by Katie Allen
She looked around again. There was no one in sight, but awareness prickled the back of her neck. She didn’t know if she should trust her instincts or just dismiss it as paranoia. Either way, there wasn’t much she could do until Cal returned. If she ran into town, she’d just draw more attention to them.
The waiting was unbearable. She shifted along the shed wall until she was closer to the road on which they’d walked earlier. Her gaze darted around as she tried to keep her breathing steady—whether someone was out there watching or not, panicking was not going to help anything.
She heard the low rumble of an engine getting closer, and she held her breath, hoping desperately that it was Cal and not a townsperson or, even worse, some sort of law enforcement. A red car edged with rust and looking like a relic from the seventies pulled up. Lauren blew out a hard breath of relief when she saw Calvin in the driver’s seat.
She ran across the short stretch of weeds and around the front of the car. Leaning across the bench seat, Cal opened the passenger door. She caught it and was about to round the door and jump in when she heard an odd whistle followed by a faint thud.
The world went still for a second as she stared at Cal—and the odd cylindrical object protruding from his upper arm. It was silver except for the bright orange-and-yellow end that looked strangely like a flower.
“Fuck!” Cal’s profanity broke the spell as he grabbed the object and yanked it out of his arm. “Get in!”
She dove into the car as he hit the accelerator. Gravel pinged against the underbelly as the rear wheels gained traction and they shot forward. The engine whined, and Cal shifted gears.
When she heard a shout behind them, Lauren looked out the window, flinching when she saw three guys in camo running toward them.
“Cal! There are three bad guys on our right!” She knew she didn’t have to yell since he was sitting right next to her, but she couldn’t help it—her words just came out loudly.
“I see them. Hang on,” he said, shifting gears again and sending the car sliding around a curve in the road. His voice sounded strange, almost slurred, and she shot him a look before grabbing at the seat as they whipped around the turn.
Clenching her teeth to hold back a whimper, Lauren hung on. As soon as the car straightened, she risked a glance behind them. Two large SUVs were tearing along the two-track road after them.
“More SUVs chasing us,” she groaned. “I’d rather take the guys on foot.”
Glancing in the rearview, Cal just grunted and swung the car into another turn, bringing them onto the town’s main street. As they flew through a red light without slowing, Lauren grabbed the dash and squeezed her eyes shut.
After a few seconds without hearing or feeling a collision, she opened her eyes. They were passing through the downtown area, speeding so fast that what she imagined were cute, old-fashioned storefronts flew by in a blur. The car drifted toward the centerline and her gaze flew to Cal.
He was swaying, his eyes rolling back until mostly the whites showed.
“No! Cal, stay with me!” She knelt next to him, grabbing the wheel with one hand and patting his cheek with the other, smacking him harder and harder when he didn’t respond. The car started to slow as he slumped toward the door, his eyes closing completely.
“Cal! Come on, come on, don’t pass out on me now,” she muttered, but it was too late. He was out.
She let go of the steering wheel for a moment to grab his arm and a handful of coat. She hauled him toward her, tipping him sideways on the bench seat. He was still mostly in the driver’s seat but it would have to do. She grabbed the steering wheel again and straightened the slowing car with jerky motions as she climbed over his limp body. She wedged her butt between his legs and the door, using her feet to shove his out of the way of the pedals. Although her position was twisted and squashed, she could reach the important parts well enough to drive. Reaching over his thighs and grabbing the gearshift, she glanced in the rearview and saw the closer SUV was coming up fast behind them.
“Oh freaking goat turds. Cal, why did you pick this exact moment to get hit with a tranquilizer dart?” she muttered, her voice getting higher and higher pitched as she frantically used her rusty manual-transmission skills to accelerate. The gears offered a grinding protest, making her wince and give the car a mental apology.
The car lurched forward and then smoothed out, the engine roaring as their speed increased. Lauren forced herself to not look at the speedometer or in the rearview mirror at the pursuing SUVs. Both would just make her panic—well, panic more—and she had to focus on driving, especially since she was going really, really fast. A loving owner must have juiced up the car, since, for a seventies tank, this thing could fly.
She needed a plan. The bad guys had numbers and legitimate law enforcement on their side. Even with the hot rod, there were too many ways she and Cal could lose this race.
She shot a quick glance at the unconscious man flopped over on the seat next to her. Losing the race meant losing their freedom and each other and all sorts of other things that she really didn’t want to lose, especially on her watch. Cal had taken care of them for the past three days, had gotten them out of trouble too many times to count. It was her turn to keep them safe, even if it was just long enough to let Calvin wake.
Tightening her fingers around the steering wheel, she set her jaw and pushed harder on the gas. A county road sign flew by, catching her attention and giving her a rough idea of a semi-stupid plan. Allowing the car to slow slightly, she glanced in the rearview and saw the SUVs were just a few car lengths behind her, despite her speed.
“Please work,” she prayed. “Please, please, please...”
