Lost: Project Xol

by Amabel Daniels

  “I’ll text you a picture of it, but it seems you got the first message wrong.”

  “Wrong how?” I asked. I’d gone to her apartment to get her key and went to the bank to get the files. Of course, I had dismissed that little bit about not telling anyone, as the man listening in front of me knew everything I did, and Zero was informed as well.

  “Wrong key, wrong box,” Zero said. “I’ll send you a picture of the letter and you’ll know where to go from there. Just get a bus ride and then find something else to drive in another city. You know, keep moving.”

  Wrong. I was wrong. I’d failed Rosa—again. Yet I didn’t want to growl in my head at the awful sensation of having failed her. This wasn’t like when she’d sent me to learn how to play the violin when I was six—I had no talent and the instructor agreed to lie that I practiced when I went to lessons and I’d just read books instead. Nor was this similar to the time Rosa had asked me to take preliminary courses for a pre-med degree—I’d fainted at the first dissection of the labs and later dropped out of college altogether. Maybe if I wasn’t so damn confused about this chaos that has been my life since I went to her apartment, I’d feel a little more of that sinking dread of failure.

  What was wrong was Rosa ever asking me to do this dirty work for her. To put me in the line of danger like this. Anger rose and I clamped my lips tightly closed.

  Keep moving. Zero made it sound so simple. If only anything in life ever could be.

  We hung up with no further direction but another promise to keep in touch. His farewell warning to avoid being identified was unnecessary. That I was alarmingly getting the hang of this stay-off-the-grid business was worrisome.

  “I don’t want to ride a damn bus,” Luke said as I locked the phone and nudged it to the side of the table.

  “Not like we have many options.” False. I didn’t have many options. He could leave. I still couldn’t understand why he didn’t. Sure, he’d said he needed to repay the favor of me saving his life. But that was a flimsy summary. I’d only been in the position to save his life because he’d stepped in as my rescuer first. Being his…burden rubbed me the wrong way. “What’s so bad about a bus?”

  He shrugged. “Memories of the last one I rode.”

  To prison? Ah. How many shitty thoughts would he have to endure? A larger question burned hotter though, yet I was too shy to ask. Why? Why had he even gone to jail—killed people before? I couldn’t dismiss this dangerous aspect to him, but I couldn’t convince himself he was a bad man either. Maybe I was biased. Hormones and lust and all. I was only human.

  “But I do have an idea of a replacement.”

  He did? That was fast. What, did he have a secret arsenal of vehicles in a bat cave— Oh, no. “Not another bike.”

  His slow and lazy smirk hinted at a smile and I slouched in the swoony warmth. “I was kinda starting to think you didn’t mind riding with me.”

  Not as much as I might want to ride y— I straightened in my seat. “What’s the replacement?”

  “My brother has an old truck he could never let go of. It’s too old for us to use for hauling house materials, so he just keeps it in storage. If we could”—he grimaced—“get a bus to Cincy, we could take it from there.”

  Take it. Because he couldn’t just ask the guy for it. The fewer people who knew where we were, the better.

  “To Texas.” I asked and stated it.

  “I guess.”

  My phone buzzed and I opened the text. Zero had sent the lines Rosa had written me and I read them twice before passing the cell to Luke to read.

  Cassidy,

  Please get the files from the storage box. At Harlowe University. You will have access. I can explain all of this later as time allows, but it is imperative you immediately obtain the files in Scott’s container in storage.

  Rosa

  P.S. Please, please do not let anyone know of this.

  Chapter Five

  Luke

  Goddamn bus.

  I couldn’t wait to get the hell off this damn thing. More so, I hated forfeiting to some punk-ass goth man driving us passengers at breakneck speed. Fast was good. I liked fast. When I was in control.

  “If she’d wanted me to go to Texas, she could have said so in the first letter,” Cassidy groused next to me. Her petite figure fit neatly in her seat, her arms hugging her knees to her chest, chin on her wrist as she stared at the highway scenery that turned to night. I slouched over into her space, my side encroaching toward her over the armrest. My legs weren’t staying confined very well either, both of them splayed out and trespassing into the aisle in the center.

