“Take another left,” he orders.
I’m really getting tired of his commands, but I do so, emerging onto a forlorn neighborhood of, most likely, abandoned homes. Five houses scatter down the street with boarded-up windows, broken down fences, and tall weeds.
“That one.” He points to a decrepit white house at the end of the block.
I slowly pull into the weed-riddled driveway.
“Hold on.” He pushes open the door and moves toward the one-car garage door to lift it, the muscles in his chest straining and the tendons in his neck bulging.
I can’t imagine the pain he’s in right now. I’ve never been shot.
Once he gets the door open, he motions me inside the dim space, looking even paler than before.
Unease filling me, I glance guiltily around and then pull inside. He quickly yanks the door down with his good arm, his jaw clenched. Silence descends now that we’re out of the rain. I cautiously step out of my car. “What are we doing here?”
“This way.” He walks up two wooden stairs and opens a door to the house.
I don’t like this at all. “Um, I think I’ll wait here.”
“Don’t make me carry you.” The last is said through gritted teeth.
Oh, like he could carry me with a bullet wound. Yet, something tells me he probably can. I wish I had a weapon. I climb the two stairs, hoping they don’t break, and step inside a dirty, yet uncluttered seventies-style kitchen with cracked linoleum on the counters and floor.
He immediately opens a door to his left and starts descending down more wooden slats of stairs, his gait losing its natural grace. “Come on.”
“Is this where you leave all the bodies?” I gingerly pick my way down the stairs. Cool air washes over me.
His chuckle is dark. “You’ve never been safer, Peaflower.”
Somehow, I’m not comforted by that fact. I follow him into a square-shaped basement with dirt on the floor and no windows. I shiver. This would be an ideal place to hide a body, actually.
He walks to the far concrete wall, plants his good hand right above his head, and waits.
I gulp, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. “Listen, I’m not sure what ...”
A door slides open in front of him. He looks over his shoulder and flashes me a grin, one that warms me in inappropriate places.
“Come on, Rosalie,” he says, his voice low with pain.
I have to admit, my curiosity has just sprung wide awake. I hurry across the dirt floor, my kitten heels sinking annoyingly, and follow him inside. We’re in pitch darkness. The door closes behind me, and I try not to scream. I hear something fumbling, and then lights flick on down a long tunnel.
“Whoa,” I say, and then my gaze catches on ... “Is that a golf cart?”
He smiles. “Do you mind driving? I’m kind of dying here.”
I like the idea of still being in control, because this is crazy. “Sure.” I run around to sit on the driver’s side of a pretty standard blue golf cart.
He sits next to me, his heat instantly warming me. “That way.”
“There’s only one way.” I marvel at the can lights attached to concrete walls every five feet or so. “Where are we going?”
“Just drive.”
I don’t want to be curious or amused, but this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. So I press the gas pedal, and the cart instantly zings off. “Don’t you have to charge these things?”
He jolts. “Wait.”
We both wince as a loud pop echoes, and I turn to see an electrical cord fly through the air and land hard. “Oops.”
