I still remembered how it had felt to lose Owen. Because I didn’t want to go through that kind of heartbreak again.
And it could happen—easily. Because I was the Spider, for better or worse, and I would
There would always be some sort of trouble headed in my direction, someone targeting me, someone wanting to murder me, and it would be all too easy for Owen and me to end up right back where we’d been after I’d killed Salina.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I just . . . I just don’t know.”
Owen gave me a small, understanding smile, although I could see the disappointment in his face. “And that’s okay too.”
We didn’t speak for a moment.
“come on,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
“Lie back down. It’s been a long day, and we still have to hike out in the morning. You need your rest.”
He wrapped his arms around me, and together, we lay down on the sleeping bag and faced the fire. His rich, metallic scent once again filled my nose, mixing pleasantly with the woodsmoke, and the warmth of his body enveloped mine, driving away the last of my lingering chill.
I thought about everything that Owen had said and all the emotions that I’d seen flashing in his eyes— heat, desire, need, want, love, and hope. So much hope. A few hours ago, I’d thought that I’d never see him again, and
I would have done anything to have had one more moment with him. Now here Owen was, proclaiming his love for me, and I suddenly couldn’t let him back into my heart.
I could face down a psychopath like Harley Grimes any day of the week, but ask me to open up and risk my heart, and I reverted to that scared, angry, lonely little girl who’d lost her family and had vowed never to let anyone get too close again.
There was no maybe about it. I was
Tonight, at least.
Chapter Twenty-five
A splash of sunlight on my face woke me early the next morning.
I squinted against the warm, golden glow. The fire was cold, but Owen must have covered me with the sleeping bag sometime during the night, because the fabric was tucked in all around me, making me feel like a mummy.
Even though I could have easily drifted back to sleep, I untucked one corner of the sleeping bag, threw the silky material aside, and sat up. I blinked a few times, trying to throw off the last comfortable, drowsy dregs of sleep.
“Owen?” I called out.
He didn’t answer me, and I finally realized that he was nowhere in sight. Not sleeping behind me, not crouched over the remains of the fire, not stretching his legs by walking back and forth in front of the rocky outcropping that I was still lying under.
For a moment, I was confused, wondering if perhaps I’d just dreamed that he was here the night before, but then I spotted his backpack, and I realized that he must be around somewhere. Maybe he’d gone to get some fresh water from the river, so we’d have something to drink on our hike back to the parking lot. Either way, I needed to answer the call of nature, so to speak, so I got to my feet—and then wished that I hadn’t.
I was bruised, battered, and sore from head to toe.
Blues, greens, purples, and yellows had blossomed like flowers overnight on my arms, mottling my skin from my shoulders all the way down to my fingertips. Given the stiffness in my muscles, I imagined that I had even more bruises on my back, chest, and legs, not to mention the burns and blisters from Grimes’s and Hazel’s Fire magic, which pulsed with tight, throbbing pain. Rolling down the river hadn’t been my best idea, but it had gotten me away from Grimes, which was all that really mattered.
I gingerly touched the bandage over the gunshot wound in my shoulder. Lucky for me, it was a through — and-through, and Owen had rubbed plenty of Jo-Jo’s healing salve on it. The wound was tender to the touch, but it wasn’t bleeding, and it didn’t have the hot, aching feel of infection. Maybe if cooper was up to it, I’d get him to heal me when we got to his house.
Because the sooner I was better, the sooner I could kill Harley Grimes, Hazel, and every other person on this damn mountain.
With that cheery thought in mind, I staggered away from our camp, found a private spot behind a tree, and did my lady business. When I was finished, I went back to the camp, but I didn’t hunker down under the rocks and curl back up on the sleeping bag. Instead, I stood by the remains of the fire and did some slow, careful stretches, trying to loosen up my stiff, sore muscles and get some blood flowing to them. Because it was still a long trek down the mountain, and we could still run into some more of Grimes’s men—
The distinctive sound of flesh cracking against flesh made me stop in mid-stretch.
“Where the hell is she?” a man’s voice growled.
Silence. Then—
“I asked you a question,” the man growled again, his voice much louder and angrier than before. “I suggest that you answer me.”
“Forget it,” Owen snarled back. “I’m not telling you a damn thing.”
Looked like Grimes’s men had come looking for me after all—and they’d found Owen instead.
I scanned the ground around our camp, searching for one very specific item, but all I saw were Owen’s backpack, a couple of empty tins of salve, and several crumpled, dirty rags that he’d used to wipe some of the blood and grime off me. No weapons.
“c’mon, c’mon,” I muttered, dropping to my hands and knees and crawling around the fire ring. “Where did you put it, Owen? Where did you put it—”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a piece of gray fabric sticking out from beneath the sleeping bag.
I stretched out my hand, grabbed the edge of the fabric, and pulled my vest out into the light.
It looked worse for wear, just like I did. The whole thing was covered with blood, mud, and grass stains, while jagged cuts crisscrossed the gray material, exposing the gleaming silverstone underneath. But I shrugged into it anyway, even though the motion caused even more pain to unspool through my muscles, especially the two holes in my left shoulder, and ripple down my arms.
I zipped the bloody vest up over my chest, then hurried over to the fire ring. Most of the wood had been burned away, but I spotted one stick that hadn’t been consumed by the flames, the one that Owen had been using to stir up the fire the night before. It was about a foot long and as wide as three of my fingers. The end wasn’t as sharp as
I would have liked, but I’d made do with worse before.
I also picked up one of the rocks from the fire ring itself and hefted it in my hands. Smooth, round, and heavy.
Perfect. crude weapons in my hands, I got to my feet and headed toward the sounds of Owen and his attackers.
I found them about two minutes later. They were definitely Grimes’s men—three guys with guns, all dressed in brown boots, old-fashioned suits, and fedoras. Two of them held Owen up against a tree, while the third used his fists on him. They must have surprised Owen as he was coming back from the river, because I saw a couple of full water bottles that had been kicked to one side of the tree.
If they’d walked fifty feet more to the west, they would have easily discovered our campsite. They might have even come upon us while we were sleeping this morning and put a couple of bullets in our skulls where we
