Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Read online

  Drake’s other knee began to bounce against mine. “Right. So, where are we driving to…what part of town?” I pressed.

  “Outside the city. We’ve gone through most of it by now and taken what we needed. Why are you asking so many questions? Damn.” Though he sounded irritated, I caught him looking down at my legs, mainly my inner thighs. Remembering Fern’s warning, I pressed myself closer to Drake and the full body contact immediately stilled his bouncing leg. Keel glanced at me a time or two, and even though I kept my eyes on the road I could feel his stares. Not that eager to start something I couldn’t finish while the truck was moving, I did my best to ignore his stares.

  The highway was lonely, surprisingly empty of cars and obstacles. In fact, it was so empty I had a feeling the road had been cleared at some point. The more I thought about it, and the fact that I counted only ten vehicles in a twenty mile stretch, pushed neatly off the side of the road and onto the shoulder, the more it bothered me. Where had the locals gone?

  “Have you traveled this way much since you started scouting?” I asked Keel.

  There was a long pause, a minute, maybe more, so I began to think he had no intention of answering, but eventually he took his eyes off the open road and glared at me. “Why?”

  “It’s too clean. There’s hardly anything out here.”

  “Well, how do you expect a community to make regular runs in and out of local cities if they can’t use the roads?” His tone was sarcastic and angry, like I’d pissed him off just by asking my question.

  “Are you always such a pleasant conversationalist, Keel?” Drake asked. I glanced over to see his right knee bouncing up and down again, with his elbow propped outside the open window, much like Keel’s was, and his hand gripped along the topside of the door frame. His knuckles were bone-white.

  “Fuck off,” Keel cautioned.

  The truck swerved slightly to the right as the two men stared each other down inside the cramped quarters of the cab. When I pointed out the windshield, Keel jerked the truck back to the center of the road, looked ahead and kept his gaze there.

  It was a surprise that he continued speaking. “This highway wasn’t too bad, actually. Only took a few weeks, a couple of tow trucks and draining three gas stations dry to get the job done. I came in at the end, so I didn’t need to move nothing. I don’t know where they took the cars, but I guess they didn’t want them decorating the road with all those dead bodies.” The hairs on my neck and arms stood up when he laughed. I’d never seen him smile before. That was when I saw that he was missing two teeth on the right side of his jaw – a molar and a cuspid. Perhaps from taking a hard blow to the mouth? I didn’t bother to ask; I wasn’t interested in Keel enough to know his backstory. All I wanted was to keep the peace. At least while sitting just an inch away from him.

  “This road is clear all the way into the city?” Drake asked.

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  We were quiet again. Keel seemed to enjoy the fact that he was in control of the mood, and Drake was as irritable as I’d ever seen him; his eyes were fixated on the scenery that rushed by the passenger side of the truck and he hardly blinked. I became mesmerized by it as well, as I watched the pine trees whir by us in a dark green blur, concealing much of the mountainside behind them. They hid their secrets so well, the trees. Danger could be lurking just beyond their branches, and we wouldn’t know till it was too late. When Keel slammed on the brakes and the truck lurched forward on its front wheels, I slid toward the dash with the momentum, and if not for Drake’s arm flying out across my chest, I’d have hit it with my face. For the briefest moment, I thought my fear of the dark forest line had truly come to life and had indeed unleashed something inhuman on us.

  “What the hell!” Drake barked, pulling me back against the bench seat.

  Keel slowed the truck to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road and pointed at the hill in front of us. We saw nothing but the lanes and wild weeds that encroached upon the highway from the woods. Nature had been busy over the last year, reclaiming what had always truly belonged to Her. Us people had just gotten in the way. Until recently.

  “What?” Drake asked, before he squinted into the early morning sunlight.

  I followed his line of sight until I saw it. Another car was approaching from the south-west, moving steadily up and down the hills of the bleak highway. When it got close enough to us that we could see how many people sat inside, it, too, stopped.

