Page 56 of Healing Conviction
CHAPTERTWENTY
By the time they got to Jasmine Thornton’s town, Draco’s eyes were so dry and tired it hurt to blink. Knowing someone could be on their tail, going to a hotel was out of the question. There was no telling who was in whose pocket, and the last thing Draco and Nora needed was for someone to report to their boss that they saw a giant and his little pixie staying the night in a crappy, low-security motel with only one exit in every room.
He wasn’t sure whether those pricks who had attacked them were there for Shanna or for them, but he didn’t want to tell Nora what he was afraid of. That SUV had been an expensive model, and they’d had no problem shooting in the early evening hours at whatshould’vebeen a random stranger’s truck. Maybe Shanna had gotten mixed up with people that bad, but he doubted it. Men with too much money and nothing holding them back didn’t spend that many resources on sick junkies.
He’d come across men like that throughout his entire adult life. Men who saw dollar signs instead of obstacles. Growing up, he’d lived in a modest house with his mother and stepdad. They weren’t rich by any means, but they never wanted for food, clothing, medicine, or shelter, and that was all he’d ever thought anyone needed.
But as soon as he went off and became something in the military, he saw how greedy people could be and how they had no qualms with taking what wasn’t theirs. That realization had been what spurred him to sign up immediately when Eagle had recruited him as a SEAL for MF7.
The opportunity to help human trafficking victims? Absolutely. Not a second thought. Sure, in the end, their head commander had been spineless when it came to sticking up to the general who’d originally backed them. But the mission had been why he was there in the first place. Not to appease some asshole who hadn’t seen combat in so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to have a gun barrel in his face.
So he’d be more surprised if the men who were chasing them were after Shanna than if they were after them. He and Nora had slept the few hours before daylight in the cab of his truck. Places like the truckers’ parking lot of a rest stop were far from ideal, but at least they didn’t leave a trail, and at least it was empty enough that he had the advantage to see who was coming near them. Nora had slept, he’d more or less blinked in and out of consciousness. It’d been better than nothing.
As soon as the sun rose, they both took showers in the rest area and changed back into their cheap department store clothes. Nora hadn’t packed enough “cosplay” as she’d put it, and wore another plain pastel dress that threw him off balance. The only real color she wore were those purple shoes. The rest of her was muted. He’d slowly figured out thatthisNora he was experiencing was the one she wore for everyone else. Her hair was pulled half up again, covering her earrings, tiny dimples peeked out from under her lips where her piercings usually were, and aside from her wire glasses, she looked nothing like the Nora he was used to. She was gorgeous, but she wasn’ther.
Instead of continuing to gawk at the outfit this “cosplayer” beside him wore, he sat back in his driver’s seat to look up the dirt driveway to Jasmine’s house. The left side of the one-story brick duplex was hers and had thriving ferns hanging from the porch ceiling with a rocking chair underneath in front of the windows.
“This reminds me of where I grew up,” Drake offered, not entirely sure why he was sharing, only that he wanted Nora to know.
“Yeah?” Nora asked with a small, genuine smile.
He nodded. “We didn’t have a lot, but my mom always made sure it looked nice inside and out. My stepdad was busy working a lot, but he always made time to play catch with me out in the yard.” He glanced back at Nora to find a wistful look in her eyes. “What about you? What was it like where you grew up?”
“Me? Oh, I um… my mom always made sure we looked nice too, but the inside didn’t really matter. Not much to tell there.” Her smile went on a little too long and was tense at the edges. “You ready to go inside?”
He watched another twitch in her strained cheek muscle before nodding. It only took him a second to get out of the truck and meet Nora on her side to help her down. When he reached for her, she didn’t put up a pointless fight about being helped this time.
Now we’re getting somewhere, Pix.
That, coupled with her confession about her childhood, made his chest ache with emotion. He suspected that she thought her one sentence about her past hadn’t given him too much to work with, but it all made sense to him. The more he watched her, the more he realized that while he was straightforward, her subtext spoke volumes about what she really wanted to say.
The ‘outside’ was what she wasn’t afraid to show, because she grew up thinking no one wanted to see her ‘inside’. What people thought of her mattered more than who she actually was.
He was sure there was more, but he’d take what he could get for now. At least she was beginning to trust him with that part of her she hid from everyone else.
As soon as he settled her to her feet, she began talking again. “We’ve been pretty craptastic at making up personas so let’s stick with these ones, okay?”
“Wait, I’m… Fred? Is that who I’m supposed to be?”
Nora sighed dramatically, flinging her arm over her eyes. “Just let me do the talking, how ‘bout that? Sheesh, amateurs.”
They walked down the cement path up to the door and Nora smoothed her dress before she knocked. They only waited for a second before an elderly woman’s friendly voice shouted from the other side.
“I’m a’comin’, I’m a’comin, hold y’all’s horses, now.” After a few more reassurances that got progressively louder, the door opened and an elderly black woman in a long faded flower dress smiled at them from behind the screen door.
“Look at who we got here.” A glance up and down at them both had her tilting her head with an expectant smile. “Well? Y’all gonna tell me or am I gonna have to guess, hm?”
“Oh, sorry! Hi, ma’am. I’m Kitty and this is my husband, Red.” She indicated to Draco, and he nodded once, hiding his confusion that her secret identity would include naming themselves after an animal and a color. “I was hopin’ we could see if Jasmine is around?”
The old woman’s expressive face ran through the gamut with Nora’s introduction before she seemed to settle on a soft smile. “I’m Beatrice Thornton, her grandmother. What is this about, child?”
“Oh, we just have a few questions,” Nora reassured her with a smile. “We hope she can help us and—potentially—a lot of other people, too.”
Beatrice frowned. “Why don’t y’all come on in and sit a spell. I think this calls for some tea.”
Nora and Draco exchanged a glance and a slight nod before Nora answered. “Alright… um, I think we can do that.”
The entrance opened up to the living room. Draco and Nora followed Beatrice’s gesture to the worn, floral couch against the left wall, and sat comfortably side by side. “Y’all make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”