Lost: Project Xol

by Amabel Daniels

  It took a few tries to get her into the appropriate cruising speed so we weren’t tailing other vehicles or dragging along like slow-pokes. And I had to admit, it was nice to not drive. Unlike being a passenger on the transit bus, this was relaxing. Calming to not be in charge and in command of the trip for once. An hour passed and I was impressed at her catching on so quickly. Actually, she handled the truck for the whole day and into the night. Our plan was Ohio to Texas as fast as possible, and she completed the bulk of it without a complaint.

  She remained at the wheel until it was time to stop for fuel and hopefully food. Night was upon us and I suggested we find somewhere to stay soon. Harlowe University wasn’t too far from us now, but there was no way we’d be able to get into any storage facilities on campus this late.

  Down-shifting wasn’t a smooth process though.

  “You have to balance—”

  “I know,” she got out around a growl. Still, she scowled as she slanted her whole body to press down on the clutch and we lurched forward.

  “You’re going to stall in the middle of the road.”

  The Ford’s engine revved too low as she tried to shift.

  “I am not.”

  “Now. The clutch. Now.”

  She grunted and levered lower. “You do know I’m not as tall as you,” she said. “Right?”

  I slid across the smooth upholstery. I set my hand on her thigh just above her knee and pushed for her to make room. Pressed next to her, I slid my leg along hers to depress the clutch. Her arm was over my lap, her hand still gripping the black knob of the gearstick.

  “Now…” I said again, forcing the clutch pedal down as she shifted, elbowing me in the chest a bit and rubbing against me.

  “I know.”

  “And you know you’re too short. So ask for help when you need it.”

  She snorted. “Like you do?”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? We’d slowed to the next gear and in tandem, we downshifted again.

  “What do I need help with?”

  “I don’t know.” She puffed out a breath, pushing off the flyaway hairs from her eyes. Her bright blue eyes were clear and sparkling in the last traces of sunlight. Hours of refusing to look at her and I’d forgotten how potent her gaze was. Especially sitting this close to her. “Something. If you’re frustrated, it’s not smart to just bottle your anger inside.”

  Anger. What a word. I was angry. At myself, for wanting her. I gripped her firm and slender thigh, wishing I could hold on to her leg with it wrapped around me instead.

  “I have no right asking someone like you for help.” Especially this.

  She wrested her tight grip on the steering wheel, like revving the throttle of the immobile wheel. At the stop sign, she waited for a beat before giving me an intense side-eye. Nope. Nothing on par with the lust I was simmering in as I still kept my hand on her bare flesh, the fringes of her jean shorts teasing my knuckles. I wanted to lean closer under the glare of her fury.

  “Because I’m some incompetent—”

  Where the hell did she get the idea she was less than…anything?

  I cut her off. “Because you don’t deserve the association with someone like me. I don’t even know why you still want me here.”

  She huffed, her eyes squinting like I’d spouted something ridiculous. “The feeling’s mutual.”

  Mutual, meaning…? Yeah. Right. There was no way she’d welcome the filthy thoughts I was bottling up inside.

  “You said you trust me. Well, I do, too—trust you. I trust you even with all your secrets. Why do I want you here?” She shook her head, studying me and then abruptly refusing to meet my gaze. “You even have to ask? Like you haven’t protected me from some wacko cop?”

  She trusted me. Even though I heard her whispered words clearly, loudly in the suffocating silence and stillness of the truck, I couldn’t let her sentiment sink in. She trusted me, yet she hardly knew me. I could say the same for her, but she wasn’t the one with a criminal background.

  I watched her mouth, those perfectly plump pink lips I wanted to taste. Waited for her to take back her statement.

  She licked the lower one and then said, “You might have done something bad…”

  Might have done? No. I had done the unspeakable. I’d taken lives. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be good.”

  Dammit. She just had to paint me up like that, give me the hope I wasn’t scum.

  My attention hadn’t drifted from her lips as she whispered those stupid ideas. I was bad—for her. Yet her face drew closer to mine, or maybe I’d leaned in further. Heat from her leg zapped me, luring me to dig my fingers harder into her flesh, anything to take purchase on this slippery insanity she was urging me toward.

