Rush (Phoenix Rising) (6 page)

“Q!” Davis bellowed, still near the structure. “Get your ass back here or you’re a dead man.”

He was already a dead man. A walking dead man. No past. No future. A present that amounted to existing in a cage, tormented, abused. Used. Escape was his only chance at life.

The mountain air exhilarated his lungs with every breath. The earth underfoot infused him with life. Had he loved the outdoors in his past? Had he hiked, fished, camped as a kid like the stories Cash had told of his childhood? If Q got out, he’d sure as hell give them all a try.

Voices echoed at Q’s back as the men dispersed into the forest—Davis in the lead. Pike somewhere behind and to Davis’s right. Samuels three hundred yards to Davis’s left.

But Green . . . Q heard nothing from Green. No threats. No footsteps. No breathing.

Q’s bad knee buckled and he hit a tree with his lousy shoulder. Pain stabbed his arm. He gritted his teeth against the need to cry out. Chest heaving, determination renewed, Q lunged forward.

The crunch of a boot on the forest floor behind him sounded a split-second before a crack landed on his skull and a jolt of heat seared his brain.

He hit the ground on his injured shoulder. Rolled to his stomach. Pulled a knee under him. Before he could push off again, that boot smashed his spine. He hit the dirt face first, took a mouthful of mulch and turned his head to spit. That’s when he saw the gun centimeters from his cheekbone.

“Do it,” Q rasped through harsh pants. “
Do it,
you sorry sonofabitch. Fucking shoot me already.
Shoot me!
”

“I’ll shoot you, asshole.”

Green put something between his teeth. Pulled it out with a soft
pop
. A geyser of panic erupted in Q’s chest.
No, no, no.
He pushed and twisted against Green’s boot, a rock in Q’s back.

Green’s arm swung down. The needle stabbed into the muscle of Q’s bicep. And the sedative—that fucking sedative signaling his torture was about to begin all over again—burned through every tissue.

The idea of reaching his fiery redheaded beauty again faded along with his consciousness.

J
essica stepped back and something crackled. She looked down and found dirt, twigs and pine needles carpeting a forest floor beneath her bare feet.

“No,” she whispered. “This isn’t real.”

She’d worn sandals to the office and kicked them off as soon as she’d walked in the door. Plush carpet had snuggled against her feet just seconds ago. But the prickly stab of those pine needles wasn’t her imagination.

The blinding light faded and other objects in the distance came into focus—a small house straight ahead. A car parked to the right. More trees in every direction. And above her, towering mountains.

“What the . . . How . . . ?” Her mind scrambled to understand. The coin tingled against her skin and she looked down, remembering Teague pressing it into her hand.

Anger nudged her fear aside. “That bastard.” He’d known if this coin had been Quaid’s, she would feel something. See something. “Bet he didn’t expect this.”

Hell, she hadn’t even expected this. Whatever
this
was.

She scanned the area for an escape. Trees. Nothing but trees. She needed a way out, but the shimmering light that had accompanied her here was gone, and instinct told her the door leading back to her office had closed.

“I can’t believe you let him take your gun, Pike.” A disgusted voice cut through the silence. Fire launched through Jessica’s stomach, and she jerked that direction. “If I don’t find it, I’m gonna let Q stuff mine in your mouth.”

They call him Q.
Keira’s words filtered through her memory and confirmed Jessica’s worst fear—she’d gone and somehow freaking transported to Q’s location. She ground her teeth as some small part of her psyche laughed at her and whispered,
I told you not to get near those doorways
.

A man stepped out onto the porch. Dressed in black slacks, a white button-down and a crimson tie pulled loose at his neck, he looked fortyish and fit. He unbuttoned one cuff and rolled it up his forearm, then the other. The handle of a gun rose from the holster at his waist.

Jessica sucked in a breath and froze while her mind spun for some excuse for her sudden appearance in the middle of nowhere. He put his hands on his hips and frowned down at her where she stood.

“I . . . Hi. I . . . I was . . . camping nearby.” Words spilled from her mouth before she thought them through. “And . . . and . . . I must have gotten lost. . . .”
Right, wearing no shoes. Brilliant.
“But I’m sure my family is right nearby . . . if I could just . . . um, use your phone . . . ?”

The man looked up, scanned the tree line and muttered, “Such an idiot.”

He jogged down the cabin’s narrow front steps, heading directly toward Jessica with a brisk, purposeful stride. She cringed, tried to sidestep, but his left side collided with hers. Yet . . . didn’t. And he continued past. The entire left side of her body sizzled like a shaken bottle of soda, as if he’d
passed through her
.

