Heart pounding, Lara scanned the pegboard hung with keys. A row of six blue school vans occupied the numbered spaces closest to the doors. The other cars — a fleet of gray Ford Taurus sedans — were parked in the row behind and on the lower level.
“Give me the keys to a van,” Justin said.
“What? No.” Didn’t he see the Rockhaven logo painted on the sides? “They’re too identifiable. We’l take a Taurus.”
“You can drive whatever you want. But give me the keys.”
She was stil reeling from the effects of his touch.
Automatical y, she obeyed his tone of command.
He glanced from the numbered key in his hand to the row of painted parking spaces. “Thanks.”
She watched, mystified, as he climbed into the number three van. The engine roared to life. The van backed across the cement lane and stopped. Justin got out, slamming the driver’s side door, and stooped by the front tire. His arm jerked. She heard a pop, a hiss, before he straightened, stil holding his dive knife.
“Get us a car,” he said.
Her brain sparked back to life. “What are you doing?”
He moved to the next tire. “Making sure nobody comes after us.”
Slash. Pop. Hiss.
She winced. “But—”
“Park by the doors. I need to block the other lane.”
She ran for a car at the end of a row, close to the ramp that led to the lower level. Through the windshield, she watched Justin make quick work of the remaining tires before raising the van’s hood. Metal banged metal.
Oh, skies.
Her mouth dried. Simon would be furious.
She rol ed down her window. “You didn’t say anything about destroying school property.”
“You got a better idea?”
“No, but—”
He raised his head and looked at her, his face hard.
Determined. Dangerous. “If I block the exit with a couple of these vans, I won’t have to touch the other vehicles. Now move the car.”
She released the brake, feeling vaguely betrayed, as if she’d befriended a stray that turned into a tiger. She maneuvered her car into the narrow space by the garage doors. In her rearview mirror, she saw Justin help himself to another key from the pegboard.
He drove the second van into place behind her, across the lane. Slash, slash on the tires. Bang, bang under the hood.
She gritted her teeth.
The passenger door opened and he slid in beside her, hot and male and overwhelming. The heth gleamed in the hol ow of his throat. “Let’s rol.”
Setting her jaw, she shifted gear.
Pain sank its talons into his skul. His eyebal s ached. His throat throbbed.
Justin glanced at Lara’s rigid profile. She was pissed, but she hadn’t panicked on him. Or bailed.
The red haze over his vision faded. He was pushing her, he knew. Playing the connection that sparked between them.
Trusting her innate decency and compassion to overcome her loyalty to Axton.
She deserved better than that arrogant, ruthless prick and his stone-faced henchman.
Too bad he didn’t have anything better to offer.
Justin released his breath. At least they were free. He was free. For now.
The hot kernel of anger inside him eased.
She drove without headlights, knuckles white on the wheel, leaning forward to peer at the dark, winding road.
He could feel the moisture in the air, the rising wind of a gathering storm.
Something flickered through the trees. A fence. The black gleam of metal pickets fol owing the dip of the ground, the curve of the road. Ahead of them, a smal, square gatehouse rose out of the gloom.
Lara braked before they reached the metal barrier.
Justin tensed. “Guards?”
She shook her head, the shadows sliding over her face.
“Not at night. The exit gate is automatic.”
“Then why are we stopping?”
She turned to him, eyes wide in the dark. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? Once we’re outside the gates, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
She was worried about him, which was both convenient and oddly unsettling. Or maybe she was stil fretting over Axton’s probable reaction to his escape. Not to mention eight slashed tires and two busted timing belts. “I like my chances out there better than in here.”
“You don’t even know where you’re going.”
The bead at his throat pulsed in time with his heart.
They’d been down this road before. “You’re wasting your breath.” And my time.
She blinked once. “Probably,” she agreed cool y.
What did that mean?
“Rockhaven is warded,” she continued. “The wards wil not stop us. But Zayin’s binding might. Crossing the barrier wil probably trigger the heth.”
“Trigger?”
She drew a finger across her throat.
He swal owed reflexively, feeling the raw skin pul at his neck. “I thought you fixed that.”
“I couldn’t remove it. I don’t think the heth wil kil you, but you’l need to stay in contact with me as we go through the gate.”
“You want to hold hands?”
That earned him a glance, brief and unsmiling. “I’m driving.
You’l have to hold on to my leg. I think. I hope that wil be enough.”
Enough to get them clear?
Enough that the damn cord or hex or whatever it was wouldn’t strangle him?
He didn’t ask. He could either trust her or they could turn back.
“Best damn offer I’ve had al day,” he said and laid his hand on her thigh.
She sucked in her breath. So did he. Even through the denim of her jeans, he got some crazy contact high from touching her. Not like the jolt in the bar this time — more a low-level hum, like the vibration of a ship’s motor through the soles of his feet or the tug of the wind in the lines.
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted— pink, soft, moist, mine—before she pressed them together.
“Here we go.” She lifted her foot from the brake.
Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was those tal iron pickets clustered like spears on either side of the road.
But as they approached, Justin could feel the barrier rushing up on them, closing in on him, tightening his throat.
The gate quivered and retracted. Lara’s leg flexed under his hand. She stomped on the gas and the wheels spun, spitting up gravel. The car lurched forward. The cord around his neck burned like a whiplash.
“Hold on,” she shouted.
Energy seared his palm and charged his arm. Inside him, something swel ed and surged. The engine roared.
The car shook like a jet plane, and with a pop, a rush, a snap like the crack of a whip, they were free, speeding through the gate and into the night.
Zayin raised his head from Miriam’s smooth, scented shoulder, uneasy even in the act of coitus. “Jude?” His lover raised her hand to his cheek, her inner muscles clenching around him as if to prevent his withdrawal. “What is it?”
He did not answer her. He was hot and hard, deep inside her, poised on the brink of completion, in the grip of her wet heat. His blood pounded in his head, in his loins, drowning the faint warning tingle of his brain. He thrust once, twice, plunging like a runner at the end of his race, hard, fast, now.
Now.
She cried out, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He shuddered and flew, free of earth and the limitations of his human body.
For long seconds he lay on her while his heartbeat slowed.
His respiration evened. Rol ing off her, he reached for his pants.