  “Providing a specific location in writing might have been more clues for someone to intercept.”

  She pivoted to stare at me, her face slanting down on her forearm. “True… But if she’d said storage box instead of just a box, I might not have automatically assumed she meant the Griffin Bank key on the ring in the first place.”

  I rolled my head on the seat’s backrest and met her stare only inches away. This wasn’t the first time we’d hashed this out. Her incredulity at Rosa’s misinformation. She was really peeved about it, maybe like a defensive mechanism. Like she hated that she hadn’t aced the test the first time.

  It wasn’t her fault. I’d read the same two letters now and agreed Rosa’s instructions were brief. Direct, but also ambiguous. Just as Cassidy had, I’d forgotten that the keyring she’d pulled out of Rosa’s bedframe post had two items on it. The Griffin security box key and another, larger unidentified one. A key that we’d presumably use at Harlowe University outside Dallas, Texas. Something to let us into a storage unit.

  “Doesn’t matter now. We’re heading the right way now.”

  She frowned, still not lifting her face from her arm. “To Scott’s box.”

  I nodded and faced forward, thinking back to all the little facts Cassidy had found about the man who had started Project Xol. She’d been updating me during our ride. When she admitted that she’d searched for info last night, I gave her a little shit for using her burner phone to get on the internet, but she said she consulted Zero and then wiped it clean. I wouldn’t have done it, better safe than sorry and all that, but there was no point scolding her for what was already done. And I took her word for it that she would refrain from using the internet again—with Zero’s permission or not. It was simply too risky.

  She had explained that Scott was killed in 1999 in Nottingham, at the research facility where Rosa had last been reported to be.

  “So they were married before you were born?” I asked again. If they were, why didn’t Scott ever adopt Cassidy? I didn’t think that only one half of a married couple could adopt an orphan.

  “Seeing as I’m twenty-six and their marriage certificate dates back thirty years, yeah.”

  It made no sense. Fidgeting, I tried to squirm into a more comfortable position in the too-hard, too-small seat.

  “They must have met in New York, since Scott was working in his lab then.”

  “The one Daysun funded,” I added.

  She nodded. “Then they got married. Rosa…got me. And Scott died in Ireland.”

  Then Rosa left and had a research crisis of completely abandoning her studies into axolotls and a cancer cure to concentrate on dementia instead.

  “Another thing I’m confused about is how old he was,” she said.

  I turned to her again, arching my brows.

  “When they married, Rosa was forty-three and he was only thirty-two.”

  So? I waited her out.

  “Well… she was so much older than him.”

  “Only eleven years.” And who cared if Rosa used to be some kind of a cougar? You loved who you loved, right? I couldn’t speak from experience, but it was just a number.

  She twitched her lips and narrowed her eyes at me. “Yeah… But Rosa’s so…”

  “So…?”

  “Prim. Proper. I wouldn’t be shocked if someone said it seemed like she
thought herself above others.”

  I could only nod. That sounded like the old woman I knew to be my neighbor—former neighbor, seeing as our homes were blown up.

  “And that maybe being with a young guy might be a challenge.”

  “Are you equating age to maturity?”

  She frowned. “Kind of?”

  I returned my attention to the torn and faded fabric of the headrest in front of me. “That might be true, sometimes. But they were both academic professionals. Scholars. I doubt Scott would have been an immature douche if he was intelligent to get so close to a cure for cancer.”

  “What about from his perspective?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “A younger guy hooking up with an older woman like that.”

  “I know you’re not fishing for my opinions on Rosa…”

  “No! It just strikes me as odd.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged and closed my eyes, hoping sleep might come for me in the last leg of this damn bus ride. Then again, if I fell asleep, and another nightmare started…

  “You disagree?” she asked.

