Amid the jumping shadows from Caspian’s lights, Chloe could see her assailant on the floor, his chair beside him, struggling against his attacker, flailing and punching.
The smaller man held his ground, fighting with a tiger’s ferocity.
“Chloe! Run!” Andrew yelled.
But she couldn’t. Chloe could only sit dumbly on the couch.
She’d never been without her lower body. Its weight was strange; even shifting bones wouldn’t spill her to the floor for a crawl.
Caspian’s arm shot out, grabbing Andrew by the neck. His hands were massive. Cufflinks glittered below them, diamonds sparkling against pressed linen. Andrew made choking sounds and Chloe, helpless and immobile, could only watch in fear … but then Andrew pivoted into his assailant’s grasp rather than away, elbow extended, and struck Caspian’s nose with a crack.
“Motherfucker!” Caspian blurted, one hand coming free to grasp at his face, now gushing blood.
“Go, Chloe! Now!”
Andrew didn’t see. Or understand. Somehow, he’d gotten into the apartment without being buzzed up, and clearly had no idea what he’d be facing.
He was grappling hard with Caspian. Doing admirably, holding Caspian off; the other man was easily one and a half times his weight. He’d probably only expected to provide a distraction — a handful of seconds for Chloe to escape.
Why wasn’t she running?
Andrew looked furious but panicked, out of options and starting to lose.
Chloe hurled her top half hard, teetering on the edge of balance, quickly falling uncontrolled toward the coffee table.
She ended up with her palms on its edge, her ass against the couch. She was wedged in, feet useless below her. But at least she could do something.
Andrew met her eyes and mouthed the word, Duck.
Chloe shoved the table with all her might.
It slid easily on the wood floors, skimming across the top of Andrew’s head and connecting squarely with Caspian’s jaw.
Caspian recoiled sideways.
Andrew scurried beneath the table.
Caspian moaned, clutching at his skull.
Andrew wriggled out from under the table and ran to her, eyes on his opponent, already struggling to stand. “We have to go!” he shouted, taking Chloe’s hands.
“I can’t move,” Chloe gasped. “He did something to me.”
“You can’t walk?”
She shook her head.
“How did you get in?”
“Through the side door. I think your Crossbrace connection is off. I walked right in.”
Chloe’s eyes speared Caspian, now on his hands and knees. “Drag me.”
“I have to knock him out or kill him or something. I can’t drag you all the way to—”
“Hurry!”
Andrew shoved the coffee table the rest of the way, then took Chloe by the hands and pulled. She went uneasily, her legs and hips banging painfully into the sunken living room steps. Paralyzed wasn’t unfeeling, it turned out.
“Faster!”
Caspian was on one knee, rising slowly, his handsome face a mask of blood.
Andrew’s rear collided with the door. He kicked at it before finding the sense to open it, fear taking over.
He found the latch and slowly it opened.
Caspian was back on his feet. Coming fast, unstoppable.
There was nowhere for a skinny kid and his half-inert girlfriend to go.
“We won’t make it. I have to fight!”
“JUST FUCKING PULL!”
Andrew hesitated, not seeing the sense, but then he tugged hard.
Chloe felt like her shoulders might dislocate. Andrew’s feet caught under her slumped body and he fell backward, landing hard.
But it was enough. Light from the hallway spilled over Chloe.
She could touch the network again. She could control it all.
Caspian rose above them.
His face turned from confident to beaten. He knew.
“Get him,” Chloe whispered.
Her lower body relaxed. The nanos left her in a smoky exhale and were on Caspian in a fractional second.
He tottered like lumber preparing to fall.
Chloe scrambled to her feet as the big man crashed to the floor, half in her apartment and half out of it.
Andrew looked at Chloe, eyes wide. He had no idea what had happened — now or since he’d entered the fray.
“I sure hope you have a car waiting out there,” Chloe said, dragging Andrew toward the stairs.
