Chapter 6

MIA

IF HE WASN’T A COMPLETE asshole, the knots tightening in my stomach would ease up.

My nerves in disarray, I panicked. The weather for the most part did nothing but haul harder reminding me that in seconds, my leg would be blown to smithereens.

“Don’t move”, Andro nudged and my feet really wanted to move.

Add in the cold, the life-threatening predicament I was in and I wanted nothing but to turn the other way and run as fast as my weak legs could manage.

But running or moving was going to kill me faster than frost bite hit the man in front of me.

Kneeling on the thickly covered ground that was snow, I glanced at his back. Watching the muscles at his back contract and expand like pistons working together to get the job done.

“Fuck!” he grunted digging into the snow with his bare hands and I winced at his actions.

“L-Leave me”, my voice wobbled.

I was a goner anyway the minute I stepped foot outside Bryant Knox’s mansion.

“No can do, Tonelli. You die, I lose my money”, Flames’ voice sounded hard and taut as I felt his hand finally reach my ankle beneath all that snow.

Right. I was the client. His client because the man I hated didn’t help people from the goodness of his heart.

What heart was I speaking about in the first place? He killed my sister; he didn’t have a heart. He’d always been the scrawny asshole-ic boy who used my sister’s feelings for him in order to escape working for my dad.

“Is that all you care about? Money?”

“Yes”

His voice came almost immediately and I glanced down the more with so much hatred that if looks could kill, Andro or whatever bullshit name he went by, would be six feet under with maggots having a field day over devouring his body.

“I see it, I’ll have to dig a little deeper but if you move, we both die”

“Maybe I want us to die”, I replied with indifference.

“If you wanted to die, you wouldn’t have run away from Bryant Knox. Stay fucking still, sunshine, this will be done in a sec”

Hiding my anxiety as he dug harder into the ground, his nails turning brown from the color of the soil and the patches of snow, I nearly collapsed when I saw the time capsule look alike that was under my leg.

“T-That’s the bomb?”

“Yes”

“Do you know how to disarm it?”

I prayed he did.

With Bryant, I saw death every day and I had embraced and welcomed death.

But this?

I did not want to die like this. I did not want to die with him in the first place.

“I wouldn’t have sticked around if I didn’t know how to”, he answered dryly, his left hand reaching for something in his pocket.

A Swiss pocket knife?

Brandishing the knife as if he was cutting through goat cheese, he scraped the cover of the time capsule bomb off revealing a whole bunch of wires that made me dizzy.

He cut an orange wire without even blinking. Then the red wire.

“Wait!” I cried watching his fingers hold a yellow wire, “you can’t just keep cutting wires like that. They don’t…they don’t do that in movies. You are supposed to cut two wires okay. Two”

I was losing my mind. I was panicking and I was damn well sure I was going to taste death in seconds if the man didn’t stop cutting wires so recklessly.

“It’s the last wire and it stops the timer”

“What timer?”

“The one that started the minute I cut the yellow wire”

“What?”

My heart pounding, my knees threatened to turn to mush. Before I could ask how long I had, Flames cut the yellow wire.

“Done”

Standing up, the ice already covering most of his hair and eye brows, Andro straightened his hand out for me.

“What do you mean it’s done?”

“You taking my hand or not, Tonelli”

“How sure are you we won’t die the minute I take a step away from this thing”

Running his other hand in his hair, his eyes turned murderous.

“I FIXED THE FUCKING PROBLEM. YOU WANT TO DIE IN THIS COLD, BE MY GUEST”

He turned around and he did what I didn’t expect him to do.

He started walking, fast towards the cabin.

I stood there, alone. In the fucking blizzard with a bomb that had a high probability of detonating the minute I took one step.

“Andro!”

The asshole didn’t look back.

Apprehension washing over me faster than the snow fall, I decided to…trust him. I was the god damn client, he wouldn’t have wanted me to die because if I died, he could lose his money. Whatever the fuck that meant.

Inhaling the draft air, cussing a lot at what stupid moron would booby trap a cabin that looked too shabby to be considered safe shelter, I took a step.

The minute I stepped off the bomb thingy, I ran like at any minute the bomb would detonate and pulverize me into oblivion.

Heart racing, sweating-I didn’t know how that was possible- my throat constricted as I tried to swallow saliva and ease whatever tension that had made my body turn into a bundle of nerves.

I survived. I was alive-

“Like I said, I fixed the fucking problem”

The tank of a man next to me spoke and that was enough for me to wish the bomb had actually taken me out.

“You left me out there to die”, I panted mercilessly holding onto his biker leather jacket like a heating pad.

“But you didn’t”, his voice came with a shrug indifference.

Whatever crap he had uttered about him helping me out of the love he had for Elise, flew out my fucking ears.

He really wanted me to die. He wished it. He longed for it; I could see it in the way he looked at me. Like I was a worm wriggling in his soup.

His six-foot four frame standing by the door, I plunked behind him listening to the tick tocks of the pass code on the door.

The door flinging open automatically, Andro went in and I followed.

The first thing I noticed was the stuffed moose head above the fireplace. I wouldn’t be shocked if the man assessing the place had killed it and stuffed it himself.

He sure looked like the type. Fierce, heartless, gruesome.

The cabin was small on the inside but cozy. With bear fur acting like a rag on the floor, two couches by the fireplace, the kitchen right next to the living room, it was everything I could ask for.

A place that felt like home. Cozy, small and not fake like the lavish hotels and mansions Bryant Knox owned.

Taking off my boots, my toes shivered at the touch of the plywood beneath my feet. I took in the smell that was more of Andro and stale oxygen with a hint of dry wood.

The caveman however moved around with his shoes on leaving a whole trait of snow crumbs everywhere.

It irritated the hell out of me and not because I was OCD or something but because that was who he was.

The asshole who tainted everything that was beautiful.

For the most part of it, Andro searched the loose drawers in the kitchen, moving to the fireplace, then back to the kitchen, then behind me to the wooden stairs I hadn’t seen before.

“We need more supplies”

He came back minutes later with a new black shirt and a heavy trench coat in his other hand.

“You are leaving me here alone?”

The question slipped from my mind.

“You’ll be fine”

“Oh God. Can’t you call your buddies or something”

I sounded desperate and that was because I was.

The cabin was great but… a psychotic drug dealer was after me and if he showed up here, I wouldn’t know where to start.

“There’s a gun underneath the cushion of the first sofa. You see anyone that’s not me, you fucking shoot”

I laughed.

“Shoot? You think I was in the fucking army like you? I don’t know how to use a freaking gun!”

Barely affected by my outburst, he reached for something at the back of his trousers. A black gun piece in his hand, he took my hand.

“Trigger. Remove protection, aim, fire”

He couldn’t possibly be serious. The heat of his hand leaving mine, he placed the gun back to his waist, putting his coat and before he made it to the door, he looked back and said,

“Don’t open the door for anyone. Not even me”

The minute the door slammed in my face; I made one fucking conclusion.

Where Andro went, I went.

I wasn’t sticking around here with no protector and a gun that might as well have been useless in my hands.

I was going to follow him.