I read the label. Generic painkillers. He’d gotten me painkillers.
I grabbed them and shook two out, swallowing them dry with a wince. Alexander watched me slip the bottle into my pocket before waving me to follow him again.
I did, turning down a hall I hadn’t seen before, then another. He’d said there were only two guards, but was that really it? Had both of them been in that other room? It was so quiet; I kept my eye on the walls, looking for cameras. Maybe some trapdoors or booby traps.
But there weren’t any. I guess everything could be hacked into, including security footage. Maybe that’s why they didn’t have any security?
The hallway abruptly ended at another heavy-looking door. Alexander did the same thing, placing his hand at the intersection where it met the frame and slowly pushed it. There was a sound right before it popped, and a sliver of weak light came in through the crack.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you going to blow it up?”
Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Blow what up?”
I tipped my head to the side. “The building,” I whispered.
His blink was so slow. “We don’t… do that.”
Oh. Duh.
He gave me another look out of the corner of his eye as he held out the backpack he’d taken from the office. “Get on my back. I bought us time, but we need to run,” he said, already moving on to the next step.
I hesitated as I slid my arms through the straps, holding back a groan at the weight and the feel against me once it was on. Running was what I’d been training for, for years. What I’d expected, but… there was no way. Not right now. Not any time this decade from the way my lungs were acting.
I was out of breath just walking, and this damn backpack felt like it was loaded up with bricks instead of whatever was inside of it. Fuck. “Are you sure your back is okay?” I asked him, ready to… ready to tell him to leave me behind. That I’d figure it out. He had already done more than enough.
But his tense look turned into a dirty one.
Okay then.
“Get on my back,” Alexander ordered, his tone almost urgent.
I don’t know about this, but at the same time, my gut said this was our best shot. As long as he was okay, which he claimed to be, we could get so much farther away. We could hobble together, I guess, if he ended up hurting.
He gave me his back and I jumped, at least I tried to jump considering how weak I was. It was more like a bunny hop. Fortunately, those big hands caught me by the backs of my thighs and hoisted me high along his spine. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I squeezed my thighs around his ribs—or at least I tried to, they were so weak—and just barely heard him say over his shoulder, “If you fall off, I’m not stopping.”
This mother…
All those supple, hard muscles bunched under my legs, arms, and chest. He threw the door open just as I did the sign of the cross and put my arm back around him.
Where the hell were we? I blinked, taking in the dark gray sky. Those clouds don’t look good, I thought as he walked toward two SUVS parked right beside the dark gray building. I stayed quiet as he went to the first one and lifted the hood—it popped as he did it—and he reached inside and…
Something crushed in his hand like a fucking eggshell.
Then he moved to the next car, lifted its hood with another ominous pop, and grabbed something, and I watched it literally break into pieces and dust in that strong hand.
A big fucking crack of thunder exploded somewhere in the distance.
It was one thing to see his strength on television, but it was a totally different thing to watch him crumble metal in his hand like it was paper.
It’s incredible, I thought, as Alexander, the man known as The Defender, broke into a run, taking us away from there.
Turning my head, I finally let myself focus in on the landscape. There was so much rock everywhere. It was a sea of orange and brown formations, of rocks, sparse bushes, and trees. So much desert-like landscape, I noticed as my breasts, ribs, and stomach constantly bounced against the muscular back I was clinging to like a spider monkey.
Where the hell were we? Arizona? Utah? Did it matter? We were in the middle of nowhere, and from the way the skies were looking and the air was smelling, it was going to start pouring soon.
I didn’t give a fuck. We were leaving, alive, and I had all my toes. I hugged him even tighter.
He was fast, but not as fast as I’d seen The Primordial or even The Centurion move; they weren’t even blurs when they tried. It was like they could teleport. Was he not going full speed because of me? My head started hurting almost instantly from the bouncing, feeling so bruised, and I decided that was probably it.
I didn’t make a single sound as those long legs led us away. I didn’t dare open my mouth and distract him. What I did do was look behind us a few times to make sure no one was coming.
The coast seemed clear.
Thunder crackled again in the distance, contradicting that thought.
Please, please, please, I begged in my head, squeezing my eyes closed. Let us get somewhere safe and far away from these fuckers.
Sometime later, too many hours later, with my thighs weak from clenching around his hips, my arms exhausted from pretty much choking him out, my brain and sinuses on fire, and soaked to the fucking bone, my superhuman transportation finally started to slow down.
The hands that had been clutching my legs for so long widened and moved, letting me slide down his back. My thighs shook as I got my legs under me, and it took me way too long to stand up straight. He wandered off, hands going to his waist.
Maybe someone wasn’t feeling as great as he’d thought.
Then again, I had no clue how far we’d traveled. Even if I’d been healthy, my limit would have been five miles. With adrenaline pumping through me, I might have been able to do a little more. Who was I to talk shit?
I waddled toward one of the same kinds of thousands of trees he’d run by after we’d finished crossing through the craggy landscape, and I clung to the trunk, trying to steady my breathing like I had actually done something. Oh, I felt like shit. Breathing through my nose was a nope; breathing through my mouth was a nope. My lungs were struggling. My ribs hurt.
More than once, I’d wanted to cry and tell him to leave me.
But neither one of us had said a word in the hours we’d traveled. Not a single complaint had been made, and I intended to keep it that way. I wasn’t the one who had run like our lives had depended on it… because they had. At least mine had.
At first, I think we were both too focused on getting away from the building as fast as we could. My nausea had gotten worse with each uneven, bumpy step, and eventually he’d slowed down a little. Still going faster than I could ever run but not at the speed he might have gone if I’d been feeling better. Or if he’d been feeling better.
And then the rain had started.
Huge, cold drops had hit us with a vengeance, and at some point, I’d had to close my eyes. For one second, my heart started to beat faster, a knot just beginning to form in my throat at the water hitting my face, but I squashed it down. The fear, I mean. The panic. It was only rain. And maybe it was the feel of his body pressed up against mine, that helped remind me I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t back in that damn room. Just maybe, the smell of the rain grounded my thoughts too.