Cut and Run (Phoenix Code 1 & 2) Page 8

  Tori nodded and glanced out the window as they approached a small town. There was a gas station up ahead less than a mile, and roadside signs that looked promising for something to eat.

  “Ethan, look,” she said, pointing to a double-wide trailer on the left side of the road as they rolled into town. In the front yard was a decade-old maroon minivan with a handwritten For Sale sign taped in the windshield.

  Runs Good. $500 O.B.O.

  She gave him a why-not shrug and a hopeful smile. “I doubt anyone will be looking for us in something like that.”

  He nodded. “Ugly as hell and cheap besides. It’s perfect.”

  15

  Ethan ditched the stolen car in the parking lot of a restaurant in Madras that specialized in pizza and Mexican food.

  An hour later, a large pepperoni and mushroom decimated between them in the back of the minivan, he and Tori sat with the side door wide open in the car lot of a quiet state park.

  Just beyond the tree-lined perimeter of the parking lot, a narrow stretch of the Deschutes River swept along rhythmically, early afternoon sun glittering off the surface.

  Ethan glanced over at Tori, watching her sip soda from a styrofoam cup and plastic straw as she gazed out at their surroundings. As far as surreal moments went, this one ranked right up there. He and Tori trying to outrun a cold-blooded killer, yet sitting together as if they were on a frigging first date.

  “Now, that was a great pizza,” she said, giving her drink one last gurgling slurp.

  Ethan chuckled. “Far cry from the standard I hoped to set last night, eh?”

  She turned a smile on him that made his heart kick behind his sternum. “I think I like this even more. It’s so beautiful here. How did you know about this park? We must be ten miles off the highway.”

  “More or less,” he said with a shrug. “I spent some time in the area a while back.”

  She nodded and resumed enjoying the view. “I imagine you’ve spent some time in a lot of places. Did any of them ever feel like home to you?”

  “Once,” he said. Tori’s face, lit up by the early afternoon sunlight, her short blond hair riffling in the light breeze, was more gorgeous than any scenery. “The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling like I was home was the year I spent with you.”

  When she glanced over at him, a look of soft surprise in her blue gaze, Ethan let out a possessive-sounding growl and pulled her to him for a kiss.

  He took his time, savoring the taste of her—spices on her tongue, sweet soda on her lips, and the warm, intoxicating flavor that was hers alone.

  He’d never felt anything so right as the moments when he was holding this woman—his woman—in his arms.

  She was smiling when he broke contact and rested his forehead against hers. “I feel like home to you?”

  He grunted. “Even a rust bucket that smells vaguely of wet dog and kid vomit feels like home so long as you’re in it with me.”

  She laughed, then wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, about that. Think we can trade this petri dish in for something else before we have to drive too much farther in it?”

  “I think that’s a definite affirmative. Should’ve asked for a sniff test before I plunked down my five hundred bucks.”

  Tori caressed his face with feather-light strokes of her fingers. “You know, speaking of home, Ethan…you’ve never mentioned anything about where you grew up.”

  He pulled away before he could stop himself. A knee-jerk reaction that he hadn’t been able to hide.

  Not that Tori would have missed it anyway.

  “Nothing to tell,” he said, a dodge that sounded more wooden than casual. “I grew up in the Army. I don’t really give my life before then too much thought.”

  A straight-up lie and she knew it. He saw her process his lame answer with a twinge of hurt in her tender blue eyes.

  She gave a slow nod. “Okay. Well, maybe you’ll tell me about it someday. When you’re ready.”

  He should have let it go at that, but damn if he could ignore the sting in her gaze. He couldn’t stonewall her, not after everything they’d been through.

  Not when she meant more to him than any other person in his broken, fucked-up life.

  As for his past, it was close enough that he could feel those bleak, early years breathing down the back of his neck.

