by Katie Allen
“You’re not,” he told her, shifting lanes. “They think they could use you to get to me.”
A comment from one of the men who broke into her apartment popped into her head. “Plus they think I might be pregnant.”
Calvin jerked back against his seat, the car swerving to the right for just a second before he corrected and straightened the wheel. “What the fuck?”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “I overheard those two guys in my apartment talking about how I don’t have any...um...” That comment was a little too personal and embarrassing, so she skipped that part of the agents’ conversation. “Right. So they brought up the possibility of me being pregnant, and the one guy mentioned a Dr. K and said she’d love to stick needles in a baby.” She shot him an uneasy glance. “Which is one of the creepier things I’ve ever heard.”
“Jesus. Are you?”
Lauren stared at his tense profile. “Pregnant? No! No. God, no.” Even though he was looking at the road and not at her, she shook her head vehemently, just to drive the whole non-pregnant thing home. “Not even a little bit. I don’t know how far back your not-remembering thing goes, but you must’ve forgotten your sex ed. One kiss—no matter how amazing it is—will not knock up even the most fertile woman.”
He actually looked a little uncomfortable as he said, “I wasn’t talking about me.”
Confused, she blinked at him for a few seconds before his meaning dawned on her. When it finally did, she was embarrassed it took her so long to figure it out. She blamed her slowness on the shocks and stresses of the day.
“Some other guy, you mean? Impossible. Unless the human gestation period is...a really long time,” she finished lamely, not wanting to admit exactly how long it’d been since she’d last had sex. The conversation was already embarrassing enough.
Calvin nodded without saying anything else, and the most awkward of awkward silences fell over the car.
“So,” Lauren said in a forcibly cheerful voice. “Who’s Dr. K?”
“A soulless fucking monster.”
“Oh.” That was...descriptive. “I kind of figured that with the whole sticking-needles-in-innocent-babies thing. What did she do?”
“She was the one who took my fucking memories,” he said after a short silence. “And...did other things.”
Lauren cocked her head, waiting for him to continue. When the silence settled over the car again, she sighed. “Still not sure what’s going on.”
“We’re going shopping,” he said, pulling into the parking ramp at a mall.
“Um...what?”
“Exchanging money for goods.” Calvin swung the car around and backed into a parking space.
“I know the definition, jackass.” She gave him an exasperated look. “What goods are we planning on buying? And why? And shouldn’t we still be running away instead of going to the mall?”
He was already out of the car, so she opened her door and climbed out.
“I need some things.” It wasn’t really an answer. “So do you. As you mentioned, it’s fucking cold in Colorado this time of year.”
After locking her car, he strode toward the mall entrance. Lauren hurried to keep up.
“I really can’t go to Colorado,” she panted, almost jogging in order to keep pace with his long strides.
“We went over this. It’s not safe for you to stay here,” he said under his breath as he held the mall door open for her. “You’re going.”
“What about my job? My apartment? My life here?”
He stopped abruptly and turned to face her. He had his fierce expression on again, his eyes at their darkest, so deep and intense she couldn’t look away. She was caught.
“You’ll lose all of that anyway if you stay,” he said, his voice low and ferocious. “Not only your job, but your freedom, your memories, your fucking life! So knock off this whiny ‘I’m not going’ shit, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked off again.
She stared at his back for an openmouthed two seconds before chasing after him. She caught up with Cal, and they walked toward an electronics store in silence.
When they reached the entrance, Lauren couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m not whiny.”
His grunt was noncommittal.
“I’m not!” she insisted, following him down an aisle. “Besides, even if I were the whiniest whiny whiner in the history of whiners, I think I have a pretty good justification for that, don’t you?”
He shrugged, pulling an electronic something-or-other off the shelf. Lauren watched, crossing her arms across her chest.
“Well, whiny is better than sulky,” she muttered.
That finally brought his gaze to hers as he heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Fuck it. Truce. Okay?”
She followed him to the next aisle over. “Fine.”
Picking up two other gadgets, he shot her a sideways look. “Look, you’re not whiny, okay?”
Lauren gave him a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I sort of was being whiny. Sorry. This is just...a little overwhelming.”
“Lauren.” He met her eyes. “Nothing will happen to you. I’ll make motherfucking sure of that. Okay?”
His expression was so sincere, so determined, that she had to rise onto her tiptoes and kiss him. Unfortunately, she could only reach his chin. The man was tall.
He offered her a slight, crooked smile. “I’ll give you the full story once we get back in the car. Now let’s shop fast and get the hell out of here.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
With a nod, he turned back to the equipment in front of him.
* * *
“Should you have used your credit card?” Lauren belatedly asked as they carried their multitude of bags to her car. Considering that it had been the fastest shopping trip in the history of malls, they’d managed to get a lot of stuff. “If people are looking for you, I mean.”
“It’s not mine.” At her startled glance, he amended, “I mean it’s under a different name.”