  For an awkward span of what felt like hours, but was really only a minute or two, we stared back and forth, taking each other in. There was a male driver, a male passenger and a huge pile of belongings and supplies in the back seat.

  “Are we going to get out and say hello, or just sit here all day in the sun till we bake?” I asked.

  Keel tightened his grip on the steering wheel, making it squeak loudly, before shooting me an annoyed look. “We’ll make a move when they do.”

  “And what if they’re thinking the same thing?”

  Neither Keel nor Drake answered me; they just continued to stare straight ahead.

  With an exaggerated sigh, I collapsed backwards into the cushioned seat, crossing my arms and glowering at the dash as if it had wronged me. Just like men to make things complicated. When I couldn’t take the sit-and-wait approach anymore, I leaned forward and peered at the two men sitting rather stiffly in their beat-up Dodge van. It used to be white, but rust and mud had turned the color a streaked brown. When I made eye contact with the passenger, I flicked my hand up and waved at him once. He returned it with a hesitant smile and Drake grabbed my wrist, pulling it into his lap.

  “Riley, don’t,” he warned.

  “Guys,” I complained, “we’ll be sitting here all damn day if someone doesn’t get out! And if neither of you have the balls to, move out of the way, and I will.”

  Drake leaned behind me and spoke to Keel, ignoring me. “Just go around them.”

  “No, wait,” I said, as the van passenger opened his door and carefully climbed out. He stood behind it, using it as a shield, then nodded at us once. Keel returned the nod, and opened his own door.

  I clapped my hands once quietly in my lap. Progress.

  “Don’t move,” Keel ordered me. With a quick swipe, he pushed his greasy brown hair back and pulled his dirt-streaked jeans up his narrow hips as he moved around his door. I noticed the jeans slide back down an inch as he walked.

  Drake and I watched the brief exchange between Keel and the stranger in the road with an eager fascination. They stood around the same height, but Keel was considerably thinner, and more toned in shape than the other man. I looked between Keel’s plaid shirt and the stranger’s stained t-shirt and wondered what they were talking about.

  “Should we get out?” I asked Drake. “Introduce ourselves maybe?”

  He shrugged. “I’m guessing that Keel doesn’t want them heading toward the Ark uninvited. I don’t really want them following us out here, either.”

  “You can’t see everyone you meet as a threat. They’re people, not monsters, Drake.”

  Just then Keel’s voice rose above ours and we looked back at the street where the two stood. Based on their change in body language, the cautious exchange had turned tense. The passenger pointed at Keel, then at us and back at the road where we had come from.

  Keel glanced over his shoulder once. His expression was tight and guarded.

  “Shit,” Drake said, gripping the door handle. “Stay put,” he warned. When he got out of our truck, the driver from the Dodge jumped out as well and moved around to his front bumper.

  “Why does everyone keep telling me to stay put?” I grumbled, while the four men sized each other up from top to bottom. “Leave the little woman behind,” I said to myself in a mocking voice.

  I couldn’t make out Keel’s words with the passenger, but when Drake greeted the driver, he spoke loud enough for me to hear. “How’s it going?”

  A brief exchange of hands
and salutations passed between them while Keel continued to argue with the passenger. The air pressure was changing, making me anxious, as if the weather was warning me that something terrible was coming. Sub-consciously I rubbed at my damaged leg and my hip, where my injuries screamed in protest every time the weather changed. Then I put my own hand on the door, ready to hop out if I was needed. Not that I imagined Keel and Drake would appreciate my assistance much.

  “No fucking way,” I heard Drake say, looking over his shoulder at me just briefly enough to catch my eyes.

  “Why not?” asked the driver, peering around Drake.

