He didn’t stick around long enough for her to respond, instead slamming out of the truck to pace up and down the road. She gave him a few seconds to work off a bit of his temper before venturing out herself.
“What’s happened?”
He shook his head and kept moving. Eventually he would run out of steam or his friends would arrive and confirm what she already suspected: The problem with the men hunting Eli had escalated. Not what either of them needed right now, but then life rarely scheduled a crisis for a convenient time.
It wasn’t long before the sound of a vehicle approaching brought Eli’s pacing to an abrupt halt. “Get behind the truck and keep your head down.”
The man was good at giving orders but piss poor at giving explanations. Now wasn’t the time for arguments, so she did what he told her. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t revisit the situation in the future. Meanwhile, a large SUV appeared from around the corner. Its heavily tinted windows made it impossible to make out more than the vague shapes of the two men inside. Eli remained on full alert until the driver’s window rolled down and Doc stuck his head out.
“Are you going to shoot at us? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m not in the mood.”
Eli lowered his gun but kept scanning the area rather than focusing on his friends. “I thought we were all going to lie low and only get in touch in an emergency.”
Doc looked thoroughly disgusted. “We did, and it is. An emergency, that is.”
The passenger door on the SUV opened and Mike stepped out. He was sporting bruises on his face and had his left arm in a sling.
Safara left her hiding spot next to the truck and hurried over to join the three men. “What happened?”
“Someone tried to run me off the road by shooting my tire.” Mike winced and shifted his stance as if looking for a position that didn’t hurt quite so much. “When that didn’t work, they nudged my car over into the ditch. Since they didn’t stick around to finish the job, they didn’t necessarily want to kill me, although they probably wouldn’t have lost any sleep if they had. More likely it was a warning to quit poking my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Since Eli didn’t show any signs of asking for clarification, she did it for him. “And that’s what you’ve been doing?”
Mike flexed the fingers on his injured arm. “Evidently.”
Eli picked up a handful of rocks and heaved them at the nearest tree hard enough to send chips of bark flying. “Damn it, Mike, I told you to walk away. Let them come after me directly.”
By this point, Mike’s easygoing stance had morphed into his pissed-off commanding officer mode. “Sergeant, do not presume to give me orders. You may not be on active duty, but you are still one of my men. If someone is hunting you, they have to go through me first.”
Doc started to step between his two friends, but Eli shoved him out of the way to glare down at Mike. “You could’ve been killed. I can’t have that on my conscience. Not now, not ever.”
Mike glared right back. “It’s my choice. Any consequences, good or bad, are on me, not you.”
As a deputy, Safara sometimes used her gender to ratchet down the tension when the situation called for it. With that in mind, she shoved her way between the two men. Just as she’d expected, each of them immediately took an immediate half step backward to give her room.
“That’s enough, both of you.” She put her hands on her hips and stared at each of them in turn. “I think we can agree on the fact that each of you cares deeply what happens to the other. It’s also obvious you should be combining forces against your common enemy, not threatening each other.”
While she waited for them to come to their senses, she glanced at Doc to see how he was reacting to her butting into the situation. To her surprise, he grinned and winked at her. Nice to know he approved.
Surprisingly, Eli was the first to back down. “Look, you and Doc go on up to the cabin. Safara and I have some unfinished business to deal with, and I’m not sure how long it will take. When I get back, we can make plans about what to do next. Until then, help yourself to anything you need.”
He maintained eye contact with Mike when he added, “I’m thinking it’s time that I move on. I’ve already decided to leave the country and disappear completely. That way, these guys won’t have any more reasons to come after you.”
Wait. When had Eli made that decision? It better have been just this second. Safara was going to turn violent if he’d known all along he was going to leave this soon and hadn’t bothered to tell her. Yes, they’d agreed any long-term involvement wasn’t in the cards for the two of them, but she hadn’t realized that he planned to cut off all future contact not only with her, but with his friends as well. The pain cut right through her heart, leaving her bleeding and hurt on the inside, not that she’d let it show on the outside. Like the man said, they had other business to finish. Then she’d walk away, head held high, and pick up the pieces of her life.
“We’d better go, Eli, while we still have enough hours of daylight left.”
He nodded without looking in her direction. She fought a childish urge to hop up and down waving her hands in his face to force him to acknowledge she was standing right there in front of him.
“What the fuck? Eli, are those swords hanging in the rifle rack in the back window of your truck?”
Without waiting for an answer, Doc opened the passenger door of Eli’s pickup and reached inside. Safara groaned when he pulled out her sword and held it up for everyone to see as if he expected her and Eli to be as surprised by its presence as he was.
“Put it back, Doc, before you hurt yourself. That blade is sharp.”
As he spoke, Eli closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead like he had a headache coming on. She knew just how he felt. Mike headed over to look at the swords for himself while Eli remained rooted in place with a look of confused frustration on his face.
Doc went back to snooping. “You’ve also got enough firepower in here to outfit a battalion. Just what kind of unfinished business do you and Safara have going on today?”