“Oh.” Lauren wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She really didn’t know much about this guy.
He pushed the unlock button, and her car lights went on. “I’ll get you set up with a new ID soon,” he promised, opening the trunk and putting his bags inside. Lauren set hers next to his.
“A fake name, you mean?” she asked, moving to the passenger-side door and getting into the car. Her stomach went a little queasy at the thought. It would turn her into such a...fugitive.
“A fake identity,” he corrected, sliding in behind the wheel. “Just in case we’re stopped.”
A tiny sound escaped her as she stared at him. “Stopped? By the police? If that happens, I’ll be falling over with a heart attack, so whether I have a fake identity or not will be the least of my worries.”
“If that happens, you’ll be fine,” he reassured her, pulling out of their parking spot. “You have fucking nerves of steel. I’ve seen them.”
For some strange reason, that calmed her down. “Really?” she asked him, flattered. “It felt as if I had nerves of Jell-O. When those guys were following me down the hall at work, I was so scared.” Being chased through her building had been even more terrifying. She shuddered at the memory.
“You didn’t lose your shit, though,” he told her, sending her a sideways smile. “A lot of people would’ve, but you kept it together and helped get me out of there. Thank you.”
She squirmed a little awkwardly. “You’re welcome.” A silence fell as Calvin maneuvered out of the parking garage. “Thank you for the winter clothes,” she added belatedly.
“No problem.”
After another wordless pause, Lauren cleared her throat. “Well?”
He looked at her, eyebrow cocked curiously, but the teasing spark in his eyes told her he was well
aware of what she wanted.
“Out with it,” she ordered. “You promised.”
When the humor faded from his expression, Lauren almost took back the request for his story, but she stopped the words before they left her mouth. No matter how she felt about Calvin, she really needed to know what was going on.
“Right,” he said. “First off, those assholes aren’t really NSA.”
“What?” Lauren stared at him. One sentence into his explanation and she was already confused. “But I saw their badges.”
He shook his head. “Fakes. They’re actually working for a small, private organization contracted by the U.S. military to do research.”
“But why do they claim to be NSA, then?” she asked. “Wouldn’t impersonating a federal agent get them into a whole lot of trouble?”
“It gets them in,” he said. “Scares people enough to get them to talk. What was your first reaction when you heard NSA?”
“Terrorist,” she admitted honestly. “But my second was that there’s no way you’re a terrorist.”
He glanced at her, almost smiling. “Why not?”
When she remembered her convoluted, he’s-too-good-a-kisser reasoning, Lauren flushed. “I, um...just knew you weren’t.” She looked everywhere except for Calvin’s smirking face. “Quit trying to change the subject,” she huffed, knowing she was bright red. “What’d you do to this research organization to piss them off so much?”
“I left.”
All of his answers were just leading to more questions. She was going to have to give him some tips on how to tell a story in sentences longer than three words. “Did you used to work for them?”
His mouth twisted. “In a way.” The humorless facsimile of a smile dropped away. “I was what they affectionately termed a ‘lab rat.’”
She stared at his rigid profile. “What? They experimented on you? But you’re a person!”
“Mostly.”
“What?”
Calvin switched lanes, his muscles in his face tense. “Never mind. I was in the lab for two years that I remember. Before that’s a blank.”
The more she heard, the more confused she got. “But what about your family? Your friends? Didn’t they get a little upset when you disappeared?”
He twitched one shoulder in a partial shrug. “Not that I heard. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anyone searching, though. We were kept pretty isolated.”
“How’d you get out?” Questions popped into her head faster than she could ask them. “What’d they do to you? What were the experiments meant to accomplish? Your friends—the ones in Colorado—were they with you at that lab? How do you...” At his exasperated glance, Lauren trailed off mid-question. “Sorry, it’s just so...crazy.”
He stiffened, shooting her a look. “It’s fucking true,” he protested.
She shook her head. “I’m not saying you’re crazy. The whole situation is nuts. Mysterious government contractors doing human experiments in a secret lab—it sounds like a comic-book plot.”
“They’re called graphic novels now,” he told her with just enough of a patronizing tone to make Lauren roll her eyes.
“Seriously?” she asked. “You’re going to geek out on me now?”
“I’m not geeking out.” His utterly offended expression made her swallow a laugh, despite the craziness of their conversation. “I’m just saying...” His gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and his mouth got tight.
“What’s wrong?” Glancing over her shoulder, all Lauren could see was normal-looking vehicles.
“We have a tail.” Calvin changed lanes.
“We do?” Turning almost completely around, she stared at the traffic behind them. “How do you know? And which one is it? That red minivan? I don’t know why but I always assume minivans are evil.”
With an amused snort, he said, “No, it’s the black SUV.”
She made a face. “How clichéd of them.” Craning her neck, she caught a glimpse of the suspected tail several vehicles back and mostly hidden behind a cargo van. “How do you know they’re following us? I can barely see them.”
