Paired Objective: Matched Desire, Book 2

by Clare Murray

  “Your fuse is a lot shorter,” Cam had once dared to comment six months ago or so. They’d been in the air at the time, scoping out small rural communities and noting the locations for map purposes. He hadn’t replied, because what could he say to that? His brother was right. His temper was worse.

  The better to kill the enemy, he’d rationalized.

  Then one day, he’d nearly throttled another Twin just for drunkenly bumping into him at a party. That had nearly cost him this mission. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Cam’s influence, he’d be cooling his heels on desk duty.

  Attaching his commtab to the dash, Russ tapped until the map on the screen zoomed out enough to give him a larger picture of the United States. It was a fully updated map—or as fully updated as they could get these days with patchy satellite service. President Wright was making a lot of noise about carrying out a Census as soon as possible. For now, however, they had to rely on Twin observations, irregular reconnaissance flights, and word-of-mouth to keep the maps updated.

  Scar City had turned into a black square on his screen, an indication that the aliens had taken it over. There were other black cities, both domestic and international, scattered across the map. Too many of them.

  A City, capital C, denoted a place with walls and relatively beefy defenses. A city…well, Russ wasn’t naïve enough to assume those places didn’t have a few human denizens. Diehards, mostly, a little like homesteaders of the old West. Deluded into believing if they occupied the area long enough, they’d own the area instead of the aliens.

  Russ zoomed in again, reviewing his route. It was likely the Shadow Feds had dispatched someone to check out the stolen commtab—after what Abby did, the bastards would be out for blood—but it would be impossible for anyone to catch up with them today, even if they took the same road.

  Unless they had access to a chopper or similar. He mulled that over, finally discarding it as too outlandish. Entitled as they were, even the self-styled senators had to recognize some limits. Namely, that gas was way too expensive to waste on flimsy recon missions.

  The safe house bunker was outside City walls, only marked on his map through code. Even if the government maps were hacked into, the hackers would have to break that code to figure out the precise location. Although…Russ frowned, suddenly remembering the Twins who had defected, Slater and Arden. Did they know the code? Would the senators have drafted them into helping pursue Abby?

  If so, they were still in danger. Looking in the mirror at Abby’s sleeping face, Russ vowed the Fed bastards wouldn’t touch a curly hair on her head—not without reckoning with him first.

  * * * * *

  Cool air on her face roused Abby. Barely moving a muscle, she slit her eyes open, a survival technique she’d honed over the past eleven years.

  Still in the van. Not moving. Engine off. Neither Twin present.

  Opening her eyes fully, Abby sat up and threw off the blanket one of the men had carefully tucked around her at some point. The sun slanted in at an angle that suggested morning was long gone.

  The van was no longer on the main highway but at the side of a much smaller road, the asphalt of which was pocked to hell and back. There’d been no attempt to fill the holes in. That meant they were pretty far from the beaten path. Certainly nowhere near a City.

  And there was still no sight of the Twins.

  As silently as possible, Abby opened the rear door, taking in her surroundings as thoroughly as she could. The grass on the verge was long and filled with weeds, and the always-growing forest threatened to eat the road sooner rather than later. The nearest roots already buckled the surface a few hundred feet down the road.

  Unzipping her bag, she pulled out the handgun she’d taken from the control room at Headquarters. Then she paced a few steps away from the van, looking up and down the road as worry gnawed at her insides like acid. There was no way Russ and Cam would have abandoned her. She was confident about that.

  But if they’d spotted a threat, they might not have woken her before going out to deal with it. And as Cam had pointed out earlier, they weren’t infallible.

  Undergrowth crackled. Abby dropped to one knee, holding the gun in a two-handed grip and aiming it in the direction of the forest. One finger caressed the trigger.

  A combat boot-clad man strode into the open, beelining for the van. His eyes widened at the sight of the gun. “Abby, whoa.”

