“They—” A rhythm of whump-whump cut her off. More background noise.
Is that a helicopter? “Where are you?”
“I’ll try …” Static again. “Promise me.”
“Yes.” Shit, I didn’t even know what I was vowing to do now, or if I could even pull it off, whatever it was. But I’d try. I’d always try.
“ … ise me. … it safe. You have to … safe.”
“I will.”
“Hend—” Muffled cries of wind. “… help you.”
Hendrick will help me. Fine. Great. But— “Where is he?” Where are you?
“I … ove … you.”
“Rosa!”
The call ended.
Faint zooms of faster cars and drones of engine brakes sounded as we hit another spot of congestion. My breaths petered out against the phone, fogging it. I hadn’t realized I’d brought it so close to my face.
I love you, too. I wrenched my eyes shut and pressed the phone to my heart.
Was that a goodbye? One final chance to tell me?
Tears stung at my eyes but I opened them and wiped away the moisture.
I love you too. Luke reached out to grip my free hand. That was all it took. One touch. A single reminder. I wasn’t alone in this, and dammit, he was right. I was strong. I’d be a goddamn warrior woman and slay Rosa’s enemies for her.
Tell me. Luke had slapped me to sense. I couldn’t wallow in my head. Bottle up and overwhelm with these too turbulent emotions.
“Hendrick,” I said, confirming he’d heard what I said.
He nodded, keeping his steely gaze on the road, checking the mirrors. “That’s a guy, right? Not a place.”
“Her RA.”
“Research assistant?”
He remembered. Zero had said he’d been trying to find him and hadn’t had luck. “Yes. He’s worked with her for years.” I touched the shorter tips of my hair, amazed at how light it felt. Air brushed the back of my neck and I resisted a shiver. “I’m surprised he’s not with her. She didn’t always travel with him on trips, but for longer stretches, they at least met up. He practically lived in the labs with her.”
“She said they’re on to her. I’m betting she’s hiding just like we are.”
I nodded. “At least they declared her dead. Probably an easier guise than being wanted.”
He snorted. “She said she.”
“Huh?” I frowned at him, finally lowering the phone to the cupholder.
“She said she thought they wouldn’t remember.”
I chewed on my lip. “Remember what, though?”
“And then she said ‘she won’t stop until they get you.’”
She. They. Me. Not us. Did she think I was alone? Or was Luke not a target, just along for my ride to hell.
“About time,” Luke muttered dryly, turning on the signal to go right. I glanced at the exit sign. We were closer to the café. Yeah, it was about time. Then again, maybe I’d stalled us in the bathroom for a minute—or five.
I touched my finger to my lips that still tingled from the branding power of his kiss.
Not now, Cassie. Not. Now.
Before I could ponder this phone call from Rosa or fall into a bit of daydreaming about exploring more of this heat with Luke, his burner beeped. A call this time.
He handed the phone to me and I answered. “Z.”
“What’d she say?”
“How’d you know she was calling?”
“My question first.”
Pushy. I relayed the phone call, with Luke inserting his ideas of what he’d overheard. Between the interruptive noises and the weak reception, we seemed to have gotten the gist of it.
“How’d you know she was going to call?” I asked again as we slowed on something of a side street. Businesses popped up at a steadier rate the further we drove from the congested highway, but it wasn’t an overly claustrophobic metropolis. Still, we’d need to be careful. “And how’d she get that number?” The best I could remember, Rosa had never met Zero or even known who my landlord and friend was.
“She left a voicemail on my business number.”
“The hacker-for-hire one?”
Zero huffed. “No. My legit, normal office line as owner and manager of our apartment building.”
Our apartment building. Home. A pang of homesickness almost pierced me at this reminder of what I was coming to consider my “former life.” BPX. Before Project Xol. It was odd, though. I hadn’t really thought about my place in all these days of belonging nowhere.
“She was looking for you, so I immediately called her back and gave her this number.”
“How’d you know it was Rosa?” Luke asked.
