The Boys Club (16 page)

“I know I don’t have my driver’s license, but I could stop
by a branch of my bank and try to get money for a hotel for us—”

Logan held up his hand. “That’s a generous offer, but you
can’t have any communication with anyone. Your picture is all over the place and
the minute you try to take money from your account with a teller, the police
and the feds will swoop in.”

“I thought the FBI knew about this.”

“They know we’re bringing you in and they know we had to
bend the law to do it, but it’s a very small handful of people that know we’re
involved. The agents searching for you don’t know anything about this. Neither
do the police. If they find you, they’ll take you back home and I’d spend some
time in jail waiting for Schaffer to bail me out. Once I got out, I don’t know
if I could get to you again or how long it would be before they attempt another
hit. It could be hours, it could be days, weeks, or months. I refuse to take a
chance with your life.”

Sara offered a strained smile. “I don’t know how to thank
you. I know you don’t have to stay with me, especially after what happened to
your friends, but—”

“I won’t leave you, I promise. Not until you’re safe with
the feds and on your way to a new life.” He picked up his water bottle and
motioned toward her. “It’s going to be a rough day, so you should finish your
breakfast.”

She had lost her appetite as soon as she heard about Logan’s
team, but she nibbled her granola bar. As they ate in silence, she noticed
dried blood on his jawline, a reminder of what he had done a few hours earlier
to keep them safe. If they would be out in the open today, blood on his face
would draw attention.

“You have some blood on you still,” she said, gesturing to
the right side of her jaw to mirror the location of the blood.

He took out some toilet paper and wet it with a bit of
water. He wiped at it blindly, missing it entirely.

Sara held her hand out. “Here, let me get it for you.”

He placed the damp paper in her palm and she rose up on her
knees. She wrapped her hand around his jaw and turned his head so she could see
the blood better in the light. Being so close to him again kick-started her
nerves. Her fingers trembled as she touched the makeshift cloth to his cheek.
The stubble on his cheek ripped through the paper, but she managed to get him
cleaned up. She rotated his face in the other direction and held up his chin to
check for other blood, but found none.

“I think you’re good now,” she said, grateful that she found
no other blood so she didn’t have to keep touching him. Every time her fingers
grazed the rough growth on his face, her heart dropped a little more. She
wanted to run her hand over his skin and couldn’t stop imagining what it would
feel like against her own cheek, neck, and other parts of her.

Her face heated up as she sat back down and sipped on her
water. She had to stop thinking about Logan in terms other than a protector.
Even though she knew she didn’t want to marry Stephen, she was engaged to him
and shared a home with him. Her inability to love him didn’t matter. She still
wanted to be faithful to him. While letting her lustful thoughts wander about
another man took her mind off all the bad that had happened in the past few
days, it also set her on a dangerous path.

Besides, Logan didn’t want her. He barely looked at her and
held her at arm’s length at all times. Sure, he had comforted her and let her
sleep next to him, but it was only because the circumstances called for it, not
because he wanted to be that close to her. Now that her father had his friends
killed, she doubted he would ever want anything to do with her. She was nothing
more than a bad reminder of the horrible things her father had done.

Afraid to let her thoughts continue to fill the silence, she
said, “I haven’t had granola bars since I was a kid. I didn’t remember how
good—”

Logan held up his hand to silence her. Eyes narrowed, he
leaned forward, his ear pointed to the opening of their camp.

Sara jumped at the snap of a tree branch not far away from
their location. She looked at Logan for guidance. He opened his bag and
motioned for her to put everything in there. He lifted his gun and crawled to
the entrance. After a moment, he turned to Sara and waved at her to follow him.
She picked up his bag and handed it to him once they were out of the shelter.

He secured it on his back and turned to her. “We have to
move slow,” he whispered. “Just follow me.”

She nodded and started behind him. Ten steps into their
escape, a large man emerged from behind a tree and punched Logan in the jaw. Sara
stifled a scream and watched Logan hit the man several times.

With his arm around the man’s neck, Logan yelled at Sara.
“Run!”

Sara didn’t hesitate. Unsure of which way to go, she took
off toward the path they traveled the night before. As she crossed over to the
other side of the path, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Logan followed.
Not seeing him, she turned her head in time to see another man jump out at her.
His arms encircled her and Sara screamed.

“There you are,” he said. “Just come with me, sweetheart,
and all will be good.”

He took hold of her arm and Sara backed up half a step. Her
knee flew up into his crotch and he doubled over with a loud cry. She balled up
her hands and brought them down on his back twice, but it didn’t seem to hurt
him. She ran a few steps before he caught up with her again.

His strong hand pushed her and she smashed into a tree. Sara
fell to the ground and scurried away, but he caught up to her before she got
too far. He grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to her feet, and pushed her
against a nearby tree.

Sara lashed out at him with her fists. He grabbed at her
hands and, one at a time, he wrestled her arms away from him and stopped her
attack.

“No, no, no!” She struggled against him, but his tight grip
kept her from hitting him again.