  More. Just another inch and I could show her exactly how this—me, plus her—would end up in another reason proving I was bad news. Because there was nothing gentle in how much I wanted her.

  Her breaths whipped from parted lips, warming my cheek as I couldn’t help but lower to her. Such a stupid, damned idiotic thing to do. Kiss her. Taste her—

  A loud crash of metal on metal jolted us, ripping us apart. Her right arm was still crisscrossed over me like a seat belt as she’d still held the gearstick and I still gripped her thigh. She dropped toward me in the lurch and I wrapped my other arm around her to shield her from the window.

  Darkness had come, and other than two blinding bright headlights, I couldn’t tell what had hit the truck. Had to be another vehicle from the side, since we’d shot to the middle of the bench seat. The loud growling squeal of tires on pavement alerted me that another hit was coming.

  “Let go!” Cassidy screamed at me as she watched the headlights speed toward us, aiming for the driver door. I loosened my hold on her thigh as she kicked it up, trying to free my hand from holding her down.

  She punched her foot to the clutch and shifted to step on it just as the other vehicle slammed into us, sending us skidding toward the slope of the roadside ditch.

  Chapter Six

  Cassidy

  “Cassidy!”

  I blinked my eyes open and registered the painful arch of my back. Tension ached from hunching my shoulders. No. I wasn’t a damn turtle. I couldn’t dip my head under a body shell for protection. But that was exactly what I’d tried to do when I braced for the second hit.

  Hit, as in another goddamn driver trying to force us off the freaking road.

  Are you freaking kidding me? What would be next? I’d been such a fool to think we’d be okay for even a second. And to have been so distracted by Luke, waiting for him to just kiss—

  “Cassidy!”

  Luke grabbed my shoulder. His panted breaths came fast and hard at my temple. I’d not only hunkered down at the vehicular impact, but I’d also gotten tossed nearly into his lap.

  “Wake up!”

  Oh. He thought I’d hit my head. Again. “Right here,” I answered loud and clear. The Ford’s engine was rumbling as steadily as it had been since we’d picked it up in Cincinnati. Yards away, the drone of another idling engine sounded like an ominous enemy.

  I slowly raised my head, peering out the window. How had it not shattered or even cracked? I doubted tempered glass was a standard at the time this vehicle was manufactured.

  Across the intersection, another truck waited. Its hood was crumpled and smashed in, evidence of the collision. Smoke rose and curled, illuminated wraiths of an engine May Day. Yet the door remained in working order because it swung open. A booted foot stepped to the pavement, a sturdy long leg in jeans following.

  Someone was getting out…

  “Move. Move over.” Luke pulled at me, urging me to crawl over his lap and to the passenger side. So stunned and stuck as I was in staring at the person who’d tried to ram us off the road, I couldn’t even blink.

  “Cassidy!”

  I flinched, snapping to. I couldn’t stop staring, my eyes focused o
n the person—man—exiting the car. In the shadows of the night, a lone streetlamp flickered behind him. I could barely make out his silhouette. Tall. Muscled. Dark buzz-cut hair.

  I gasped as I scrambled to allow Luke behind the wheel, his muttered curses hardly a blip on my radar.

  The man stood fully, cracked his neck, and bent to retrieve something in his destroyed truck. He straightened, a firearm in his hand. Then he strode toward us as Luke jimmied with the gearstick.

  No… “Michael.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Luke spat the question as he concentrated on getting us out of there. With him in the driver’s seat, I couldn’t guess what the hiccup could be. Yet he scowled and then grimaced as he tried to drive off. Splatters of mud slapped noisily behind us and it was only then that I realized we were at a lopsided angle. We’d been maneuvered almost into the ditch.

  Heart hammering, I let go of my hold on Luke’s bicep. He needed no distraction from me. Get us out of here! If he couldn’t, then I wanted all the head start we could at running away.

