The Escape Page 3

  “Hey, baby—try to forget about Jenna, okay? It’s not healthy for you to stress yourself out over something you have no control over.”

  “There are a few things I’ll never forget for as long as I live.” She looked into his handsome face and blinked back tears that threatened to fall. “Jenna’s one of them.”

  New York City

  Jenna had been walking for hours, and her feet were killing her. She wished she could get rid of the glass candle filled with water in her waistband—it was slowing her down. But until she found a water bottle or canteen or something, she needed to keep what limited supplies she had.

  The streets were so different now. So quiet. Every single store had their gates down, but every window was still broken.

  She kept her eyes out for things to steal, but everything worth stealing had already been looted. Even the cars were empty, their gas tanks open, the gasoline siphoned out.

  “I need a bike,” she said to no one.

  That was another thing she needed. Some company. Every day for the past year, she’d been surrounded by people. No night was spent alone. Yeah, she had her visitors. And fuck it, she didn’t feel guilty, either.

  Being on the Tracks gave her an excuse to indulge her sexual addiction. It hadn’t been a sexual addiction before the Pulse, but without antidepressants around, sex was a quick, easy way to feel good and forget. Better than drugs.

  Is it though? Using sex as a coping mechanism probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal. But it had kept her alive.

  She should have listened to Emily’s friend Mason when he first told her about the radio. Should have planned, and just escaped with Taryn. Instead she’d frozen like a deer in headlights. Told Mason she’d be killed if anyone knew that she knew.

  Which, apparently, was true.

  Jenna turned abruptly, checking behind her. Ghosts kept following her. At least, she was pretty sure they were ghosts, even in the daytime. Because while a group of soldiers should have come for her by now, they hadn’t. She’d know them in an instant by the sound of a running motor—the army had confiscated all the old cars that didn’t have computer chips in them and still ran.

  The moment she heard an engine, her plan was to hide and close her eyes. She couldn’t outrun a car.

  But she could outrun the fucking ghosts.

  Something behind her, maybe fifty yards back—though it was hard to tell with the way sound traveled along the empty streets—kept making little noises. A stumble here. A crunch there.

  And there it was again.

  “What the fuck!” she yelled, turning. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  Bad move, Jenna. Way to tell the world your location.

  At least the ghost was quiet now.

  Jenna kept walking, not even sure exactly where she was headed. Toward the FDR, she thought. Her sense of direction had never been particularly good, and the tons of cars and rubbage blocking her path didn’t help to orient her.

  Just keep walking straight. If she kept walking, eventually she’d get somewhere, right?

  Another noise, behind her. She whirled around.

  “Leave me alone, please, leave me alone,” she whispered.

  A man stepped out behind a stalled car. A soldier.

  “I can’t do that,” he said. “Hands in the air.”

  Jenna cursed and ran blindly, all thoughts about hiding gone.

  Run. Run. Run girl, keep running.

  The air rushed out of her as she was pushed to the ground by a hard shove between her shoulder blades. The glass candle in her waistband broke against the pavement, cutting her stomach and drenching her shirt with water.

  “What the hell was that?” the soldier asked, surprised, and rolled her over, still on top, all of his weight pressing down on her.

  “Please, let me go,” she begged. She reached for her knife, but the man pinned her arms above her head. “Fine, you wanna fuck? Let’s fuck. And then I go.”

  “What?” The soldier frowned. “I’m not going to rape you.”

  It was Barker. The nice soldier.

  “Private Barker,” she whispered. “It’s you, right? Barker?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Come on, we have to go back to Grand Central.”

  “No,” she said. “Wait. I’m hurt. You made me cut my belly.”

  He held her hands with one of his, and slid the other hand along her body. But her first thought—sex—was wrong. He grabbed her makeshift knife and tossed it away from her.

  “Please, I need that.”

  “No, you don’t.” Barker finally got off of her, but kept one hand wrapped around her wrist.

  Damn, he was good-looking. Even with that ugly shaved head that screamed “soldier” he was hot.

  Seriously, Jenna? What does it matter how hot he is if he’s about to kill you?

  “Don’t kill me,” she said.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  For some reason, she believed him. Maybe because he gave her his ration that time. Maybe because he was the only unmarried man at the camp who never visited the Tracks like his buddies. Maybe because she had no choice. But she believed him.

  “Can I look at my stomach, please? I want to see how bad it is.”

  “I can’t risk you killing me with one of those glass shards. That’s how your roommate Emily killed the other Private Andrews. You girls are dangerous.”

  “That’s how she did it, huh? Good. I’m glad.”

  Barker furrowed his dark eyebrows. “Let me see if you’re injured. Don’t move.”

  With careful, gentle hands, he brushed the glass away and lifted her wet and bloodied shirt.

  “Your shirt protected you pretty well. You have two cuts here from the glass, but they don’t look deep.”

  Jenna winced as he probed the wound, checking it. “You’re not a doctor.”