I didn’t take his retort as an accusation. He was simply that direct. And quick.
Zero had a reply ready. “I’ve listened to a few of her interviews since I’ve been on this case. I recognized her voice.”
An incredulous laugh bubbled up. Case. He was referring to the mess of our lives as a case? So…objective.
“And she knew where your birthmark was.”
I grimaced. “I don’t have one.”
“She knew where you’d tried to give yourself one.”
I rolled my eyes at his jab. It was a stupid story about me trying out rebel as a teenager and wanting a tattoo. I’d gotten one on my thigh, courtesy of a real rebel of a classmate who’d googled DIY tat guns. I’d tried to lie to Rosa about it when it was infected—claiming it was a birthmark she’d never noticed. I was that bad of a liar.
Luke raised his brows at me.
“It’s a long, stupid story.”
“But funny,” Zero added.
“Let’s have comedy hour another day, shall we?” Zero was the only person I’d ever shared that story with, and the fact he’d used that as a test to prove Rosa was who she’d claimed to be was enough for me to be convinced. Besides, it was her who’d tried to talk to me minutes ago.
“Yes. Raincheck on that, girlie. Are you done with the zip drives yet?”
Luke laughed. “No.”
Heat spread up my cheeks. Even his gruff rumble of a laugh was sexy. And the fact he was amused about why we were behind schedule…well. Uh…it was my fault, getting carried away in that manner.
“We were stuck in traffic. We’re pulling up to the place now.” He shifted into park and turned the engine off.
Zero tsked. “O-kay. Then go. I’m gonna work on tracing her calls. Later.”
Shouldering the backpack, I checked that my hood was up and my glasses weren’t slipping down my nose. I met Luke on the sidewalk, keeping my face tilted down.
He took my hand and we went inside.
Just like the seedy black-painted interior of the pay-as-you-go internet café in New York City, this place was a morbidly unwelcoming dump. Instead of feeling like we’d walked into a photo lab’s darkroom, we entered metal-bands-lover paradise. I recognized a couple of the groups on the posters tacked to the walls. The entire surface of all four sides of the narrow room were covered with band posters.
An unpredictable crashing beat of too many unsynchronized instruments blared from the back of the café. Luke pointed at a computer that showed an adhesive number stuck on the top frame of the monitor. It was one of the PCs Zero had instructed us to use. Only one of the pair. We were using two computers that my friend had remotely commandeered because the zip drive transfers would likely be slow.
We immediately logged in with the info Zero had sent us and began plugging away. He took half of the stack and I started on the remainder.
“I’m surprised these still have the drive for these disks,” I commented. I didn’t really use them, but I’d seen them in Rosa’s office when I was little.
Luke shrugged, scanning the room and the rest of the computers. We were the only customers in here. The employee at the help desk wore dark sunglasses and seemed to be passed out. Probably from the six beer cans littering the counter he had his head on. A snore rent the air. Yup. In la-la l
and.
“Looks like everything in here might be a hand-me-down,” he said.
“Yeah.” All the computers were of the battered, older model variety.
In silence, we slipped the disks in the drives. I’d gotten through seven of them before Luke broke the quiet spell. “So this birthmark…”
“Don’t…” I warned lowly.
He chuckled lowly.
I didn’t want to tell him exactly where it was or what it was supposed to resemble. I wanted to show him. To show him a lot of me, preferably somewhere where he could reveal more of his hard body to me.
Like on a bed. Backseat of the car. Anywhere will do—
“What’s on your mind over there?” he asked. He swiveled his chair to face me, bumping his knee into the cushion of my chair. “You’ve been kind of quiet.”
I slanted a side-eye at him. I hadn’t even taken the time to thank him for what felt like a much-needed bitch slap back to reality at that rest stop. He’d pushed my buttons and forced me to let out my worries. If he hadn’t taken a no-nonsense approach with me like that, I would’ve still been shell-shocked and mired with too many emotions. Distracted, which wasn’t smart for our need to stay alert.
Well, I’d showed what I thought of him by kissing him.
