He got out of the car and shut the door softly, but the white mist distorted the sound and bounced it around the small clearing like a drum solo. The air smelled of pine and tasted of remembered pain.
Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her here. He’d known not to take her back to his place. There was no evidence of him being at the Center and no chance that Liz—if grilled, if pressured, if threatened—would ever rat on him. But if anyone looked close enough at her, they’d find him.
This was the only completely safe place he knew of. It was off grid—no electric, no gas, no running water. Not even Mac knew Cain came here. No one would be able to find him. He rented the place by the year. The old lady who owned it was mostly blind, happy to take cash, and didn’t ask questions for an extra five hundred dollars.
Anywhere else, Cain risked being seen. Even though it had been twenty years ago, too many people still recognized him as Killion’s kid—either that or thought he was his father for a split second until their minds had enough time to catalog the differences.
He walked up on the porch, the boards creaking a muted tone from the damp. The wooden rocker he had sat on for years looked down over the lane as if a ghost sat sentry. Cain unlocked the door and stepped inside the one-room cabin.
His eyes immediately locked on the sketchbooks. On the mantel above the stone fireplace were his personal portraits of blood and murder and death. Heaviness settled across his shoulders, then sank into his guts. Oh, he recognized that feeling. Knew it intimately.
Shame.
He’d been cozying up with that emotion since he’d been a child. Shame was a stalker, always there, always watching, always waiting for its chance to ravage his fragile hold on normalcy.
He scooped the books off the mantel and into his arms. Shit. Where the fuck was he going to put them? He hadn’t thought beyond the need to hide them.
The room was sparse. A fireplace. A full bed. A large cupboard that contained foodstuffs and supplies. A small table and chair. No good place to ensure she wouldn’t stumble across them.
Outside. He’d put them out there. He opened the cupboard, grabbed a plastic grocery sack stuffed in the back corner, shoved the books inside, then went back out to the porch and around the side of the cabin to the woodpile. He shifted the top logs forward and shoved the sack into the space between the cabin and the wood, then restacked the logs until they appeared untouched.
He forced himself to walk calmly back to the car, despite the way his heart skittered around his chest as if he’d just escaped a death sentence. He flung open the driver’s door and scooted the seat forward. He’d never wished for a back door on his car until this moment. He contorted himself into an unnatural position—feet and legs on the ground outside the car, torso and arms inside, trying to gather her limp body to him, while not causing her any more pain or banging his damned head on the ceiling.
God, she smelled of sweat and barf and a chemical stench that he assumed was the meds working their way out of her system. He backed out of the space, cradling her to him, and began walking toward the cabin.
“Uhh…” The sound wisped from between her lips, yet it may as well have been an air horn to his ears. Every muscle, every fiber, every cell inside him locked on her. Her head lolled against his chest, her arm flopping out at an awkward-looking angle. “Idontfeelgood.” The sentence came out in one slurred mass that took his mind a moment to translate into individual words, each with its own meaning.
“You’re safe now. No more drugs. No more shock treatments.” In the light of day, the bruise on her cheekbone was a grotesque mound of black. Christ. Her cheek could be broken. If he ever happened across Dr. Payne… “I’ve got you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Her head jerked against his chest, and she uttered something else that he couldn’t understand.
“Everything’s going to be—”
Her body tensed so suddenly he almost dropped her. A slick stream of vomit gushed from her mouth, sliding down her chin into her loose smock top and wetting his chest. He stopped and stared down at her to make sure she’d finished and wasn’t aspirating. When nothing else came out, he leaned his head back on his shoulders and looked up into the foggy abyss.
This day was just getting better and better.
He tried to find a breath free of stench, but he was surrounded. He thought she’d stunk before? That had only been the plateau on the way to this new peak of reek. “Okay. So here’s the plan, and I need you to be on board with it. I’m going to have to clean you up. You stink. You gonna be okay with that?”
Her face, mashed in the barf on his chest, gave a little jerk.
“I’m taking that as agreement.” He carried her onto the porch and set her in the rocking chair. She was too weak to sit up straight and slumped half over the side. Oh well. For the moment, it was the best he could do.
Eyes still closed, she mumbled something that he chose to hear as acceptance.
“I’ll be right back.” He yanked his shirt over his head and let it fall on the porch floor. Splop.
Inside the cabin, he grabbed a sweatshirt for her to wear—she seemed so cold—a washcloth, a towel, and a bar of soap and set all of it out on the porch rail. She hadn’t moved from the way he’d set her. Then he went around back to the hand pump and pumped fresh spring water into the bucket.
It was gonna be cold, but at least she’d be clean.