Fugitive Fascination

Chapter Eight

"Oof!"

The air within Reece's lungs was expelled as a heavy weight dropped onto his stomach all of a sudden. His eyes snapped open, his arms flailing out to secure himself to his bed.

"Earthquake!" He yelped, almost positive it was a piece of ceiling that had fallen onto his chest. "Hoard your canned foods! Double up on socks!" He was silenced only when he felt a finger touch his lips, giggles being poorly muffled by a hand.

"Why socks?" Drea asked after a moment, amusement dancing within the hazel depths of of her eyes.

Slapping her hand away, Reece rolled his eyes. "Duh. You can't walk on ruined ground with bare feet, they'll get cut up."

He then promptly flipped over; he was quite a bit bigger than Drea, who couldn't even match his 6"6 stature with her 5"4 height and his thicker build. Naturally, she was squished as he just laid atop her smugly, grunting with laughter when she began to squirm.

"Get your fat ass off me, Reece!" She complained, and he laughed even harder when he felt a small bite on his chest. "I'm dying! Slowly dying!"

She shoved at his shoulder, and he finally rolled off, laying near her side.

"Did you shower last night? You smell like it," Playfully, she pressed her nose against her shoulder, breathing in deeply. "Mm. Like the ocean."

"f*****g weirdo," He mumbled, turning onto his stomach as he pressed his face into his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. "Stop smelling me before 8 am, we talked about this."

"It's 2 in the afternoon, you dickhead."

He didn't even lift his head. "f**k. I missed four meetings." The words came out muffled, but Drea could tell that they were unbothered.

Sitting back on her legs, she ran her fingers through his thick brown hair. "You also have a ton of missed calls." She paused as the vibrating started again atop the end table next to the bed. "And there it is again."

"Answer it for me. Two feet away is too far to reach."

Scoffing, she leaned over him and picked up his smartphone, sliding her finger across the screen.

"Reece, you lazy i***t. Why is it that whenever I call you, you take four and a half centuries to answer?"

Confused at the female voice that automatically poured out of the phone, Drea paused for a moment. "I just called him a dickhead. Who is this and how do you know my boyfriend?" Her tone was a mixture of jealousy and curiosity.

She’d already forgotten that her relationship with Reece was rather new, so he might’ve still had some skeletons in the closet to air out. Reece was without a doubt, a man w***e. Because of this, he rarely ever gave his phone number out.

"Boyfriend?" The woman on the other end sounded just as confused as she was.

Maybe that wasn't the best term for what they had; Reece hadn't officially asked her, but they basically spent every moment they could together when Drea wasn't dealing with her husband. They did the typical couple things; held hands, kissed, stole cookies from one another, etcetera.

Lifting his head slightly, he smirked at her as if following her line of thought. "Boyfriend?"

Placing her hand over his face, she pushed him away playfully.

"Yes, my boyfriend. Who are you?"

"Where is he?"

His face suddenly scrunched up with confusion before he all but tackled Drea, wrestling the phone away from her.

"Hunter? Where the f**k are you?"

The woman's voice on the other end seemed to elevate into an irritated yell, at which point Reece began to yell back, a smirk on his face. Curiously, Drea let it go on for a good two minutes before becoming impatient, delivering a less than gentle smack to his face.

"Who is it?"

Grabbing her hand, he promptly dragged his tongue along her palm before releasing her, a squealing mess.

"My older sister."

"I don't care who she is, girlfriend or not, Reece," Hunter said, irritated. "That's not the point. I need you to send someone to come get us or you do it yourself, something's wrong with this car and we're stuck out in the middle of a long stretch of road somewhere in rural Missouri."

"All of Missouri is rural; that's not very specific."

Frustrated, she released a sound of pure annoyance, her fingers grasping Cierra's within her own.

"We're somewhere four or five hours away from Kansas City, get here soon please." With that, she turned off the phone to conserve some of the already depleted battery, resting her forehead against the steering wheel. "We're going to be stuck here for awhile."

Having already figured this out, Cierra nodded, settling back into her seat.

The car had, after two more hours of driving, decided to splutter it's last breath and cough to a stop on the side of the road. If there was one thing Hunter wasn't good at, it was dealing with cars.

It was all but freezing, and the heater wasn't working.

It wasn't long before shivers began to wrack Cierra's body, and Hunter, previously staring out the windshield, caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.

"Here," Stripping off her thicker jacket with some difficulty, she handed it to Cierra. Thankfully, she was a little smaller than Hunter herself, so she was able to actually put it on, the sleeves reaching almost past her finger tips.

The interior was made of some kind of thick white fluff that isolated heat, and the outside was dark brown, the fabric rough under Cierra's fingers. It smelled heavily of Hunter's sweet aroma.

"Thanks," The ex Detective mumbled, still shivering.

Hunter eyed her for a moment, her lips pursed before she pushed back her seat, all but dragging a squealing Cierra over the stick between them. She then promptly wrestled her onto her lap into a comfortable position, wrapping her arms around her lover's shaking frame.