She slammed on the brakes, hearing the tires squeal in protest, and then hit the gas and jerked the steering wheel to the right, hard. The rear end of the car swung wide and she fought to straighten it as images of spinning into the ditch ran through her brain. Her body was pressed against the door from centrifugal force and the weight of Cal’s body as it slid closer to her.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” The car grudgingly straightened and roared forward down the new road. She looked in her rearview mirror and saw the first SUV on its side in the ditch. The second had slowed considerably to make the turn.
“Yes! Take that, you high-center-of-gravity pieces of shit!” Excited, she bounced in her seat, as much as she could bounce with Cal pinning her against the door, and patted the steering wheel. “You may not have air bags or...well, any safety features at all, but at least you’re pretty close to the ground.”
She accelerated again, not wanting to lose her minuscule lead. She made turn after turn, weaving through the countryside, not thinking of any final direction or destination—just away. She lost the second SUV at the fifth turn, but she kept driving, her eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few seconds. She slowed the few times she passed another vehicle going the opposite direction, mostly pickup trucks, although the approach of a dark-colored SUV made her heart beat faster until she got close enough to see the golden retriever hanging his head out the back window.
The needle on the gas gauge dipped below an eighth of a tank, and Lauren knew she needed to hide somewhere until Mr. GPS-head woke. She looked over at Cal for the hundredth time, watching for the movement of his chest that showed he was breathing. Except for that slight rise and fall, and the short slides across the seat when the car changed direction, he was still.
She looked around as she drove, trying to find a place to pull off that would be sheltered from view. Shorn fields stretched around them, broken by clusters of trees that most likely sheltered homes from the wind. Lauren wished it were summer, with lots of lovely leaves and brush that would hide them, instead of this barren emptiness.
A driveway—little more than a dirt path, actually—caught her eye. The mailbox at the end was rusted and leaning listles
sly to the side. She turned onto the drive and followed it between two fields, hoping the sad state of the mailbox meant that the place wasn’t lived in, rather than that the occupants used a shiny new box at the local post office instead.
When the first dilapidated structures came into view, it looked promising. A small shed drooped at about the same angle as the mailbox and weather had stripped an old barn of all but bare traces of dark red paint.
She slowed to a crawl as the car bumped over potholes and rocks, the driveway almost disappearing in the weed-choked farmyard. As the house came into view, looking almost but not quite as rough as the barn, Lauren had to choke back a laugh. This was uncomfortably similar to the beginning of so many horror movies.
The sun was setting, the run-down buildings casting long shadows. She couldn’t see any movement from the house, but the windows were small and dark, so anyone could be watching them.
Bringing the car to a full stop, she hesitated for a few seconds, tapping her finger on the steering wheel. The driveway, as rough as it was, split just ahead—one section leading toward the house and the other toward the barn. If anyone was home, she should drive toward the house, get out and knock on the door, pretend they were lost or something. If the place were empty, she’d rather head straight for the barn. The large doorway looked as if it would be wide enough to accommodate the car and, as long as there was room inside for her to park, they could hide until Cal was conscious again.
The barn was the most tempting, especially when she heard the distant drone of what sounded like a helicopter. Although she knew that the majority of helicopters were used by good, helpful people who weren’t into kidnapping lab escapees and their girlfriends, the sound made her stomach clench. If the agents lost their trail on the ground, the next logical step was to find them from the air.
The barn it was, then.
Before she could move the car in that direction, she heard a sound she’d never heard in real life before, but recognized instantly all the same.
It was the racking of a shotgun, right outside her window.
Chapter Ten
“Get out of the car. Slowly.”
Lauren opened the car door and started to get out. The car rolled forward, and she twisted back into her seat to hit the brake pedal and then fumble for the parking brake. She gave Cal’s still unconscious body a quick glance and a silent apology, a flood of guilt mixing with her terror when she thought about how she hadn’t been able to keep them safe for even a few hours.
“Out. Let’s go.”
As she climbed out of the seat, she saw the shotgun and its owner had moved back a few steps, giving her room to exit. As she straightened, she realized her hands had automatically flown above her shoulders, palms out, in the universal “don’t shoot me” position.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Lauren’s heart was beating so loudly that she almost couldn’t hear the gun holder’s question. All she could focus on was the shotgun pointed right at her chest.
“Hey! Answer me,” the voice demanded, his tone commanding enough to drag her attention off the gun and onto the figure behind it. He was average height and looked to be in his fifties, his face creased with angry lines. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to his head. She wasn’t sure which was scarier—the gun or the man holding it with the ease of familiarity, as if he shot a couple of trespassers every day.
“Wh-what?” She couldn’t even remember the question. Hell, she could barely remember to breathe.
“What’s wrong with him?” He gave a short jerk of his chin toward Calvin’s unconscious body without looking away from her.
“Th-they shot him,” she stammered, too scared to think of a lie—or even figure out if she should lie.
His expression turned even more skeptical. “Shot him? Not much blood. And who are ‘they’?”
“With a dart. A tranquilizer dart.” She started turning toward the car as she babbled. “It’s still in there. On the floor I think.”