  I squinted to keep my eyes shut. “That age should matter in a relationship?”

  “That it might be a challenging factor.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She huffed a soft breath and elbowed me gently. “What, you’ve never been with someone older than you?”

  I’d never… I counted a couple of breaths, not wanting to divulge these facts. “I’ve never done the whole—” I shifted in my seat again, the pointed frame of the backrest digging into my side.

  “The whole…?”

  “Girlfriend thing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Still with my eyes closed—because I did not want to face her and see the disbelief that I heard in her tone—I shrugged. A lump of padding slid in the cushion with my movement. How much longer are we on this damn bus?

  Again, she elbowed me. “If you’re trying to tell me you’ve never been with a woman before—” She coughed once.

  I opened my eyes and faced her. “I’ve fucked women, Cassidy. Before I was arrested and sent to jail, I’ve been with women. Too many to remember and too long ago to matter. Were they young or old, I don’t know. I was too busy making them scream and pull at my hair to ask them their age.”

  Yep. There it was. That adorable spread of rosiness. First her cheeks, then back to her ears. The tips were going to be tomato-red in a second. That was the reaction I’d been gaming for. She wanted to go there? Ask me about my past? The women in my life? I wasn’t lying. Women never had a place in my existence. Before jail, it was a bodily routine. Orgasms were achieved no different than anything else my body wanted. For the almost two years after I was released from prison… I hadn’t gotten around to wanting to taint another person as being my anything—lover, girlfriend, or fuck buddy.

  Being with Cassidy like this, for every breath of morning and night, it wore on me. Tested the boundaries of my curiosity. Crept close to wondering… what if? What if I could let go of my past and think for a second that I’d be good enough for someone? Someone like this sassy angel of a girl who needed my protection.

  No. She saved me. She’d protected and chosen me, too.

  I’d never be good enough for her. And being forced to even chitchat about anything to do with sex or relationships was a scalding reminder: do not go there.

  Because, goddammit, I only had so much restraint. Watching her lick her lips and rear back from me only fueled this insane attraction rising within me. She tucked her loose hair back behind one ear and still refused to meet my eyes.

  Yet the asshole inside me wouldn’t stay quiet.

  “What about you, Cassidy? Huh?” I bumped her with my shoulder instead of mimicking her jabs with her elbow. “You ever fuck an older guy?”

  “I…” She swallowed hard, that blush flaring even brighter. “I…”

  Jesus God Almighty. If she said she was a virgin… I shifted in my seat again. The thought of being her first— No. There’s no way she could be. Never minding her timid personality, she was too feisty to have never taken that step.

  “I’m thirty-one. Does that mean I disqualify?”

  What the hell am I doing? Do not go there? I was there and stomping all over the territory. The last thing we needed was the mere idea of a hot, sweaty, hard fuck. Not when some insanely strong maybe-cop was after us. Not when there was no guarantee that we’d see each other after getting to Texas and finding Rosa. If Rosa was even there!

  “N—no…”

  I ripped my hardened stare from her. She just had to answer with that. Which didn’t mean I was qualified to be with her. Goddammit. This was ridiculous.

  “I don’t—”

  Cassidy’s softly spoken words were halted when we were thrust forward from the idiot bus driver’s too-sudden braking.

  “Just ahead, folks.”

  Thank. God. Perfect timing to get the hell off this bus and step away even an inch from Cassidy after the images I’d set in my—and maybe her—head.

  Without a word, we exited the bus and made our way into downtown Cincinnati to take Jonah’s truck.

  ****

  Despite the stupidity of opening the can of worms known as attraction and what-if-we-got-naked, no thanks to my brilliant goading, Cassidy and I survived the night and morning without mishaps. Finding a “safe enough” motel near Jonah’s gym and ensuring there were two separate beds helped as well. In the aftermath of talking too far about personal matters, she kept quiet and largely avoided meeting my gaze. And in the absence of her conversation and actual company, I was free and primed to torture myself with more ideas of those what-ifs.