Unbidden, I dropped my gaze to his lips. That firm, soft flesh that demanded more. As I stared, one corner of his mouth curved up. Giving me that puddle-rendering charming half-grin.
I blinked and lazily made eye contact. “Oh. This and that.”
He almost turned from me, alerted by the flash of a dialog box disappearing on his monitor. Another disk transferred. I watched his corded arms flex as he replaced the copied one for another.
I’d been holding my breath slightly, riding on a simmering tension of impatience as we downloaded the disks. Anything could happen. We were vulnerable here, dealing with such explosive, coveted intel. Now, as he brought his intense gaze back to me, he murmured. “This and that?” I wanted to whimper at the hot onceover he dragged from my new hair to my chest. “Mmm. My thoughts exactly.”
Oh. Mama. Mia.
I parted my lips, needing a full breath under the bolt of lust he zapped me with. His eyes. Just the full hit of those dark pools of want had me desperate for him. How much darker could his gaze get? Would he—
Darkness flickered on my monitor. The download progress box faded away. I sighed at the disruption to my thoughts. My need. Just as well. As horny as I could be, we needed to prioritize here. Get these files to Zero and then… Well, that remained to be seen.
About a half-hour later, as my excitement of a potential success teased me to fidget in my chair, Luke heaved out a deep breath. “That’s my last one.”
I licked my lips, tapping my finger on the kind of nasty, stained mousepad. I’d put the last of my stack in the PC too. We were there. So close to one step of this search for answers. “Ditto.”
In no time, we were stacking the zip disks back into the cardboard box. I glanced up at the deadbeat still sleeping in the back of the room. From this distance, I could see the shine of drool pooling on his sleeve from where he’d used his arm as a pillow.
“Ready?” Luke asked, shoving to his feet and wincing briefly. He put weight on his leg, easing the stiffness from sitting.
We’d copied the files, uploaded them to the cloud storage Zero gave us, and then we opened the email with a link he’d instructed us to download. A black screen with small, green script pulled up. Rows and rows of gibberish streamed across the screen and I realized we’d activated a bug. Probably something to erase the activity we’d done on the machines. Guilt didn’t even faze me. The damage was a necessity for the greater good.
Luke took my hand and I didn’t like how much he pulled on my arm. It wasn’t painful. My other arm was the one that had taken the graze of the bullet. His lopsided gait merely proved how much he had to be hurting.
“I’ll drive,” I said as we approached the SUV. I checked that the license plate was still concealed with mud. Luke grunted in reply. His face remained lowered as his eyes roved back and forth, taking in our surroundings.
“Maybe you can take a nap?” I suggested.
Another deep grunt. Maybe he loathed this vulnerability. “I think a nap is going to take me.” He rubbed at his forehead.
It was settled then. Besides, we didn’t have anything else to do until Zero gave us a destination.
Back in the SUV, we ate the last of our convenience-store-quality protein bars. Even though they were bruised, we finished off the last pair of bananas and apples. We’d need to stock up soon. Maybe with a little more to last this time.
As I drove away from the café, Luke slouched to the window and closed his eyes. I glanced at him every other minute or so. His yawns came quicker together and longer until he finally nodded off.
With no idea where to go, I hopped on a highway, avoiding Big Brother’s presence in small towns.
After twenty-some minutes of driving, my burner phone rang. I answered and hit the button for speakerphone. “Z. Did you get all of it?”
“I did. You bugged the computers?”
“Yes, sir.”
He chuckled at my sass. “I prefer Commander. It’s going to take me a while to check this out.”
I realized it wouldn’t be an instantaneous undertaking. Zero worked alone and he was poking through lots of stuff. Finding Hendrick. Locating Rosa’s last whereabouts. Digging for info on Ryan. And Michael. Researching everything to do with Project Xol. It was a lot. While Luke and I hadn’t opened any of the files from Scott’s archives—because we’d wanted to focus on the downloading and transferring of them to Zero—I noticed there were spreadsheet extensions and documents. Many listed abbreviations that made no sense. Perhaps more patient files? When I’d skimmed the list of contents and picked out some docs labeled with the word journal, I was sorely tempted to read them.
