She mumbles something I can’t hear, but I don’t bother asking. I’ve never been good with people in general, and I’m not used to talking at all anymore. I’ve never had a taste for idle chitchat, and I’m definitely out of practice now.
Very little else is said until we get to the entrance of my abode.
“What the hell is that?”
“A bomb shelter.” I open up the hatch in the side of a small hill and pull it back. “Watch your step—the first part is steep.”
I watch the woman grab the edge of the opening and carefully navigate her way down the steep stairs to the bottom, then follow her, closing the hatch behind me. When I get to the bottom, she’s staring with wide eyes and an open mouth.
“Did you build this?”
“No, I found it.”
The inside is small and probably intended for only one person. There’s only one room, but whoever built it was smart enough to leave themselves two entrances. Apparently, they weren’t smart enough to be here during the attack. The benefits of being underground include temperature control. Though it’s late into the fall, it is still damn hot outside.
“It looks like something from the fifties.”
“It’s a lot newer than that.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s got fiber optic cable running into it,” I say. “It doesn’t work, but it’s there.”
“You mean to get on the internet?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there any internet anymore?”
“Not as far as I know.”
I go to the locker just below the small food prep center and grab two bottles of water. I hand one to her.
“Thanks.”
I pop the lid off of mine and sit down on the twin-sized bed. There isn’t any other furniture in the shelter—just the bed and storage.
“My name’s Katrina,” the woman tells me.
I don’t respond.
“Are you going to tell me your name, or do I have to guess?”
“Falk.”
“Falk?”
“Yes.”
“That’s unusual.”
“It’s German.”
“Oh! Were your parents from Germany or something?” Katrina leans against the food prep area and sips from the water bottle.
“Grandparents,” I say. I don’t know why I’m telling her any of this. It’s been weeks since I’ve talked to anyone. Even the sound of my own voice is strange. “It’s a family name.”
“How did you end up here on your own?” she asks.
“It’s been a long year.”
“I’ll say!” She snorts out a laugh.
The food prep counter must not be very comfortable because she decides to sit on the floor. She places the bottle of water next to her and twists her fingers around in her lap.
“How did you survive?” she asks.
“I was underground.”
“Oh yeah? I’ve heard others say that, too.” She nods her head as if we magically understand each other completely now. “We were fishing up at Lake Lanier. Me, my dad, and my brothers—Seth and John.”
She keeps glancing up at me. I should be friendly—engage her in conversation, ask her questions. That’s what she wants. It’s been too long though. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want to hash through all the same shit again.
I was a bodyguard. I was protecting a woman. I failed at it.
“We were in a cove,” she says when I don’t respond. “There isn’t much of anything around there, but we heard all the noise. A bunch of boats out in the middle of the lake were capsized. When we got back to shore, everyone was dead or gone.”
I finish my water and toss the bottle in a nearby container. It’s getting full. I’ll have to haul the trash out soon.
“When the truck wouldn’t start, we took the boat up the Chattahoochee River as far as we could go, all the way past where the ferries are. Walked into town from there.”
I’m barely listening to her, but she goes on anyway.
“It was days before we found anyone. When we did, we wished we hadn’t.”
I glance over at her, but she’s not looking at me. I wonder how old she is. If she was out with her father, she could be even younger than I thought.
“It started out all right,” she says, “but when they kept finding more men, and I was the only girl around…well, Dad figured out what they wanted from me pretty quickly. He decided to get us out of there in the middle of the night. They came after us though. Dad stayed behind so we could get away. I never saw him again.”
A sense of relief washes over me. I’m not sure if it’s because she wasn’t violated like I thought she probably was or if it’s because I don’t have to hear about it. She’s chatty. She may very well have given me all the details, and I don’t need to hear that.
“We’ve been in this area ever since then—me and my brothers.”
“Where are your brothers?” Some part of her story is still missing. If she had family to return to, she wouldn’t have followed me here so blindly.
“Seth got sick,” she says. Her voice gets soft. “John went out to find some antibiotics or something, but he never came back. That was three weeks ago. Seth…well, he died in his sleep four days ago. I had to dig a hole big enough to bury Seth, and I waited around for John to come back. When the food ran out, I left. That was this morning.”
“You haven’t been on your own long.”
“Just the past few days, really. Seth wasn’t much of a talker at the end.”
If they have been living out here, they probably got bad water. Her brother wouldn’t be the first to die from it.
I kick off my boots and shove my feet under the blanket. I scoot back to the wall so there’s enough room for her to lie down as well.
“Are you going to sleep?”
I close my eyes for a moment, sigh, and look back at her.
“It’s late. I got a little beaten up saving your ass today. Yeah, I’m going to sleep.”
She bites her lip and cringes at my sharp words. I should feel bad about it, but the lip biting reminds me of her, and my mood worsens.
“Where should I sleep?”
“There’s only one spot big enough.” I’m being a dick. I know I am, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
I don’t open my eyes as I hear her approach and then lie down beside me. I can feel her shuffling around to get comfortable on her side, facing away from me.
