by Tammy Walsh
My head snapped up.
“You do?”
“I feel the same connection with you. It’s strong, like you said. I could shut my eyes and point in your direction no matter where you are.”
I grinned at him, so relieved it was beyond words.
“But what does that have to do with Liam?”
My concern returned and I shuffled my feet again.
“I, uh, wasn’t paying much attention to the view out the window when I noticed him coming.”
Clint frowned, not understanding the significance.
“So?”
“So… I felt him approach. The same way I felt you lying in the bed. I didn’t see him until after that.”
“You’re saying… you share a bond with him the same way you do with me?”
I gnawed on my bottom lip and nodded my head.
The admission slugged him in the gut.
It was the very last thing he expected me to say.
And now, I wished I hadn’t said it.
I wished I could see what he was thinking.
He wiped his hands on his pants and stared between his feet with eyes so intense he might have been trying to melt the carpet.
Then it hit me.
He was thinking about how he had to share me with that creep, that he had some kind of claim to me the same way he did.
I couldn’t understand how I shared the bond with Clint, never mind Liam.
Couldn’t he see I didn’t want to be connected to him?
The sensation made my stomach twist.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He opened his mouth to speak but quit.
He wanted to tell me I didn’t need to be sorry, that none of this was my fault, and he must have known it wasn’t, but he still wore that hurt expression.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” I said. “I knew it could only cause problems.”
I turned away from him, but he wrapped his arms around me anyway.
“Hey, hey,” he said. “None of this is your fault. Do you understand? None of it. You didn’t ask for this—for any of this. You were lumped into this situation the same way I was. I only wish I could remember everything I was supposed to. At least then we might be able to make sense of this whole thing.”
I was slow to turn to him.
“You’re really not mad?”
“Not at you. I’m plenty mad at that asshole.”
He raised my chin, our lips less than an inch apart.
I could see the longing in his eyes, the same longing reflected in my own.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You belong to me. No one else. I don’t care if he shares the bond with you. We’ll figure a way around that. What I feel for you, that’s unique. That’s what joins us. He’s just an asshole with too much time on his hands. He won’t have you. I refuse to allow it.”
My concerns broke and tears rolled down my cheeks.
He gently kissed me on the lips.
“I don’t think I’ve ever cried this much,” I said. “Except when I watch America’s Got Talent. Some of those sad backstories really get to me.”
We embraced and I felt his heart race beside mine.
When we were this close, and we shared our body warmth, our heartbeats slowed until they matched, beating as one.
He completed me in all the ways I was deficient.
I wondered if I did the same for him.
“What are we going to do now?” I said.
“First, we’ll get moving. If he’s got a built-in tracking beacon and he knows where you are at any moment in time, he’ll be heading right for us.”
I put the pick-up in gear and pulled onto the road.
I worked through the gears until we sped around each of the long winding country roads, heading into the darkness that stretched out before us, infinite and long.
Neither of us spoke for a while, letting our minds wash over recent events and come to terms with what needed to be done.
And what our next steps would be.
I broke the silence first.
“If he knows where I am all the time, there’s no way for us to escape him, is there?”
“No. I don’t think there is.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
He must have sensed the edge of panic in my voice.
“Stay calm,” he said. “That’s the first thing. We can puzzle our way out of this.”
“We tried hiding. That didn’t work.”
“No, he’ll keep coming and looking for us.”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Kill him?”
It was a throwaway comment that I didn’t really mean.
The silence that yawned between us was incriminating.
“We can’t kill him,” I said. “We’ll get caught. And he’s a cop. At least, he was. They come down hard on cop killers. And even if we do get away with it… I’m not sure I can live with that on my conscience.”
Clint placed a hand on mine and I calmed down, my knee ceasing its endless jittering.
“We won’t kill him,” he promised. “But we have to stop him.”
“You’ve seen this guy! He never stops! He’s like a machine!”
“If he can sense you the way I can, he’ll follow you wherever you go.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Wonderful.”
“No, it is. Think about it. If he will always follow you, then that means we know where he’ll head.”
“Toward me.”
“So, we can set a trap. He’ll come for you and we’ll figure out a way to lock him up.”
“How? The guy scaled my parents’ farmhouse like it was nothing and he smashed through those motel doors like they were matchsticks. There’s nothing that can keep him contained.”
Clint’s eyes turned distant with thought.
I wondered where he had drifted off to.
“You’re right,” he said. “Nothing can hold him… except the latest advances in technology that haven’t been released to the public yet.”
