Cut and Run (Phoenix Code 1 & 2)

by Lara Adrian

  He wasn’t about to stop and chat.

  Without a second’s hesitation—without giving her even so much as a blink of acknowledgment—he bolted after his quarry, leaving Tori to gape behind him.

  He couldn’t afford the delay. Had no time for explanations or apologies, even if she deserved both.

  For her own safety, he couldn’t let on for a moment that he knew her or that she might know anything about him, even his name.

  He was the hunted now. Already in the crosshairs of powerful enemies who had demonstrated twice so far that they were capable of finding him, no matter where he ran or for how long he kept moving.

  He’d be damned before he would let that target settle on Tori’s back too.

  Ethan dodged outside the market building, squinting through the hazy glare as he searched for his assailant. Where the hell did he go?

  “Ethan.” Tori’s voice sounded several paces behind him, filled with confusion and disbelief.

  He didn’t turn around. Not even when it killed him inside to treat her with such coldness.

  There was no other way. Seeing her here and now was the worst thing that could’ve happened. If he was lucky, she’d either chalk him up as an illusion or as a black-hearted bastard who didn’t deserve the time of day.

  But that wasn’t how Tori Connors rolled. Indefatigable, unshakable, he could practically feel her determination like a current in the air as her eyes bore into him from behind. “Ethan, talk to me.”

  He moved deeper into the crowd, needing to lose Tori as he continued to look for the assassin among the clots of people arriving and departing from the market square.

  He heard a sharp scream off to his right and swiveled his head in that direction. There—he spotted the bald man near the head of the street. He was hauling an old woman out of a compact car that idled at the curb.

  Light footsteps sounded at his back and he knew Tori was following him.

  “Ethan Jones!” Her shout drew several gazes toward her. Toward both of them.

  Including the gaze of the assassin.

  Ethan’s gut tightened when the bald head pivoted toward him, the eyes hidden by dark shades zeroing in on Tori as she caught up to Ethan in the crowd.

  “Get away,” he growled without looking at her. “For fuck’s sake, woman, get out of here and leave me alone.”

  Too late. The hit man paused as though cataloging her face, as if noting her apparent familiarity with Ethan.

  A brief smile played over his lips. Until next time, that thin smirk seemed to taunt.

  The assassin ducked into the old woman’s car and slammed the driver’s side door.

  He peeled away from the curb with a screech of spinning tires, then rounded the corner out of sight.

  Goddamn it.

  Ethan wheeled around on Tori’s confused, questioning face. She was oblivious to the danger she’d just stepped into, but he felt it with a dread he could hardly contain.

  He wanted to roar at her—at himself too—but there was another part of him that ached to do nothing more than drag Tori into his arms right then and there.

  Instead, he did neither. Just stood in place, frozen by the sight of her after so long apart.

  She’d cut her blond hair much shorter than she used to wear it before. The spiky, pixie style made her dark blue eyes seem even larger, as deep as sapphire pools.

  Summer had left her skin tanned a golden hue, and her simple white tank and olive shorts bared a whole lot of that soft skin to Ethan’s roving gaze.

  His mouth watered despite the fury and fear hammering through him at this very inconvenient, unwanted reunion.

  “I told you to stay away from me,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ. What the hell are you doing in Seattle?”

  “I’m visiting a friend,” she scoffed. “And I could ask you the same thing. Is this where you’ve been all these years?”

  “You don’t need to know where I’ve been. And I’m not staying.”

  It took all of his will to pivot and take the first few steps away from her.

  He heard her breath catch behind him. Heard her sandals clip swiftly over the pavement as she came after him.

  “Ethan, wait.” She grabbed him by the arm. “You’re bleeding.”

  Her touch electrified him, even after all this time. In the years since he’d left Maine, he’d almost convinced himself that he was over her.

  Now, he felt all those lame rationalizations disintegrate around him as every cell in his body responded to the warmth of her fingers clasped onto his arm.

  He scowled and pulled out of her grasp. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll live.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” She stared up at him, her blond brows furrowing at his harsh tone. “Why are you acting like this, like you don’t even know me?”

  That’s exactly what it was—an act. It was all he could do to make sure anyone who might be watching their exchange wouldn’t think Tori meant anything to him.

  With every cold glare and disregarding word, he prayed like hell that his act might keep her safe.

  But she was a tenacious one, always had been. She hiked up her chin and he knew she wasn’t about to let him dismiss her so easily. “Ethan, tell me what’s going on. That man—who is he? Did he…Jesus, that’s a stab wound. Did that man try to mug you or something?”

  “Or something,” he murmured. “Like I said, I’ll live. Now, do us both a favor and forget you saw me.”

  He saw her gaze shutter as if she’d been physically struck. “That’s it? Are you fucking kidding me?” Her voice rose, taking on an uneven edge, full of hurt and outrage. “All this time, after everything you put me through, and this is all you can give me?”

  Ethan glanced around the market square as she railed at him, trying to discern if there were any eyes on them with something more than passing curiosity. It didn’t seem so, and although his security training told him to extricate as quickly and cleanly as possible, he couldn’t disengage from the look of betrayal on Tori’s pretty face.

