Page 112 of Under His Guard

The disarray and smell of decay makes my nausea worse.

I can pick out broken picture frames, an actual dumpster pulled into the building, and various pieces of destroyed furniture and pallets crammed behind a fenced-in area near the back wall.

The craziest items, I think, are the soundboard and DJ setup stuck against a side wall for raves, the stacks and stacks of blank canvases, and the stalled-out trunk in the loading dock that’s been parked in by a boat.

“I’m not sure. I can hear the shore, so we’re not far from the ocean. Which holds up.”

Furrowing my brow at him, I try to adjust my wrists again. “What holds up?”

“The Cobras like to be near the water. Easier for dumping…” Luke’s eyes hit the floor, and I can tell he doesn’t want to finish the sentence. “Stuff.”

“Oh, shit.”

That burning behind Luke’s eyes returns, and he pulls harder against the binds at his wrists. I can see the skin reddening from even my distance away.

“Dammit, Clara. This is all my fucking fault. I’m so damn sorry.”

The harsh laugh that cuts through me is equal parts tired amusement and resignation to my situation.

“An apology. Just what the doctor ordered. Too bad we’re here.”

I don’t intend to come off so severely, but to say I’m upset with our current predicament is a massive understatement.

“Clara, you have to know that I?—”

“I do, Luke.” I sigh, hanging my head. “This whole thing is so…Trust me. I know there are a lot of things we should’ve done differently. But we can’t really fix any of that now, can we?”

Luke cocks his head to the side like he’d rake his fingers through his hair if he could.

He does that when he’s thinking or stressed. I recognize it from living with him.

First guy I ever lived with.

“No.”

“So—” I suck in a breath through my nose, regretting the way it fills with the stench around us “—let’s get the fuck out of here, and we’ll talk about it all then. Yeah?”

Smiling while shaking his head, Luke starts chewing on his lip before he meets my eyes.

“Okay.”

He nods slowly, then shakes himself to focus.

“So, I tried to track the drive here. I know we went over the railroad tracks, and I’m pretty sure we went southeast because—ocean.” Luke gestures to the right wall with his head.

As Luke stares in that direction, I try to picture what he’s describing.

If I were looking at Hildale Port on a map, the train tracks cut perpendicular across the middle, with a gradual slope going southwest.

The ocean is at the eastern and southeastern edge of town. It means we have to be southeast and not northwest moving across the track, or we wouldn’t have hit the coast.

The hotel is in the northern part of town, so we didn’t go that way and pass the train tracks.

It also means we could have left the damn state.

But we didn’t drive for that long. So we couldn’t have hit the border.

“Are we in the industrial part of town?” I cock a brow at Luke, and he looks over for a moment, the wheels in his mind turning.

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