CHAPTER SIX
Chloe turned to run down the street, but Andrew held her fast. “This is the only way,” he said. “Come on.”
But Chloe’s eyes were on the limo. A hybrid drive/hover, its street wheels down, so black that it reflected the sun in a blinding sheen. To own a car like this one, you’d almost have to own the world.
The door opened. Alexa leaned out, Parker visible behind her, her face blank. It was so uncommon to see genuine emotion on the face of the unflappable Miss Mathis.
“Get in, Chloe. Hurry.”
Chloe shook her head. Backed away.
You’re a pawn to Alexa, same as you’d be for me, Caspian had said.
“No. We’re not going with them.”
“They’re here to help us,” Andrew said. “I couldn’t get into the building. I was sitting here twiddling my thumbs, wondering if something was wrong, when they pulled up, shouting about someone being after you. Alexa got me into the building and then the elevator. Without their help, you’d still be up there.”
“She didn’t help. She let you take all the risk.”
Andrew was trying to shove Chloe, his manner panicked and rushed. “I barged in, Chloe! They called the cops and told me to—”
Parker was tapping his mobile. He looked at Alexa. “It looks like someone named Rachel Ryan sent the police to this address as well.”
Alexa reached out. “They’re coming, Chloe. And the police aren’t safe.” Frustrated, she looked past Chloe to Andrew. He was a mess: a cut lip, his clothes all filthy and ripped, hair disheveled, sleeve inked with Caspian’s blood. “Was he here already? Is he coming?”
“He’s here,” Andrew said. “He was holding her somehow. Chloe did something to him. He’s—”
“Not a problem,” Chloe finished. “Just like nobody’s a problem for me now.” Her eyes bored into Alexa’s.
“Chloe. I’m on your side.”
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t. You can’t.”
“You told the others about me. You told them who I am. Who my father is. What I can do. What you seem to think I mean.”
“There was no other way. They were always going to find out, but at least if I went to them first, we’d have some control.”
“You’d have some control.”
“Chloe,” Andrew said, looking over his shoulder at the gathering crowd, “we have to go. People are coming.”
Chloe looked at Alexa and said to Andrew, “‘People are already here.”
Alexa came forward. Took Chloe by the wrist.
Chloe slapped her away, pushing, adrenaline rising.
“You told them about me. He came to my apartment. To my apartment!”
“Calm down.”
“Who else is after me? You promised that this would be over!”
“I was wrong. I didn’t know. But—”
Andrew pushed. Chloe resisted. She shouted, “NO!”
“Alexa has an idea, Chloe. She—”
“Fuck Alexa. Fuck everyone!”
Parker rolled his eyes, sighed in one enormous exhale, stood from the limo, then strode forward so strongly and confidently that until the final moment, Chloe thought he was planning to strike her.
She sent her mind out, finding it impossible to focus, scared beyond all capacity for rational thought. There was no time to summon the network’s help. No time at all before Parker’s hands were on her.
“We can do
the hysterics later,” he said to Alexa when she eyed him — and a small black device he’d slipped from an inside coat pocket.
“What the fuck is—” Chloe said, her attention turning toward the thing that Parker was pressing to her skin.
Her sentence was severed as if with a knife.
The world vanished, and Chloe saw only darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chloe woke slowly, her head heavy with disorientation.
The world was too bright. Sunlight cut every muscle in her throbbing forehead. Her vision flickered.
Chloe closed her eyes. In the semi-darkness — orange because even closed eyelids couldn’t block the solar assault — she heard a steady purring, like a humming fan. Something vibrating beneath her.
“You’re awake.”
Andrew’s voice, coming from beside her.
Details were coming clearer. Memories, too.
Chloe remembered a sense of captivity, a fight. Her leg hurt as if she’d banged it. Something abrasive ran across her chest.
Chloe opened her eyes. She was slumped, and from her perspective Andrew was somewhat above her. She sat up, realizing where they were. Looked around, heart skipping from slumber to alert, wary.
