Fear the Night

Chapter 13: The Escape

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Maverick hissed, lying under a blanket. The wagon they were in the back of jostled and he grunted when he bumped into Yukio who was lying next to him.

“I can’t believe who she is!” Yukio hissed back through clenched teeth.

“You didn’t know who she was when you met her?!” Maverick chuckled, softly.

“I’ve never seen her!” Yukio retorted. “How was I supposed to know she was Natalie Keith, heiress to the Keith family, the richest family in the country?!”

“Well, you know now,” Maverick replied, rummaging into his pocket and pulling out two compacts and handing one to Yukio. “Better put your face on.”

“I’m afraid to look dead,” Yukio voiced, wrinkling his nose as he took the compact. “Dead people look too much like Drones.”

Maverick chuckled as he dabbed his finger into his compact then pressed it to his forehead, right between the eyes.

“How come you get shot in the head and I get beaten to death?” Yukio wondered, rubbing his face with dark make-up.

“‘Cause I’m too cool to be beaten,” Maverick smirked, handing him the compact of red make-up.

“Whatever,” Yukio grumbled, snatching the thing from him. “You think Izzy’s ok with the servant guy of Natalie’s?”

“I trust he’s helping out by keeping her as still as possible with all this jostling,” Maverick replied, wiping off the make up from his finger. “We should just worry about out part. I have no doubts about Natalie’s acting skills since she fooled you, as easy as that is to do.”

“I just reloaded my gun, Mave,” Yukio warned, jokingly. “You don’t want a new real bullet hole in you, do you?”

“You don’t scare me, Greenhorn,” Maverick retorted.

“Quiet you two!” Natalie called softly from the front of the wagon as she sat with the driver. “We’re coming to the Barrier!”

Maverick and Yukio nodded to each other mutely then shifted to lie on their backs and began breathing shallow as they shut their eyes.

“I’m gonna have nightmares about my death tonight, I know it,” Yukio muttered, quietly.

“Shut up!” Maverick hissed as the wagon stopped.“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“

“Stop!” a Suit ordered the driver of the wagon Natalie was accompanying. “Where are you going, Miss Keith?”

“Please, you have to let me through!” Natalie cried desperately to the Suit. “It’s important that I get to the woods before sunset! My uncle, in the woods, he’s expecting me!”

“What’s in the wagon, Miss Keith?” the Suit asked, skeptically. Natalie felt her heart race, but kept up the act. She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head and making her shoulders shudder as she gave sniffles and slight sobs. She finally looked to the Suit with crocodile tears and sniffled one last time.

“My dear friends,” she shuddered. “Someone killed two of them and injure the other. My uncle can treat her, but he wants me to bring the bodies of the two to bury them.”

The Suit frowned then walked to the back of the wagon. He looked into the wagon to see a man with the body of a girl and a blanket on the other side of the wagon with a pair of legs sticking out from under it.

“Hey!” the Suit called to the man and when he had his attention he ordered, “Pull that blanket off those bodies.”

The man did as instructed and the Suit saw two men, dead. One shot through the head and the other looked beaten to death. He gave the man his thanks for cooperating then headed back to the front of the wagon.

“Alright, Miss Keith,” he nodded and signaled to the gatemen to lower it and let her pass. Natalie cried a little more as she thanked them and the driver drove them past the gate. She kept fake sobbing until they were a good distance from the gate then checked to make sure before slipping into the wagon and pulling the blanket off of the bodies.

“Alright, boys,” she grinned. “You can stop playing dead!”

“Finally!” both men exasperated as they sat up and Maverick rubbed the bullet wound from his forehead.

“I’m going up front to guide the driver,” he announced. “You guys gonna be ok here?”

“We’ll be fine,” Yukio replied, trying to wipe his make-up away as well. Maverick climbed up front and sat next to the driver. Natalie giggled at Yukio as he tried to wipe his face clean but it was proving difficult. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and scooted closer to him.

“Here,” she murmured. “Let me help.”

Yukio froze and stared at her as she wiped the make-up from his face. He swallowed as he stared at her, feeling a strong urge to kiss her but he held back and decided to make conversation instead.

“Ya know,” he choked then cleared his throat when she looked into his eyes. ‘I’m actually surprised we were able to pull this off.”

“You had doubts?” Natalie wondered, still wiping the make-up from his face.