“I’ll give you the rundown as soon as I can.”
“I know.” I nodded. I could count on him. He knew how much I liked to solve puzzles and he wouldn’t keep me waiting for the hell of it. Plus, those disks held an abundance of material. Nothing that would be a quick, light read. But it didn’t mean I had to be one hundred percent patient.
Maybe Luke’s rubbing off on me. I smirked at the gruff yet gentle man sleeping in the passenger seat. And maybe he can rub—
“In the meantime,” Zero said, breaking my chain of illicit thoughts. “Head north. We’ve been lucky so far that Wyatt didn’t see the license plate for the car. But the make and model are in that APB. I’m trying to find a new car again near your next stop.”
The man was a mastermind of interference. How would I ever be able to repay him? “Which is…where?” Driving random highways wasn’t exactly fun. Staying on the go would make us harder to track and capture, but having an end-point, even a temporary one, would give me a small sense of purpose.
“A house in Cantan Township. In Oklahoma.”
I frowned. Where the hell was that? What was there?
“Heading north is the smarter plan. The closer you are to the border, the more chances of security and law enforcement.”
Fair enough.
“A house, though?” Wouldn’t a private property be risky? Whose was it? Could we be found there?
“It belongs to a…let’s say an acquaintance of mine.”
“A friend?”
“A colleague.”
“Another hacker?”
“Girlie—”
I rolled my eyes. “I trust you. I just want to know a little more. I’m blind here.”
“Someone I worked with in the past. Or for. It’s a safehouse of sorts.”
All right. I’d have to take his word for it. Names weren’t necessary and maybe the lack of them would be a safety measure.
“I’ll text you directions. You’ve dumped a lot of intel in my lap. I can’t be sloppy, can’t rush this. And it might be a couple of days before I can pin Hendrick.”<
br />
Can. Not if. Zero’s confidence gave me a boost of faith. We would find Hendrick.
“Get some supplies. Rest. Stay alert, but maybe you guys can take it easy for a short while for a change.”
“Take it easy?” I challenged dryly. He had a point. Holing up somewhere safe sounded like heaven. Luke surely needed to recover and not overdo his leg.
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll do our best.”
“Oh, and Cassie?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t forget condoms.” He let out a naughty giggle and hung up.
Even if Zero hadn’t put images of me and Luke naked and requiring protection, I would have fallen into that rabbit hole anyway. For the rest of the tank of gas, I distracted myself with daydreams of the bare-skinned and lust-driven Luke kind. Every time I chewed on my lip, I recalled his kisses. Heat pooled low in my belly and I clenched my legs closer together.
When I stopped for gas and supplies, Luke jerked awake.
Even though he was still sleepy-eyed and yawning, he insisted on going in the small store to purchase everything. Needed to move his leg, he explained. After he returned to the car, I ducked into the bathroom. In-and-out, we left the gas station, loaded for more driving, this time with him at the wheel. I took a page out of his book because as soon as the highway mileage added up again, I was lulled to sleep.
I woke to Luke patting my leg. Blinking, I scooted to sit up. Darkness had fallen, and at first, I thought maybe we’d needed to stop for gas again. God. A day not being in a car would be so awesome. I cracked the stiffness from my neck, taking in our surroundings.
“Where are we?”
We were crawling through a line of cars. Traffic again? I frowned, spotting lights on a portable road-service banner ahead. Letters were dotted in, announcing something ahead. A D and part of another letter were all I could read with the truck up ahead blocking it.
More importantly, why did he wake me up? I glanced at him and instantly snapped to.
His stern expression chilled me.
“What’s going on?”
“I got lost with some detours a while back.”
Damn. If only we could use navigation or have smartphones again.
“And I thought I was heading back to the highway, but I got stuck on these one-way streets.”
Find: Project Xol Page 7