"You could've just asked, I would've moved," She stated defiantly, sticking out her lower lip in an adorable pout.

"What fun would that be?"

Stealing a kiss, she shrugged, resting her head in the crook of Cierra's neck. Her skin was still cold, but against Hunter's burning touch, she wasn't worried.

"Do you think he'll be here soon?"

Hunter sighed. "Knowing my brother, we'll be stuck for a while. I'd just go on foot, but there's no way you'd survive in that cold flout such a long walk even with my jacket." She shrugged. "However, he's not completely hopeless, so he'll get himself together in a few hours and try to track us down by the tracker in my phone."

Cierra shuffled curiously. "You let him have a tracker in your phone?"

The Siren scoffed. "Let him? No, that's our parents' doing. They forced it on both of us after he disappeared in the Philippines for over a month two years ago."

She didn't even bother to ask why; if it had to do with Reece, then it was probably better not to.

Suddenly, Hunter's body seemed to stiffen, her aquamarine eyes narrowing into slits. Cierra could feel the tension rolling off her and wanted to ask what was going on, but the look on her face silenced her.

That was when she heard it herself; the sound of tires crunching over the freshly fallen snow, multiple headlights slicing through otherwise obscenely dark night. She couldn't see through the rear view window as it was already covered with a fine layer of snow, so there was no way to know who was happening upon them so late in the night.

Cierra looked back to Hunter, who's mind seemed to be going a million miles an hour.

It was almost in slow motion as Hunter pushed her onto her back over the driver's stick, lowering her own body just as gunfire erupted, shattering the glass. Automatically raising her arms to cover her face, Cierra felt Hunter shift so as to cover her body with her own in the small space, causing the position to become even more awkward.

The noise was excruciating; the sound of the bullets hitting the metal of the car along with the initial scream of the guns. The assault couldn't have lasted for than two minutes, but it felt like hours.

The metal of the car seemed to ache and groan as it settled, the final remnants of glass that hadn't been shot fell out. Hunter's eyes opened, and she could see the snow already beginning to spill into the damaged car.

She breathed a sigh of relief before she quickly choked on it, catching sight of her blood coated fingers for the first time.

A blossom of a dark crimson stain against the grey t-shirt that Hunter had bought for Cierra at the hotel gift shop. It was just a few centimeters above where Hunter's head had been, lodged somewhere in her lover's ribs.

For a moment, all Hunter could do was stare. Confusion tangled her thoughts into an unrecognizable mess, preventing the horror from fully sinking in.

How had she gotten hit? Had she moved too slow, or had the bullet just ricocheted off the interior of the car?

Unrecognizable voices filled her ears, demanding her attention, commanding her to do things. The flash of blue and red reflected in the rear view mirror now that there was no window for snow to pile upon, but Hunter couldn't hear them.

Cierra's mouth was parted in a silent plea for relief, her features scrunched up in agony.

Hunter had never cried a day in her life, but the tears seemed to come out as a facet in that moment.

Pulling Cierra's body to hers as gingerly as she could, she buried her face in the soft, dark brown curls that smelled of cheap hotel shampoo. Her clothes became tacky with blood, but she didn't care.

What did it matter if Cierra died? Everything, everything, would have been for naught.

The door to the driver's side was wrenched open, and multiple gloved hands grabbed at her. Cierra, much to her credit, clung weakly to Hunter, the color visibly draining from her cheeks.

"Hunter," Her name slipped off of Cierra's tongue in a muted, painful whisper before she was whisked from the Siren's view by a man dressed in a SWAT uniform, the letters in bold white on his back engraved into Hunter's mind.

The cold barrel of a gun was pressed against her temple as soon as she was gone.

"Don't move!" A muffled voice all but screamed at her, two men literally dragging her out of the seat. She glanced at their faces; they wore helmets with black visors, covering their faces save for their chins.

"Move and I'll blow your damned head off; just give me a reason to shoot."

The fight had all but drained out of Hunter though. She allowed herself to be pressed face down into the snowy road, her wrists bound excruciatingly tight behind her back. She didn't even have the strength to lift her head from her chest as the men lifted her up by her upper arms roughly, popping one out of the socket.

The pain was startling, but Hunter paid no attention to it, knowing it would right itself on its own.

The men all but threw her in the back of an obviously heavy armored van. She didn't even attempt to cushion her fall. The doors slammed behind her, and she was plunged into a hopeless darkness that rather reflected her entire entity at that moment.

There were no windows, no seats, only a slick floor about which she slid as the van revved to a start. She could no longer hear the raucous outside, and guessed the walls were noise isolating.

The longer she laid there, the further into desolation her mood sank.

Cierra was strong, but she was human. What were the chances of them being able to help her before... before it was too late?

The tears came once more, and the sob that spilled past Hunter's lips was one of complete heart ache that she hadn't known she was capable of.

Cierra was gone, and there was no getting her back this time.