It’s all too familiar.
Every muscle in my body is suddenly tense. Memories of her warm, soft body pressed against my chest and my arm wrapped around her, pulling her close against me and telling her she’d always be safe flood my brain. I try to swallow, but I can’t. There’s pressure behind my eyes, and I have to fight back the tears as my temples throb.
“Aren’t you going to fuck me?”
The sudden bluntness of Katrina’s question snaps me out of my own head. I can’t even answer her—my throat is still too dry.
“You are, aren’t you?” There’s resignation in her voice.
“No.” My tone is flat. I’m still too shaken from the memory.
“Why not?”
“Are you saying you aren’t like the other guys? You don’t want to fuck me?”
Her voice is far too clear in my mind. Fear and desire all wrapped up in one package. I wanted her more than anyone I’d ever wanted before. I just wanted her to feel safe with me, to be safe with me.
I fucked it up so bad.
“That’s not why I brought you here.” I finally spit out the words, but my head is still spinning.
“Why did you?”
I can’t deal with this now. My head is still throbbing. I probably do have a concussion from that elbow to the face. I need sleep.
“Would you rather be out there alone in the woods?”
“No.” She’s quiet for another minute. “What are you going to do with me, then?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.”
r />
“Are you going to sell me?”
“Katrina, shut up.”
She tenses beside me, and I feel bad for being so harsh—God knows what’s going through her head right now—but I can’t take any more. I shove myself up from the small bed and climb over her. In a cabinet on the other side of the room is a bottle of vodka. I pull it out and take a big swig.
It’s cheap stuff and burns my throat as it goes down. It warms my stomach and clouds my head, too, which is the desired effect.
“Who is she?” Katrina’s words are barely audible.
“Who is who?”
“The girl.” She sits up and looks up at me. “The reason you aren’t fucking me now. What’s her name, and what happened to her?”
I still as images rush through my head again but worse this time.
She was leaning against the concrete wall of a parking garage. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail, but most of it had escaped, and the wind was blowing it all around her face. The last time I saw her—exhausted and so sure she would be fine—was when I glanced over my shoulder right before I entered the half-destroyed hospital building. I was supposed to be gone for only a few minutes.
I never should have left her.
“Hannah,” I finally say. “She was taken from me.”
Chapter 2
It’s the first time I’ve said her name out loud in months. I don’t even like to think it. Every time I do, I’m reminded of our first meeting when she told me to call her by her first name, and I had refused.
How could I have called her that? I’d been following her story since I read the first article about her turning in the Tyler Hudson for embezzling, kidnapping, and running a human trafficking ring. She didn’t have just an inkling—she had tracked down solid evidence. She had enough on him that a prosecutor had to do something about it. Hudson was a king in both industry and politics, and some barely-out-of-college woman was willing to take him on. It was something no one else, not with money or power, had been willing to do. There was no way I could have referred to her in such a familiar manner—I was in awe of her.
“Will you tell me about her?” Katrina asks.
I take another long swig from the bottle, but I don’t answer. There’s gooseflesh appearing on my arms, and I can’t seem to stop my right leg from jiggling up and down. I remember calling her by her first name when she would start to panic and how it would calm her. I remember whispering it in her ear as I made love to her. I remembered screaming it over and over and over again when she was nowhere to be found.
“She must be really important to you.”
“She was. She is.”
Katrina shifts on the bed, pulling one of the pillows into her arms and fluffing it. She props it up against the wall behind the bed and leans against it. She looks at me as if she’s waiting for a bedtime story, but I don’t have a “happily ever after” to tell her.
I remember when Hannah told me about Hudson’s assault on her. It had taken everything in my power to keep myself calm and to stop myself from getting out of the bed and completely destroying the room. I’d asked her to tell me, and I knew I needed to keep my cool so she could tell me everything without breaking down, but I hadn’t really been prepared for the look in her eyes. Afterward, she was drained, but she also seemed relieved and more focused.
I glance up at Katrina. She’s still just sitting there, watching me. As far as I can tell, she’s genuinely interested in hearing me tell my story.
Maybe I should.
“I was her bodyguard.” Just the word makes my chest hurt. I can’t believe I’m actually speaking out loud. I haven’t told anyone exactly what happened. “I was supposed to protect her.”
I slide down to the floor, bottle still in hand. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I lean my arms over them and take another drink. I put extra pressure on my right leg to stop it from bouncing around so much.
“I guess that didn’t work out so well.”
I shake my head.
“We had just gotten away from the group we were in. There were people there…men who wanted to hurt her. I got her away, but then…”
I feel the pressure behind my eyes again as the vodka works its way through my system.
“We stopped at a hospital to get a few things,” I say slowly, focusing on my breathing and trying to remain calm. “Hannah was exhausted. She wasn’t up for climbing through all the destruction to get to the supplies. She wanted to stay outside and rest. I didn’t like it, but she…she had a way of convincing me to do shit I didn’t want to do. She was always so confident and independent; it was hard to argue with her sometimes. I left her there while I went inside.”