“I hope that dipshit gets canned for this,” he muttered, stalking away as if he hadn’t seen her. Or felt her. “I’m so fucking sick of that asshole.”

Disoriented, Jessica swayed and reached for the stairway railing. The rotted wood snapped, and the crack echoed in the dense silence. She jumped back just as two other men came out on the porch, weapons drawn and aimed in her direction.

“I just . . . was lost and . . .”
can’t breathe
“. . . wanted to . . . to use your phone . . .”

“Piece of shit,” one of them said. “I’ll check Q and the back. You look around out here.”

Body bunched with tension, Jessica held her breath, waiting for them to
see
her. The first man headed back inside. The other jogged down the steps.

Jessica gasped, tensed. But he strode right freaking past her, too.

Her heart rate shot up. Her adrenaline surged
. Oooo-kay.
She’d experienced some weird stuff in her life, but this topped it all.

She was
so
killing Teague when . . . if . . . she ever made it back there.

She stuffed the coin in her jeans pocket, eyed the man’s retreating back, then the stairs. Indecision warred. Q was here. Great, she’d found him. Only she hadn’t. Not really. Because she didn’t know where in the hell she was. And she didn’t know how the hell to get back home.

Maybe Q did. But did she want to see who this mysterious Q really was? He had some connection with Quaid, or he wouldn’t have had her husband’s coin. What she’d told Teague was true—she couldn’t allow herself to slide back into that gritty, dark place where she’d hidden from the pain. But nor could she ignore the suffering of another human being. And if there was a man being held prisoner here, that meant some other family was suffering without him, the way Jessica was suffering without Quaid.

No one deserved that kind of pain. Well, except Schaeffer. Schaeffer deserved much worse.

Jessica took a focused breath and studied the stairs again. Lifting her foot, she tested the wood to see if she’d slide through like a ghost, or if it would snap like the railing had. When neither happened, she hurried into the house and quickly checked rooms as she passed.

The space was small and dark and dank. Musty as if it had been closed up for years. A flimsy table set up with cards and poker chips sat in the middle of the living room. She passed a tiny kitchen, an ancient bath. At the end of a short hall, she paused to glance into a small, empty bedroom.

Dim light filtered through the trees, barely illuminating the gray space. A dirty, tattered mattress lay on the floor in a corner—

Jessica’s breath stuttered to a stop. The room was
not
empty. A man lay on the mattress. He was turned toward the wall, one arm cuffed to a metal ring bolted into the wall above his head, the other thrown over his eyes.

An icy chill washed Jessica’s body, freezing her in place for a moment. Her gaze darted down an adjacent hall. It was empty, but men’s voices sounded just beyond.

“Hey,” she whispered to the prisoner from the doorway, keeping an eye on the hall. “Can you hear me?”

When he didn’t move, she slipped inside the room and dropped to her knees beside the mattress, taking him in with a panicked glance. His dark hair was cut military close. A bizarre techno pattern of short, linear scars covered his scalp. Bruises and scrapes in various stages of healing marred the arm covering his face. His jeans and plain gray T-shirt hung loose over a malnourished frame.

“Those damn animals,” she whispered, then leaned over him and caught a confusing whiff of mixed scents—both stale and crisp. “Hey, wake up.”

He didn’t respond. Didn’t move.

Shit.
She stared at a blotchy bruise on his muscled bicep. The other men had passed through her. She probably couldn’t touch him to wake him, but . . .

She brought her index finger down on the purple edge of his bruise—and met solid flesh.
Yes!
She gripped his arm and shook him lightly. “Hey, Q, you gotta wake up.”

Still no response. She shook harder. Tried to lift his arm, but it was dead weight, so she checked his pulse instead. Slow. Weak.

Footsteps sounded and Jessica turned. A man filled the doorway. She fell back on her butt and scooted away, but he seemed oblivious to her presence. He was older than the others, his face stern, eyes cold and completely emotionless.

He stalked into the room, kicked the unconscious man’s foot hard enough to shake his whole body. Jessica watched for a reaction, but the man didn’t wake.

“He’s still out,” the older man called as he turned from the room. “I gave him a shitload of that tranquilizer. He’ll be out for hours.”

Jessica’s shoulders sagged. “Shit.”

Now what? She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them with her palms, letting her head rest there a moment while considering her options. It didn’t take long—there weren’t many. She had to find a doorway and go back. Maybe . . . maybe she could somehow take him back with her.

As if I know how this whole freaky doorway thing works
.

