the kind of training that Jason did. If I had, I might have been able to consider that line of thinking, but my best bet was to take my chances in the harsh unforgiving environment of the water down below.

“I don’t think I have to tell you my answer.” I’m not sure exactly how he was going to survive this, not with that injury now plaguing him. It was up to him to decide what he was going to do. I did like him a lot, but I think I was more concerned with my own life than anything to do with this dangerous man that betrayed me. “I can’t decide this for you, but you either come with me or we part ways right here.”

“Man, I don’t know if I can survive the fall with my injury, but what the fuck…let’s do it.” We grabbed hands and stood on the precipice of life and death, looking at each other before taking a deep breath and letting it out, while at the same time leaping into the air.

The ground around us disappeared and it almost seemed like we were moving in slow motion. I don’t know how long it really was, only that the impact into the water was jarring and so cold that it almost froze me from the very beginning. All I could see was blackness and the water that was now surrounding me from every angle and I didn’t even know which way was up or down. The only way that I could determine that was to look and see the light of the moon shining on the surface of the water. This gave me a marker to follow, until finally I was gasping for breath and coming out of my own watery grave.

“I didn’t think that you would do it, but don’t thing for a second that this changes…any…” The rushing water was more than enough to drown him out, but it was the force of the water that was now dragging me down away from those that wanted to do me harm. I didn’t see any sign of Jason. If he had to die this way, then a least he was dying on his own terms.

There was something in front of me and then I saw the terrified face of Jason, as I slammed into him, as he was clinging to life on a branch that was stuck out from the other side. I didn’t mean to dislodge him from his safe zone, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. “Damn, where the hell did you come from?” The rapids were strong and were pulling us further down, but I suppose I could take some solace in the fact that we were together.

It didn’t look like he could swim that well and he was basically bobbing up and down in the water trying to stay afloat. “I hit the water hard, but I managed to stay above it, until I was able to grab onto that branch.” I was beside him and I was able to wrap my arms around his chest to keep him from going under, but it was that sound that I’d heard before that was making me have cause for concern. I knew that sound.

My mind began to formulate a memory from my past where I was swimming with some friends out in the middle of nowhere. There was this watering hole with rushing falls and then a moment of clarity made me realize just exactly what was coming our way.
 

That sound was waterfalls. Though we survived the first fall from on top of the hill it didn’t mean that we were going to be able to survive a fall with rushing water crashing into us all the way down.

“I don’t want to alarm you, Jason, but we aren’t exactly out of the woods.” He looked at me, but then I think it dawned on him what that sound was. “Let’s try and get over to shore and grab on to anything that we can.” Desperately, we fought against the current as best as we could, grabbing onto slick rocks that were too damn slippery to get a hold on.
 

It appeared that Jason had grabbed onto another branch, but this one broke under the weight of both of us hanging onto it and before long it became quite obvious that we were going to have to face the falls whether we wanted to or not.