  What if she knew who I really was, what I’d done?

  What if she still didn’t mind being next to me?

  What if she would welcome me in her arms again after a nightmare?

  What if she—

  All night and into dawn I tormented myself wondering. It wasn’t until after we’d taken Jonah’s classic—old—Ford 150, fueled it up, and driven a hefty stretch of highway that we started to speak again.

  “You know, I could help.”

  I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel and breathed steadily and slowly through my nose, my lips slammed shut.

  Help? With…me? With what I couldn’t stop thinking about? This goddamn desire that was claiming me inside out?

  “I can drive. If you’re tired of it.”

  Oh.

  Of course.

  And she was so damn polite about it too. Thoughtful. Sweet. Generous. Because that was the kind of good-hearted woman she was. Not a raw, frantically horny sex goddess who’d rip off my clothes and—

  “You just seem…tense. I can’t tell if you’re tired or just annoyed as usual—”

  “As usual? How the hell do you think you know me enough to know what’s usual?” I shot a glare at her before focusing on the road again.

  Arms crossed, she snarled at the windshield. “You’ve been trying to be an asshole to me since we met.”

  Trying? I opened my mouth to retort with something—anything—but she beat me to it.

  “And you’ve been one since our conversation on the bus.”

  I gritted my teeth and glared at the road opening before us.

  “I get it. All right? I’m some silly little prude you’re tagging along with. Fun, fun. Well, you know what? I don’t have to be your burden. You don’t have to repay me any favor. I’ll…I’ll find my own way to Texas if I have to if you’re going to act like this.”

  Ah, crap. Was she getting teary over there? She was upset that I…felt obligated to be here? The idea of her taking off from me wrenched something heavy in my heart. And she couldn’t even know a fraction of why I was acting like this—I didn’t know myself. Lust. It had to be nothing more than the good, old basic drive of lust. Plus the lure of her, knowing she would never be within my reach.

  And she thought she was my
burden?

  More proof I’d never be worthy of her, despite her illusions.

  “You’re not a burden.” Was this something more than our weird silent treatment after awkwardly talking about fucking? A fear or concern she’d always held, from never measuring up to Rosa? For ever being an orphan, an adoptee?

  Take her hand. Pat her shoulder. Tell her you’re sorry you are an asshole.

  “Then let me drive. I want to at least do something.” She uncrossed her arms and wiped at her face. “It’s all my fault you’re even in this mess.”

  “Cassidy,” I started, a sigh heavy in my chest.

  “Let. Me. Drive.”

  Fine. She wanted to feel productive? She could be my guest. Sitting idle wasn’t going to counter whatever had her riled up.

  “Okay.” I checked that no one was near us and pulled off to the shoulder. Without giving her a chance to speak, I exited the truck, leaving the driver’s door open, and rounded the hood.

  Once she was in the driver’s seat and we were buckled in, I sprawled out on the bench seat and waited.

  And waited.

  Eye contact was a finicky little issue still, but from my peripheral vision, I watched her as she sat there. “Problem?”

  “No…well. No.” She prodded at the gear stick and ducked to look at the pedals. “It’s…manual.”

  I let my head fall back and stared at the roof. “You realize that now?”

  “I wasn’t paying attention! I was trying to not look at you and piss you off.”

  “You don’t piss me off.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I sat up. “I’m frustrated.”

  “Take it out on someone else.”

  A dry laugh escaped. “Who? Just you and me here.”

  Her throat tightened as she ceased moving her hands. I was glad the marks of abrasions were fading even more. Letting her creamy skin appear perfectly unmarred on her neck. Perfect for kissing, sucking—

  Goddammit!

  My patience was shot. Like always. “Do you know how to drive it?”

  “Yes!” She frowned as she scooted up to the edge of the seat. “It’s been a while. And I’ve only driven stick a…couple times.” Yet she jabbed her feet down on the correct pedals, jimmied with the gear stick, and we lurched off.