He pinned both of her hands over her head with one hand and
raised his other hand to strike her. “You stupid—”

A gunshot rang out and she screamed again. The man fell at
her feet and she jumped to the side.

A hand grabbed her arm and she whirled around. She threw out
her fist again, but the new man caught her wrist before it connected with his
body. Only then did she see Logan’s face. Her shoulders dropped and she took in
a deep breath.

Logan cupped her face in his hands and looked her over. “Did
he hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry that I—”

“Don’t worry about it.” He released her. “There are going to
be more of them and they would have heard the shot. Can you run again?”

“Yeah.”

Though sore and tired, adrenaline coursed through her veins.
Her legs moved without thought and she followed Logan’s lead. They raced down
the path, hugging the left side where the trees acted as cover from anyone on
the ledge above them. Despite the burning in her lungs, Sara kept her pace up
to match Logan.

Thoughts swirled through her mind and she tried to process
everything that happened. The man falling down dead in front of her and the
assumption that Logan killed the other man, too. No matter how gruesome the
thoughts, she kept coming back to the idea that Logan would go to any lengths
to keep her safe. She wanted him to kill every last one of them.

“I need to stop.”

Logan stopped walking and glanced at Sara. One hand rested
on her chest, which heaved with shallow breaths, and the other one on her hip.
They had walked for a little over three hours without finding anywhere they
could safely stop for a phone. The temperature rose substantially during their
journey, slowing Sara down the hotter it became. He had encouraged her to keep going
all morning and they were close to a rest stop, but the fatigue on her face
told him she couldn’t make it much further, not in her present condition.

“Let’s rest for a bit,” he said.

He led the way to a nearby tree and dropped his bag to the
ground. Sara placed both palms on the tree and rested her head down on the
backs of her hands, but made no move to sit.

“Do you need your inhaler?”

She nodded, but didn’t look at him.

Logan helped her sit and crouched down beside her. Handing
her the inhaler, he grew concerned at her pale color. She had finished her
water bottle off a couple of hours into their trek, so he gave her his water to
drink.

“It’s only going to get hotter,” Logan said, once her
breathing seemed to get back under control. “We need a car.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“No, we’re going to get one.”

“If we’re trying not to reveal ourselves to anyone, how are
we getting a car?” She paused for a moment and her eyebrows shot up. “We’re
going to steal one?”

“I’m going to steal one from the rest stop. You’re going to
hide.”

“Logan, we can’t steal someone’s car. That’s not right.”

“No, it’s not right, but what choice do we have?” He
recognized the conflict on her face. “Listen, whatever we do wrong will be made
right. We’ll find a phone, I’ll give Schaffer the details. Someone will pull up
the police report, contact the owners, tell them they’re with some governmental
agency, and spin a tale as to why their car was stolen. If for some reason we
can’t return their car in the same condition we took it, they’ll get a new car,
fully loaded and fully paid. No matter what, they’ll receive a large amount of
hush money. It may not seem like it at first, but whoever’s car I steal is
about to have one of the best days of their life.”

“Since you put it that way,” Sara said, standing up.

“Where are you going?”

She pointed in the direction they were heading. “To the rest
stop so you can steal a car. The quicker we get there, the quicker we get to
enjoy the air conditioning.”

Logan got to his feet and put her inhaler back in the bag.
They continued walking for another twenty minutes, stopping in a good location
near the rest stop. With the trees in front of them, they could hide in plain
sight while still scoping out the parking lot for the perfect car.

“Which one are we going to take?” Sara asked, as she sat
next to the tree.

“One that’s as close to us as possible, but far enough away
from any of the other cars. It might take some time to find the right one.”

She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I guess
I have nowhere else to be right now.”

Logan settled onto the ground and stared at the parking lot.
Though he saw several cars he’d like to take, the bustling rest stop didn’t
provide the opportunity to do so without getting caught.

“How did you get started doing this?” Sara asked.

“Stealing cars? Schaffer taught me.”

“No, how did you get started doing whatever it is that you
do?”

“That’s a long, tedious story.”

“It’s not like we don’t have time. You don’t have to tell me
if you don’t want to. I’m just curious.”

He didn’t have anything to hide, but very few people knew
about his past. He glanced at Sara, who waited anxiously. He figured it
wouldn’t hurt to tell her a bit about his life, and it could go a long way in
getting her to trust him and feel more comfortable around him. Waiting in
silence would leave his thoughts to wander to his team and the great loss he
had suffered. With that came the blame game, the same one he played every time
he thought about Karen. He preferred conversation over tormenting himself.

Logan sighed. “I guess the quick version is my mom was a
prostitute who dropped me off in front of a hospital when I was 4-years old
with a backpack and a note saying she didn’t want me anymore. I have no idea
who my dad is, but I assume he was one of her johns.

“I was shifted around from foster home to foster home, and
finally ran away when I turned nine because I was tired of one of the older
boys there beating me up all the time. I ended up across state lines and in
another foster home. Every time I ran away, I’d get caught, stuck in a juvenile
hall for some petty crime, then I’d go back into foster care.