  “I can’t do this with you, Tori. I don’t expect anything I tell you right now would make it any clearer for you, anyway.”

  “Try me.”

  He gave a tight shake of his head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “You’re not making any sense. What’s too dangerous?” She looked at his bleeding wound again, her gaze sober. “You need medical attention, Ethan.”

  He wanted to deny it, but he could hardly argue that Tori was wrong. Pain lanced him where the knife had pierced his pectoral. A numbness had begun to seep into his upper arm as the blood leaked out of him.

  He needed to get somewhere safe where he could clean up and stitch his injury, if nothing else.

  “My friend has a car parked in the public lot down the street,” Tori told him. “I’ll go back in and get her, then we’re going to take you to the hospital before you lose any more blood. You need to go to the police—”

  “No,” he said, all but cutting her off. “No hospitals. No police reports. That will only make things worse.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “You’re serious, aren’t you. Jesus, Ethan…what kind of trouble are you in?”

  His feet itched to bolt, but the rest of him refused to cooperate. And the throb of his chest wound was intensifying by the second.

  He was growing weak the longer he stood there. Too much blood loss and his body was starting to sink into shock.

  “This friend of yours who you’re staying with,” he murmured. “Do you trust her?”

  “Of course. I’ve known Hoshi since nursing school.” Tori stared at him, her dark blue eyes concerned, but also suspicious. “I trust her a hell of a lot more than I can say for some other people.”

  Ethan grunted, knowing he’d more than deserved that dig. “I need to take care of this wound, but I can’t risk going to a hospital and I can’t go back to where I’ve been staying in the city the past two weeks.”

  The hostel had been compro
mised the instant he’d spotted the assassin tailing him today. There was nothing of value there anyway. Ethan traveled light, and took precautions in case he needed to escape any given location in a hurry.

  He planned on doing just that, once he was patched up and rested, and ready to hit the ground running again.

  “I can’t be seen in a public place, Tori. Not now. And not with you.”

  “Okay.” She listened soberly, then gave him a tight nod. “Hoshi’s got an apartment on the other side of town. We can take you there. No doctors. No police. I’ll have a look at your wound. Then you’re going to give me the truth, Ethan. I think you owe me that much.”

  Yeah, he did. But even though he gave her a nod of agreement, Tori was asking him for the one thing he could never give her.

  5

  Even after making the drive across town with Ethan in the backseat of Hoshi’s Subaru, Tori could still hardly believe it was really him.

  After all this time, here he was again. In the flesh.

  In the injured and bleeding flesh.

  And he was slipping into a paler shade of gray with each passing moment.

  Tori held a bunched-up beach towel against the wound to try to stanch the blood flow until she could go to work on him. It helped, but by the time they reached Hoshi’s place, Ethan’s lids were drifting closed more than they stayed open.

  Lethargically, as if he had no choice, he followed Tori’s orders to hold on to her as she and Hoshi extricated his big body from the car and helped him shuffle into the building.

  The one-bedroom flat on the first floor was cozy but cramped, especially with the sudden presence of a six-foot, semi-conscious man in it.

  Tori’s unease worsened when her hand brushed the cold metal grip of a pistol tucked into the back waistband of Ethan’s cargo shorts.

  “Wait,” she told her friend.

  Hoshi’s eyes narrowed as Tori carefully removed the gun and set it down gently on the kitchen table just inside the apartment.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hoshi whispered. “Are you sure this is a good idea? What the hell do you really know about this guy?”

  Tori shook her head, unable to answer that at the moment. “Let’s put him on the sofa, okay?”

  They guided Ethan over to the pull-out that had been her bed during her visit. He slumped down onto the cushions as Tori and her friend snapped into nurse mode.

  Tori had assessed in the car that his airway was clear and that the blade had luckily missed his lung. Now, she carefully removed his blood-stained T-shirt while Hoshi disappeared into the bathroom down the short hallway and began rummaging in the cabinet under the sink.

  Ethan roused at the noise in the other room. His head lifted, and his eyelids dragged open. “Have to get up,” he murmured thickly. “Gotta get moving…before he comes after me again.”

  Tori put her palm on his good shoulder and held him down with surprisingly little effort. “You’re not going anywhere right now. Be still and let me get to work.”

  He quieted, but as he settled back his brow remained furrowed, his sensual mouth held in a tight, grim line.

  He’d sunk back into a drowse by the time Hoshi returned with an armful of things they would need: surgical gloves, antiseptic, bulky bandages and medical tape, nylon thread, packaged needles and syringes, and a small bottle of topical anesthetic.

  They cleaned and prepped, then went to work immediately, tending Ethan’s knife wound, then stitching it up while he faded in and out of awareness on the sofa.

  As Hoshi tied off the final suture, her dark eyes flicked over to Tori. “So, this is him, huh? The guy who tore your heart out?”

  “Yeah, this is him. This is Ethan.”

  Hoshi knew all about what happened back in Portland. She’d been a true friend through Tori’s pain, so it didn’t come as any surprise that Ethan wasn’t exactly a welcome guest in her home. Particularly in the disturbing condition in which he and Tori had just reunited.