I let another gulp of cheap vodka burn my throat.
“I never should have left her alone.”
“Did those guys take her? The ones you were trying to get away from?”
I nod before continuing.
“I was in a hospital building. We were running low on gauze and antibiotic cream, and I didn’t know when we’d get a chance to find some again. The place was a mess, and though I found the storage area, I had to dig into it to find the supplies I needed. I was making a lot of noise throwing shit around—I was pissed it was taking so long to dig it out. I should have been quiet. If I had, maybe I would have heard them.
“I heard a sound behind me, and I knew exactly what it was. My back felt like I’d just been punched hard or maybe hit by a baseball that should have made it out of the park. I looked down. My shirt had a huge hole in it, and blood was seeping out. Then there was another blast, and I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I turned around and saw him—Caesar. He was the guy trying to get Hannah. He had a grudge.”
I stop and try to catch my breath. All my words are coming out rushed, mimicking the way the thoughts are flowing through my head.
“There was another guy with him—Brett. I think he fired the second shot. I had the chance to kill him days before that, and I should have. I should have just fucking killed him the first time he touched her, but she…she wouldn’t have liked it. She always thought the best of everyone, and she didn’t realize what kind of person he was. Not then, anyway.”
I shake my head.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“What happened then?”
“I fell backward onto all the medical supplies. My whole side felt like it was on fire. I couldn’t move at all for a moment. I think I knew I’d been shot, but it took me a few minutes to really comprehend it.”
“He shot you?”
“Yeah. Right in the back. The bullet came out in the front.”
I reach down and place my hand over my left side, sliding it down and grabbing the edge of my shirt. I pull the fabric up enough to show her the long scar between my ribs and my hip.
“Holy shit,” she mumbles. “That’s...”
“Pretty ugly.”
“Yeah. At least. How did you even survive?”
“I’m getting to that.” I breathe slowly, trying to say the words without actually reliving the experience, but it’s not easy. “So I’m lying on all these boxes of bandages, pills, and ointments, just stunned. I could still see Caesar’s face in my mind—he was smiling at me right before I fell—but I was having a hard time piecing together what had just happened. There was blood all over my shirt, and I also hit my head on something in the pile of supplies. I couldn’t move at all. I don’t know if it was shock from being hit, a concussion, or what, but I couldn’t move for what felt like the longest time. He must have thought I was dead, because he didn’t shoot again.”
“What did you do?”
“When I looked down, my shirt was covered in blood, and I could feel it bubbling out of me. The box of gauze I had already set aside was still right next to my hand, so I grabbed it and ripped open the hole in my shirt even wider so I could see the exit wound. I nearly puked, and I’m lucky I didn’t just pass out at that point.”
I have to stop and take another swig from the bottle.
It’s strange how comforting the burning liquid feels. I’ve never been much of a drinker.
“I could see…” I stop again, taking a deep breath. “There was a lot of blood, and it was still seeping out, but there were also bits of tissue mixed in with the blood, and I could see part of my intestines sticking out of the hole.”
Katrina gasps and places one hand over her mouth. Her eyes are wide, and she looks a little sick.
“I was sure I was dead. It burned so bad—like someone took a hot metal pole and shoved it right through me—but I couldn’t...I couldn’t die. Hannah was still out there, and he was going to go after her next.
“I pulled my shirt out of the way and used my fingers to push…to push everything back inside. I could feel everything shifting around in there, and I had to fight the urge to throw up. I used a wad of gauze to put pressure on the wound to try to stop the bleeding, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. I could feel the blood seeping through even as I piled more gauze on it. I was trying to run through all the shit medics would do in combat, but I was getting lightheaded, and I couldn’t think clearly.
“I felt pain in my back, too. At first, I thought I had landed on something that cut me, but then I realized it was where the bullet actually entered.”
“That’s good though,” Katrina says. “The bullet wasn’t still inside of you.”
“No, it wasn’t, but it was a hollow-point bullet. They’re designed to do more damage coming out.”
“Shit. What about your leg?” she asks.
“Give me a minute—I’ll get there.”
I reach to my thigh and rub at the scar before I go on.
“I’d been wounded before,” I tell her. “When I was in Iraq, I was hit with shrapnel. Lots of small wounds but nothing like this. Actually, I’d never been shot before—seen it a lot, but it hadn’t happened to me. All I could think was that I needed to stop the bleeding. I had to stop the bleeding and get back to Hannah, so I started looking around.
“I guess if you’re going to get shot, get shot in the middle of a hospital supply closet. As I saw all the stuff lying around me, I started thinking a little more clearly, but I knew that wasn’t going to last. I was losing a lot of blood. I had to crawl to get everything I needed, which made the bleeding pick up again, but I found a box of curved needles and suture thread.”