Hidden Flames (8 page)

Prue finally caught on that Owen wanted her to pull out first, so she dropped the shifter into first with her left foot and eased off the clutch with her left hand while applying throttle with her right. The speed limit was forty-five miles per hour, but she facilitated through the gears and eventually had them at fifteen miles over that to put as much distance between them and Deacon’s group as possible. They rode for another ten minutes before Owen eased over and then in front of her, taking the lead and signaling that they were turning right around thirty feet ahead. She turned after he did and they got another two miles under their belt before he had them slow it down and pull off in a small gravel area under a bed of heavily leafed trees.

“You mentioned before that you know how to use a weapon,” Owen said, getting off of his bike and opening up one of the weapon cases. “This is a Sig Sauer P220 Match Elite .45 ACP double action semi-automatic handgun. The recoil is heavy, so don’t be surprised by it. Aim center mass and squeeze the round off. They won’t need a second shot unless you miss or they are wearing body armor. Thread this holster onto your belt, along with this pouch for two extra magazines. If you have to pull the pistol, shoot each target in a deliberate manner. Do not hesitate.”

Prue didn’t have a choice but to shut off her engine and follow suit. She glanced behind them even though she didn’t hear the rumble of other engines. In fact, all she could hear was the rustling of the trees above them. There were no calls from the birds, no movement from the squirrels, no sounds from the crickets…basically no wildlife present. It was eerie and before she could comment on it, Owen was pushing extra magazines into the pouch on her belt.

“Wait,” Prue argued, trying to shift so that he couldn’t slip the shiny chrome clips into the small twin black leather pouches attached to her belt. “I don’t have a license to carry.”

“We’re in a situation where that doesn’t matter anymore.” Owen quickly ran through the safety and instructions on the weapon he’d secured in her holster. It felt odd having it at her side and she wasn’t sure if it made her feel safer, but it apparently satisfied his concern for her wellbeing. “I don’t want you in the position of not being able to defend yourself if needed. Those men are the type of people who will do whatever is necessary to survive—even killing innocent people that stand in their way.”

Owen stepped back and appeared to approve of her new accessory. The heat she felt at her side had nothing to do with the weapon and everything to do with the imprint of his hand. Prue looked down and considered arguing with him just to prove that nothing had changed between them, but the thought of Deacon and his group kept her tongue in check. She did need to protect herself.

“Do you notice anything?” Prue asked, sitting back on her bike and waiting for him to do the same. Owen glanced around them and she realized that he’d caught the eerie silence as well. “The wildlife is preparing to survive as well.”

“We need to keep under the radar with the amount of weapons and supplies that we have with us.” Owen lifted the kickstand with the heel of his boot, settling his weight on the heavy machine. His last statement stayed with her for miles and miles, reverberating in her mind. “We’re no different than an animal’s basic instinct to survive and the weak will be eradicated by the strong by the time this is all over.”

O
wen didn’t have
a muscle in his body that didn’t hurt by the time they’d reached Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He’d never ridden his bike for such a long distance before and he didn’t think Prue had either. Between the aggressive tread vibrating the bike more than usual and the seven hundred plus miles of back road, Owen was ready for a rest. Motorcycles were meant to be enjoyed and not an ideal vehicle to escape a nationwide catastrophe on at a high rate of speed. He slowly pulled down the country lane to an abandoned campsite at the edge of a small wooded area skirting a large pond, the stillness ringing in his ears when they shut off their engines. He clenched his teeth against the deep ache in his back when he stood and dismounted his bike.

The small county park’s camping area appeared quite deserted. There had been no lock on the gate, not that Owen had expected some lone ranger to be patrolling the area considering the threat looming over everyone as it were. Several old prison-made parks department picnic tables were positioned here and there among the sites and he’d chosen one at random—close enough to the entrance to hear if someone drove in and far enough away to keep their presence a secret should someone pass by looking for trouble. It was as eerily quiet as when they’d stopped earlier today on the side of the road. No wildlife making themselves known and barely a rustle of the leaves on the trees.

“We’ll catch a couple of hours of sleep here,” Owen said, still looking around the area for any unseen threats. He shook out his hands, trying his best to get some feeling back into his fingers. They’d gone numb several hours into this trip and he hated the prickly sensations the vibrations of the handlebars caused. “How are you holding up?”

Owen caught Prue’s annoyed glance when he shot her that question. He could see what she thinking—she could handle anything that he could and probably double that. He still asked, because one of his foster mothers had grilled manners into him until it had become automatic. He hadn’t been a fan of hers, but her lessons had definitely stuck with him.

“I could have gone another hour or two.” Prue unsnapped the strap of her helmet and let it hang from one of the handlebars. She stretched her arms above her head before resting her hands on her lower back and arching to relieve some of the pressure. “The amount of people thinking they are going to cross into Mexico is unbelievable. It’s as if none of them are heading east like the President advised.”

“Both directions are nothing but chaos and it’s probably a good thing we’re off the beaten track.” Owen unfastened his sleeping bag and grabbed the bottle of water he’d opened earlier along with an MRE. He set his bags down on the ground around six feet from their bikes, dropping the water and his meal next to where he planned to lay out his bedroll. “Even these back roads are getting clogged and it won’t be long before we’re forced to go farther north.”

“Toward the ash?” Prue gathered the same items from her bike and joined him, although she made sure that a good yard separated their bags. Owen didn’t comment on the distance she’d put between them. He adjusted his shoulder holster, not about to remove it while he slept, and then folded his frame until he was sitting on his bedroll. They would only be here for a couple of hours anyway and he’d certainly slept in worse conditions than this. Prue hadn’t bothered to put on her cap and her long black hair fell over her shoulder when she joined him. He hid a tired smile, knowing full well she was just as exhausted as he was if she didn’t have that piece of armor in place. “It’s been about twelve hours and it could be upon us at any time depending on the shift of the jet stream.”