  Tori couldn’t keep from looking at him as he rested.

  She could hardly keep from stealing a caress of his peaceful, handsome face.

  Then again, she also wanted to slap him.

  “Thank you for helping us, Hoshi.”

  “Us?” Her friend shook her head. “I’m doing this for you, not him. If I’d known who he was back at the market square, I would’ve let him bleed out on the pavement.”

  Tori frowned. Even she had her doubts about Ethan. In fact, doubt was all she had where he was concerned.

  It was obvious enough that his stabbing hadn’t been random violence. The man he chased through the market had attacked him for some reason, a reason Ethan refused to share.

  And while he had always been elusive when it came to answering even the most innocuous questions about himself, the dodging and full-out refusal to be straight with her today was something far more troubling.

  She didn’t believe anything he’d said today.

  She couldn’t turn her back on him as easily as he’d been able to do to her three years ago, but looking at him now, Tori realized she didn’t really know him at all. Maybe she never had.

  For the first time since she’d known Ethan Jones, she didn’t trust him.

  The rectangular outline of a cell phone sat in the side pocket of his cargo shorts. Tori hesitated all but a second before carefully reaching in to retrieve it.

  She powered it up, noting that it was one of the prepaid kind. There were no contacts stored in the device. The call log was empty too.

  As if its owner wanted to leave no trace of his activity.

  Tori set the phone down on the floor beside her, then reached over to search the other pocket of Ethan’s shorts. Her fingers curled around a worn leather wallet, bulging with folded cash. She pulled it out, flipped it open.

  A lot of small bills fell onto her lap, more than just a few hundred dollars’ worth, from the look of it.

  “What the hell?” she whispered, an odd sense of dread washing over her.

  Ethan had no credit cards. Not even a gas card or any other piece of plastic that most normal people carried on them as a matter of habit, if not necessity. But there was one form of ID inside the wallet.

  An out of state driver’s license.

  She stared down at the heavy beard and unkempt hair in the photo, and the familiar, all-too-gorgeous face that couldn’t be fully obscured even under the careless, rumpled appearance.

  Tori glanced at the South Dakota address. She didn’t know it. Then again, she didn’t know the name listed on the license either.

  Not Ethan Jones, but a different name.

  One that clearly didn’t belong to him.

  Everything she’d seen today, everything she’d heard from Ethan in the past couple of hours—or rather, everything she hadn’t heard from him, namely anything resembling the truth—put a sick feeling in her stomach as she looked at him now.

  Hoshi had paused in the collecting of their used medical supplies and was staring at her. “What is it, Tori? What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  What was wrong?

  Everything.

  Hoshi came over and looked at the ID in Tori’s hand and the fat wad of cash scattered in her lap. “I thought you said his name was Ethan.”

  Tori didn’t answer. She glanced at him as he slept, uncertain of anything right now.

  She felt as though she’d been punched.

  What had happened to the straitlaced liberal studies professor she’d known and loved?

  Then again, she might have thought she loved him, but it was becoming clearer by the second that she didn’t really know him at all.

  Maybe she never had.

  6

  I’m not going to make it in time.

  The thought hammered through Ethan’s head—through every screaming cell in his body—as his legs pumped across the desert sand and his heart felt ready to explode in his chest.

  It was the dream again.

  H
e knew that, in some dim corner of his sleep-encumbered mind.

  The premonition that only came to him as a nightmare, whereas his other visions had always played out when he was awake.

  Ethan ran and ran, but his feet felt leaden, not moving fast enough to make it.

  I’m not going to be able to stop it from happening…

  Even though he knew what was coming, the dread of it, the horror of what he was about to see, gripped him in a stranglehold.

  No. I can’t let it happen.

  He ran as hard and as fast as he could, until his lungs were on the verge of bursting. Yet he made little progress on his way toward the building in the distance.

  I have to get inside.

  Someone has to be warned…

  But who? Warned of what?

  He didn’t know. Those answers were never shown to him.

  He only saw the building in front of him—close enough that he always believed this time he would reach it. This time, the nightmare would be different, and he would find a way to thwart the annihilation to come.

  Yet it never happened that way.

  Ethan ran and ran, but never got close enough.

  Already, the rolling cloud of yellow sand was churning in the distance.

  Just like every other time he had this nightmare premonition, the caravan of black SUVs slowly came into view on the far desert road. They sped toward him, nine gleaming ebony vehicles with diplomatic plates.

  “Stop!” he shouted in the dream. “Go back!”

  But the cars kept coming.

  They always did.

  Ethan counted them as he dragged his leaden feet through the deep sand. One. Two. Three. Four…

  As soon as the ninth SUV rolled past him on the stretch of desert sand, it was too late to do anything more. The detonation boomed in his ears.

  The sonic blast knocked him backward, flat on his ass.

  The heat was unbearable.

  Hellish.

  Relentless.

  It seared his face and eyes, drew hot flames up into his nose.

  When his skin began to melt and fall away, Ethan roared in agony. He sat bolt upright on a curse before he had fully awakened.

  A hand came down gently on his good shoulder and Ethan swung to grab it. He twisted the delicate wrist and heard a shriek.