The Condemned (27 page)

     
‘I gave her the fucking idea, I practically sent her away. I should’ve kept my fucking mouth shut.’

     
‘Start at the beginning buddy.’ Beriael urged, setting the armchair to rights and sitting on its arm.

     
‘Day before yesterday...’ Amato shook his head as though he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid to not know what was going on, to not have known what she’d plan on doing. Or maybe just for thinking that what he’d told her about how he felt would’ve made any difference at all
, would have convinced her that she needed to be here, with him, always
.

     
‘She was askin all kinda questions
,
about ‘em lookin’ for us,
a
bout whether or not they’d give up if and just stop lookin’ if we fell under the radar long enough. Wanted to know if this was a safe enough place to stay long term.’ He shrugged and looked up helplessly, Morgan felt his pain but was contending with her own aswell.

    
Leci was a friend and they’d grown close in the last few
days, almost a sisterly bond forming between them. This was worrying and frightening but she felt she had to put on a brave face for Amato’s sake
,
if nothing else.

     
‘I told her no. I told her that they won’t stop lookin’, that she’s too valuable to ‘em and that while she’s still out here and alive they won’t leave any of us alone. She got it into her head that we’d be better off without her.’ He looked from Beriael to Morgan and back again.

     
‘Not that we’d just be better off if she wasn’t here, in the cabin with us. But that the only way they’d leave us alone was if they knew she was dead, knew there was no point in lookin’ no more.’

    
Beriael groaned and Morgan gasped as what he was saying sank in.

    
Amato stood, he seemed to have recomposed himself and was
once more
the image of cool and collected that he had always been.

     
‘She took one of the horses. I’m taking the other. You two will be fine so long as you stay here, got it?’

     
‘No way man, you know we’re not gonna let you do this alone.’ Beriael stood, shaking his head, Bits nodded in agreement.

     
‘Yeah, you are. I need to do this alone. I know where she’s heading, and with only one horse you guys are just gonna slow me down.’ He looked almost apologetic.

     
‘Besides, if she comes back, you need to be here.’

    
Bitsy raised an eyebrow slightly and smiled.

‘You don’t need to patronise us
sweetie
, we know as well as you do that she won’t come back, not when she thinks she’s doing us a favour. But yeah, the other part makes sense. You can get a lot more done without us two slowing you down.’

    
Beriael looked as though he might argue but thought better of it and finally nodded his assent.

     
‘I’ll pack you some food.’ Morgan busied herself preparing a bag for him while Amato promised Beriael he’d be careful and that he’d bring her home safely.

     
‘Has anyone seen my jacket?’ He frowned, scanning the cabin.

     
‘Wasn’t it on the back of that chair you threw outside?’ Bitsy asked with a grin.

     
‘Yeah...’ He muttered, looking towards the open doorway, his expression thoughtful. ‘But not when I threw it.’

    
Morgan stopped what she was doing and looked at him questioningly.

     
‘She took it with her?’

    
He nodded and then smiled.

     
‘Yeah. Looks like she did. Shit, I gotta find her before she burns that thing up. I
liked
that jacket!’

#

The Clones stood in the doorway and waved him off. Bitsy looked nervous and scared, wringing her hands with worry
,
Beriael circled a hand around her waist and hugged her to him gently.

    
Amato was pretty sure the bald dude was more worried about the state his wife was in
,
due to Leci’s disappearance
,
than he was about Leci herself.

    
Still, he knew that deep down
, somewhere,
Ber was concerned about the Firebug
,
and it was kind of touching, knowing that despite what had gone on between the two of them, there was a possibility they could get over the past and live harmoniously alongside one another.

    
Ok... Enough of that soppy crap.

    
The important thing right now was to get his ass in gear and go find his girl. He knew
that she woul
d head for the nearest town, had a pretty good idea what she was planning on doing
,
and knew that he had to get there before she did it. He had no idea how much of a head start she had on him but he fully intended to make up as much ground as possible. He was relieved he had vague tracking skills to fall back on, hopefully he would be able to pick up her trail and locate her pretty easily that wa
y. He doubted that she woul
d be trying
very hard to cover her tracks, or, at least, he was relying on her not doing. She wasn’t stupid but he reckoned that right now she was feeling pretty reckless, if she really was running off to kill herself in some insane act of martyrdom then she wouldn’t really care about hiding her tracks.