  Russ. It was Russ. Her relief manifested in a slight shakiness as she flicked the safety back on. “Whoa yourself,” she muttered, and tucked the gun away before Russ could do something overly protective like take it away from her. His alertly speculative look made her smug—so they hadn’t noticed all this time that she’d tucked that gun into her bag?

  Good.

  She rose, dusting off her knee, and scoped the area. Were they at the bunker? She couldn’t see anything save for the thinnest of deer trails through the forest. If anyone lived around here, they were careful not to broadcast their habitation too clearly. Abby would never have noticed the path from the van.

  “Is this where we’re going to stay?”

  “Yep.” Russ responded to the dubious note in her voice by pacing closer. “The bunker’s in that forest, underground. It was built sometime during the Cold War and kept under wraps by the government since. Why they’d want a nuclear bunker in rural Ohio is anyone’s guess. Cam suspects they built it for shits and giggles. Then kept it for special, official parties.”

  “Parties?” Abby snickered. The earlier adrenaline rush left her veins, leaving her shaky but relaxed. “Is there any leftover alcohol?”

  “Not any longer.” Russ actually looked disappointed. So he drank? Partied? What was his social life like?

  Maybe life for the Twins was all work and no play. Abby frowned. If that were so, it was no wonder Russ seemed to have a stick up his butt sometimes. She gave him a sideways glance, taking in his muscular body, his wide stance and clasped hands. Postcoital tension? She didn’t know what to say to cure that unless she trotted out some cheesy line from a movie. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

  Russ broke the moment by putting a hand at the small of her back, guiding her toward the forest. “Let’s get out of the open. The Triplets are inside in case we need backup, but I don’t want to tempt fate given our bad luck lately.”

  There were Triplets inside? Abby blinked. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “What about the van?”

  “Cam will drive it around the back. There’s a dirt road a little ways down.”

  Abby eyed the trees as they approached the deer trail. In the eleven years since the Invasion, the undergrowth had grown significantly, brushing the asphalt of the highway. Even with the afternoon sun beating down, there was plenty of darkness in the forest.

  Darkness hid Barks.

  “Let’s go around the back too,” she suggested, balking at the tree line.

  “Can’t do that. We’re supposed to shield knowledge of this location from civilians. If you hadn’t been sleeping on the way here, we would’ve had to blindfold you.”

  Despite the pressure at her back, Abby planted her feet, anger buoying her. “Fine, then blindfold me. Want me to sign a nondisclosure agreement too?”

  “Abby—”

  “Or we can do it verbally! I solemnly swear I’ll never disclose this location to any Russians, Barks, or spies,” she snapped. “I solemnly swear—”

  Russ spun her around, cutting her off midsentence with a hard kiss. He tipped her back, cradling her head so that she was completely at his mercy, dependent on his strength to keep her upright. She opened to him as his tongue flicked out, stunned at how quickly arousal swept over her. The fabric of his shirt bunched between her hands as she clung to him, and her head felt fuzzy when he set her down again.

  “Do you really think,” he said fiercely, “that I give a flying fuck about preve
nting you from finding out the location of this bunker? Do you think I give half a shit about bending over backward to follow every single piddling rule and regulation?”

  “No?” Abby guessed. She stared into his eyes, which burned into hers from mere inches away.

  “That’s right, I fucking don’t. But when it comes to you, I have to care. This is the kind of thing that might make a junior official get their panties in a wad—you knowing this bunker’s location. Then they escalate it to the scientists in charge of us, and voila, they’ve got ammo to banish you from the Complex.”

  Abby breathed out, nodded.

  “And if they banish you from the Complex, they might as well banish me and Cam too.”

  She nodded again. Well, there was a way to state commitment.

  “Excuse my French,” Russ said belatedly.

  “I’ve heard worse.” She let him tuck her under his arm, though she tensed as they went out of the sunlight.

