Blood and Bone | 1

4 | 8

    

     "It's been a whole day," I said, looking back at our unconscious crew. "I was expecting them to be awake by now."

      Jake pulled the truck into an abandoned parking lot. It was in the middle of the night, and we were stopping for the day in a small German town. It appeared that everyone who lived in it had already turned in for the evening; no public buildings were open.

      "There's one method that always works," he informed me and got out of the truck. I heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel as he made his way to the back of the truck and then a click as he succeeded in picking the lock. The back doors swung open.

      Jake hauled over a bucket of almost-frozen water that had been in front of the nearby gas station to catch a leak from the ceiling. Stepping up into the back of the truck, he dumped the freezing water on each one of our crew members.

      They all came to life, coughing and spluttering while water dripped from their faces to soak their clothes.

"What the hell?" Riley hissed, her short dark hair plastered to her face. She raised a hand to drag the wet hair out of her eyes but froze when she saw that it was Jake who had doused her.

"What are you doing here?" Finn asked Jake, clearly baffled about this turn of events.

"We saved you from Hundsen. Is that how you address your rescuer?"

"Who's 'we'?" Riley inquired in the middle of wringing out her wet clothes.

      No one said anything, though all the eyes in the room slowly went to me as I stood in the doorway.

      "Delphinium," Arlo said in realization, his eyes wide.

      "Why did you two rescue us?" Finn queried slowly, his eyes shifting between Jake and I. It was clear that he didn't expect us, of all people, to do something so noble.

      "For the record, I didn't want to," Jake answered the blonde boy coldly. "But Tesla thought we'd be stronger together against Hundsen."

      "Is what Hundsen said about you true?" Finn asked me. "That you're-" He stooped. His light eyes gazed into mine and I knew that he was afraid for my answer.

      "That I'm what?" I replied softly, daring him to say it.

      "That you're an assassin, a trained killer." I knew that he asked the question all the others were wanting to know the answer to. I could tell by the way they were watching me warily, like I was a dangerous psychopath.

      They might have expected me to act ashamed or deny it. But I answered quietly, "Yes." There was no point in lying; they already knew the answer.

      "So why did you rescue us?" Finn repeated his question. It may have been blunt, but I could understand his apprehension. They'd only just now learned about my work in the criminal underworld and it didn't help that I'd kept it a secret.

      "You're not going to...do anything to us, are you?" Gigi's wide blue eyes looked fearful. I cringed at the obvious fear written all over her face.

      "She untied you," Jake spoke in a low voice, surprising me. "She's not going to kill you." I was shocked, but grateful that he'd stood up for me. I couldn't remember the last time someone had done that.

      "Though I might, after all the trouble you've caused us," Jake growled, finishing his sentence. Arlo shifted his weight on the seat so that he was sitting farther away from the raven-haired boy.

      "You're both hurt," Gigi said softly, staring at Jake's bloodstained shirt. Though it made me wonder how she knew my leg was injured as well.

      She slowly stood up and waved her hand over the bullet hole in my leg. It had been healing well until I'd accidentally ripped open the wound again during the car chase. Almost immediately, I felt a warm prickling sensation spreading throughout the hurt area. After she stepped back, I was relieved of most of the pain that had been a nuisance during all of the action of the past two weeks.

      Gigi made a move to come towards Jake next but he glared at her. A frosty "No," was all he said, but it was enough to make her quickly sit back down.

      "So what now?" Riley asked no one in particular. "Is the Club still after us?"

      "Hundsen's men are still out there," I informed them, "Though we were able to buy ourselves some time. If we move quickly, we should be able to get to New York before they find us. And as for what to do when we get there..." I trailed off, looking at Jake for the answer. Back when it was just the two of us, he'd inferred that he had a plan to strike at Hundsen.

      "When we get there, we will bring everything we have against Hundsen," Jake decided, staring down at all the others with a fierce look in his eyes. "He's started a war. It's time for us to finish it."

      "It won't be easy," Riley warned him. "From what I saw when we were locked up there, he's gathering up supplies, weapons and soldiers. He's ready for an attack."

      "Then we'll give him one," Jake said harshly and stepped out of the back of the truck. "Sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

      Arlo started to complain, "How are we supposed to sleep when we just-" Jake cut him off by slamming the two back doors shut.

     "Asshole," I heard Arlo mutter under his breath so that Jake couldn't hear him through the wall of the truck. Someone in the back closed the partition between the front and back parts of the truck. I sat back down in the front seat as Jake climbed in next to me.

      After the doors were firmly locked, Jake sat back in his seat and pulled his shirt off. I looked away but not before catching a glimpse of the wound the Club had given him. It was in his shoulder, surrounded by a sea of dried blood.

      In the reflection in the windshield, I watched as he stuck two fingers in the bullet hole, intending to pull the bullet out with his bare hand. In no time, he'd yanked the metal out from his wound. He bandaged up his injury afterwards.

Watching him heal himself made me wonder why he'd been so against Gigi's help. It was undeniable that he didn't like relying on other people. But I questioned if there was a deeper reason that he was so cold and closed off, refusing even the smallest of kindnesses.

I turned away from Jake and looked out the window to watch cars pass by on the highway. It was a dark night, as the moon was only a minuscule sliver. There were only a handful of stars in the sky.

At least an hour had passed. I'd been dozing on and off for a while, but my eyes snapped open when I heard the others talking in the back. I leaned closer to the partition to hear better.

"Can we trust them?" someone whispered. They must have thought Jake and I were sleeping. They were wrong.

"They saved our lives. If not for them, we'd still be Hundsen's prisoners."

"Yeah, they did rescue us. But we can never know what's going on inside Jake's head. He could have other motives."

I glanced at Jake, who was slouching in his seat with his arms crossed. His eyes were open and I knew that he was listening as well.

"But they risked their lives for ours. Doesn't that mean something?"

"Yes, it does. However, he has some sort of connection to the Club," someone else whispered. "No matter what it is, we need to be cautious."

"Yes, you do," Jake suddenly announced in a cool tone, loud enough for all of them to hear. "More cautious than you are now, talking where anyone can hear you."

The whispering in the back of the truck ceased. Everything was silent once again.