“The last foster home I was in, I took off when I was 13 and
got pretty far away. I found some other kids on the streets and they taught me
the ropes. I survived out there for two years, until I was caught burglarizing
a home. That’s when Schaffer found me and recruited me for his program, and
here I am.”

“That’s awful,” Sara said, her hand half covering her mouth.

“You didn’t ask for a happy story.”

“I’ll remember that next time. What was it like living on
the streets?”

“There was a whole different set of rules out there. People
stuck to their own kind. The drug dealers all hung together, the prostitutes,
the gang bangers. I didn’t belong to any of the groups, so even though I knew
some of them, I stayed with the other kids that didn’t fit in anywhere. One of
the older kids taught me how to pickpocket and shoplift, so that’s what I did.”

“Were they all kids?”

“All of them. The adults stayed in different areas than we
did and they also went to shelters, which we didn’t do. None of us wanted to
end back up in the system, so we stayed away from places like that.”

“What about that car?”

Logan followed her extended finger to a white Prius that
pulled into a parking spot closer to them and far away from some of the others.
He considered it for a moment, but then a black Escalade pulled up next to
them.

“Damn it,” Sara said.

“And that’s why we wait. One will come along soon.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Your job. You had a horrible start to life. No one seemed
to show you kindness until Schaffer came to you, so why do you go and help
others out? Why are you risking your life to help me?”

Logan kept his mouth shut and scanned the parking lot. He
had never been so honest with someone outside of Schaffer and Karen. The idea
of opening up to someone new terrified him. If he revealed his weaknesses to
others, they could exploit them.

Yet telling Sara about his childhood happened without
concern, as if he already trusted her completely. The woman had been in his
life for a few days and already she had broken through his cement walls. Then,
in a few days or less, it would end and Sara would be nothing more than a wisp
of beauty who floated into his life on a summer breeze, only to vanish into a
faded memory.

None of his thoughts stopped him from answering her
question. “There was a girl on the streets with us. She was only 14 and a
prostitute, but we got along well. We’d hang out from time to time and since I
was 15 at the time, I thought maybe there was something to it. But she had a
mean pimp—he called himself her ‘manager’—who ruled his lot of kids with an
iron fist. If any of them stepped out of line, he beat the crap out of them.

“I went off with Schaffer to pursue my new life and all
these kids I knew were left behind. I suddenly had a purpose for being alive,
where they didn’t. I wasn’t complaining, but I’d often think about them and
wonder what happened after I left.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to the girl?”

“A couple years later, I talked to Schaffer about her. I
wanted to find out where she was so we could somehow set her life straight. He
warned me against it, but I was on a mission to save her. I found out that just
a few months earlier, she’d been knocked up by someone. Her pimp forced her to
have a back alley abortion, after which he put her right back to work. Didn’t
take but a day for her to die from internal bleeding.”

Sara wiped at the dampness in her eyes, but didn’t speak.

He took a deep breath and smothered the anger that always
came when he thought about his past. “I spent the next month thinking if I had
just gone looking for her sooner, I could have saved her. I could have pulled
her out of that life and shown her a better way. Who the hell knows if I could
have done all that, but you asked why I do this. I do it for the ones out there
who can’t save themselves, exactly as Schaffer did for me.”

Sara lowered her eyes and her voice. “You saved me. I
couldn’t save myself, but you saved me, even if I didn’t want you to at first.”

“And that’s why I do it.” He jetted his head forward a bit
to catch her attention. She looked up at him, a pained look on her face. “I’m
going to keep you safe, Sara. I promise no one will hurt you.”

Her forehead creased. “But what if they hurt you first?”

He laid his hand on her forearm. “No one is going to hurt
you.”

She gave him a quick smile and nod, but then turned her head
to look at the rest stop.

Logan took his hand off her skin and let his eyes drift back
to the parking lot. The Prius and Escalade had both left. After a moment, an
older model Escort pulled into the spot closest to them. A young couple climbed
out of the car and ambled toward the scenic trees behind the restrooms,
hand-in-hand, while the man swung a camera by its strap in his free hand.

“That’s our car,” Logan said, pointing at the Escort.

Sara took a deep breath and blew it out. “So what’s the game
plan?”

“I’m going to go hotwire the car. Get a good look at the
couple. I want you to walk around the back of the restrooms and toward the rest
stop exit. Keep your eye on them for me. If they start heading back before
you’re past the restrooms, find a way to stall them, but only if you have to.
Don’t let anyone see you unless absolutely necessary.”

“Where do I find you?”

“At the exit. I’ll pick you up there. Be ready to jump in
and go.”

She nodded, but still stared wide-eyed at the car.

“Can you do this?”

Glancing at him, she said, “Absolutely.”

The strength in her voice convinced him she would do fine.
“Give me a quick head start before you leave.” He got up and hurried toward the
car, keeping an eye out for the couple and anyone else that might take notice
of him.