Crux (The Aurora Lockette Series) by Miranda Kavi Read Free Book Online

sealed window. It was boarded over with bright cracks of daylight leaking in. The glass was old, but thick. Probably easily breakable. It was the boards that would cause me trouble...
    Footsteps shuffled outside my door. I turned as Mr. X swung the door open.
    In his hand, he had a burrito on a paper plate. He put it on the ground along with a couple bottles of water. “Come and get it.” He stared at me while I did.
    I limped towards him, groaning as I bent over to get the food. I panted as if the movement was tiring me out.
    The burrito was cool in my hand. “This is still frozen,” I stated.
    “ It will thaw eventually.”
    He left, shutting the door behind him, locks clicking in place.
    I put the burrito on the nightstand, then chugged all three bottles of water.
    I finished the last bottle, remembering how Gavyn used to push me to drink more water when we arrived in Vegas.
    We’d been laughing then, as we checked into our room our first night in Vegas. The valet had given us bottles of water as we parked.
    “ You’ll need it,” Gavyn had said, pushing the door to our room open. “This is literally the desert. Your body needs more water than normal.”
    “ Yes, sir.” I’d mock saluted him. Then I’d drank the water, thrown it to the side, and pushed him down on the bed.
    I came back to the present, tears crushing against the back of my eyes. I brought my hand to face while the pain came, licking and lapping at my self-control. I couldn’t do this now. I couldn’t think about him. I had to survive. My fingers toyed with the metal band of my engagement ring. They hadn’t taken it from me, but even if they did, they couldn’t take Gavyn from me. He was burned into my heart and mind, forever.
    O nly strong thoughts crossed my mind now: I would heal, I would escape, and I would take Keith with me.

CHAPTER 7
    GAVYN
    The dark roads rolled under the car as we drove through street after street. It was night again. A full day had gone by without her.
    No word, no clues.
    Carmen flicked on the turn signal. “Let’s try some of these dirt roads out here.”
    “ Sure,” I said flatly. I checked my phone screen, like I was going to magically find a text or an e-mail from her.
    Carmen got on 160, heading west. The city was falling behind us and flat brushy desert stretched all around us.
    I had an icy, weird feeling, like a wave of cold nausea. “Stop!”
    She did, just short of an unmarked dirt road that crossed the highway feeder road.
    “You feel that, too?” she asked quietly.
    “ Yes.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my lap and tried to process the strange feelings. “It’s dark, strange, but I feel…”
    “ Like she might be here.” She turned the wheel sharply, pointing the headlights down the barely visible dirt road.
    “ What are you waiting for…go!”
    “ We can’t.” She pulled away, merging onto feeder road, then the highway.
    “ What are you doing?” I yelled. “Go back!”
    “ We’re being followed.”
    “ What?” I twisted around in my seat, staring at the cars trickling by. “By whom?”
    “ Please look forward and act normal. I can’t tell which car it is, I can just sense it. The last thing we need to do is tip them off.”
    I shook my head. “No. We can drive down there and just see.” I clenched my fingers into a tight fist.
    “ We can’t risk it. Not like this. They’ll move her, or worse,” she said.
    She was right, damn it. “Blast it!” I shrank back into my seat, but my eyes moved over the darkening horizon. She was out there somewhere. I could feel her.
    I texted Konstantin to give him the coordinates of our location and to let him know we were working our way back.
    “ We have to stop,” Carmen said. She squeezed the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white.
    “ Are we still being followed?” I said.
    “ Yes.”
    “ Bloody hell.” I shoved my phone back in my pocket.
    She found a cheap pancake house off the interstate, miles away from our safe