Jessica lifted her head and stared at the man’s shoulder blades stretching his cotton tee. It was worth a try. Not a lot to lose at this point.

She drew up close beside him and pulled the coin from her pocket. Rising up on her knees, she leaned in to speak near his ear. The very warm scent of a man’s skin rose through a thin veil of soap. He was the crispy half of the smell she’d caught earlier. Lemon . . . Spice . . . For his condition and surroundings, she hadn’t expected him to smell so . . . well, good. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed the scent of a man’s skin. Jessica closed her eyes and breathed him in. Oh, yes, he had one of those scents that made a woman want to burrow her face in his neck, snuggle naked under the covers, wear his clothes....

No.
Her eyes popped open and she leaned away, her stomach fluttering. So he smelled clean. So what? She could look at this man’s size, his build, and know this wasn’t Quaid. Her husband had been heavily muscular, thick in his chest, arms and thighs. He’d lifted weights and easily retained mass. This man’s smaller frame couldn’t begin to hold that amount of muscle.

A futile and far-too-familiar brew of anger and loss tightened her chest. She didn’t understand how her closest friends could have even
voiced
such a wicked possibility as Quaid still being alive.

She curled her fingers around Q’s wrist and held tight. With the other hand, she tilted the coin toward the small window, trying to catch a sliver of daylight to open a doorway.

“Come on, baby,” she murmured to the coin. “Bring us home.”

The man shifted on the mattress. The movement pulled at the cuff on his wrist and muscles flexed through his arm, rolling beneath the cotton. She reassessed the sinew in his forearms and biceps. Maybe she’d mistaken extreme fitness for malnutrition.

Her gaze traveled from his bicep to his face, and the sight of his jawline, now exposed, shot a tingle of awareness across her chest. Before her mind had time to wander to places it didn’t belong, he yanked at the cuff again.

“Shhhh.” She leaned close, her mouth just inches from his ear, her gaze darting toward the door. “They’ll hear you.”

A noise rumbled from his throat, and he turned his head in a languid, sleepy way that swept familiar currents through Jessica’s belly. His eyelids fluttered and his head turned toward her voice. When his dark eyes found hers through that thick screen of lashes, Jessica’s whole world slid sideways.

Velvet brown eyes. Sexy. Molten.

Self-protection raised a barrier on her thoughts to keep out the
what if
s. Hope pounded against that barrier, searching for a miracle. While all Jessica could do was stare.

His lashes lifted a little more, and Jessica’s stomach caught in her throat. “Oh . . . oh, my God.”

She sat back to get a full view of his face. Took his head in both hands and turned it toward her, so she could see his features all at once. One side of his face was scraped and raw, the cuts still harboring dirt.

She scoured his face, forehead to chin, over and over, trying to convince herself, one way or the other. He didn’t have Quaid’s nose. And there was something different about his mouth. The set of his jaw was wrong. But, damn, those eyes just sucker punched her.

His face was just as handsome, rugged, sexy and well-proportioned as Quaid’s had once been, but also . . . a little too off to be Quaid.

They say everyone has a twin somewhere. But what were the chances Quaid’s twin would be here?

Nil.

She refocused on his eyes, and the breath left her lungs in a quiet swoosh. How many times had she dreamed of looking into his eyes again? Millions. It had to have been millions.

And she did. God help her, she did. She so badly wanted these eyes to be Quaid’s she would have sold her soul to the Devil. Which was exactly why she’d told Teague and Keira she couldn’t do this.

“Shit . . .” Her voice shook as her logical mind tried to make sense of what she saw even if her heart was ready to leap at the one-in-a-billion chance.

Then he smiled. Or tried to around the cuts. His lips curved and his deep brown eyes glinted beneath those heavy lashes . . . and . . . Jesus, Mary and Joseph . . . that was
her
Quaid in those grinning eyes.

“Haven’t . . .” He licked dry lips. “Seen you in so long.” His voice was rusty, not altogether different, but not familiar either.

He rolled toward her, and the chain above his head clanked. She lunged to grab the metal and keep it quiet. The move pressed her body against his and an instant, deep hit of tingling awareness penetrated everywhere they touched. His free arm curved around her hips and his sultry hum lit off fireworks throughout her body. He turned and pulled her into him until her breasts were snug against his chest. He kept his head tilted back, his eyes on her face with an expression of awe and pleasure and affection. But he was obviously a little gone, because he showed no fear, as if her presence didn’t pose a threat to them both.

“You have to be quiet.” Her breaths came quickly— because of the fear, she told herself, not the way her body heated being pressed against him.