by Katie Allen
“Hey.” He gave her a little bounce. “Stay awake. No more passing out on me.”
“Sorry.” Her eyes opened, but she kept her head resting against his chest. “Why are we going to this tiny, tiny town?”
“There’s a vet clinic right outside of town,” he said. “They’ll have supplies that I can use to fix you up.”
She wiggled a little against him and protested, “Cal, don’t stop for me. I’m fine.”
He had to snort at that. “Bullshit. Fine enough to lose consciousness?”
“It was just for a minute.” She glanced up at him uncertainly. “A couple of minutes?”
He just looked at her.
“Okay, how long was I out?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He figured he’d gone far enough in the creek to throw off their pursuers, so he angled toward the bank. As he stepped out of the water, Cal gave a silent sigh of relief. His legs and feet burned from the cold. “We’re stopping.”
Her face was squished up in disgust. “I hate being the weak one.”
“You’re not weak.” He picked up a steady jog, happy to be moving faster. Carrying Lauren and traveling through the woods slowed him down, but he still could manage a steady nine-minute mile. At that rate, they’d be at the clinic in less than three hours.
She shook her head and winced again. “I’m the one slowing you down.”
“Lauren, knock it off.” Cal wanted to give her a shake but resisted, not wanting to jostle her brain any more than it already had been by the rollover accident.
Her lips tightened into a stubborn line, and she was quiet for a few minutes. “Put me down. I’ll walk.”
He gave her an incredulous glance. “No. That will slow us down.”
“No, I mean, I’ll walk, and you keep running.”
That didn’t even deserve a response, so Cal just kept running.
“Cal, I’m serious.” Her voice caught on the last word. “I don’t want to be the reason you get caught.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” Anger tightened his throat so much that he was surprised he could talk. “I’m never fucking leaving you.”
There was another stiff moment of silence before she spoke. “Before, at work, it felt like I was helping you. Now I’m just a useless, heavy, bleeding...albatross. An albatross that’s going to get you sent back to that awful place. Oh fuck, now I’m crying. I’m a heavy, useless, bleeding, crying albatross!”
Despite everything, Cal had to swallow a grin at her mournful monologue. He was glad her face was buried against his shoulder and she couldn’t see his mouth quirk up at the corners. Her sobs quickly wiped away his smile, though.
“We’re just taking turns,” he said, twisting her to his side as he passed an evergreen tree so the branches wouldn’t scratch her.
“What?” Her voice came out soggy and muffled.
“I’m the albatross, then you’re the albatross... It’s a whole fucking albatross circle.” He had no idea if what he was saying made any sense, but he had to try to get her to stop crying. The assholes in the lab hadn’t made him nearly tough enough to withstand her tears.
Lauren gave a watery giggle. “Albatross circle.”
“Yeah.” He felt a warm rush of success at her laugh, as teary as it was. “I’m the big daddy albatross who started this whole messed-up thing. If it weren’t for me, you’d be happily working at your desk right now.”
“Nope.” She still sounded stuffed-up, but the tears had thankfully stopped. “You’re wrong there, Big Daddy Albatross. It’s Sunday. Besides, you try to ‘happily work’ with Stacy right next to you, telling you what to do. I’d pick a concussion over working with her any day.”
He just grunted, picking up the pace at the reminder of her injuries.
“And if I were working,” she continued, her arms tightening to adjust to his faster jog, “I’d probably be in the mail room, making out with you.”
“Nope. You’d have to make out with some other dick-face in the mail room, since I’d have been picked up and brought back to the lab. You warned me, remember?”
She scoffed at that. “You would’ve gotten out without me. You’re super-senses guy.”
With a shake of his head, he jogged across a clearing toward another stand of trees. “It was your plan, your car, your idea to hide me in the ladies’ room, your theft of the suit... I’d be back at that hellhole of a lab without your help.”
Glancing down, he saw a quick smile slip across her face.
“Okay” was all she said, leaning her cheek against his shoulder.
“Okay what?”
“I’ll call you Big Daddy Albatross.”
Since he was so happy that she was smiling rather than crying, Cal couldn’t put much force behind his growl.
“It’s kind of long, though,” she said. “Maybe Big Daddy Al?”
He tried not to smile.
She gave a fake-offended gasp and pulled her head back so she could look at him. “Is this all a scheme to make me call you ‘Daddy’ again? You seem a little obsessed with that.”
A laugh burst out of him, and he hitched her higher in his arms, making her squeak and cling to him. “You just want me to offer you candy.”
“I wouldn’t turn it down. I’ve become accustomed to a steady supply of junk food.”
“Once we take care of your injuries, we’ll get you fed.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
* * *
For as tiny a town as it was in, the vet clinic was a good-sized building. It was also well protected.
“There’s an alarm?” Lauren whispered, hearing the warning beeps echo through the empty clinic. Cal had gotten them inside through a back door, destroying the lock and doorknob with one hard twist. He’d carefully swung the door closed, propping a nearby wastebasket against it to keep it from swinging open.
“I’m on it.” He gently set her down on an exam table and disappeared toward the front of the building.
