“Gage,” the voice snarled. “Shut up, or I’ll shut you up myself. You’re gonna’ get us caught.”
Gage jerked upright, his forehead slamming into Scar’s sternum. He ripped away from the grip and shoved hard enough to hear a body hit the hardwood floor.
“Don’t touch me,” he raked out in a raw voice.
Had he really been screaming?
He sat up too fast, and the world tilted. His skull throbbed as if somebody was kicking him in the back of the head.
“Then quit yelling,” Scar snapped from somewhere a step or two away. “You want every hillbilly in this county on our ass?”
Gage breathed. The air was cool and wet and tasted like manure. He lifted his hand to his temple and found crusted blood, grit, and a swelling that pulsed under his skin.
“You’re the one who crashed us here, idiot.”
Scar’s exhale sounded like a growl. “I’m not a fuckin’ pilot.”
He shouldn’t be coming down on Scar. At least they were out of the Ravens facility and alive on the ground, not blown into pieces.
The memory added to his headache.
The sound of blades screaming, the cockpit shuddering, Scar breathing like a panicked bear in a trap, cursing at the controls he had no recognition of, the horizon a blur Gage couldn’t see. Then the bone-rattling impact, the skid into dirt, the scents of gasoline and upturned earth.
Afterward, Scar had dragged him through a field, fingers hooked in his collar, yanking him so harshly his knees still felt it now.
He swallowed what he wanted to ask… Where am I?
He forced himself to calm down so he could focus because he refused to ask Scar to describe his surroundings.
Tilting his head, the dark morphed into a gray haze. He could tell light from shade, but everything else was deception.
A square that might be a doorway was in front of him. A darker block, probably Scar, was to his right, breathing as if he were barely restraining his temper.
The floor beneath him was hard like boards, no, planks of wood laid over concrete. Splinters pricked at the heel of his palm—hay or straw.
The hardness beneath his sore back was a wall of more wood, cold and slightly damp. The scent of animal dung, ammonia, and dust made him want to gag.
Scar had them hiding in a goddamn barn.
“This was the only place you could find?” he gritted.
“Yeah, well, the Ritz-Carlton had no fuckin’ vacancies, you ungrateful piece of shit,” Scar said. “I could’ve left you in the damn chopper and been halfway to Chicago by now.”
That was true, so he clamped his mouth shut. The deal was after they escaped, they’d go their separate ways.
Locked away in the white walls of the Ravens facility, they’d worked together because they had to. They’d broken out, determined not to die as someone’s failed project. But it didn’t change the history between them.
He was loyal to West Side Chicago, and he could practically smell the stench of the South Side embedded in Scar’s bones.
Gage pushed his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets until sparks exploded in the blackness.
He turned away, didn’t want tears to well up, but they formed and trickled down anyway.
What have I done to deserve this?
He made himself get to his feet. His back cracked and his hip remembered the crash.
The barn swayed until he set his stance wide and pulled his shoulders back. He could feel Scar’s glare on him, and he refused to show weakness or fear.