“That experiment shit I was talking about?” he said, going left onto a one-way street.
“Yeah?”
“Part of it included vision enhancements.” He turned into a narrow alley and accelerated.
As her car flew past a Dumpster, just a bare inch away from taking off the passenger-side mirror, Lauren’s hands flew up to cover her eyes. “Vision enhancements? Like laser eye surgery gone mutant?”
“Kind of. It’s like a telephoto lens. I can zoom in on things, like two assholes in a black SUV trying to be inconspicuous about following us and failing.”
Her curiosity overcame her nerves, and she dropped her hands. Twisting around, she saw the SUV turn into the alley.
“They’re right behind us!” After the words were out, she gave a choked laugh. “I sound like a B-grade action-flick character. When did this insanity become my life?”
“When you came down to the mail room to fucking torture me.” Calvin swung right onto the cross street, merging into traffic without slowing down.
“Torture you?” she repeated, a little miffed. “I was very nice to you. I brought you cake.”
“I remember.” His look was hot, so belly-melting, spine-shivering, skin-goose-bumpy hot that Lauren knew she had to change the subject or she’d spontaneously combust into lustful flames.
“How’d they know where we were?” she asked, the words coming out fast and rusty-sounding. She cleared her throat.
“This.” He tapped the screen of her navigation system. “They contacted the company and tracked you using the GPS chip.”
Feeling like her car had betrayed her, Lauren stared at the innocent-appearing screen. “Can we take it out? The GPS chip, I mean?”
“Even better,” he said, turning left on the road they’d been traveling the opposite direction on just minutes before. “We’ll let the motherfuckers keep following it.”
She blinked at him. “How is that better? Are you planning to drive off a cliff or something and hope they follow?”
Calvin’s grin was almost predatory and she felt her heart patter against her ribs. Whether that was from apprehension or simple lust, Lauren wasn’t sure.
“You’ll see.” He moved around another car and sped up a few notches.
Closing her eyes again, she gave a small moan. “Not reassuring, Cal,” she said from between clenched teeth. “Not at all.”
He laughed. “No cliffs for us today. I promise.”
Since he sounded sincere enough, Lauren dared to open her eyes. “What’s your plan, then? Or do I want to know?”
“Depends.” He turned right and then immediately left again, so they were driving down a residential street.
“On what?” She was already pretty sure she didn’t want to know Calvin’s plan. On the upside, he was working on his long-term planning skills finally.
Turning onto a cul-de-sac, he said, “On how literally you take the car-theft laws.”
Chapter Four
Before she could find any response to that comment, he’d pulled up behind an orange VW bus and turned off her car.
“Stay here,” he ordered and got out. Watching as he casually walked to the driver’s door of the bus and pulled it open, Lauren groaned.
“Holy moly,” Lauren muttered as he hopped into the driver’s seat of the bus. “I just keep getting in deeper and deeper. I should move over behind that steering wheel and drive away, leave the tacky-seventies-bus-stealing man and just go back to my normal, happy, slightly boring life and... Oh shit, here he comes.”
He opened the driver’s-side door of her car and pulled the lever to pop the trunk. “Clear all of your personal things out of the glove co
mpartment,” he said before closing his door and moving around to the trunk.
Even as she questioned her own sanity for the hundredth time that day, Lauren did as he asked, pulling everything out of the glove box and checking in the center console and in the back seat. Calvin was transferring all their new belongings to the bus when she got out of the car.
“Put all that in here,” he ordered, opening one of the remaining shopping bags and extending it toward her. She let everything she’d pulled out of her car tumble into the bag as she glanced over her shoulder.
“The assholes won’t come in here,” he said.
“How do you know?” she asked, a little startled when he soothed her unspoken worry.
“They know that we’d see them. They’re still trying to hide the fact that they’re following us. I think they’re hoping I’ll lead them to the others.”
“Oh.” Lauren followed him to the bus. “You left my car keys in the ignition.” The shivery feeling in her stomach told her it hadn’t been an oversight on his part.
“Yeah,” he said as he opened the passenger door for her. “We’re not stealing this VW.”
“We’re not?” Before relief could really take hold, Calvin grinned as he handed her the shopping bags.
“Nope. We’re trading.”
“Trading?” At his nod, she wailed, “But I love my car!”
“After all this is over, I’ll get you a new one,” he promised. “Watch your feet.” She tucked all her body parts into the bus, and he slammed the door. She dropped the bags on the floor behind the front seats.
Circling the flat front of the VW, he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Grab that roll of electrical tape I bought, would you?” he asked. Lauren twisted around and dug through the bags. She emerged triumphant with the tape to see Calvin working with exposed wires beneath the ignition.
As Lauren stared, he twisted a black wire with a red wire before touching the connection with another red wire. A spark made her jump as the engine grumbled to life. He wrapped the tape around the connected wires, holding them in place.
