Adam's Outlaw by Sandra Chastain

Author:Sandra Chastain [Chastain, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-54205-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

Adam didn’t turn into a prince. But then he wasn’t a frog. If he had been, Toni decided this would have been the time to croak.

He pressed his finger against her lips, and she obeyed his unspoken order, for once not questioning the man. The courtyard was not yet totally dark, though inside, the prison was like black ink. There were no streetlights and the moon wasn’t up. The eerie quiet lifted goose bumps on Toni’s arms. Somebody on the other side of that wall had a gun.

More footsteps. Someone else had walked from the other direction.

“I’m over here. You got …” The voice became muffled. The two men walked away. There was a brief scuffle, an angry exchange of words, then silence.

After a long moment Adam let out a deep breath. He took a step back and drew Toni with him. “Let’s go to your little bathroom. That seems to be the darkest section of the building, with no holes in the wall and no windows. That’s where we wait.”

“Wait? You’ve got to be kidding. For what?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“Why not just go out and identify yourself to the mad dogs? Then we can get out of here.”

Because, he wanted to say, it isn’t safe. I’m not sure whoever’s in the car is one of us. It’s too early for the surveillance team and I don’t know who those two men were. If something else was going down, he didn’t want Toni in the middle of it. He’d already seen an example of her vigilante group in action. His chest still twinged from the imprint of her lethal foot.

What he said was, “No, we might stumble into something and mess it up. It’s best if we wait.” He led the way into the small room and closed the door. The room went black. Toni gave out a small yelp.

“What’s wrong, outlaw?”

“It’s very dark, isn’t it?”

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course not!”

She was. He could feel her fear and automatically put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. “Slide down the wall and we’ll sit on the floor and talk.”

She didn’t fight his suggestion. He felt her silent sigh as her body molded against his and they dropped to the floor. “You’ve probably ruined your clothes.”

“You can buy me some new ones. You’re a woman of means.” Her skin was damp. He caught the faint clean scent of wildflowers.

“How do you know that?” She tried to keep some distance between them, then gave up the idea as she took another breath. She was afraid of the dark. There was no defending, explaining, or pretending that she wasn’t. As a child her grandfather had told her fairy tales to take away her fear. After he’d died she’d continued to reach for those stories as her own kind of invisible protection.

Here in this wretched place the only one she could think of was “Little Red Riding Hood.” She was afraid the Big Bad Wolf was already in the room with her, and she didn’t even have a night-light.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.