  “No, but I know you’re all right. Okay? You’re fine. They’re just bleeding a little now. Nothing big.”

  He pressed her shirt against the cuts, holding pressure on them. After a moment, he let go. Her stomach was fine, although it burned like a bitch.

  “Please, you’re a good guy. I know you are,” she said. She looked up at him through her lashes, hoping to get him to see her as pretty, as feminine. To see her as a damsel in distress. “You can save me.”

  “I am saving you, Jenna. You’ll die out here. I have orders from the Colonel to bring you back to the camp for questioning.”

  Jenna gasped and grabbed him by the front of his uniform.

  “He’ll kill me. You know he will.”

  Barker shook his head. “Just questioning, okay? He won’t kill you if you’re innocent. He told me so.”

  Jenna laughed. “You believe everything you hear? He shot Taryn. He’ll kill me too.”

  “Taryn was executed for murdering a soldier.”

  “A soldier who was about to kill me, Barker. Andrews’s brother. Don’t you get it? She was saving me, and now she’s dead. And if you take me back there, I’m dead too. You may as well kill me now and save me the trip.”

  “No one’s going to kill you. Not me. Not anyone. Can I let you go?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Don’t run.”

  She smiled. “I’m badly injured. I can’t run.”

  Barker raised his eyebrows but he let go of her wrist. “Stand up. We gotta head back before it gets dark.”

  He helped her up, and she moaned, pretending the cuts on her stomach were worse than they were. She doubled over and turned away from him, gagging as if she might throw up from the effort.

  Barker took a step back and she stood.

  “I’m okay, thanks,” she said.

  And then she ran.

  * * *

  Fuck. How had he fallen for that?

  Barker r
an after the girl, determined to get her. He didn’t want to spend a night out on the streets of New York City if he could help it.

  Get the girl. Get back to camp.

  His legs were much longer than hers, and stronger. He caught up quickly and wrapped his arms around her to restrain her against his body.

  “No, let me go,” she screamed.

  “I can’t do that, Jenna.” He spoke softly, hoping it would make her calm down. Instead it seemed to enrage her even more.

  She elbowed him in the gut and stomped on the inside of his shin down to his boot, but he held tightly.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. Still calm. Not taking the bait.

  Jenna relaxed suddenly in his arms, though he could feel the frantic beating of her heart through her thin chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just got scared.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m going to tie your hands, and we’re going to walk back together.”

  He pulled a plastic zip-tie from his cargo pants and wrapped it around her tiny wrists, effectively cuffing them behind her back.

  She walked next to him silently for a full two minutes before she stopped.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “It won’t take us too long to get back. A few hours. Maybe longer, with you walking so slowly.”

  “Please, Barker, I have to pee. Can I go pee?”

  He wasn’t going to fall for one of her tricks again. “Fine.” He pulled her pants down and held her elbow. “Go.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Yes. Go. Or would you rather keep walking?”

  Her ass was bare, her pussy exposed. Barker turned his head, not wanting to see. “Go on, take a piss and let’s go.”

  “Forget it.” Jenna took a couple of hobbled steps, her pants around her legs. “Can you help me?”

  But when Barker went to pull her pants up, she laid down on the cold pavement.

  “Get up.”

  “Look at me, Private Barker. You have me here, on the ground, my hands cuffed, my pants down, at your mercy . . .” She said the words with a sexy lilt to her voice, like she was describing his fantasy instead of what should have been her nightmare. “Don’t you want to fuck me?”

  Yes. No. Fuck.

  “I’m not like that. Get up.”

  “You’re gay?”

  He’d been asked that plenty of times before simply because he wouldn’t take advantage of the women he was supposed to be protecting. But fuck no, he wasn’t gay.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘don’t tempt an honest man’? Get the hell up, Jenna.”

  He reached down and pulled her pants up, and lifted her from the ground.

  “Let’s walk.”

  “I don’t believe you’re not gay.” She didn’t sound like she was teasing him.

  “I really don’t care what you believe.”

  Jenna, even if she was dangerous, was beautiful, and she knew it. He hadn’t gotten laid since the Pulse. The girl he’d been dating before it happened—he never saw her again. Without cell phones, they just never found each other. He liked to imagine that she’d escaped the city, but with most people dead and the rest at Grand Central, he knew, in his heart, that she didn’t make it. Like the others.

  “If you’re really not gay,” Jenna said, “then I’m not good enough for you? Don’t want used goods, am I right?”

  Barker didn’t answer. It did bother him that she’d slept her way through the military, but he also knew that wasn’t her fault.

  “We didn’t do a very good job of keeping you safe, Jenna. And I’m sorry about that.” He looked her in the eye so she’d know he meant it.

  To his surprise, her blue eyes were wet with tears.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and started to wipe her face, as if she’d already forgotten she was cuffed.

  “Please . . . don’t thank me.”

  “No, I mean—thank you for looking at me like a human, instead of like . . . prey. Haven’t seen that in a while.”

