by Katie Allen
“Holy cow,” she breathed. “We’re seriously stealing this bus.”
“Trading,” he corrected as the vehicle rolled forward. “Just for a while. So we’re borrowing it, actually. The owners can use your car in the meantime.”
“This is so wrong,” Lauren breathed. “I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket—okay, so maybe I did get that one speeding ticket, but still—and now I’m a car thief. What the hell happened?”
“You’re not a car thief. More of an accessory,” he said, not sounding nearly concerned enough about her descent into a felonious lifestyle as she would’ve hoped.
She closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall back against the seat—the stolen seat. “Thanks,” she told him mournfully. “That’s so much better.”
“Lauren.” His voice was serious. She opened her eyes to look at him. “We needed to do this. There was no choice. They can’t fucking get you.”
Taking a deep breath, she said firmly, “They can’t get either of us.” She shoved the whole stolen-car issue to the back of her mind to be morally ambiguous about later. Glancing out the passenger window, she grabbed the edge of the seat. “Hey, Cal, I don’t think we’re supposed to be on this.”
He was turning the VW onto a paved jogging path that connected with the cul-de-sac. The path wasn’t narrow, but the bus still took up the entire width. The side mirror next to Lauren came just inches from hitting the “No Motor Vehicles” sign next to the path.
Calvin didn’t look too concerned. “No other way out except this and the way we came in.”
“And they’re waiting for us where we came in.” Lauren sighed. Driving on the path suddenly seemed to be the lesser of the evils. “I just hope no one picks right this moment to come flying down the path on rollerblades.”
“In just a half mile, we’ll be back on the road,” Calvin said.
That half mile seemed much longer as Lauren held her breath around every turn, terrified they were about to smoke some luckless exerciser. It wasn’t until they eased between the trail signs onto an actual street that she relaxed.
Calvin shot her a cryptic look and then focused on the road again.
“What?” she asked.
Shifting in his seat, he rolled his shoulders back and gave her another glance, as if debating whether or not to tell her. “Why do you believe me?” he finally asked. “You said yourself that this sounds all kinds of crazy.”
She considered that, a little surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I just do. I mean, I’ve had a few moments today when I’ve wondered about my sanity. Deep down, though, I’ve always believed you.”
“But I’ve pretty much acted like an asshole the entire time you’ve known me,” he said, making her grin.
“True.” She laughed when he looked offended. “Asshole or not, I kind of like you for some crazy reason. Plus, those fake NSA guys seemed pretty shady, even before I heard them talking about needles and babies and crazy doctors and kidnapping me.”
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Want to hear the rest of my fucked-up story?”
“Definitely.”
“There were four other men trapped in that hell of a lab with me.” He turned onto the entrance ramp to the freeway. “We didn’t even know our real names. The doctors referred to us by our numbers, and the asshole guards called us lab rats or—”
“LRs!” Lauren interrupted as another memory of the intruders’ discussion surfaced. “That’s what one of the guys in my apartment called you.”
“Right.” He grimaced at the mention of the fake-NSA guy. “The five of us named each other. Our lab ID was the study number plus a letter. My letter was C, so they called me Calvin.”
“So that is your real name, then?” Before he could answer, she corrected herself. “I mean, the same name your lab buddies gave you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” At his surprised glance, she shrugged and smiled. “You’re Calvin to me now. It would’ve been hard to think of you by another name if it had just been an alias.”
“Scott—my last name—is an alias,” he said. “Calvin’s as real as I can remember.”
“So what exactly did they do to you?” she asked tentatively. “Besides the bionic-eye thing.”
Instead of answering, he scrubbed a hand over his hair and then made a face. “I’m not used to it being so short.”
Lauren smiled. “It looks good, if I do say so myself.”
There was a brief silence as Calvin focused on the road a little too intently. “They did a bunch of shit. Sensory enhancements—like the ‘bionic-eye thing,’ data-processing implants, carbon-fiber bone and muscle reinforcements, things like that.”
She could only stare at him, her mouth open. “Things like that?” she finally managed to sputter. “Cal, they made you into the Terminator!”
“No,” he shot back so sharply that Lauren knew she’d unintentionally struck a nerve. “The Terminator was a robot made to look like a person. I’m a person, only with...additions.”
She slowly shook her head side to side. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you a robot. I’m just... It’s just so...amazing!”
After a moment, he jerked his chin in a short nod and focused out the windshield again. “That’s okay. I know it’s a lot to process.”
Twisting toward him, she grinned. As the information sank in, her brain was lighting up with questions and possibilities. “This is so cool! So, since you had that sensory-enhancement thingy, you can hear really well too?”
He nodded. “Sight, hearing, and smell were all improved.”
“Not taste?” When he shook his head, she was a little disappointed. “Too bad, although that makes sense. Your delight in a corn dog doesn’t help you save the world, does it?”
Instead of laughing at her joke, he stiffened, his expression freezing into hard, cold lines. “Those fuckheads didn’t do this to save the world.”