  Tori started to turn away from him. Ethan reached out to her. “My old man was a drinker. And when he drank, he was a mean son of a bitch.” He blew out a humorless laugh. “The only thing my dad liked more than his whiskey was telling his kid what a fuckup he was. When he wasn’t busy knocking me around, that is.”

  Tori had gone still, holding his eyes without pity or judgment. Ethan shrugged, forging on, too late to change his mind about spilling his life story in all its pathetic glory.

  “The drinking got worse over time. Good thing about that was I knew I’d have some peace once the old man passed out.”

  “Ethan…” She settled her hand over his, swallowing hard as he explained.

  “My mom tried to defend me from him. She’d distract Dad’s temper with kindness or humor. Begging and pleading when nothing else worked on him. But that usually just pissed him off even more. I don’t know why he hated me. Maybe he had no goddamned reason at all.”

  “He was an alcoholic. Addicts don’t make good parents, even under the best conditions,” Tori said gently. “Did you know about your ESP back then? Did they know?”

  “Mom knew. He didn’t, not for a long time. Not until later.” And then his father really had begun to hate him. “My mother made me keep my gift a secret from him. She said it would only make things worse on me if we let on that I was different. God knows, he didn’t need any other excuses to despise me.”

  He looked out at the river, recalling when his father’s rage had escalated to its worst.

  “I could’ve handled violence and insults. I was tough enough, even early on. But then one night he hit my mom. Sent her flying across the room. He’d found out she was cheating on him. Hell, who could blame her?” Ethan sighed sharply. “I was ten at the time. I was shocked that he’d struck her, scared shitless the way I never was when he hit me. I went at him for the first time, started hitting him. He knocked me out cold.”

  “Jesus,” Tori whispered thinly. “Please tell me your mother called the police.”

  He shook his head. “The next morning, I woke up in the living room where he’d dropped me. Mom was acting like nothing was wrong—like she forgave him, if she even remembered what he’d done. That day in school, I had a premonition. I saw her packing up a suitcase and leaving us while the old man was delivering a truckload of vegetables to the farm stand in town.”

  “Oh, Ethan…”

  “I got home and found Dad in a rage. There was a note on the counter. Mom said she’d forgotten to tell him about a meeting after hours at the library where she worked and would be home soon.” He still recalled reading that note while his father was pacing around like a wild animal, a half-drained bottle of Jack in his hand. “I started gathering things to cook, but he barked at me that it wasn’t my job. He said, ‘Save it for your mother, boy, whenever the bitch finally comes home to look after her family.’”

  Ethan chuckled, but it was a brittle sound. “I didn’t want to out her, but I was hurt and angry. She left me behind that day too. I blurted out that she was never coming back. That she ran away because of him.”

  Tori’s voice was hardly audible, filled with dread. “Oh, my God.”

  “He was pissed off, of course. And suspicious. ‘How do you know that? Where’d she go? Did you help her leave me, you ungrateful little fuck?’”

  The memories were vivid, but no longer sharp. He could tell Tori everything and not feel he’d been flayed to the bone.

  “I told him that I saw her leave. I told him about the premonition, and that I’d had the ability for as long as I could remember. He beat the living shit out of me that night.”

  Tori squeezed his h
and, silent now, her big blue eyes welling.

  “I wanted to run away, but I had nowhere to go. No one to turn to.” He shrugged. “So, I made the best of my fucked-up home life. I avoided the old man as much as I could. Kept busy at school studying, or at the library, reading. I spent as much time as possible away from home. I guess it paid off in a small way. Dad left me alone pretty much after that, and somehow I ended up valedictorian of my graduating class. I finally left home for good the day I was supposed to speak at commencement.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “He was in an ugly mood the night before my graduation, looking for a fight. I guess I finally had enough of his shit. I was seventeen, bigger than him by then. I told him what I thought of him. You can imagine how that went over.”