  Barker didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  “Let’s go.” He took her carefully by the arm, and they walked.

  * * *

  The sun had been slowly setting for the past half an hour, but Jenna trudged on with Barker, and didn’t say a word. All of her progress walking away from Grand Central, and now it was being reversed, step by step.

  Damn it. It wasn’t fair.

  Think, Jenna.

  The best way to get what she wanted—the one way that always worked for her since the Pulse—was to use her body. Sex was power, it was her currency. Her body was better than gold when it came to getting what she needed. If she’d learned anything in the past year, it was that.

  She had to get him to sleep with her. It was the only way she knew to control the situation. But if he’d been able to resist her lying on the ground with her pants down, what else could she do? He was so different from most of the soldiers who visited the Tracks.

  His body, his movements, everything about him screamed “man.” Straight man. Jenna liked to think she had pretty good gaydar, and she wasn’t surprised when he told her he wasn’t gay. So it must be something about her that he wasn’t attracted to.

  “It’s getting dark,” Barker said, and stopped walking.

  Jenna looked at him. “Do you feel how spooky the city is now? Or is it just me?”

  “It’s . . . different. Without the people.” Barker shrugged.

  “Please, untie my hands. My back is killing me walking like this. I promise I won’t try to run again.”

  “I’ll cuff them in front, so you can stretch a bit. But I can’t have you running off in the night. I need to tie your legs too, when we sleep.”

  “We’re stopping?”

  That was good. Anything to delay the inevitable, and to give her more time alone with him, to seduce him. Maybe change his mind.

  “We have no choice,” he said sharply. “Come on.”

  “Wait. My hands, please. Please.”

  Barker looked down, as if he were ashamed he’d been making her walk with her hands tied. “I’m really sorry about all this. I never wanted to do this, you know that.”

  “You don’t have to do what they say, Barker. You’re your own man. You can do what you want.”

  “That’s a nice fantasy,” he smirked.

  He pulled a switchblade from his pants and cut her free, but held her hands and pulled them around to her front, massaging them. “Are your hands okay?”

  “No,” she lied. “They’re numb. You had the zip-tie on too tight.”

  Not true, but she wanted him to feel as bad for her as he could. He held her hands between his large, warm ones, rubbing them.

  Jenna smiled at him. “What did you do before the Pulse?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters. We used to be different people, all of us. Do you think I used to be a whore? No. Do you think a year ago, you’d have been dragging me, tied up, to my execution? No.”

  Barker shook his head. “Just taking you in for questioning, okay? Stop saying that.”

  “You need to get real, Barker. You’re a smart guy. Think about it, please. The Colonel will kill me. And my blood will be on your hands.”

  “Stop.” He dropped her hands from his, and Jenna winced, ready for the blow she felt sure would come.

  “Hey—” Barker touched her chin, angling her face up to his. “I’m not going to hit you. Goddamn it. This is so fucked up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Me too, Jenna. Me too. You don’t want to run away from me in the dark, right?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Then hold my hand, and we’ll walk like that for a bit, okay? If you let go
and run, I’ll tie you up again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Jenna smiled and took his hand, reveling in its warmth. She wouldn’t run, not now. Not when she was so tired, and everything hurt. They’d sleep, and she’d find a way to get his gun and escape when he was passed out.

  “I used to be a lawyer,” he said. “Lot of good that did me.”

  “Maybe you could represent me when I talk to the Colonel.”

  He laughed. “Wasn’t that kind of lawyer.”

  “I used to be an office manager,” she offered. “And I was single then, too.”

  When he didn’t say anything, just kept walking, looking at each building they passed, she sighed. “What about you? Is that why you don’t want me? A wife somewhere?”

  “I had a girlfriend. I think she’s dead, though.” He said the words with no emotion, as if he was relaying the information without thinking about what it actually meant.

  “I’m so sorry, Barker. That’s terrible.”

  “My loss is nothing like what other people have gone through, though. People whose children died. Wives. Babies. If we dwell on it, we’d never be able to get up in the morning. So I don’t dwell.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Here we go.” He stopped and pointed to an apartment building. “Let’s squat here tonight. We’ll be safer inside, where we can barricade the door.”

  “There’re bodies in there. The place will be haunted.”

  “Come on.” He had to give her hand a tug to get her to move toward the door.

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  “No, it’s not. We have no idea if there are criminal elements running around at night. We’ll be safe if we have four walls around us and a roof over heads. Warmer, too.”

  “How do we know this place isn’t already being used by this ‘criminal element’?”

  He didn’t answer. “Now.”

  Fuck. Jenna followed him, hoping she wouldn’t see any dead people.

  “Let’s go up the back stairs,” he said, and opened the door for her. The darkness was thick and cold and complete when the door shut.

  “I can’t see anything,” she whispered.

  “Just hold on to me, and to the rail. I’ve got my hand on the wall. We’re going up one flight, and we’ll go in the door at the landing.”