  There were stories floating around about people accidentally stumbling across Bark burrows—enough stories for Abby to believe in them. Having lived the past few years of her life on the road, Abby considered herself hardier than most people, but the idea of stepping on top of a sleeping alien really squicked her out.

  So she kept to the trail, walking single-file as it narrowed, although Russ kept hold of her hand. As they got deeper in, the trail branched in two and Abby resisted the absurd urge to quote Robert Frost as Russ chose the fainter path.

  “Why are you so certain you want me to stay with you?” she asked, mostly to break the oppressive silence.

  “There’s a theory that Twins have a kind of super-attraction to certain women,” Russ answered. “It’s something basic, possibly relating to scent. Pheromones, maybe. I think it runs a bit deeper than that, because after I tasted you, I felt like I couldn’t get enough.”

  “Is that…coded into your DNA?” Abby knew enough about the Multiple Project to have a vague familiarity with the origins of the Twins.

  “Possibly, although my personal theory is that it’s a bug, not a feature.” Russ started walking again, but not before she caught the bleak expression on his face.

  Ouch. Dignity bruised, she winced. “If, um, you want me to wear perfume or something…”

  “Why?” He whirled so fast, she stepped off the path and shrieked. Before she knew it, she’d catapulted herself into his arms and was perched halfway up, feet on his thighs, trembling.

  No tentacles reached for her. No howls pierced the air. Still, her feet had touched something. She clung to Russ, paralyzed with fear.

  The anger scrawled on his face lessened, turning to bewilderment. “What are you… What’s wrong?”

  “Think-I-might-have-stepped-on-a-burrow.” The words tumbled out of her, half-garbled.

  By the lightening of his expression, he understood perfectly. “You didn’t, baby. There’s too many roots around here for aliens to burrow.”

  “Okay. Right. Cool.” Abby cast one last dubious glance into the dimness of the forest. Carefully, she disentangled herself from Russ, forcing herself to stand normally and not on her tiptoes. No burrows around here. None.

  “What were you saying a minute ago about perfume?” Russ pressed.

  “I can wear some?”

  “Why?”

  Her heartbeat was starting to slow down. Abby looked up at him, still breathing hard, then looked away with a shrug, still hurt. “You seem like you don’t want to be attracted to me. If it’s a problem, we can change it.”

  “That’s not what I meant. At all.”

  “Perfume is pretty easy to scavenge,” she went on, cutting him off. She wished she could step around him and continue walking, but she didn’t know the way. Wasn’t supposed to know the way. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled tomorrow and you can let me go scavenge somewhere. Then I’ll spray myself and we can move on.”

  Russ was quiet, blocking the path in front of her. When she finally looked at him, she felt a pang of remorse. Anguish lined his face. He looked directly at her, the intensity of his gaze pinning her to the ground.

  “I never asked to be created, but now that I’ve tasted life, I’m not sorry for it,” he said quietly. “I’m not sorry for being attracted to you either.”

  When he turned, she followed him in silence. Several times, she opened her mouth to form an apology, but something about the way he strode forward was forbidding. What must it be like, knowing you were created for a specific purpose? That you were regarded as a tool first, human being second?

  Plus, there was the whole attraction thing. She reciprocated the feeling—with both men—but maybe there were people who didn’t. Or couldn’t. That must be some kind of hell, being chemically attracted to someone who couldn’t love you back.

  Or worse, loved your Twin but not you.

  “Here we are.” Russ paused in front of a chain-link fence. It was rusty but relatively intact, which suggested this area didn’t see much alien action. Besides, it was a barrier designed to keep out humans, not Barks. The thin metal wouldn’t last long against their serrated teeth.

  Unlocking a gate, Russ let her through, then clicked it shut again. On this side of the fence, she felt less psyched out about not walking on a path. Roots, she reminded herself. They don’t like roots.

