Their Forever Home (3 page)

“Hold her and keep her as warm as you can. I’ll gather firewood and start the fire. How close to the cave’s entrance do I make it?” Lance asked.

“Even with the entrance so the smoke will flow back into the cave. Hurry man. She’s ice cold.”

Lance rushed around, grabbing anything dry that was small enough he could manage it. Once he had a good-sized fire circle created with rocks, he set up the sticks then used one of their precious matches to light it. Normally, they used flint to start a fire, but time was more important now than conserving the matches.

Less than five minutes later, he had a roaring fire going. It put out lots of heat, but not much smoke. When he looked back to ask Carver what he should do next, it was to find him sitting super close to the heat being put out with the woman in his arms.

“It’s not making much smoke,” Lance said.

“Grab some of the wetter leaves underneath the dryer ones. Put three or four of them on the fire, but don’t let the fire go out.”

Sure enough, when he dropped three of the wet leaves on top of the flames, smoke immediately started billowing up.

“Now wave it toward the cave and keep it off of me. Can’t breathe very well with all the heat as it is now,” Carver told him.

The other man started pulling at the still-unconscious woman’s clothes, trying to get them off while Lance worked on creating the smoke they needed.

Lance used a shirt from his pack and began waving it so that the billowing smoke rolled toward the cave until large puffs disappeared into the inky blackness. It took a little while, but some raccoons and a family of skunks raced out of the cave’s opening. They paid them no attention as they hurried away.

“All clear now?” Lance asked.

“Don’t know for sure. Hold her while I scope it out,” he said.

Lance pulled the now-shivering woman into his arms while Carver grabbed a long stick and laid it in the fire. Once it had caught ablaze, he took it and used it to light his way as he entered the cave. It didn’t take long before the flickering light of Carver’s makeshift torch was swallowed up by the thick blackness.

The other man had managed to get the woman’s top off and had her wrapped in the blanket. Lance stayed as close to the fire as he could manage without singing his eyebrows. He wanted to give her as much of the heat as he was able to stand.

Long minutes dragged by as he waited, listening for any sounds that might give him a hint of what was going on inside of the cave. After what seemed like twenty minutes but was probably less than fifteen, the sound of Carver’s boots scuffing on the ground let Lance know the other man was returning.

“Well?” he asked when Carver stepped out into the open.

“Looks clear. I still don’t feel safe, but it will do for now. I’m going to build another fire to help block off the entrance so those critters won’t come back during the night. Come on this side of the fire and finish taking her clothes off. Then spread out all of our blankets. We’re going to have to get cozy to bring her temperature back up.”

While Lance stripped the both of their clothes and rolled them up in the blankets, he watched Carver gather a massive amount of firewood he put on their side of the fire then build another fire using burning coals from the first to coax the second one into life.

“How’s she doing?” Carver asked as he stepped back and started pulling off his damp shirt.

“She’s about to shake me to death, but so far she’s still alive. She has the prettiest hazel eyes, Carver.” Lance wasn’t sure why he said that last part.

“She’s awake?” Carver asked, stopping what he was doing.

“No. I saw them when she was still hanging on to the tree limb. Seeing all that fire in her eyes is what made me take the chance that you would help and lunge for her. You can see golds and greens and browns in them.”

Carver just grunted as he pulled off his boots followed by his jeans. That’s when Lance realized his newfound friend hadn’t been boasting out of turn about the size of his dick. He was hung like a bull, and the man didn’t wear underwear. Jesus, he could have gone the rest of his life without seeing that.

“Let go of the damn blanket, Lance. I’m freezing my nuts off here.”

“Not like you need both of them,” he said before he thought about it.

Carver burst out laughing and scooted between the covers when Lance released them. Then he scooted over until he was pressed tightly against the woman. It put the two of them facing each other with her in between.

“Hell. I’m not staring at your pretty-boy face all night.” Carver started to turn over.

