The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,37
us—”
“I need your help,” Priyanka cut me off, her voice tight. “I can’t carry him alone, at least not far enough to matter. I can’t. I’m not—I’m not enough. I need help.”
I fought to keep my eyes off the gun in her hand.
I can’t say no, I realized. If I stopped pretending everything was fine, so would they. And without knowing what their endgame was, I couldn’t predict how she would respond or how she’d try to keep me here.
I just had to make it back to DC with the phone. If she got desperate to keep me here…
“Do you know what it takes for me to ask for help?” Priyanka said, her voice ragged. Whatever adrenaline surge she’d experienced, it had played itself out. Her legs, covered in darkening bruises and gashes, were trembling with the effort of staying vertical. “Do you think I would ask if I didn’t absolutely have to?”
I swallowed and made the decision. I just had to stay alive for now. There would be another chance to get away from them. I’d make sure of it.
“Here,” Priyanka said, holding out a hand covered in road rash and blood. “I’ll hang on to that phone for you.”
My grip on it tightened. “I’m good.”
“I have pockets,” she said, her voice as direct as her gaze. “I would hate for you to lose it.”
The gun was still in her other hand. Every instinct I had was screaming at me as I slowly placed the phone in her palm and watched as it was tucked into her ripped jean jacket.
Feeling trickled out of my limbs as I climbed down out of the cab. We hurried back toward where she’d left Roman stretched out and prone in the shadow of the semitruck.
“Let’s get out of here before the cavalry comes galloping over the horizon,” Priyanka said, kneeling to get one of Roman’s arms over her shoulder. I did the same.
“And go where?” I asked, scanning the open fields on either side of the road.
In response, the long grass waved back at us, combed through by the faint breeze. Miles to the west, to the east, to the north, to the south, there was nothing but prairie and open sky.
Nothing but us.
NIGHT HAD TURNED THE EMPTY highway into a dark ribbon of asphalt, one that stretched on endlessly to the distant horizon. It felt like I was chasing the moon, only to have it remain just beyond the reach of the headlights.
The thought was jostled out of my head as the wheels hit a pothole. The worn-out shocks on the truck launched the three of us off the bench seat. Priyanka’s forehead smacked into the window she’d been resting it against. I glanced over at her quiet grumbling, but, within seconds, she’d once again given in to the exhaustion tugging at her mind.
My eyes slid down to the small lump in her jacket pocket, back to the road, then back to that same pocket. Biting my bottom lip, I reached across Roman’s body, careful not to brush the slight rise and fall of his chest, fingers straining toward her jacket.
Get the phone, stop the car without waking them up, run like hell away from them.
Except Priyanka shifted, turning so her back was fully to me. Even without the seat belt strapped across my chest, there was no way of reaching the phone without climbing over Roman.
“Shit,” I breathed out, turning my full attention back to the road. My hands gripped the wheel so tightly, I felt the old leather crack beneath my palms.
Priyanka and I had walked for hours, carrying Roman’s unconscious form between us. Wild grass turned to cornfields, which had led us to an abandoned farm and a junker truck left to be buried by a collapsing barn. All I’d had to do was use the last bit of power in the house’s generator to jump the engine.
The truck was an old model, with its best years in the rearview mirror and a broken fuel gauge, the latter of which added some unwelcome mystery about how much gas we actually had. Liam would have loved it, though. He’d call it a “classic beauty,” and name it after some old rock song.
Maybe…he could be my second call, after I let Chubs know where I was and that I was okay. If I still had the right number.
I rolled down the window’s hand crank, hoping some fresh summer night air might keep the fog of fatigue from creeping too deeply into