“Is this your car?”
“It is now,” Andrew said.
Chloe looked out the window. She remembered a car now, too — a hybrid limo that belonged to … Alexa Mathis? This clearly wasn’t it. This car smelled and was loud. There was no wet bar or chauffeur. There were two seats in front and a cramped bench in the back. The windshield was cracked in one corner. Papers and decades of dust were caked in the rear.
Through the windows, she saw open space. The foothills of mountains.
“Where are we?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Where are we going?”
“To visit someone.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Chloe’s head hurt. She let it go.
“Was I sleeping?”
“Sort of.”
“How long?”
Andrew looked at the broken dashboard clock and laughed. “Three or four hours.”
“Did someone knock me out?”
“Parker injected you with something.”
Chloe closed her eyes. She was remembering. The fear was returning, along with the despair.
“It’s okay,” Andrew said. “You had it coming.”
“I did?”
“You were being an asshole.”
“You … you came into my apartment. Someone was holding me there. You …” But it was foggy.
“I kicked his ass. That’s how manly I am.”
Something Chloe had done before Andrew arrived — before even the bad man (Casper? Caspian?) had come — itched in the back of her mind.
She’d been talking to Brad.
She’d realized something that seemed important.
“But we’re broken up. I’m still mad at you.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Andrew said. “I’m pretty adorable.”
“Alexa told the world about me. All of her buddies.”
“I know. Alexa and Parker gave me a full rundown before they dropped us off and bought us this tidy little ride. She’s a beaut, isn’t she? The only car we could find on short notice that they could buy for cash. It’s a 2017 Mitsubishi something-or-other. Runs on gasoline. Finding gas out here is a whole other story. We have twenty gallons in the trunk because finding a petroleum station out here seemed unlikely. What say we pollute together up in this bitch? I’m up for blackening the skies a little. What do you think?”
Chloe closed her eyes. It was all too much to think about.
“They’re looking for me. They’re coming for us, Andrew.”
Fresh sleep was already coming to claim her.
Chloe felt herself slipping down into darkness again.
“Not anymore,” Andrew said.
“Wake up,” Andrew nudged her. “Your turn to drive.”
Chloe opened her eyes. They were precisely nowhere. It was dark, a garish sign that said MOTEL in big yellow letters the only thing in sight. A sprawl of decrepit rooms was strung in a daisy chain in front of the car’s bumper.
“Drive?” Chloe said, groggy.
“I’m kidding. But holy shit are you a crappy travel companion. You didn’t laugh at any of my jokes.”
“What is this place?”
“I tried to play the license plate game. Turns out nobody has state plates anymore. All those old road trip movies we watched were a lie.”
Chloe closed her eyes. Opened them. She felt a bit better than the last time, but fighting the cobwebs was still requiring all of her attention.
“Where are we now?”
“Still Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is long.” He said it as if the state had done something to offend him.
Chloe forced herself to sit up. She blinked around. Then, craving fresh air, she opened the door and stood. Facing away from the hotel, the darkness wasn’t entirely complete, though it was close. Sparse lights dotted the land, which rose in peaks. Above it, Chloe could see a slightly lighter sky, lit by a smiling moon.
“We’re in the mountains?”
“And I totally forgot my banjo.”
“Why are we in the mountains, Andrew?”
“Ambiance.”
“Will you just answer me seriously?”
“I will once you’re clear-headed enough to understand. Right now, you strike me as still pretty stupid.”
“Where are we headed?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I’m just following the GPS. Luckily, I found a toothless old man who makes his own gas, so we’ve got a full trunk to get us there.”
“Full tank,” Chloe corrected.
“No, trunk. You haven’t been listening.” He pointed to the ancient automobile’s trunk, where Chloe now remembered he had tanks of backup fuel.
“Show me.”
“The trunk?”
“The GPS.”