“Wait. We need to talk first. Then you can turn your tail over like a pussy,” Lance said with a hint of humor.

“Fuck you! What do we need to talk about anyway?” he asked. It amused Lance how his entire face frowned when he was pissed.

“To begin with, what are we going to do about her? If she fell in by accident and has a family somewhere, we need to get her back to them,” Lance said.

“And if she doesn’t?”

“That’s the next question. Do we take her with us?”

“Hell, man. She probably isn’t even going to survive. We’re going to end up digging her grave. That’s what we’re going to do with her,” Carver said.

“She might make it. Then what? We’ll have to decide what to do about her then. I’d rather have it figured out now than wait until she’s better and not have a plan in place,” he said.

“You and your fucking lawyer plans. There doesn’t have to be a plan for everything, Lance. Live a little for once. You survived the fucking apocalypse and the anarchy that followed. That was a fucking miracle if you ask me. You weren’t cut out for this life.” Carver’s face turned a light shade of red.

“I’m sorry your friend didn’t make it, Carver. None of mine did either. Not one single one of the bastards I grew up with and went to school with. It sucks, but it isn’t your fault or my fault. Just because I survived, that doesn’t mean that in some sick twisted way someone else had to die and that happened to be your friend. Life doesn’t work like that. There isn’t some scale somewhere that balances everything. If someone good lives then someone bad has to die to even it up. Is that what you think?” He panted, angry now because he realized part of the man’s hostility toward him was because that was exactly how Carver thought.

Instead of mouthing off something, Carver just stared at him. Lance was sure that if he looked real hard he’d see his own death in the man’s eyes right then. Instead, the asshole smiled, showing a few more even, white teeth than was normal when a man smiled. Holy hell, he
was
about to die.

“So what the hell do you want to do with the woman
if
she makes it?” Carver asked without taking his eyes off of Lance.

“I say she goes with us to find the new community near Yellowstone. It’s spring. We’ve got plenty of time to make it before fall. We can hunt and trap as we go so we have plenty of furs to offer since we won’t have anything else to offer,” Lance said.

“So that’s how it works? We have to buy our way into this place?” Carver asked, scowling.

“No. It isn’t like that. But if we get there too close to winter to help pull our weight for the coming cold months, it would be nice to have something to contribute as a show that we’re willing to work.” Lance knew chicken shit about gardening or hunting or anything that would be useful. He wasn’t sure about Carver. The man didn’t say much if he didn’t have something important to say—or insults for him.

“So the plan is to take her with us. Then what?” Carver asked, staring hard at Lance.

“We’ll be there then. That’s all.” Lance could see the disbelief in the other man’s eyes. Shit.

Carver didn’t say anything more, just stared at him. Seconds ticked by, and Lance had to force himself not to squirm like a kid waiting on his father to call him on a lie.

“What?” he finally bit out.

“You want her to be your woman, don’t you, Lance? What are you going to do if she doesn’t want you?” Carver asked.

“Of course I want her, but I thought we’d share her. That’s how everything is now. Two or three men share one woman to make sure she’s safe and they can provide for her and their children,” Lance said defensively.

“And if she doesn’t want you, or us, for that matter, what then?”

“Then she doesn’t want us. She’ll be in a larger group of people who are trustworthy. Out here she’s in danger every second of every minute.” Lance stared back at Carver, wishing the man would just say what he wanted to say instead of drawing everything out like he did.

“You won’t force her? Not into taking what you want or telling her it’s for her own safety? What kind of man are you?” Carver’s words pissed him off.

They made him so mad that he punched out before he’d even thought about it. His fist made contact with the other man’s cheek when Carver turned at the last second. Lance thought his hand would break apart it hurt so damn bad.

“Fuck! What the hell are you made out of, concrete?” he asked, shaking his hand and wincing.

“Same fucking thing your hand is made of. I think you cracked my fucking cheekbone, asshole.”

Lance stared at him in disbelief. “What is wrong with you?”

