“Where are we going to go?” I ask him.
“Now? You’re asking me about this now?”
He reaches down for another kiss but I press my finger to his lips, keeping him at bay with a smile.
“Now. While you’re properly motivated.”
“You drive me crazy,” he objects, trying again for a kiss that I deny him.
“Didn’t hear you complaining about that last night.”
I remove myself from his lap with a wicked grin, trailing my hand across his arms. He grunts, half frustration, half amusement, and rolls his head back to watch me.
“Come on, oh masterful tactician. Where do we go from here?”
“Did you hear that?” He twists his head right to the window.
“Yeah, nice try. Just admit you don’t have all the answers.”
He shakes his head and cocks an ear towards the door. I freeze. He’s serious. And that’s when I hear it. The low, throaty rumble of an engine.
I straighten up in a heartbeat, casting a frantic look around the room. My eyes fix on the gun we stole from AbGen and I snatch it up. Scott can’t shoot left-handed. The noise grows louder as I slide the magazine into the well and chamber a round. A car engine, and it’s close.
“No messing around, Anna. The first sign of trouble, you shift out.”
Like I’m going to do that. I ignore him and press my back up against the wall beside the door. Scott joins me, though I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to do with no weapon and his hand still out of action. Then again, he managed to take Marcus down. I frown as a thought strikes me.
“You can’t sense anything?” I breathe, my voice barely a whisper. He shakes his head in response and my frown deepens. Whoever’s coming, they’re not an absa. Did AbGen send a team made up entirely of handlers so Scott couldn’t feel them coming? More importantly, how the hell did they find us out here?
The rumble of the engine cuts off abruptly. I strain my ears, listening for the sounds of the team surrounding us above the pounding of my heart. I can just make out the crunch of footsteps on the cottage’s uneven track. But it only sounds like one pair. The rest of them must be going round the back. My fingers are itching to peel back the curtain a crack and look out into the falling darkness, but I don’t dare move from this spot. The footsteps come closer. There’s a scraping in the lock – a lock pick? – and the door starts to edge inwards. It gets halfway before Scott’s left hand snakes through it. He pulls back, dragging a figure inside and slamming him against the wall. Damn, he’s strong. His foot kicks the door shut and I lurch forward, jamming my gun against the figure’s head.
I take him in with a glance – male, fit, no radio in his ear, weapon in his hand is… a baseball bat? It tumbles to the floor as the man’s wide eyes take me in.
“Anna, stop!”
I snap my head round to Scott. He releases the intruder and steps back.
“What’s going on?”
The man, wisely, says nothing, but he’s not acting like any agent I’ve ever met. Who the hell breaches a holed-up subject with a damned baseball bat? I kick it aside anyway, because weird doesn’t translate as trustworthy.
“It’s Peter,” Scott says. “He owns this place.”
I stare from one man to the other for a long moment, breathing heavily, before I lower the gun and step back, still keeping a wary eye on our visitor while my brain catches up. The owner. I guess there was always a chance he’d get wind we were camping out down here. Probably just as well I didn’t shoot him.
“Scott,” Peter says stiffly, inclining his head a fraction in greeting. “Who’s your friend?”
“Uh, this is Anna. We needed a place to lie low for a couple of days.”
“Hi.” I give him an embarrassed smile and a little wave with the hand that isn’t currently wrapped around a gun. “Want some coffee?”
I put the kettle on while Peter explains that he’d come to check the place out after a friend had seen smoke coming from the chimney. Squatters are a bigger problem than you’d expect in this part of the country, apparently.
“So how do you two know each other?” I ask, passing a steaming mug to Scott’s friend. He shoots a quick glance at Scott, who nods.
“She’s clued in.”
I stiffen, almost spilling my coffee, because I’ve got an uneasy feeling in my stomach about where this is going. There’s only one secret I’m clued in on.
“I used to be a handler at AbGen.”
He must see the alarm on my face because he quickly adds,
“I haven’t been back there in years.”
I guess the handler retirement package is a little better than the one they offer absas. Makes sense, I guess. They can always train more handlers. Sucks to be wanted.
“I take it you two don’t work there anymore, either?” Peter says, watching us carefully over the rim of his mug. His eyes flicker briefly to Scott’s damaged hand cradled in his lap. I don’t know how much we can trust him, so I leave Scott to do the talking.
“We’re exploring other options,” Scott says. “Maybe you can help. Have you ever heard of something called the Ishmaelians?”
Peter considers it for a moment, then shakes his head.
“Sorry, can’t say I have. You might try speaking to Carson.”
“Derrick Carson?”
Peter nods, then drains the rest of his coffee from his cup and sets it aside.
“I should get going. Those tracks are treacherous after dark.”
He pushes himself up from the armchair and heads for the door. Once he reaches it, he turns back and looks at us both.
“You two are welcome to stay here as long as you like, but I don’t want to get tangled up with AbGen again. If they start asking about you, I won’t lie. But I won’t be the one to contact them.”
“Thanks,” Scott says, clasping hands with the man. “I – we – appreciate it.”
“Any time. Just don’t make a habit of it.” He looks over at me. “Anna, it was nice meeting you.”
“And you. Sorry about, you know, the gun thing.”
His lips curve up into a brief smile and he thumps a fist over his heart.
“Helps to keep the old ticker beating.”
The door closes behind him, and I set my mug down with a sigh. That was too close for comfort.
“Do you trust him?”
Scott nods and sinks back into the worn sofa.
“He won’t tell anyone we’re here. But we shouldn’t stick around for too much longer. Every day we stay puts him in more danger.”
“Then,” I say, curling up on the sofa next to him, “I take it we have a plan now?”
“We’re heading north, first thing tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll track down Carson and see if he knows anything about the Ishmaelians.”
Yeah, the Ishmaelians. I lean my head back. Whatever, whoever that might be. A place? An organisation? A damned rock band? Our best chance of bringing down AbGen, I know that much. And maybe our only chance of surviving Gardiner’s legacy. Or the fastest way of getting ourselves killed.
“What about Joe? Maybe he managed to convince the others that–”
Scott cuts me off with a shake of his head.
“If it was safe, he’d have reached out to us by now.”
“How? By sending a raven?” I gesture to the room around us. “We’re a little off the grid out here. Even Peter only stumbled across us by chance.”
“He’d have found a way. A TV report or an article in the newspaper.”
“Oh.”
I drop my head onto Scott’s shoulder. We’re silent for a moment until I say, in a quiet voice,
“We don’t have to look for them.”
Scott smooths a lock of my hair aside so he can see my face.
“We can’t run forever.”
“We could,” I object. Because if running looks like this, the two of us holed up somewhere together, then I’d run for an eternity. I sigh. “But it’s not just abou
t us.”
He nods. We’ve both left friends behind, friends we can’t risk getting in touch with, friends who deserve to know the truth about AbGen, and never will. Not if we keep running.
“Up north?” I ask, and he answers me with a nod.
“First thing tomorrow.”
A mischievous grin returns to my eyes, and I place my palm onto his firm chest.
“That means we’ve still got tonight.”
I close my lips over his, and the rest of the world ceases to exist. No AbGen, no absas and handlers, no Ishmaelians. Just me and Scott. Just two people who love each other. We’re safe, and we’re together, and nothing else matters.
A note from the author
Thank you for sharing the first step of Anna’s journey with me. To find out what happens next, be sure to check out TALENTBORN:EXILED, book two in the TALENTBORN series.
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Other Titles By C.S Churton
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Awakening (TalentBorn Book 1) Page 18