Kira eyed Nick. ‘So, you’re on first watch?’
When Nick groaned in reply, a smile touched Euan’s lips. Even though the anger between them fought for supremacy, Nick was still Nick. For this moment, their fatigue and fear broke down the barrier. There was no past or future. Just the present. He’d take the precious moment for what it was—a finite and fleeting thing.
Euan showed a similar level of caution when he approached the tack room. The door was closed. The frosted pane of glass was gold with grime. The door handle was icy when he touched it, and it took a significant amount of strength before the latch loosened and clicked. The hinges creaked as the door swung inwards to a windowless darkened room.
Kira was at his side before he had a chance to turn to call her name. She slipped him a pair of infrared goggles that had been stored in a pack. Their fingers brushed and he took comfort in the brief intentional contact. Her skin was streaked with dirt and soot. The crystal blue of her eyes glittered in the limited light.
She reached up to finger the bandage that was, by some miracle, still wrapped around his head. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
The sigh that escaped was followed by the sag of his shoulders. He tried not to lean into the touch, then gave up. He’d take whatever she would give him. He was exhausted, in pain, uncertain of what to do next. So, he said, ‘Doing good, sweetheart. You?’
A knowing smile. It held hurt. It held sorrow and grief.
He opened his mouth to speak.
The tips of her fingers moved over his lips. She pressed down to halt his words. Her soft eyes turned hard, an unsurprising defiance glittered from within. ‘Not tonight. It needs to be talked about, but not tonight.’
Under her fingers, his lips twitched. She had learned too well from him. He nodded despite the turmoil of emotions that brewed inside him. She was right. He needed to ensure their comfort and safety before he approached the subject that still sat heavily between the three of them.
Their flight for their lives through fire and flame physically may have happened today, but metaphorically, a war of words and emotions was still to come.
Once the goggles were strapped to his face, through his one eye, he was able to see that most of the interior was untouched since it had been abandoned. Saddles covered in a layer of white dust lay on powder-coated steel pommels built for that purpose. Leather bridles, reins, corded halters and lead ropes of various lengths and materials were hooked to the walls. Brushes, combs and other horse-care paraphernalia littered the single pine table, the drawers where they were kept still open from when the owner had last rummaged through.
Scanning the floor, he finally found something of use. Blankets and coats for the horses were piled against a wall. He flicked the infrared vision switch on his goggles and saw that the warm remains of tiny bodies had only infiltrated the layers closest to the floor. He picked the upper coats carefully and shook them out as he left the room. His shoulder protested at the aggressive movements.
The musky smell of the animals still clung to the material, but Euan found comfort in the domesticated scent. It reminded him of peace, of kindness, of gentleness. A sense of homeliness that he hadn’t recalled in a long time. His mother had loved horses, but they had never had the money to enjoy them other than a brief touch of a velvet nose on the rare occasion they were in the city. Pony rides for children at an out-of-town fair had been the last time, when he was just a boy. He’d ridden the tired and hot beast as a twelve-year-old just so his mother could take a picture and pet its caramel coloured fur.
He drew in a deep breath in an attempt to use that sense of security to ease his rising trepidation of their current predicament.
Nick and Kira were making the final preparations to their sleeping quarters. He removed the googles and approached.
‘Thank fuck,’ Nick muttered when he saw Euan. ‘Thought we were gonna have to fight off the rats as well as Parker’s men tonight.’
‘Should keep us warm too when the adrenaline wears off,’ Euan offered.
Even with the softness in Nick’s voice, he avoided the brush of Euan’s skin when he took the blankets from his hand and laid the first one over the straw. His grunt of ‘You’re gonna need them,’ had Kira narrowing her eyes at Nick’s back.
Euan took a breath before he moved forward to help. He was not looking forward to another night without their warm bodies wrapped around him to keep the nightmares at bay. But what he’d done was not forgotten, and even as they battled for their lives, Nick could not yet forgive.
Chapter 8
Kira
Safety was always relative. As Kira woke, she realised the bunker that had housed her had only provided an illusion of safety. It was the big man that held her, the biker who watched her, and the brother that had kept her hidden, that provided the true sanctuary. Euan might not understand it, but it was men like him that would see an end to this madness.
The comforting warmth created by body heat cocooned her, wrapped around her, pulled her under the layers of sleep and threatened to never let her go. She relished it for just a moment, a fleeting second where the realities of their situation were banished and not allowed to intrude. A single breath where they were not fleeing for their lives, where her childhood home hadn’t been abandoned to fire, where there were not men biting their heels for one glimpse of her, one touch. One taste …
Despite the warmth, she shivered.
She was not going to permit any of that to tarnish this moment. Not the memories of Euan’s butchered form being