     
‘Be careful. Find her.’ Bitsy instructed him and he nodded, saluting the two of them in a gesture of farewell, double-checking the rifle slung across his back before kicking the horse into motion and vanishing into the trees.

Chapter 24

Leci was tired. She wanted nothing more than to stop and rest for a little while
,
but she knew she couldn’t and so she pushed on. She felt as though she had been running for days but knew it was less than half of one and judging by the position of the sun, high up in the sky, she’d been gone maybe ten hours or so.

    
It felt like more.

    
It wasn’t enough.

    
She suspected that they would follow, or that Amato would. There was only one other horse, it wouldn’t be feasible for the three of them to uproot and come after her, besides, doing something like that could lose them the cabin.

If anyone came, it would be him, and he would come alone.

Half of her hoped that he would, the romantic part of her that refused to shut up, lay down, stop interrupting and just fucking die so that she could concentrate on what she was trying to do.

    
The second half was her more realistic, logical side and it kept trying to viciously beat the first into submission, make it be quiet if only for a little while, long enough to get things done.

It was doing an ok job of keeping her imagination in check.

    
Sort of.

    
She’d caught herself detouring off into a fantasy world once; he rode up alongside her, his horse
was
white
,
rather than the black one she had left behind, he
reached over and
grabbed a hold of her, pulled her from her saddle and into his arms and then rode off with her into the sunset...

    
Yeah, aside from that she’d managed to keep her mind on business...

    
She was putting her lapses down to sleep deprivation. She hadn’t slept the previous night when she’d lain awake waiting for the chance to leave
, and the night before that... w
ell, she’d not gotten all that much rest then either, had she?

    
When you factored in the two full days of riding before that, the only sleep she’d gotten then had been when someone else ha
d taken over the riding and she ha
d managed to doze
fitfully
on the back of a horse that was being run at full gallop. In a situation like that it just made sense to pay more attention to keeping a good grip rather than catching some Zs.

    
Again, not
a terribly
restful of an experience.

    
She almost missed the quiet of her cell
,
back at the prison. At least then if she’d wanted a good night’s shut-eye she could’ve just played up until they injected her with the drugs that sent her out of it for hours at a time.

    
The sun was high and hot and she no longer had the cover
of the trees to block out the worst of it. She’d entered barren wasteland a few hours earlier. The ground was dry, parched
,
and clouds of dust rose around her, stirred by the thundering hooves.

    
She wore her cap pulled down low to shield her eyes and Amato’s jacket was tied around her waist. She was sweaty and dirty from so much time on the horse
,
an
d the first few hours until she ha
d finally just gone numb had been absolute hell with the jolting motion aggravating her various aches and bruises.

    
Maybe she should’ve waited a few days until she’d healed a little.

     
‘Come on Leci, who’re you kidding?’ She asked herself sneeringly. ‘You think you could’ve kept your hands off him long enough to start feeling better before the two of you got all nasty and piled a load more of the good kind of hurt on top of the ones he already gave you?’

    
Not a chance Leci, babe.

    
Not a chance.

    
Plus, she knew that if she had waited she would’ve just been inviting herself to get comfortable and the more comfortable she had become
,
the less likely it was she would’ve moved at all.

    
L
eaving had been the best option, t
he only option
,
and she didn’t regret it; she just wished it came with designated
rest breaks.

    
She was desperatel
y hoping to find someplace soon, e
ven just a small place for now
would do fine
.
Later she would need somewhere big, swarming with guards, somewhere she’d be easily noticed
,
but right now some dingy little back alley with a few boxes that she could turn into a bed would
more than suffice
for a few hours.

    
She was all too familiar with the feeling of running on that last little rush of adrenaline before complete exhaustion set in
,
and she knew it wasn’t long before she started making stupid mistakes.
She had no intention of either dying or going back to that cell but if she wasn’t careful she’d end up doing one or the other.

    
She had only seen one place since she’d set out; it barely qualified as a town at all. It had consisted of one very run down looking tavern and a couple of traders. At that point she hadn’t been reaching desperation and she’d chosen to carry on.

That had been around four hours ago and she was starting to wish she’d stopped there for a while instead of just passing through, regardless of the fact that
she knew she hadn’t put enough distance between her and the cabin yet, knew that if Amato was on her trail she needed more time to get things done. If he caught up with her she didn’t want to be tempted to go back with him, she wanted to finish what she had
started.

Chapter 25