  Ethan blew out a wry exhalation and continued. “We fought, and he broke a bottle on my head. Split open my scalp, broke my nose. The next day, instead of showing up like that to the commencement, I skipped the ceremony and went to the Army recruiting office instead. Signed up on the spot. I bunked at a homeless shelter in town until I was able to ship out for Basic. Never spoke to my dad again. Never been back since.”

  “Ethan…” Tori wrapped her arms around him and just held him for a long moment. “What your father did to you and to your mom…it’s inexcusable, unforgivable. But I can’t fathom why your mother didn’t take you with her.”

  “She did what she felt she had to,” he murmured, feeling no ill will toward her, not in a long time. “I like to think she found some happiness with the man she’d fallen in love with. I never knew, because she died a couple of years after she left. Drunk driver. How’s that for irony?”

  Tori stared at him, tenderness in her expression. And something deeper. “You had no one to look out for you. No one on your side for so long, Ethan. No wonder you don’t need anyone now.”

  He cupped her nape in his palm. “Not true. There is one person I’d rather not be without.”

  Drawing her into his arms, he kissed her slowly, holding none of himself back.

  Hard to imagine when he’d started this journey three years ago—when he’d had to cut ties to everything he knew, everything that mattered to him the most. He’d never dreamed he’d have Tori back in his arms.

  Back in his life.

  He didn’t know how he would be able to find a place for them to be together when his existence depended on how fast he could run and for how long. But a determination to make what he had right now with Tori a reality was burning strong inside him.

  He needed time to think, to plan a course.

  He needed to be somewhere no one would think to look for him.

  Somewhere not even he was certain he should go.

  Back to his past, so he could finally move forward.

  But not just yet.

  He wasn’t ready to leave this temporary slice of tranquility with Tori. His demons would have to wait.

  16

  “I shouldn’t have had all that soda,” Tori said from the passenger seat of the minivan, her bladder feeling every rut and bump in the uneven pavement.

  “We’ll be stopping for the night in a few minutes. You be okay until then?”

  She nodded, but crossed her legs just the same. Rather than get back on the highway, Ethan kept them on rambling back roads that followed the river.

  Tori was well aware of the tension that had settled over him since they’d left the state park a short while ago, but as he contemplated their course in sober silence, she couldn’t help being captivated by the rugged scenery that slid past the window.

  Breathtaking, rust-colored rock formations jutted up behind wide, rolling farms and green pastures. Livestock paddocks and pole barns let out onto acres of well-tended land, most of it hemmed in by low white fences that seemed to go on for miles on the winding valley road. Against the far horizon, hazy, snow-covered peaks of jagged mountains loomed, making even the highest ridges in the Northeast look like meager hills.

  After a few miles, the picturesque homesteads, farms, and clusters of rural neighborhoods gave way to less prosperous-looking patches of land. Few homes or trailers sat on the stretch of twisting asphalt ahead of them now. The land was flat and dusty, most of it gone to seed or littered with rock and boulders. Here and there a rundown farmhouse or neglected camper squatted at the end of an unpaved driveway.

  It was near one such place that Tori noticed they had begun to slow down.

  Up ahead on the left, a rusted metal mailbox with the name “Wm. Davis” painted onto it sat atop an S-curved length of plumbing pipe. At the end of the long, dirt path leading back from the road was a ramshackle, sun-bleached gray two-story farmhouse with a sagging, faded red barn behind it.

  She glanced at Ethan as he brought the van to a crawl as they approached. A strange shiver worked its way up her nape as she took in the sad, sorry condition of the house and land.

  It was a lonely place. A home that had been long in ruin, devoid of joy.

  And suddenly she knew where they were without needing to ask him. “You spent some time in the area,” she murmured quietly, his words back at the river. “This is the house where you grew up.”

  He stared at the old house, the van now paused in the empty road. “Yeah. This is it.”

  “The mailbox doesn’t say Jones on it,” Tori pointed out, looking at him in question.