  The man approached us, walking with no limp, no hesitance, despite the shattered windshield and totaled truck he distanced himself from. In a branch of dim light, I caught a glimpse of the sheen of liquid on his forehead. Blood? He must have hit his head. Still, he came to us, raising his arm. The Ford’s wheels spun and whinnied at the rotations. Nothing doing.

  “Hurry, Luke. Hur—”

  A gunshot fired. I ducked and Luke crouched over, still pressing his foot to the pedal.

  Like a goddamn robot, the man stalked toward us in the old Ford stuck on the muddy slope.

  He cracked his neck in the opposite direction he had the first time, and I squinted. Was it Michael? He didn’t have the same cleft chin. Or was that my imagination? Such a stupid, minor detail, but I couldn’t dismiss it. Of course this was Michael. Who the hell else could it be? More minions? Regardless of who…

  “How does he know where we are?” I muttered.

  Weren’t we untraceable? Using these burners and avoiding security cameras? How? How could this asshole still be on our trail? How had he ever been able to find us?

  He raised his gun again. Luke must have chanced a glance in the mirror because he said, “Fuck,” on a low growl. Instead of sitting in place, the truck rolled back as Luke slammed us into neutral, dipping us into the mud hole the tires had dug. As soon as we’d rocked back, he pulled on the gear again, sending us even closer to the gun aimed our way.

  Reverse? I held my breath and slammed my hand to the dashboard to brace myself in the unexpected direction.

  Like a steel tank, the old truck shot back over the hole we’d been stuck in. Luke spun the wheel to whip us onto the roadside.

  A guttural yell sounded as we probably came damn near backing over the man. Gunshots popped as we tried to leave. Luke dropped us into first gear, and with a little swivel of hot tires on pavement, we dug in and sped off down the road.

  Only once we were a good distance away, some miles from the intersection, did I let myself inhale a proper breath. It came in as a gasp. Dizzy from the fear, I willed my heart to slow.

  Luke kept his attention scanning around us—on the road ahead, glancing to the side streets we passed, and darting peeks into the rearview mirror. He swiped a hand through his hair and exhaled shakily. “You okay?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard. Yep. Yup. Okay. Just another adrenaline rush. One more freakish attempt of my life. Again, I nodded. Now the shakes and trembles would come as I realized I’d live.

  For now.

  “Are you okay?” he repeated harder.

  Right. Nods are silent. Whoopsie. “Yeah.” I blinked fast as I wiped my sweaty palms on my jean cutoffs. “You?”

  “As good as I’ll get.”

  I slanted him a look, my brows raised as high as they could go. “As good as you’ll get?” Like that was nothing? Just another oddity of life anyone could experience? My naivety was once again so obvious.

  Hell, he’d been in prison. Maybe that little bumper car game back there was nothing for him. It was damned frightening enough for me, though.

  “Peachy.” I slumped then, taking faith in Luke’s relaxing stance that the smoking truck that had hit us wouldn’t be gunning after us anytime soon.

  “Was it really him?” he asked as he turned onto another side street.

  I shrugged then remembered Luke wouldn’t hear that answer either. “I think so?”

  “So he’s following us.”

  How? I wanted to scream it. I was no expert at stealth, but how could that man still be following us? We hadn’t seen him since New York. Luke wasn’t the only one constantly surveying our surroundings. Maybe I didn’t really know what to look for, but I was sure I could spot one freakishly determined killer cop.

  “One would assume.”

  Luke grunted at my snappy answer.

  “Unless he’s got someone else doing the dirty work for him.”

  Which, we already knew he had. The men I’d witnessed entering Rosa’s apartment just before it blew up attested to Michael having backup of some kind. Yet…who were they? Cops? Feds? Alien cowboys?

  I scrubbed at my face, annoyed and frankly tired of this constant fear dipped in unknowns. Why, I got that part. I’d had intel related to Project Xol and I was en route to retrieve more. That had to be what Michael was hunting me for.

