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@tzdkh
They’d been forced to split up. The project had taken them by surprise and while Creed could scale the rock face easily, the same couldn’t be said of Deacon. They had a better chance of splitting their focus if they went different directions and while Creed didn’t like it, she hid her uncertainty. She gave Deacon a confident grin before she hooked her hands into a hold and began to haul herself up the jagged boulders. The judges reached where they split and a few howled, the sound eerie and alerting their handlers to where Creed had gone. She hoped Deacon could make it to the river and lose them before they tracked him.
She pulled herself over the edge right as an arrow was let loose and hit the rock she’d just been hanging off of. A mumbled curse follows as she rolls out of sight and then gets to her feet and takes off in a sprint. They probably couldn’t climb after her but there were bound to be more hunters around. Jacob Seed didn’t seem to half-ass anything which was frustrating. The radio at her hip crackles and alerts her to the hunter’s movements. They know where she went, but had yet to track Deacon – the other deputy.
Her teeth grind at that. Of course Jacob would see Deacon and think he’s a perfect candidate for his ‘program’. She reaches behind for the rifle slung across her back and doubles back towards the wall she’d just climbed up and lays flat on her stomach. There’s a spot of red weaving between the trees and she knows it’s one of the hunters. They all have the same uniform. She takes aim and fires. They drop out of sight, a spray of red letting her know she’d hit her target.
Killing isn’t something she enjoys, and she tries to avoid it whenever possible, but this isn’t a situation where she’s willing to risk letting them go. That meant putting Deacon in danger. The other hunter wises up and ducks for cover before she can take a shot at them the way she did the other. Her radio goes off again, with them alerting others to her position and she has to move. Maybe she bought him enough time. She shoulders the rifle and crouches on her knees for a moment and then is off running once more. They know where she’s at, but Deacon is still their focus
Creed slides to a stop beside a tree so she can catch her breath and thinks about him, about how much she cared for him and how she couldn’t let one of the few people she’d ever cared for get hurt. It’s a feeling she’s not used to, the fierce need to protect somebody not because it was her job but because she cared. The trials would ruin him. She only knows what Eli has told them and what they’ve heard from others in the area but it sounds like hell. It’d take him, chew him up and ruin him ... and he’s too gentle for something like that. She’s running out of time to come up with a plan when she hears what sounds like a moose call, but then it repeats. Tammy had told them to look out for the wolf beacons and as she hurries in the direction of the animal calls she realizes that’s exactly what she stumbled across.
Luckily, she’s got one last explosive she’d been saving. Ideally, for one of Faith’s bliss operations but an explosion may draw them off of Deacon. Knowing him he’s thinking about trying to take the heat to protect her which means she has to act fast. So she grabs the timed charge from her pack and then sends it flying at the generator beside the tower. The impact doesn’t set it off, but the 9 mm round she fires into it does. Her ears ring, and when she starts running again it’s in the opposite direction of where she’d seen Deacon headed for. The chatter on the radio increases and when the ringing thins out she hears Jacob’s voice. He’s not happy. Typically, she didn’t try to needle the Seed siblings, she makes an exception this time, for Deacon.
“Not much security for former military.” She keeps her voice quiet since she’s uncertain of how loud she’s speaking due to the blast. Everything sounds like it’s coming through cotton stuffed in her ears.
Jacob makes a threat, implies his hunters are on their way when she already knew they were. She just had to keep them from going after Deacon. Creed would rather die than let Jacob get his claws in someone as kind as Deacon, but she doesn’t die – not when the arrow lodges itself in her leg and she goes down from the bliss. She doesn’t die in the trials or when Staci Pratt, their coworker tells her they should’ve stayed out of the Whitetails. Once, or maybe twice, Jacob calls her predictable and taunts her, but he has it wrong thinking she was playing hero. It wasn’t for the county it was for Deacon. She’s not sure how much time passes before a trial gets interrupted and she wakes up tied to a chair with no other survivors in the room with her, but she does recognize the silhouette in the room, checking each body he passes.
“Deacon-” Her voice is nearly nonexistent, cracking on his name but he zeroes in on her and rushes over. She closes her eyes when she feels his calloused fingers at the ropes binding her wrists. It’s a soft touch, softer than she’s used to and it nearly breaks her.
Arms slip beneath her back and behind her knees, lifting her as though she weighed nothing and maybe she did. Jacob’s treatment left her feeling like a wisp of herself, like she’d been hollowed out. Her head falls to rest against his chest and she frowns at the blood that seeps from her onto his clothes, but they’re already stained. She presses a hand to the stains, feeling to see if it’s fresh or from him but it doesn’t seem to be.
“I can walk.” She murmurs, but she’s not really sure she can. Deacon holds onto her tighter and when she glances up at his face she sees how worried he is. The man should never play poker.
Creed would sooner struggle and suffer than let someone carry he. Being a burden or seen as incapable is one of her biggest fears, but she knows what he’d say if she told him that. He may not actually say anything but it’d be clear as day that he didn’t consider her a burden. That he cared in a way she wasn’t deserving of or entirely understood. So she doesn’t fight him, and lets him carry her out of the building and set her down into the passenger seat of a project truck. Only after buckling her in does he get into the driver’s side and pushes down on the gas.
She drifts in and out but eventually she leans as far as her seatbelt will allow, resting her head on his shoulder and reaching for one of his hands to hold. He can steer with the other.
dailybridgerton
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