“We’re equipped to ride through the ash,” Owen pointed out, downing the various portions of the MRE, slipping his main meal into the heating sleeve and adding enough water to finish off his first bottle of the day. There’d only been a couple of inches of liquid inside the container anyway. They were being careful about what they consumed, not knowing what was ahead of them. A hot meal now meant hours of energy later. “We have gas masks, those filters you installed, and supplies. We’ll be fine, but I think we should head north by around thirty to sixty miles to stay away from what congestion we can.”

Prue finished off her wolf cookie and then settled back against her bag, waiting for her main meal to heat through. Once she had finished eating the worst version of spaghetti with meat sauce he was certain that she’d ever encountered, she repacked all her remaining trash in the plastic shell her meal had come in. There were a few extra items that she hadn’t used. He watched as she collected them in a plastic zip-lock baggie for later use. As for the small single use bottle of Tabasco sauce, he should have told her to add that to the main meal to at least give it some flavor. He just shook his head. If he’d mentioned it, she would have never used it anyway.

“Who were you talking to this morning when we ran into those bikers?” Prue finally stretched out on her bedroll, flipping the outer side over her to keep the mosquitos at bay and then linked her fingers behind her head as she stared up at the sky. It was a cloudy night and the stars couldn’t be seen, which was a shame. Once the ash cloud traveled, they wouldn’t see the moon and stars for a very long time to come. Owen was still pretty wound up and wasn’t able to sleep quite yet, so he remained semi-upright leaning against his pack and appreciative that she wanted to talk as he took inventory of the weapons case. “Your friend, Berke?”

“No, it was Mav.” Owen thought of his former teammate, currently in Lost Summit, Washington where he and Ernie were trying their best to get the remaining residents to believe that they would be better off staying in that area than leaving. “He’s trying to keep the peace in the valley, which isn’t an easy thing to do. The town has maybe fifty residents, give or take. They’re about to have a town hall meeting to discuss their options. There are some strong personalities to deal with. You’ve heard me talk about Ernie. Well, he’s what you would call a prepper and has even managed to turn an old mine into a bunker that would rival those on that television show. Shit, he could probably give Mt. Weather a run for their money.”

“Can that many people fit inside?” Prue asked, her head turning his way. It was dark and he couldn’t fully make out her expression. She’d arranged herself just far enough away that it made him want to shift his sleeping bag closer to her. “You can’t tell me he has the supplies to take care of that many people for an extended amount of time.”

“Yes, but I don’t think they’ll need it,” Owen said, putting himself in Mav’s shoes and giving her a scenario of how he thought things would play out. “Ernie and Mav will probably convince those that stay to move up to the lodge. He certainly has space for all of them and from what Mav has told me, Ernie feels the fishing lodge is well enough protected by the elements that we can all survive there for a very long time. Let’s face it…the National Guard is not going to be able to search every square inch of the United States for survivors. They’ll hit the major areas in hopes that people have worked their way to the cities or to the coasts.”

“Why me?” Prue’s question came out of left field and she’d said the inquiry so softly that he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. Owen waited a few moments to see if she’d follow up, but she remained silent and still. It was as if she was holding her breath for an answer and he wasn’t so sure she was ready to hear it. “You said you were raised in foster homes around the area, but you didn’t contact any of them before we left town. Why?”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone I met while growing up in foster care for well over fourteen years,” Owen admitted, responding to her second question first. He leaned back against his pack as he settled in to have this conversation. It would take them some time to wind down anyway and it was the first time that she’d ever asked him about his past. He was an open book and would tell her anything she wanted to know. “I was a handful. I was in and out of foster homes for years until I joined the Marines. There was no one in particular with whom I had a connection until I met Ernie and the guys. We gravitated toward each other because all of us in some way were alone and enduring the same hardships. The military was our way of life. My fellow Marines became a family and the bond between us during our combat tours brought us even closer. They
are
my family…my brothers. We might have had different paths and experiences in getting to where we were, but we would lay our lives down for each other if it ever came to that.”

Owen stopped talking, moving his head an inch to the right. He thought he’d heard something from the front of the campsite, but there was nothing now. He glanced toward Prue who hadn’t given any indication she’d caught the noise. He remained on alert as he answered what she really wanted to know and hoped that his honesty would be a catalyst to her sharing something with him.

“You’ve been at the shop for over a year, Prue. You mean more to me than just an employee and you know it. Hell, I’m relatively sure you don’t even think of me as your boss anymore. You have your own agenda and I just happen to own the place where you work on the machines that you love. You’re a contradiction in everything you say and do. And that kiss…” Owen shifted and pushed his pack back against his bike so that he was lying flat on his hip and using his elbow to elevate himself off the ground to mirror her position. She was looking at him, still as the night air had become. Now that he’d brought up their relationship, he would have sworn that static electricity could be seen traveling between them. “That kiss will happen again. Not even the end of the world could keep me from tasting your lips again.”

“Talk about calling the kettle black,” Prue said, having to clear her voice twice to get the words out. It proved that she wasn’t unaffected by his admission, but she still held her ground. “I’m an open book. What you see is what you get. I’m not the
house in the country with a white picket fence
type of woman. I don’t do relationships. Wherever it is you’re thinking a simple kiss can go…you can get it out of your head right now.”