“Don’t move.”
Her body froze as he rounded the car, keeping the gun pointed at her the entire way. Only her head turned, following his movement. He reached the front passenger door and eased it open, his gaze darting between her and Cal.
“Move and I’ll shoot your friend,” he warned.
“Don’t! Please don’t hurt him! Oh God, please!” Her breath came in short puffs as her hands, still hovering above her shoulders, clenched into fists. She couldn’t believe that she’d driven them right into this danger. If Cal had been awake, he would’ve known better. He wouldn’t have done anything so dumb. She’d been stupid, and now they were both going to die.
“Calm down,” the man said, pointing the gun at Calvin as he reached toward the floor of the car in front of the passenger seat.
She tried to obey, but it was easier said than done. There was a gun pointed at her unconscious...friend? Boyfriend? Road-trip fuck buddy? The ridiculousness of trying to define their relationship at the moment while being threatened with a shotgun hit her, and she had to clench her teeth to hold in a hysterical laugh.
The man straightened and held up the dart in two fingers. “Who shot him with this?”
The entire story tumbled through her head as she tried to sort out a concise answer that sounded halfway rational. “Government agents. They say they’re NSA, but they’re not really. They’re...” Frick, she almost said they were secret agents. Could she sound any more unbelievable? “They want to take him back.”
“Back?” This guy had a great poker face. She couldn’t tell if he believed her at all.
“To the lab. They did experiments on him and expected him to do horrible things.” The words fell out of her in a rush, coming faster and faster until they ran together in an almost incomprehensible scramble. “He escaped, and they tracked him down and have been chasing us and shot him with that dart, and I managed to lose the guys in the SUVs, but now we’re low on gas, and I don’t know where we’re going, and I hear a helicopter, and I wanted to hide us in your barn.”
He stared at her. She didn’t blame him. Her whole rambling torrent of words made her sound crazy. Lauren stared back at him and the shotgun still pointed at Cal. She didn’t even dare blink.
“Okay.” He gave a short nod and stepped back so he could close the passenger door.
“Um...what?” She watched in disbelief as he started walking toward the barn, the shotgun dangling from one hand.
“Better hurry before that copter comes into view,” he called, still striding toward the big barn doors.
She blinked and then shook off her shock and climbed back into the driver’s seat. For some reason, now that the immediate danger was...not quite so immediate, her entire body started shaking. She released the brake and turned right, slowly following the man to the barn doors.
He slid them open, one at a time, and then waved her through. She eased the car inside, slowing even more as the dim light in the barn robbed her of her vision. As soon as the tail end of the car cleared the entrance, the man was pulling the doors closed.
As she set the parking brake, Lauren had a sudden shock of worry that she’d just made things worse. Maybe he’d brought them into the barn so he could kill them without anyone seeing? The horror-movie scenarios filled her head again, and her whole body shook even harder. She tried to calm her suddenly racing heart by telling herself his place was so isolated that he didn’t need to hide the murders in the barn. He could’ve shot them both in the driveway, and no one would’ve seen.
She swallowed hard as she sat rigidly, watching in the side-view mirror as the man approached her door. It had just been so easy—too easy—to make this stranger believe her babbled story. He drew closer, and she rubbed her damp palms against her jeans.
“Shut it off,” he commanded, and she did. Although it took aw
ay the illusion of escape not to have the car running, she figured it wouldn’t help anyone to give them all carbon monoxide poisoning.
Suddenly, sitting in the car made her feel too vulnerable. The man was almost to her door when she shoved it open, needing to stand.
She lurched out, and he took a step back, bringing the shotgun halfway up.
Lauren wanted to smack herself for startling the guy with the gun. How did she keep doing exactly the wrong thing every time?
“Sorry,” she said, noticing her hands had jumped to their open position above her shoulders again. “Sorry. I just had a claustrophobic moment.”
He gave a short nod, still watching her suspiciously even as he lowered the gun. Her hands followed suit.
“I just don’t get... I mean, why are you helping us?” When he didn’t answer right away, her eyes widened, and her voice sharpened to a squeak. “If you are helping us and didn’t bring us in here to shoot us?”
The man scowled. “Why would I make a mess in here? Could’ve shot you outside if that’s what I was going to do.”
“Right. Well...good.” Relief washed through her, making her knees shake. She supported herself on the open car door.
“You can stay here until he wakes up.” The man jerked his head toward the passenger side of the car. “Then I want you out.”
He turned and walked toward a small door at the side of the barn. Lauren, still dazed from the residue of fear and relief, watched him until he was almost to the exit.
“Wait!” When he turned, she asked, “Why did you believe me? I barely believe it and I’m living it.”
After studying her silently for several moments, long enough that she didn’t think he’d answer, he finally said, “Doesn’t surprise me the government is doing shady things. Besides, why’d they use a dart? If you two are dangerous criminals, makes more sense to shoot you. With bullets. I figure that even if you’re not telling the whole truth, I’d rather take a chance and help you out than hand you over to the damn government.”