  The first signs of human habitation were subtle—a vegetable patch in a small clearing. Enough sun trickled through for certain varieties of plants to thrive, and Abby supposed the chain-link fence kept out any vegetable-nibbling deer. She walked by the raised beds, wondering if Twins had been taught gardening skills or if they’d been forced into it after the Invasion along with the rest of the human population.

  She’d certainly never learned how to tend chickens or grow potatoes in high school. Fortunately, Grammie had a green thumb, and Callum had been a Future Farmers of America member. She’d teased him mercilessly about that once upon a time, simultaneously amused by and proud of the ribbons he won for exhibiting his animals.

  After the Invasion, however, Callum’s experience with chickens had come in handy. Abby shook her head. Maybe they should have stayed put instead of going on the road. They’d kept a small flock of chickens, four fat Rhode Island Red hens and a Bearded White Silkie bantam rooster.

  That combination had made for a few interesting offspring. Still, eggs were eggs, and they’d thrived for a time. But human-on-human crime in their area had risen steeply, so much so that her mother had deemed the road safer than hunkering down. Maybe she’d been right. The hell of it was she’d never know. Callum was dead, and Mom too.

  “Abby.”

  She realized with a start that she was standing still, staring into the near distance. Russ was walking back toward her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, but he tucked her under his arm anyway, a comfort she couldn’t bring herself to reject. He guided her toward what looked like a pipe sticking out of the ground.

  “Memories?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” That was all she could manage, and Russ didn’t pry. Instead, he opened a hatch in the metal tube. The darkness within was almost palpable. She gulped as he stepped in.

  “I’m going first in case you fall,” he said.

  She might have argued with him if she hadn’t been so shaken. But her earlier scare convinced her to meekly go along with his plan. She copied him by descending backward, firmly gripping the sides of the ladder. Above her, the hatch swung shut with a muffled clang.

  She expected the interior to be pitch-black, but to her surprise and relief there was a faint light somewhere beneath them. A few furtive touches told her she was in a narrow tube. The darkness lessened with each cautious step she took.

  The stomp of Russ’s boots on concrete warned her that the ladder was about to end, and his hands closed around her waist, providing extra security. She was tempted to sag against him, but pride k
ept her upright.

  The sole light flickered dimly in a corner, anemically yellow. Abby tried to swallow her consternation. The area was barely larger than a bathroom stall—speaking of which, it lacked those facilities as well. Wrinkling her nose, she stared around.

  Beggars can’t be choosers, she told herself. The place would keep them safe from aliens, at the very least.

  A creak made her whirl. Blinking, she watched Russ turn a small wheel on the wall, a portion of which swung outward, submarine-door-style, to reveal a glimpse of a much larger interior. He stepped through the small door, bending almost double.

  “Fancy-schmancy,” she muttered. To follow him, she had to duck too, all the while making sure she didn’t trip over the raised threshold. So this had been a politician party base? She couldn’t imagine the plump senators from Headquarters making it down that narrow ladder.

  Russ shut the door as Abby stood still, getting used to the increased light. “There’s another entrance, but it’s blocked off,” he said almost apologetically.

  “The better to prevent a Bark visit.” The lightly accented voice came from behind her.

  Three dark-haired men lounged on a pair of couches, meeting her gaze with open curiosity. It was unclear who’d spoken—not that it would have mattered anyway, since she couldn’t tell them apart. Cam and Russ had their subtle differences now that she knew them, but these Triplets looked like trouble personified.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Meet Valentino, Lorenzo, and Rocco,” Russ said, sounding distracted. “Guys, I need to go back up and help Cam.”

  “Sure,” one of the men said. He patted the empty spot next to him, “Come sit down, cara.”

  Abby warily obeyed, sinking into the plush cushions. Whoever furnished this place clearly hadn’t skimped. The living area was open-plan, with a respectable kitchen at one end and couches and chairs at the other. The floor was bare concrete, broken up here and there by thick rugs. An ancient projector hung from the ceiling, pointed toward a rolled-up movie screen.