  Everything changed in the next fifteen seconds. Keel shoved at the dark-haired passenger, who toppled backwards but regained his stance almost instantly. As the two began to hit each other, Drake put his hands in the air, a gesture of surrender. And then I saw why. The driver, with a messy mop of dirty-blond hair, was armed. Drake’s own gun, and mine as well, were stored in the tool box behind me in the bed of the truck. Keel, still untrusting and unwilling to drive us armed, compromised by tossing our weapons into the tool box till we got to our location. I didn’t think there was time to wait and see what happened, so I turned around and forced open the back window, scrambling out of it and over the top of the tool box, where I landed in a tangled heap onto the dirt-streaked truck bed. I’d just opened the metal cabinet when a single shot rang out in the air, silencing what little bird life there was in the trees. I was afraid to look. Terrified to see if it was Drake who’d been shot, possibly injured, possibly dead. I couldn’t care less about Keel. My gun was in my hand, the safety off, the trigger ready to be pulled, when sheer happiness flooded over me at the sound of Drake’s husky voice on the wind.

  “Get back in the car, now!” he commanded.

  Unsure if he was talking to me or the driver of the van, I peered carefully over the top of the tool box, and then sat back on my heels with relief when I saw it was Drake who held the gun and had it leveled at the driver’s head. He must have made a move for it, and luckily overpowered the shorter man.

  With a hop out of the truck bed, I dropped onto the ground, kicking up loose asphalt. The only two to look at me were the strangers. Keel and Drake held their positions.

  “Do we have a problem here?” I asked from a safe distance. With my gun held calmly against my leg, I moved closer, looking between the strangers, noting their young age. Early to mid-twenties, at best.

  “No problem,” Keel barked. “Get back in the truck, we’ve got this.”

  The passenger of the van laughed and nodded at me, staring at my chest while he spoke. “That’s right, pretty lady. No problem here, just having a talk is all.” With one swipe, he cleared a streak of blood away from his nose with his sleeve.

  My cheeks warmed. “I’m no one’s little lady, and I’m not going anywhere.” My statement was aimed at both Keel and the man with roving eyes.

  “Riley, get back in the truck,” Drake hissed.

  “I’m quite capable of handling myself,” I snapped, patting the gun against my thigh.

  A bird shrieked from our left and the air dipped low enough that my body reacted. I felt my nipples harden slightly from the cold draft, and though I wanted to raise my free arm over my chest to cover them, I stood still as if nothing had happened.

  The driver of the van sneered. “Hey, Lee, look at that. I think we’ve got her all hot and bothered.”

  With a glare, I shot my middle finger up, an exceedingly immature thing to do, but Drake took it a step further and clocked the guy with the butt of his own gun against the side of the head. When his face turned back toward me, a thin trickle of blood was leeching from his hair line. And the immature sneer was gone, having been replaced with a darker and more sinister expression.

  “We told you,” Drake warned. His voice was strained, but still threatening. “She’s not on loan. Get the fuck out of here.”

  On loan? As the men gave me another cursory glance, eating me up with their eyes, I guessed what they’d asked for wasn’t directions.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, looking between them.

  “Shut up,” Keel snapped at me. He spun the passenger around and pushed him back toward the van. Reluctantly, the driver retreated as well, keeping his front facing Drake, looking down the end of his pistol barrel with a sly smile, like he knew something Drake didn’t.

  When he reached the open door, he pointed steadily at me and smiled. “We’ll meet again one day, sweetheart, then I’ll show you a good time.”

  With an exaggerated tilt of my head, I responded, “I seriously doubt that. I see nothing of interest here.” I then did what he’d done to me, and ogled him from his dusty-booted feet to the top of his scraggy head of hair, but paused and made a tsk-tsk sound of disappointment when my eyes glanced over his pelvic region.

  His smile fell a little and his pale eyes twitched before they darkened into shadows. “You don’t know what you’re missing, bitch.”

  “Let’s go, Jay. Before shit gets real.” The passenger risked one more longing glance my way.