  We’d changed vehicles. Hadn’t used credit cards. New burner phones. No contact to anyone associated with Project Xol. Rosa was still AWOL, only contacting me via snail mail. Yeah, I’d used my phone for a few minutes of browsing about Scott, but I’d reset the device and only used Zero’s redirected links. I didn’t know anyone else involved with the secretive, maybe-miraculous cancer research—

  Luke does.

  Luke was an acquaintance, albeit an indirect one, of Dale Hanson, CEO of Daysun, the original funder of the research. I glanced at the ex-con next to me and waited for it. Some gut instinct to point a finger at me with an aha! Yet, nothing came. I stared at him, wondering if he could be some link to any of this, but I knew it was a fluke theory. He was probably the only innocent soul messed up in this.

  “But… How the hell is he following us?”

  He sighed and reclined a little more in his seat. “Gotta be tracking us somehow.”

  I reared back and stared at him. Tracking us? Like with a chip? If he’d slipped something on my car, that was left behind, as was our second means of transportation—Luke’s bike. Now they had made the truck, too?

  “How?”

  He sighed even longer this time. Yeah, I was repeating myself. Did I have to pull his thoughts from his head now?

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been hunted like this before.”

  Neither had I. Hence, questions galore. “You mean like he stuck something inside of us? A microchip?” It had to be us, not the cars.

  “No. He didn’t cut me anywhere to implant anything.”

  Au contraire, Michael had cut Luke in the process of punching him when they’d wrestled. Twice. The first gash on Luke’s cheek was nearly healed, but then our run-in with the shady cop at New York’s subway station had resulted in injury number two. God. How the poor man was getting beat up over me. It sickened me.

  “You?” He straightened in his seat, glancing at me more than just once in a while now. His brows slanted as he seemed to consider the possibility.

  There had been plenty of blood shed that night at Rosa’s apartment, but it’d been mostly Michael’s not mine. “No.”

  “What about his wallet?” he asked.

  I shook my head, saying, “Gone. I put it in the glove box in my car. So it’s still back in the garage at that house.”

  “Well”—he huffed, or maybe it was a cover-up for a yawn—“let’s find somewhere to stay for the night. We can dump out the bag and make sure there’s nothing else that he could be tracking us by.” He sucked in a breath suddenly.

  “What? What is it?”

  �
��I still have his knife,” he admitted.

  I frowned. Of course he had Michael’s knife. We’d agreed it was better served in his possession than mine.

  “It’s all we have for defense, but…” He groaned lightly.

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe it has a tracker on it somehow.”

  Ah. A chip on a knife? How? Like if it was embedded in the handle or something? “Let me see it.” I wasn’t a security expert, but I was certainly curious now.

  He shifted his hips and pulled the knife out. The wood and metal casing was warm from being under Luke’s ass and I ignored the visual of those fine muscles. I pressed a mechanism and the blade thwacked out. Keeping the point away from me, I used the flashlight on my phone to peer inside the sheath space. Nothing stood out. Everything was smooth, flat, and likely how it was after being manufactured.

  “Well…” I closed it and gave it back to him. It was just a knife, but it was better than nothing, right? There was no denying the fact I felt safer knowing he had it. “I’d hate to give it up.”

  “Me too.” He put it back in his pocket.

  “I didn’t see anything on it.”

  He shrugged. Yeah. Me not seeing anything didn’t mean much. Michael and these Xol people were…crafty.

  “Let’s stick to the plan. Get a room and check what’s in the bag.”

  “Okay.” Because what other options did we have? Another night on the run, or…another night on the run. It made sense to stop now though. If he was crashing from the excitement and roller coaster of another encounter with Michael, he didn’t need to be behind the wheel anymore. Besides, we’d cruised past the majority of Harlowe University around dusk. No offices in the library or archives department would be operating that late. We had no choice but to wait until tomorrow.

  Luke drove around town, seeking out another “safe enough” motel that would be seedy enough to not be top-notch in security. While he drove, I searched for Harlowe on my burner and mapped out exactly where we’d need to head in the morning. The Biological Sciences Department had just moved its archive and staff periodicals to the main library, so that was our destination. I prided myself in that small step of preparation as we pulled in to park in a lot.