I took my eyes off the road and peered at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Something I haven’t told you about yet. When you hypnotized me, I saw things, remembered things. It worked. I’m not sure it will work a second time—”
“Good, because I never want to turn you into a vegetable like that again. I was so scared you would never wake up. And when Liam came…”
I shook my head, refusing to ride the rollercoaster of emotions that threatened to take me again.
“I won’t leave you,” Clint said. “I don’t need to. I rediscovered some of my old memories. They’re buried so deep… I remembered flying through the storm when it struck, and a bolt of white lightning hitting my ship. I fell and crashlanded in the lake. I saw the ship I was flying. It was nothing like the technology you have. It’s more advanced, futuristic.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Liam was right…”
“About what?”
“He came up with this bullshit story about you being a Russian spy. Don’t worry, I don’t believe that for a second, but there were parts of his story that correlate with what you’re saying.”
“What parts?”
“That you might work for the Air Force, that you were a pilot testing out some kind of new airplane with cutting edge technology. That was why, he said, no one came looking for you. They didn’t want to admit they’d lost a pilot, never mind a plane that shouldn’t exist.”
Clint drifted from me again.
He shook his head and focused on the here and now.
“That ship had some advanced technology on it. I can’t tell you what because I honestly can’t remember. But there were advanced weapons—”
“I told you,” I said, “I don’t want to kill him.”
“And advanced medical technology.”
He looked at me pointedly.
“There might be a way to heal what happened to me so
I can remember everything.”
“You think you’ll remember something that will help us?”
“Yes. And the ship is bursting with advanced technology. There must be something on board we can use to restrain him.”
Clint ran his thumb over my bare knee and felt the goosebumps that popped up on my skin.
“Then take us to the crash site,” he said.
I hit the indicator and pulled off the road and rejoined the motorway.
We were heading back to my hometown, back to Phoenix Lake, back to where our story had begun.
And where, I hoped, this episode would end.
Ras
I instructed Isabella to keep a close eye on the bond she felt with Liam—or whatever that thing chasing us was.
I had no connection to it the way I did with Isabella.
She was the only way for us to know how far away he was.
“He’s heading in our direction but he’s not going faster than us, I think,” Isabella said.
We raced down the highway as fast as we dared but kept at the speed limit.
The very last thing we wanted right now was to be pulled over by the police.
With Liam’s connections, he could have put out a warning to keep an eye out for us.
They would book us and we would be trapped.
Then he could take his sweet time and pick us up whenever he got around to it.
Isabella checked her mirrors often, keeping a close eye on anyone who might be trailing us.
The highway was quiet at this time of night.
According to the digital clock on the dash, it was two in the morning.
Mostly, we saw large trucks transporting goods across the country.
Isabella focused on any cars we passed very closely, studying the shape of their rear and front headlights to determine if they were cop cars.
There was no way of preventing the cops from picking us up if they spotted us.
I wished we could have swapped vehicles but there were none to be found.
And so, we pushed on.
I’d opted not to tell Isabella about everything I saw while I was under hypnosis.
It would only frighten her.
Hell, it frightened me!
I knew what to expect when I saw my ship again but it still didn’t quite feel real.
I’d seen the changes I could have on my memories.
Was it possible I could have completely fabricated the playback of a memory I’d experienced too?
I guess it was possible, though I wouldn’t have done it on purpose.
Besides, I had no other memories to draw on, no movies or books or stories to recall.
It made the likelihood of me altering a memory less possible.
It meant that, no matter how crazy, what I’d seen in the memory was what had actually taken place.
I’d been in a dogfight with another ship that, come to think of it, looked identical to the one I’d been flying.
Seeing that memory play out hadn’t answered many questions, but it gave birth to a bunch of new ones.
Who was I really?
Where did I come from?
What was I doing in a dogfight in the first place?
And why were we trying to kill each other?
That question more than any other simmered in my mind.
Did the bond I shared with Isabella have something to do with it?
It had to, I reasoned.
After all, Isabella shared an identical bond with Liam/the creature.
It all had to make some kind of logical sense, didn’t it?
“We’re almost there,” Isabella said.
I looked over at her, her seat pushed forward, her legs barely able to reach the pedals.
It was a vehicle designed for bigger people.
Although Isabella was fairly tall, the seat she sat in swamped her.
If she leaned back, she could have used the seat almost as a full-size bed.
I ran an eye over her slim legs and narrow waist, her ample breasts that pressed against her thin top.
She was a gorgeous specimen and I feared how she would react upon learning the truth…
However that ended up happening.
Would she recoil from my touch if it turned out I was from somewhere far away?