“Why did they do this?” Lauren asked curiously. “I can’t imagine all those years of research on you guys was cheap. They must’ve had an end-game strategy.”
“We were meant to be soldiers—assassins really,” he explained tightly, one hand gripping the steering wheel with enough force to whiten his knuckles. “All that shit those assholes did to us was to make us better killing machines. They thought wiping our memories would take away our humanity, make us morality-free blank slates they could train and control.”
Unable to stand his empty gaze and the flat, emotionless tone of his voice, Lauren reached over to squeeze his upper arm. “What happened?” she asked gently, running her fingers down his arm to rest on his wrist. His hand squeezed the head of the gearshift, but he didn’t pull away from her touch.
“Even without our memories, we’re still people. Those amoral bastards apparently didn’t expect that. We pretended to be the fucking mindless drones they wanted us to be until the night we escaped that shithole.” The muscles in his wrist flexed under her fingers. “We agreed it would be safer to scatter. I set everyone up with new identities, and we tried to hide, but evidently it’s not working. That’s why we’re going to Colorado—it’s a safe place to hole up until we can think of a new plan. I haven’t seen the place, but it sounds like Ari’s made an impenetrable bunker out of his home.”
“Wow.” Giving his wrist a final squeeze, she released his arm and sat back.
Silence filled the bus until he cleared his throat. “What are you thinking?”
Her laugh was bewildered. “A gazillion things at once,” she admitted. “I’m just trying to process all this.”
He nodded without speaking.
When he glanced at her sideways for the tenth time, Lauren asked, “What?”
“You’re just so fucking sweet. I hate that I’ve gotten you involved in my shit.”
“Actually,” she said slowly, “despite the terrifying moments and the brain overload and the bus stealing...” When Calvin cleared his throat, she rolled her eyes. “Fine. Bus trading. Despite all that, and the fact that I might actually be going insane, I’m almost glad to be involved in this.”
His grunt was skeptical.
“Really!” she insisted. “This is definitely the most interesting thing ever to happen to me. In fact, just my crush on the hairy mail room guy was the most exciting thing to happen in longer than I want to admit.”
Although she flushed, she was glad that she’d confessed when his mouth quirked up at the corners. A smile from Calvin was worth any amount of embarrassment.
“So you weren’t down in the basement for supplies?” he asked, giving her an amused glance.
She laughed. “Do you know how many highlighters I have in my desk drawers right now?”
When he shook his head, she sighed. “Hundreds.”
Calvin chuckled before his smile fell away from his face. “I tried so hard to stay away from you, and then you show up in the goddamn mail room.”
Wincing, she had to ask. “Were you hoping I’d just go away?” Her heart sped up as she waited for his answer.
“Yes and no,” he said. “Yes, because I didn’t want to put you in danger, and no, because...” He trailed off and shot her a sideways, almost bashful smile. “And no just because.”
Hiding her own pleased grin, Lauren reached over and gave his shoulder a shove. “No fair! You can’t just stop at the good part!”
He shrugged, a smile still playing around his mouth.
A flush of excitement mixed with the embarrassment still flooding her face. “So tell me...” She changed the subject reluctantly. “With all your talents, why were you working as a shaggy mail clerk?”
“I needed to stay under the radar,” he said. “No one notices the mail boy.”
When Lauren raised her eyebrows, he gave her a suggestive half smile. “Almost no one.”
“There was something about you, even with all that hair,” she admitted, trying to ignore the way her insides melted at that smile. “I had no idea you were drop-dead gorgeous under that Cousin It impression, though.”
To her delight, color darkened the edge of his cheekbone. “I’m not that great,” he muttered.
“Are you blushing?” she asked, amazed.
“No. Jesus.”
“You are!” Lauren laughed. “And yes, you are that great. You’re a walking tower of hotness.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “Now you’re just messing with me.”
She grinned and shrugged. “Can’t really blame me. I’ve never seen you blush before.”
“I wasn’t fucking blushing,” he protested.
“You were, too.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Were.”
“I don’t blush.”
“Whatever.” She tried not to laugh.
He gave her another one of his sideways looks. “You’re a really...happy person, aren’t you?”
“You say ‘happy’ like you mean ‘really dumb.’” Lauren attempted to look stern, but she ended up grinning and probably proving his point.
He twisted his shoulders in an awkward shrug while focusing too hard on the traffic in front of them. “I’m just waiting for you to start screaming or crying or something like that. Not many people would be all cheery and chit-chatty in this situation.”
“Yeah, I tried to react normally before,” she said, shooting a half-amused, half-annoyed glance his way. “You called me whiny.”
“Did not. Not exactly.”
“Well, you implied it, then.” When he just shrugged once more, Lauren sighed. “Why do I get the feeling I’m never going to win an argument ever again?”
Calvin smirked.
“Whatever.” She tried to hold on to her annoyance, but he was just too freaking good-looking for her to feel anything but lust and awe. Maybe if he had a paper bag over his head... No. Even when he’d had an excess of facial hair, she’d not been able to resist him.