  “I dropped the family name after I got into the Phoenix program. Henry Sheppard helped me start fresh, bury my past. I’ve been Ethan Jones ever since.” He turned into the narrow driveway.

  Tori could see that he wasn’t happy to be there. His fingers were coiled around the wheel, his jaw clamped tight.

  “What are we doing here? Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Staying anywhere else right now is too much risk. We could be spotted at a motel, and I’m not going to make you sleep in this van tonight.”

  “But here, Ethan?”

  “I’ll keep you safe.” A solemn reassurance, spoken like a vow.

  He kept driving, the silence in the vehicle punctuated by the pop and crunch of gravel as they rolled slowly toward the old house.

  She didn’t understand until now how deep Ethan’s dread must be that the killer on their tail, or the ones who hired him, might find them.

  If he thought seeking shelter at his father’s house was less terrifying than facing his other enemies, then Tori could only hope they survived the night so they could run far and fast again tomorrow.

  She sat ramrod straight as the van crawled up the driveway to the side of the house. Inside, a curtain swung back into place in a dingy bay window, as if someone had just peeked out. Before the van had slowed to a stop, the side screen door opened.

  An old man stepped out onto the covered wooden porch. Tall and thin, hunched at the shoulders, he poked his thinning, gray-haired head around one of the rails and scowled at his uninvited visitors.

  He wore a white, short-sleeved undershirt and dark green work pants. Sagging, faded black tattoos rode his forearms. His glower was piercing, terrifying and forbidding.

  He peered at the van’s windshield for a long moment, then the glare faltered. Just a fraction, and only for a moment before he called it back and scowled even more furiously.

  Ethan put the van in park, but left the engine running as he opened his door and got out.

  Tori didn’t feel quite as brave as him, yet she couldn’t let him face his father on his own. She climbed out too, and stood beside the vehicle as Ethan walked around the front.

  “If you come here for the readin’ of the will, you’re too early.” His father’s voice was scratchy, not nearly as deep or smooth as Ethan’s. “I ain’t dead yet, boy.”

  Tori stared, unsure what to do or say in the face of this cold reunion. Ethan seemed thoroughly unfazed. He stood his ground as the old man hobbled down from the stoop and made his way onto the dirt drive.

  Fog-gray eyes stared out of a skull covered in tissue-thin, sallow skin. His chee
ks were sunken, lips dry and cracked.

  He wasn’t healthy, but there was still an air of couched aggression in the man. God only knew what he’d been like with a few more pounds on him and thirty fewer years of age.

  The old man’s shadow-ringed gaze slid to Tori for no more than a second before he turned his displeasure back on his son. “You gonna tell me what you’re doing here? You didn’t come for my funeral and you sure as shit ain’t here on a social call.”

  “We need a place to crash. Just for the night.” Ethan didn’t phrase it as a question, and there was no fear or hesitation in his voice or the steely stare he fixed on his father. He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts. “If you need money—”

  “I don’t want your goddamn money, boy.”

  The sharp retort made a rattle crawl up the old man’s throat. He wheezed and coughed, then spat at the dusty ground once he’d composed himself again.

  He pursed his pale lips, looking from the van to Tori, then Ethan. “Just for one night?”

  Ethan gave a curt nod. “We’ll be gone by sunrise.”

  His father studied him for a long while, then his head bobbed absently in consideration. “Okay, then. If that’s what you need, boy. Come on inside.”

  Ethan cleared his throat. “I’d like to park the van in the barn.”

  The wiry gray eyebrows rose a fraction. He grunted, then motioned for Ethan to follow him as he started heading for the weather-beaten red outbuilding.

  Ethan didn’t follow right away. He walked over and brushed his fingers through the hair over her brow. “There’s a bathroom just inside the house. Second door on the left.”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. I’d rather wait for you—”

  He gave a faint shake of his head. “I need to get a few things straight with him. And I need to do it alone.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  He kissed her, tender and sweet.

  Then he pivoted to go confront the monster of his youth.