Lauren looked around. She was in what she was pretty sure was the surgery area. It was a large room, filled with white cupboards and various machines. There were small windows set close to the ceiling, high enough that no one could see into the supposed-to-be-empty clinic.
The beeps stopped and she let out a long, shaky breath. She wasn’t surprised that disabling alarms was part of Cal’s skill set, but waiting for the warning beeps to turn into a shrieking alarm had put her on edge. Her head throbbed with the exhalation, the heavy beat of pain matching the one in her leg.
Cal slipped back into the room and started moving from cupboard to cupboard.
“Why an alarm?” she asked, more to take her mind off the pain than anything else. “Is someone going to steal one of those cones dogs have to wear around their necks?”
“Elizabethan collars,” he said, pulling a couple of brown bottles and a handful of gauze squares from one of the cabinets.
“What?”
“That’s what those cones are called.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “You have an infinite amount of useless information in your brain.”
“Yeah.”
“So why the alarm?”
He nodded toward a locked cabinet. “Ketamine and euthanasia drugs, mostly. Pants off.”
“Oh.” She obediently unbuttoned her jeans, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Is now really the time for gettin’ busy?”
“What?”
“Joke. Sorry.” Lauren wiggled, working the jeans under her butt. Cal grabbed the waistband and tugged. Her breath caught when the dried blood on the fabric pulled at her wound. Cal gave her an apologetic glance, although he didn’t stop tugging until her jeans and boots were off.
She adjusted her pantie
s, which had slid down as her jeans were removed and partially exposed her cheeks. Even though he’d seen all there was to see of her body, she still felt weirdly shy about showing off her ass.
Her attempts at modesty didn’t really matter, as Cal was intently focused on the cut crossing the top of her thigh. Pulling off her jeans had started it bleeding again, just a slow seep of red. He poured a yellow liquid onto a piece of gauze and started cleaning off the old and new blood around the wound.
She held her breath, anticipating pain, but he was surprisingly gentle. Although her leg still throbbed, his ministrations didn’t make it worse. Watching was grossing her out, however, so she looked away and started talking.
“Any side effects to using pet drugs on me?” she asked, her gaze bouncing around the room, trying to look anywhere except the bloody stripe across her thigh.
“This is just an antiseptic,” he said absently, holding up one of the brown bottles. “We’ll get you some antibiotics too. Cats, dogs, humans—same shit, different dosages.”
“So I won’t start barking? Or purring? Or not being able to resist running after a ball?”
He looked up from her leg and met her gaze, his mouth curving up wickedly. “First age-play and now pet-play. You’re a kinky little thing, aren’t you?”
Lauren couldn’t help but laugh as she wiggled her eyebrows lecherously. “Don’t forget playing doctor. You seem to really like to strip me naked and treat my ow-ies.”
In a second, his expression changed from teasing to heated. Her grin fell away as he leaned in closer and closer. When his mouth finally met hers, she groaned and closed her eyes. His kiss was light, his lips just brushing hers, but it was enough to make her forget all of her aches and pains.
He pulled away, and she opened her eyes, smiling. With a shake of his head, he turned back to her leg.
As she watched him close the cut with butterfly bandages, she said softly, “Oh, Doctor...”
His eyes flashed up to hers. “Don’t make me fuck you.”
Lauren laughed, although it sounded a bit husky. He said that like it was a threat and not a tempting, tempting suggestion. “Sorry, Doc. Carry on.”
With a grunt, he finished tending to her leg, taping a bandage securely over the wound. He straightened to once again gaze into her eyes, more clinically this time.
“Your pupils look good,” he said.
“Why, thank you.” She grinned at him. “Your pupils are quite attractive, too.”
He gave a short laugh and flicked her nose. “I’d feel better if you had a CT scan, but I think your concussion is mild.”
“Do they have one here? A CT scanner, I mean?” she asked, looking around curiously and then wincing as he probed the bump on her head.
“No.”
She shrugged, trying to keep her head still while she did it so she didn’t interrupt his inspection. “My big ol’ head probably wouldn’t have fit in it anyway, if it was pet-sized.”
He pulled his hands back, obviously finished with examining her skull. “I would’ve gotten it to fit.”
“That sounds a little ominous, Dr. Frankenstein.” She reached toward him, running a gentle finger next to the smear of blood at his temple. “What about your injuries? Do I get to play the doctor, now?”
“No.” He grabbed a clean gauze square, dampened it with antiseptic and scrubbed firmly at the streak of blood.
Lauren winced in sympathy. “Ouch. Aren’t you being a little rough?”
“Nope.” He lifted the gauze and showed her the unbroken skin he’d just cleaned. “It’s healed.”
“Whoa!” She blinked and touched the spot. It was slightly pink but otherwise showed no sign of the cut that had existed just a few hours earlier. “Bionic healing man in action. Can you grow a finger back if it gets chopped off?”
“No. Stay here.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, he was gone. As she waited for him to return, the seriousness of their situation crept through her mind. It had been one thing to be running from the fake NSA—Cal’s former captors and definite bad guys. Now, though, they were on the run from real, legitimate law-enforcement people, who were probably following their trail through the woods right now, getting closer and closer to the vet clinic.
