“So you kept looking?” she finished his sentence.
Brody traced her spine with fingers calloused from the manual labor he’d done over the past year and a half. “I kept moving every few weeks, desperate to find something, anything to justify why I’d left, but it was the same thing everywhere I went. I just wasn’t good enough.”
“You were good enough for me. And I know your father was always proud.”
“Again that hindsight thing. So many times, I gassed up the bike and picked up the phone, ready to quit and come home. I wish I had.” Brody fell silent as he bitterly recalled the dreams he’d had. A dream he’d followed westward, chasing a rainbow that never ended in a pot of gold, or Hannah. And then it was too late. He’d woken up one morning and found the world dying. As the death toll mounted, Brody had realized, to his horror, that he’d spent months chasing fool’s gold and lost everything that meant anything to him.
“I waited for you, you know,” she admitted. “Every time the phone rang or I heard a motorcycle, I thought it was you finally coming back to me. Then the flu hit and everyone died, and I think that’s when I finally admitted to myself you were never coming back.” Her voice choked, and Brody could feel his eyes dampen, glad she couldn’t see him.
He had to swallow hard before he trusted himself to speak. “I was coming back to you, I swear. Then the virus hit, and it was chaos everywhere.” She had actually been his first thought when the plague hit. Terrified for her, he’d begun travelling back, diverting around roadblocks that soon manned empty streets as the world faded with a cough and a sneeze. “I started for home, but as I travelled, I kept slowing down.” Fear had grabbed him. What if he returned and found her dead? Or worse what if she’d survived and moved on with someone else?
She didn’t ask him why, she just snuggled him closer and again he felt that stupid moisture in his eyes that he’d found her again. That she loved him, even if that love was tempered with hesitation. I’ll never hurt you again, he silently promised. He’d die first.
Brody had never gotten over Hannah. He’d never even tried. Offers from other women had been there, but he’d never been able to muster interest. All he’d ever wanted was his golden kitten.
He just hoped he could make her believe in him fully again so they could be the family they’d always been meant to be.
Chapter Nine
Hannah woke before Brody the next morning, and she watched him as he slept, the new lines he’d gained from the hardships he’d face smoothed out, leaving him looking like the boy she’d fallen in love with a lifetime ago. The boy and now the man she loved still.
Easing out of bed, she threw on some clothes and exited the room, heading for the front office and the vending machines Brody had said he’d found inside. With no coffee, she needed to get a caffeine fix in the form of a cola. She opened the glass paned office door, the sun rising still at her back. The pop machine stood, a sentinel of a bygone time, at the back of the room. Two steps in, just enough for the door to swing shut, a hand clapped over her mouth, while something sharp and pointed pricked the skin at her back through her shirt.
“If you move or scream, you die.”
Brody awoke alone with a sense of something not being right. Hopping out of bed, he pulled on his jeans as he checked the bathroom for Hannah. Tucking the gun he’d put under the pillow into his pants, he left the room, his feeling of urgency increasing.
Where could she have gone?
The bike still sat in its spot, untouched. His eyes scanned the area around the motel, but nothing moved. A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention from the office. He pretended not to see it and wandered around the backside of the building. He ran quickly once out of sight ‘til he reached the rear of the office then he inched quietly up the side. Scuffing sounds ahead had him holding his breath and peering around the corner. His hearth clenched at the sight of Hannah being marched with a knife at her back.
Aiming the gun, he called out, “Let the girl go, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
The ruffian whirled, one hand tangled in Hannah’s hair, the knife moved to a point below her chin.
“One move and she dies,” threatened the bastard who had dared touch Brody’s woman.
The absolute look of terror in Hannah’s eyes twisted like a knife in Brody’s gut. “I am not telling you again. Let her go, or I’ll cut you apart piece by fucking piece.” Brody cocked the gun, stilling his breath, waiting for his shot.
Hannah, as if sensing her captor’s distraction, slammed her foot down on his instep. With a yelp, his knife hand moved, and Brody fired.
Hannah heard the crack of the pistol, might have even felt the whizzing breeze as the bullet flew past her face and hit the vagrant who’d caught her. With a scream, the hand in her hair loosened, and she ran straight for Brody.
Thunderclouds brewed in his eyes, and his lips were taut with anger. He reached an arm out to curl around her and tuck her face-first into his chest. She heard another crack of the gun and the screaming stopped.
Shaking, she let him lead her to their room. Tenderly, he lifted her chin and, with antiseptic and bandages from a kit he kept in the saddlebags, he cleaned and covered the nick on her neck. Then he engulfed her in a huge hug, a bone-crushing one.
“Don’t you ever go out on your own like that again,” he said with a tight voice.
Hannah, still in shock, just nodded. She’d even do one better. Once they found Beth, she’d go back home and never leave again.
Brody packed their things in silence and signaled to her it was time to go. Hannah kept her eyes averted so not to see the body in the parking lot. Death in this case had been inevitable and justified. Scum like that couldn’t be allowed to live and prey on others. She only hoped Beth hadn’t run into him as well.
Had all the men left in the world gone crazy? Why did they all want to hurt and rape? She thanked god that Brody hadn’t turned feral. She also prayed with all her might that Beth hadn’t been waylaid.
After checking their route on a map he’d brought along, Brody drove, only stopping for gas. Hannah found herself getting more and more tense the farther they went without seeing any signs of Beth. Oh god, please let her be all right. She knew they had to be getting close to the old Amish village. Signs of people in the area were glaringly obvious from the road that had been cleared of vehicles allowing them to make good time, to the smoke spiraling in the sky which pulled at them like a beacon.
Trying to ignore her anxiety over Beth, she found herself thinking back on Brody’s confession of the previous night. He never stopped caring, and he wanted to come back. She didn’t have a hard time picturing his pride standing in the way of common sense. Brody had never been the type to tuck tail and admit defeat. But his stubbornness had cost them both a lot. Hannah wished she could trust in him completely. The pain of the last year and a half was still an ache in her heart, and her skeptical side couldn’t help wondering if he’d leave eventually looking for greener pastures again.
Brody cursed and downshifted on the bike, startling Hannah. Lifting her head from where it rested on his back, she peered around his wide shoulders to see two men dressed ruggedly in jeans and ball caps, standing in the middle of the road, rifles aimed menacingly.
“What do they want?” she asked, fear making her voice come out high.