“That’s my fault.” Isaac clutched his chest. “But I know somewhere he can’t find us. At least for now.”
“Can anyone find us?”
His eyes fell closed and he turned away from me. “I know what I’m asking for, Tara. You don’t have to trust me, not after this, but if you can believe one thing, it’s that you’ll be safer with me.”
I considered him long and hard before murmuring, “Tell me where. I want to see it on the map—" I reached into my pocket, forgetting my phone was floating in the bay with my car. “My phone! My car. What am I—"
“It’s okay. Me and Saul will take care of your stuff. Let’s just get you out of here.”
Saul. The older brother.I catalogued the name.
“Fine.” I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling colder with every second. I did want to get out of here, even if it was with him.
Right now, Isaac was the lesser enemy.
He beckoned me toward the road. As soon as we started moving his eyes lit up, head swiveling back and forth. When we neared a corner of a building, he held up his palm and stopped to listen.
This place felt like a maze, sending us in circles. I could hear the bay, feel whispers of the breeze off the water, but every time I thought we would be free, there was more concrete.
I felt it closing in on me, my skin pebbling with anxiety as the sensation of being trapped grew. Then suddenly the road appeared, and I exhaled a shaky breath.
A fresh wave of emotion crashed over me just as a real wave lapped against my car. It was nearly underwater, along with all of my things. My phone, my suitcase—even my wallet.
Fingertips pressed into the small of my back, and I startled. Isaac removed them quickly, taking two big steps away from me and pointing toward an old blue truck. It wasn’t the small, clean black one he’d swapped for his motorcycle last week.
I didn’t ask who it belonged to. I couldn’t find my voice.
The door groaned when I yanked it open. The leather seat was cold under me.
Isaac looked ragged and pale when he climbed into the driver’s seat. What was left of his clothing was caked with drying blood. If anyone saw him, they would think he was attacked by a wild animal.
Because he was.
I followed his movement in my peripheral, noticing the way he winced as he tightened his seatbelt.
“You’re bleeding.”
He shrugged. It had none of the easy confidence he usually carried. “It’ll heal.”
It wasa lotof blood.
Something stirred in me at the sight of claw marks deep in his skin. I grasped for it, trying to hold onto it, to identify this familiar tug, but it was swallowed up by a blanket of cold.
The adrenaline was ebbing, and all that was left underneath was a tired, numb sensation. Isaac looped the truck around on the road, turning it back toward Port O’Henry.
I saw it from above, like I was floating ten feet off the ground.
My body was anchored there in that leather seat. I could feel the cold saltwater still clinging to the fabric of my pants. A seatbelt dug into my collarbone as I twisted as far from Isaac in the cab as I could get.
But those sensations felt distant.
The questions in my head sank, too heavy for me to lift from beneath this exhausted haze. “Where are you taking me?”
“My brother’s house. His—" Isaac cleared his throat. “His girlfriend can help you until you get your stuff back.”
“And where is that?”
“On the bayou.”