She shivered, and then Cal was back, offering her a handful of pills and a paper cup of water. Accepting the tablets, she glanced up at him curiously.
“The four white ones are antibiotics,” he explained. “The two red ones are Tylenol.”
“They give Tylenol to dogs?” she asked before popping two of the pills in her mouth and taking a drink.
Cal’s mouth quirked. “People work here. I got it from the bathroom.”
“Bathroom?” she repeated hopefully, after chasing the last of the pills with water. The need to pee surfaced at the reminder.
“Go ahead.” He nodded. “Through that door and second door on the left. Don’t leave prints. Cover your hand with your sleeve before you touch anything.”
She was inside the bathroom before she realized that she still wasn’t wearing any pants. Or boots. As she washed her hands, she made a face at the thought of wiggling back into her torn and bloody jeans. Raising her head, she reluctantly met her gaze in the mirror.
It was about as bad as she expected. Although the skin hadn’t broken over the lump at her hairline, it was starting to bruise, blue and purple joining the red by her temple. The rest of her face was chalky white, except for the dark circles under her eyes. Her hair... She groaned softly. It was a sad, sad mess. What had started as a sleek ponytail that morning had degenerated into something a bird wouldn’t even nest in. She figured it’d be easiest just to grab some dog clippers and shave herself bald.
“You okay?” Cal opened the door and walked in.
She sighed. “You have a serious lack of respect for bathroom privacy.”
He just kept his eyes locked on her face in the mirror and cocked an eyebrow.
“I’m fine.” She tugged at an errant strand of hair. “Except for the catastrophe on top of my head. I’m considering just shaving it all off.”
“No fucking way.” His hands came up to smooth it protectively. “No shaving. No cutting.”
“What’s your solution, then?” She tried to run her fingers through a section, wincing when she hit a snarl.
He worked the ponytail holder out, carefully extracting it from the snarls. After placing the holder on the edge of the sink, he smoothed her hair back with both hands, occasionally tugging a leaf or small twigs from the strands. His hands moved gently over the throbbing lump on her head.
“How has having tree parts in my hair become the norm?” she grumbled, watching as he dropped another small piece of bark into the toilet.
Cal ignored her and continued his hairdressing efforts, twisting her tangled mop into a semi-neat bun and securing it with the hair tie. As he reached over to flush the toilet, he asked, “Better?”
“Much,” she agreed, leaning back against him as she admired his efforts in the mirror. “I’ve moved up from a bird’s-nest trailer park to somewhere in the avian suburbs.”
“You’re strange,” he said, but he gave her uninjured temple a kiss anyway. “Let’s go.”
“Can’t.” When he gave her a questioning look, Lauren clarified, “No pants.”
“Got you covered.” He grinned a little. “Literally.”
She followed him back to the surgery room and saw he had cleaned up all evidence of their visit, except for a pair of jeans slung over the exam table. Picking them up, Lauren realized they weren’t the bloody, torn ones she’d been wearing earlier. She eyed Cal curiously as she tugged them up her legs, wondering how he’d managed to conjure a pair of jeans out of thin air. His mouth quirked a little as she eyed him.
“Employee locke
r,” he explained before she could ask. “She probably keeps a change of clothes here in case shit happens. Again, literally.”
The jeans were a little too long and fairly loose, but they weren’t in danger of falling off her hips. She gave a satisfied nod and shot Cal a thank-you smile.
“This probably qualifies as shit happening.” She hitched the jeans up and shoved her feet into her boots. “Ready?”
He nodded and grabbed a partially filled garbage bag from the corner. Lauren assumed it contained the evidence of their visit, including used gauze and the remains of her jeans. She followed him toward the hallway leading to the door they’d used to enter. As he walked, he twisted the top of the garbage bag and tied a quick knot.
Suddenly, Cal froze, and she almost crashed into his back. She was about to ask what was wrong but decided to keep quiet when she took in his stillness.
“A vehicle just entered the parking lot,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear.
Lauren swallowed.
“Another one pulled in after it.”
Her heart was beating so fast that she almost missed his words. “Police?” she whispered.
His head cocked, as if he were listening, and then he shook his head. “No. Hang on—they’re talking.”
For what felt like an infinite amount of time but was probably less than thirty seconds, Lauren waited and tried not to hyperventilate.
“It’s one of the vets and a client,” Cal finally said. “His dog was hit by an ATV.”
“Oh, poor thing!”
When he gave her a look, she demanded, “What? I should lose any decent human feelings just because we’re on the run?”
“No, just prioritize.” He moved silently to the back door. “Let’s get away, and then you can feel bad for the dog.”
She shuffled behind him, trying to move quietly but not succeeding nearly as well as Cal. “What door are they coming in? Can you hear?”
“Front,” he said, and Lauren’s breath flew out in a rush of relief. “The vet’s unlocking the door now.”
“Won’t he notice the alarm’s not activated?” she whispered.
With a shrug, he said, “He’ll probably just blame the last person to leave yesterday for not setting it.”