Would she look at me differently?
Would she run and hide?
Would I?
We rounded a long corner.
Moonlight flashed off the lake, offering tiny slits of what we had to look forward to on the other side.
The lake.
The drowned ship.
I shivered at what we might learn.
I considered telling Isabella to keep on driving, to turn around, or take another road and get as far from this place as possible…
But she would have questions, and I knew I wouldn’t lie to her.
I couldn’t lie to her.
Running away now from getting the answers we sorely needed wasn’t going to help anybody.
Nobody but the creature on our tail.
He knew far more than I did.
He still had full access to his memories, who he was, and what he was there to accomplish.
To stand a chance against him, I needed to know the same.
And so, I didn’t say a word as Isabella slowed down, hit the signal, and pulled onto the lake’s muddy edge.
Brightly colored police tape held up by sticks demarked the area where the accident had taken place.
A corner had come loose and fluttered in the wind.
Isabella turned the engine off and we sat there for a moment, the metal making soft popping noises as it cooled.
“We’re here,” Isabella said. “What do we do now?”
My stomach churned.
“Now… I swim down to the wreckage.”
Isabella’s neck snapped around.
“You never mentioned having to swim down there!”
“How else do you suggest we bring it up?”
“We can rent a crane or a tractor or something to dredge it up.”
“We don’t have time for that. The longer we take to get it out of the water, the sooner Liam will catch up to us.”
Isabella’s eyes shifted over my shoulder in the direction Liam was coming from and then switched back to mine.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Listen,” I said, “I can’t use the medical equipment without bringing the ship up. And we can’t use any of the other technology onboard either. We have to bring it up.”
I reached for the door handle.
Isabella’s hand rested on my arm.
“Don’t. The last time you were in this lake, you almost drowned and I almost lost you. Don’t tempt fate again.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
Her mouth worked but the words were hard to form.
“We could run.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the same line of thought she was trailing that I had.
And I could virtually taste how hard those words were for her to say.
She wasn’t a runner—never had been—and the thought of doing it now for who knew how long must have been difficult for her to stomach.
“We can’t run forever,” I said. “We don’t know enough about what’s going on here. There’s something much bigger than us happening and we need to know what it is if we want to fight Liam.”
“It’s not Liam I’m worried about.”
She couldn’t say it directly or refer to the creature that either mimicked him or completely subsumed his body, but I knew what she was referring to.
The creature was not of Earth.
How could it be?
Maybe she could lie to herself that it was some kind of weapon created in a lab somewhere on Earth, but that didn’t answer all the questions rushing through both our minds right now.
Like why was it so much more interested in capturing her than me?
If I was the one that escaped a lab somewhere,
shouldn’t it be more interested in me?
Then there was its ability to shift shapes and take the form of others…
It was an ability so far beyond the skill of modern-day scientists on this world.
She knew there was more was going on than we were privy to, and she didn’t want to know the truth any more than I did.
But it was the only way to keep her safe.
I had to know what was going on here.
I leaned forward and put my hand to her face and neck and felt her heat beneath my fingertips.
Her brow furrowed with lines.
We shared our breath and gently probed each other’s lips.
She pulled me forward on top of her and widened her legs enough for me to lay with my cock pressed against her.
“Take me,” she said. “Take me now in case… in case anything happens.”
Those were the words I’d been desperate to hear from her ever since I first laid eyes on her.
To join with her and see what would happen to the bond that existed between us, to watch as it expanded and consumed us both…
I would feel her tighten around me at the apex of pleasure and she would stimulate me into pumping my seed inside her…
It was the stuff dreams were made of.
All my recent dreams.
And with her looking so good, so open to me…
My cock hardened and she must have felt it.
“I’m ready,” she said. “I want to know what it’s like to have you inside me.”
I shook my head in an attempt to dispel the red mist that descended over me, the pure hunger to taste her, savor her…
Devour her.
“How far away is he?” I said.
“Don’t worry about him. Worry about me.”
She licked the tip of my nose, catching me by surprise.
I swelled even thicker in the front of my pants.
The hunger was overpowering.
Maybe if we did it quickly, I could still get down to the ship in time…
“Believe me, I want nothing more than to take you right here and now,” I said. “But it’s too risky with Liam so close. I want to take you every day for the rest of our lives, and I won’t risk it for this one time, as good as it would be.”
The mist that’d descended over Isabella’s eyes dissipated.
She looked away from me.
How would she react? I wondered. With anger? With dismay? With denial?
When she turned back, she wore a cheeky grin.