Andrew had climbed out with Chloe. He reached through his open window and plucked something from the dashboard. A clunky thing in a faded gray plastic casing.
“What is this?”
“It’s a GPS.”
Chloe turned it over in her hands. The thing looked a century old.
“I know,” Andrew said. “But Alexa told me that it’s hard to get a mobile signal up here sometimes, so we needed an old model that stores routes and doesn’t require a constant connection. We bought that off the same guy who sold us the car while you were conked out. But that’s just the half of it. That thing? It does need an occasional connection to update. Another fifty or a hundred miles on, we’re going to need the other GPS.”
“And where’s that?”
Andrew reached into the car again, then handed Alexa an intricately folded piece of paper. She opened it, finding that it had torn on the folds. Over a path on the ancient parchment, someone had drawn a fresh red line that ended in an X. Then, an address.
“The guy with the car had all sorts of dusty old shit,” Andrew explained. “But it’s okay. I think I can figure out how to read a map once I have to. Or you can, if I’m driving. And there’s another advantage to this GPS over the other one, come to think about it.”
“And what’s that?”
Andrew reached into the back seat and retrieved a bag with the O company logo on its side. Then he tossed Chloe something — a plastic fob with a metal key — as much a relic as the map, the motel, and the ability to pay for anything with cash.
“When we’re done with that ‘GPS,’” Andrew said, pointing at the map in Chloe’s hand, “we can burn it.”
A hand shook her awake. Chloe started, then calmed, then alarmed all over again once she realized her whereabouts — or, more precisely, that she had no idea where she was. Chloe only knew that she and Andrew were in the Pennsylvania mountains. But not exactly where, not how, and not why.
Th
e lights and sounds were wrong here. So was the air. And wow, was it quiet. No auto sounds, no pedestrians, no shouts of too-loud neighbors passing through the hallways. But it was more than that. For the past few weeks, Chloe had been increasingly aware of the network’s presence. She felt Crossbrace and The Beam like turbulent rivers around her.
But nowhere, there was none of it.
Other than a few sparse Fi signals, the network was gone.
“What is it?”
“Come with me,” Andrew said, silhouetted in the dark.
“Is it time to go? Did someone find us?”
He shook his head. “Nothing like that.”
They went to the door. Andrew took a coat from the O-logo bag and handed it to Chloe. After an appraising second, she dragged it on. It was warmer than it looked, made of some luxury synthetic. She could get the whole story later, but from what she’d pieced together, Chloe thought she understood what must’ve happened.
Alexa and Barnes really had helped them flee the city, really were at least nominally on her side — both of their sides, with Andrew now a full partner.
But Andrew had come to Chloe’s apartment after she’d called him and Chloe had barely escaped with the shirt on her back. Neither had packed clothes or any other essentials. If this was some sort of clean break, they’d needed supplies. O, it seemed, had provided — along with cash, GPSs, and maps to an unknown destination.
“Is this safe?”
Andrew looked her over. “It’s a coat.”
“But …”
Andrew sensed her meaning. “I don’t think O is tracking you, Chloe, though time will tell. For now, this is our best bet. Trust me, and I’ll tell you everything later. If you want, we can stop somewhere along the way and throw everything Alexa gave me out the window. But in the meantime, I’m sure their coat won’t hurt you.”
Feeling a bit silly for wondering, Chloe put on the coat. But there was a spell on the night, and everything seemed to call for whispers. They were alone and reporting to no one, but she couldn’t shake a feeling that they were sneaking out nonetheless.
“Come on.”
Andrew grabbed a blanket and then opened the door to their motel room. The other rooms were silent. From the time they’d arrived until now, she’d seen literally nobody else. Andrew must have paid for the room to get the key — cash again, she assumed, and what kind of backwoods motel still dealt in cash? Who even carried cash? She had to assume there was a manager in the motel’s office. But were they otherwise the only ones here?
The Future of Us (The Future of Sex Book 12) Page 5