Carver chuckled then winced. “Before we met up a few months back, I was a bondsman, one of those bastards that went around making sure that there was some kind of law in place to protect the rights of those just trying to make a life for themselves and their families. That’s what it started out as anyway. Things started changing as more and more men joined and some of them weren’t too nice, if you know what I mean.”

“You were a fucking black market trader?” Lance pulled the still-unconscious woman closer to him.

“No. There was a difference back then. We hunted the black market traders down and took them to one of the jails that were set up at the time. The bondsmen helped families find their lost women when someone took them. We didn’t always find them in time, but we tried.” Carver closed his eyes as if he could still see some of them they hadn’t been able to save. Lance hadn’t known this about the man.

“Then it all started to change. Some of us didn’t know what was going on at first. Then when we figured it out, we tried to stop it, but too many of the members had turned to profit and had lost the vision we’d had of protecting the few women left and keeping the innocent families safe.”

“What happened that you finally left?” Lance asked him.

Carver was silent for a long time. Finally he started speaking again, only not exactly on the same topic at first.

“You know, the reason I joined them in the first place had nothing to do with saving lives and preventing people from being used and stolen from. I saw them as a substitute for my old MC. The club had been my life, those men, my only family. I missed that sense of belonging and knowing that my brother had my back no matter what that being a part of The Rebel Riders had given me. I thought I’d found that again. I was wrong.”

“What in the hell does this have to do with anything anyway?” Lance asked, still nursing his fist. It hurt like he’d broken it, but he could move his fingers despite the pain.

“I found out that some of the women we were taking hadn’t actually belonged to the men we gave them
back
to. We were being paid to hunt down women, any woman, and turn them over to the black market for auctioning off to the highest bidder. When I figured that out, I told the guy who’d been working with me since I’d joined. I respected him and never once saw him hurt a soul unless it was necessary to protect another. I should have realized that he was with me to make sure I didn’t cause trouble,” Carver said, staring up into the darkness.

“When you talked to him about it he told the others, didn’t he?” Lance said. “How did you get away, knowing what you did?”

“He didn’t say anything right then. He said he’d had his doubts about what was going on but that we needed to wait for the right time to deal with them. I went along with what he said because I trusted him. When we stormed a home of a family to take a man’s wife the next day, I kept waiting for my partner to do something, but he didn’t. I still trusted him and figured he was going to confront them later and take the woman back.” Carver ran a hand over his face and looked up as if trying to control his emotions.

“She fought as soon as we were away from the house. My partner laughed, telling her she could fight all she wanted but it wouldn’t save her. I didn’t understand at first, but later figured out they were planning to sell her to a brothel. He dragged her, kicking and screaming, but she was tough and managed to nail him in the balls.

He went insane and turned his gun on the woman. He would have shot her, but I shot him instead. I guess he figured I wouldn’t draw on him. His mistake. There were two others with us on that ride. I shot one of them, but the last one got me in the shoulder before I could get to him.”

When Carver didn’t say anything more, Lance realized that the comments earlier had been Carver’s way of testing him to see if he was capable of harming the woman if she refused them. It pissed him off that Carver didn’t trust him, but Lance couldn’t blame the man. Instead of saying anything more, he started to turn over so Carver wouldn’t have to.

“W–what h–happened to the w–woman?” a soft, shaky voice asked from between them.

Vella thought she’d heard enough of the story to know that the two men lying closer than fleas on a dog wouldn’t hurt her. Since she was staking her life on it, she prayed she was right. They weren’t any of the men who’d tried to take her before she’d jumped into the swollen stream. She’d taken her chances that she wouldn’t drown when she’d jumped, and those chances had paid off. Not only had she survived, but the men who’d pulled her out sounded like fairly good men.

“I returned her to her family. They took care of my bullet wound, and I stuck around long enough to heal and make sure that when the group I was riding with didn’t return they didn’t send someone out after them. She was fine when I left,” the big man on her right said in a gruff voice.