“What?” he grunted.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
How he knew that when his eyes were fixed on the road ahead was beyond her. Lauren dug around in her brain for a topic less embarrassing than what had actually been going through her mind. “Just wondering how the lab guys found you. I mean, I don’t think most of your coworkers ever looked at you long enough to pick you out of a lineup. How’d the NSA guys...er, lab guards...figure it out?”
The tips of his ears turned red. “It’s stupid.”
Now Lauren was really curious. “Tell.”
He paused long enough to make Lauren wonder if she was going to have to pull out the thumbscrews to make him talk. “Fine. I was November’s employee of the motherfucking month.”
She let out a surprised hiccup of laughter, and Calvin glared at her.
“Sorry,” Lauren said, knowing her apology didn’t sound even close to sincere. “I don’t get how that...accomplishment blew your cover. I mean, it’s not like the Associated Press picks up the breaking employee-of-the-month story from TechnoCorp’s super-lame newsletter.”
“No, but they do post it on the company website. The lab agents must be running a facial-recognition program. I’m guessing that’s how they tracked me down.”
“Huh.” Lauren digested this information. “If you were trying to stay incognito, wasn’t it kind of dumb to be employee of the month?”
Cal’s glare made her want to laugh again, but she bit her lip and restrained herself.
“Of course I didn’t want to be the goddamn employee of the month,” he said with so much disdain Lauren almost lost it. “They didn’t really give me much choice. That screechy redhead—”
“MacKenzie?” she guessed, interrupting him.
“No.”
“Zoe?”
“No.”
“Jasmine?” Lauren asked doubtfully. She wouldn’t really call Jasmine “screechy.”
“No. The guy.”
“Oh! Bryce!”
“Yeah, but does it really matter?” Calvin grumped.
Lauren shrugged. “Guess not. Just wanted that mental picture.”
“Jesus Christ. Anywaaay...” He drew out the word in the most long-suffering way possible.
“Drama queen,” she muttered.
“What?”
Putting on her best innocent expression, she said, “Nothing.” With his enhanced hearing, though, there was no way he’d missed that.
After a long pause probably meant to punish her, Cal continued. “Bryce and the others made such a big deal about it that I figured it would’ve brought more attention to fight it. I didn’t find out it was online with my fucking employee ID photo until it was already up. I took it down as soon as I found it, but it must’ve been too late.” He gestured at Lauren and the stolen—traded—VW. “Obviously.”
“You took it down?” Lauren said. “How’d you get Bryce to do that? The employee-of-the-month thing is kind of his baby.”
Cal shot her a sideways look. “Didn’t really ask.”
She grinned. “Seriously? You can hack the company website? Do you realize how much fun we could’ve had with that? The newsletter would never have been the same. Articles on Stacy’s enormous chin zit with a close-up picture, or on Darren and Michelle’s torrid affair—like everyone doesn’t know they’re making out in the copy room.” Not that I can judge, since making out in the mail room isn’t really any different.
“That’s what you’d do if you had hacker skills?”
Lauren made a face. “And other, better, more awesome things, of course.” Once she thought of them. “Why? What do you d
o, besides taking employee-of-the-month articles out of company newsletters and making Bryce cry?”
Just like that, he was back to being serious, brooding Cal. “Mostly just the new identities for the other guys. Not that it helped much.”
“Did the others get caught?” Even though Lauren didn’t know his friends, her insides cramped at the thought.
“No, but not for a lack of trying.”
Lauren snickered.
“What?”
“You sound like a grumpy teacher, talking about a couple of misbehaving second-graders.”
He gave her his best glower. Lauren just grinned.
“I told them to be careful,” he said defensively. “And what did they do? Ed got his fucking picture on the news after trying to play hero to some science geek and her pet rat.”
She blinked. “Rat?”
“Yes, a rat. Keep up. Then Darwin gets himself ass-deep in some messed-up love triangle, and his boyfriend’s jealous ex runs his fingerprints through NCIC, for fuck’s sake!” He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles went white again.
Lauren stared at him, fascinated. “Okay, you have to tell me both of those stories in full detail right now.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’ll just think that what those guys did was romantic.”
She was going to deny it and then didn’t. First, it was true, and second, being romantic shouldn’t really be a point of shame. “From the seriously edited versions you’ve given me, yeah, probably. Don’t you?”
“Fuck no.” Calvin gave her an incredulous glance. “Their focus should’ve been on staying hidden. It’s not the time for getting all lovey-dovey.”
“Huh.” Pushing down a flicker of hurt, Lauren kept her tone light. “Guess I was making out with some other mail guy, then.”
“I’d been trying to ignore you,” he retorted. “It worked until you started stalking me.”
The hurt grew to a hard baseball in her stomach. He didn’t have to keep repeating it. She knew that she was the one who’d pursued him, who’d stuffed her desk with boxes and boxes of office supplies just to get a chance to see him.