“Well, not about your part,” he smiled and Natalie blushed slightly with a smile of her own. “I was more concerned about one of the Suits recognizing us.” He looked to the man with Isabella and asked, “Is Izzy ok?”

“She’s still breathing, Sir,” he replied. “I’m trying to keep her as still as possible.”

“You’re doing a fine job, my man,” Yukio commended then looked back at Natalie who seemed a little closer to his face than he remembered. He couldn’t fight it anymore.

Screw it, he thought to himself and planted his lips to hers, causing them both to topple over with him on top of her. She giggled when they fell but he still kissed her as she threw her arms around his neck.

The man sitting with Isabella jumped when they fell, but smiled at the two before turning his attention back to Isabella who still slept.“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“

Meanwhile...

“Just follow the trail up to the fork, then turn right,” Maverick instructed. “Going right you’ll come to another fork and I’ll take the group from there. You can take Natalie and the other servant back across the Barrier.”

“She won’t go back,” the driver reported as Maverick was just about to climb into the back and he stared wide eyes at him who continued, “Miss Keith is stubborn. Unless you can tie her to the wagon as I drive off, I doubt she’ll go back. Especially since Mr. Hayate is here.”

“What? Yukio?” Maverick smirked in amusement. “Don’t tell me she’s got a crush on that scrawny Greenhorn.”

A giggled answered his question and he turned to look into the wagon where he saw Yukio and Natalie having their moment. He smirked then turned his attention back to the trail ahead.

“Well, I guess there’s no getting around it,” he sighed. “Looks like she’ll be coming along after all. Yukio seems to share her sentiments.”

“So it would seem,” the driver smirked, glancing over his shoulder as well. A silence reigned over them for a moment before he said, “That unconscious girl…is she yours?”

Maverick shot his gaze at the driver in wide-eyed surprise and sputtered, “W-What?!”

“The way you looked at her before we got into the wagon,” the driver recalled, “it looked like she was your girl.”

“Oh,” Maverick replied, vacantly then cleared his throat and sputtered, “Well, I, uh…I guess she is.”

“You guess?” the other man chuckled and Maverick narrowed his eyes at him.

“Just drive,” he muttered and climbed into the back of the wagon as the driver laughed. Maverick sighed as he shook his head at Yukio and Natalie, still in a lip-lock. He said nothing as he stepped over them and toward Isabella where he knelt down at her head as the servant with her moved away.

“How is she?” Maverick whispered.

“Nothing’s changed for better or worse,” the man replied. “She’s still breathing.”

“Thank you for helping us,” Maverick said. “With Yukio and I playing dead there wouldn’t have been anyone else to keep her from jostling so much.”

“Miss Keith knew you’d need another hand to help,” the servant replied.

“I’ll watch her now,” Maverick nodded. “Thank you, again.”

The servant nodded and climbed out to sit with the driver.

Maverick didn’t hear Natalie’s giggles as Yukio whispered in her ear, and he didn’t see that they were smirking in amusement at him. All he saw was Isabella’s face and all he heard was her steady, shallow breathing.

“Hold out, Bell,” he whispered, his face so close that his breath fanned through some of her hair. “Hold on, please.”

Unable to help himself he leaned forward and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead as he stroked her hair.

“Wake up,” he whispered. “Just open your pretty eyes, Bell. I need you to open your eyes. You don’t have to jump up and do a dance, just open your eyes.”

“Mave?” Yukio called, but the other man didn’t move. “What’s wrong?”

Hell if Maverick knew. He’d never felt of acted this way with anyone else before Isabella. For some reason, he missed her. He couldn’t wait until they got to his friend in the woods; he wanted her to wake up now.

“Mave?” Yukio tried again.

“Nothing, Yukio,” Maverick finally replied. “Just talking to myself.”

A gentle hand touched his shoulder and he looked up to see Natalie’s smiling, freckled face. She knelt down to his level and patted his shoulder.

“She’s tough, Maverick,” she assured him. “A little bump on the head isn’t gonna take her out so easily.”

Maverick smiled back and nodded in agreement, but he still wished Isabella would awaken. He had an urge to kiss her…badly.

“So,” Yukio cut in, “what’s your doctor friend’s name, Mave?”

“Joshua Crane,” Maverick replied, stroking Isabella’s hair as he looked down at her again then whispered to her, “I’ll get you there, Bell. He’ll take care of you.”