  “Go. Fuck. Off,” Drake spat. He fired a warning shot into the air, and both men scrambled into the van with a rush, slamming the doors and throwing the engine into reverse. We watched as the battered vehicle spun in a circle backwards and then peeled out, returning the way it had come, smoke pumping from the exhaust.

  “Well…that was…weird,” I said, trying to thin some of the heaviness from the air.

  Drake launched himself at me and grabbed my upper arm, dragging me back to the truck. “Riley, I told you to stay out of it for a damn good reason. I know you can handle yourself, but this was different. They didn’t want our shit or the truck or even a place to stay. They wanted you – in the back of their van – for an hour or two. Whether you went willingly or not.”

  “Oh,” I stammered, trying to shrug myself loose.

  “Stupid broad.” Keel was shaking his head as he climbed into his seat, staring me down with daggers in his narrow eyes. Ironically, he seemed to forget how he himself had been looking at me with lustful thoughts just minutes before as we cruised down the road.

  “I was trying to help. What was I supposed to do, read your minds?” I finally yanked free and slumped against the side of the truck while Drake raked his hands through his hair. The sunshine peeked through the clouds overhead long enough to light him up with a yellow glow. As if he wore a halo. Ironic.

  “I know,” he sighed. “But you can’t do that shit. Not anymore.”

  “Do what?” It wasn’t as if I bounced out of the truck naked and danced for attention. “We’re all strangers until one of us says hello. You can’t look at everyone like they’re evil.”

  “And you can’t assume everyone is inherently good. Because people aren’t – not anymore. They will take what they want, when they want it. That includes sex, Riley. So that includes you.”

  “You already know I’m very much aware of that, or have you forgotten L.A. already?”

  It took all my control to keep from fisting my hands and propping them on my hips in defiance. I was suddenly surprised by an image of my son standing the same way when he was angry, and my gulp was audible enough for Drake to hear.

  He shook his head and said angrily, “Then fucking well act like you do. You’re an intelligent woman! Don’t act like an idiot.” He looked away, finding some innocent tree in the distance to focus his livid expression on, then seemed to remember another point he wanted to drive home before releasing me. “And that thing you like to do, the leaving-notes-for-people shit - you need to stop, understand? It’s for reasons just like this - to avoid the fuckers that will hunt us down and take what we have. We can’t afford to lose anything now, Riley.”

  My mouth hung open for just a second before I swallowed and stared out into the forest that surrounded us. In my backpack in the truck bed was the half-used can of spray paint. He knew I wouldn’t leave the Ark without some way to leave a message for Connor,
and until then, he hadn’t mentioned a problem with it.

  His delivery might have been harsh, but what Drake said was true. He hit the side of the truck with his fist, and I jumped. After Keel pressed his hand into the horn, and revved the gas, reluctantly I climbed back into the cab and was careful to keep from touching him. He might have prevented the strangers from using me as they wanted, but if the two of us were alone in a room, I wasn’t so sure Keel wouldn’t attempt the same thing. He had a haunting look in his beady eyes; there lingered in his gaze a dirty desire to strip me naked and have his way with me, then go out and hunt squirrels for dinner after, like nothing had happened. If the man had a genuine smile, he could pass off as the ruggedly handsome mountain man type, but I couldn’t get comfortable enough in his presence to see him that way.

  As I sat rigidly with my hands folded in my lap and my gun in the glove box where Drake had stashed it, feeling chastised like a petulant child, I thought for what had to be the hundredth time that in the newly broken world we were stuck in, life for me would’ve been easier had I been born with a penis instead of a vagina.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The truck lurched off the highway and vibrated over an uneven and winding dirt road for miles before the tread touched asphalt again. Less than one mile later, a small outcropping of dilapidated buildings dotted the east side of the road. A large water tank that had been damaged from a small explosion faced the buildings from the opposite side of the cracked street. When the wind hit the windows from the side, what little glass was left rattled and shook. I wasn’t looking forward to going scavenging in the worsening weather. Especially in a place that looked like Serial Killer HQ.