Jake’s heart stopped as Kiera fumbled with the door handle. He stepped in, yanked the door open, and exited first, scanning for danger as he reached into his chest holster.
She staggered out into the brisk air right behind him, her muffled coughs ratcheting up his guilt. He’d exposed the baby to toxic gas, smoke, and God knew what else.
Dragging her behind him down the side of the building, he peered around the brick corner toward the parking lot, all the while keeping his body in front of Kiera and his Sig ready. The second man, a burly SOB, hadn’t moved from his position. The fucker still leaned against the bumper, trying to look nonchalant as he cased the front of the restaurant.
The Jeep, two spaces away from the asshole, at least was closer to the back of the restaurant. But it wasn’t close enough. They’d never get to Jake’s vehicle before the SUV man intercepted them.
Intercepted Kiera.
Damn it, he needed the second dude to go inside. Now.
Sure enough, after about thirty seconds, a scream and a blunted crash came from within the restaurant.
A series of small explosions shook the brick wall next to him. He checked over his shoulder. Deep-fried bleachy smoke poured from under the back door.
People rushed out of the Waffle Palace and into the parking lot. They had phones out. Shouts echoed off the glass windows.
Confusion took over. Fire alarms wailed. The guy two cars away from the Jeep ran straight toward the restaurant. Perfect.
Jake yanked Kiera forward in a sprint, half supporting her off-balance frame and gritting his teeth at her awkward, too-slow pace.
Five feet from the back of the Jeep, she stumbled.
His heart stopped.
He gripped under her arm and somehow kept her on her feet.
God bless her, but she kept up as best she could as she dashed to the passenger side. By the time her door closed, he’d turned the key in the ignition and re-stowed his Sig.
People milled about in the parking lot, pointing and blocking the exit to the highway.
The two SUV guys staggered out of the restaurant, coughing, spitting, and doubled over as they threw up.
So, how did you fuckers like my little chlorine gas surprise?
Then one man stood, swiped a hand over his eyes, and fished at his waist.
Shit.
“Belt in and hold tight!” Jake yelled. He didn’t wait for her response but threw the vehicle into drive.
He forced the Jeep to jump one curb, then two, almost tipping the vehicle over as they crawled down and up a drainage ditch to an adjacent parking lot.
High-pitched pings, impacts on metal, had him pushing Kiera forward.
“Oh, my God!” she yelled.
“Shit. Stay down!”
“Hard to do.” Her voice came out muffled.
Moving his hand from her head back to grip the wheel, he lurched over another curb, peeled out through an adjacent parking lot, and squealed wheels getting onto U.S. Highway 74 South, heading away from Murphy, NC.
Sitting up, she brushed her auburn hair back from her sweaty forehead. “How did they find us?”
“I got sloppy.” He smacked the wheel. “Fuck!” Taking a cleansing breath that in no way did its job, he glanced at Kiera’s pale face. The face he couldn’t say no to. The face that made him jettison good judgment and go to a public diner. Shit. He was in way deeper trouble than from the guys chasing them.
For now, though, he had to take care of Kiera. He’d deal with the whys of his bad decisions later after he re-tooled this operation ASAP. “Are you okay? Can you breathe? Do you need medical help?” When Beau’s minions recovered, they would be coming for Kiera and Jake. What he would have given to stick around and permanently incapacitate those two cowards. Hunting down a pregnant woman—real brave.
She ran her hands over her head, abdomen, and hips. After a strong inhale and exhale, she shook her head. “No injuries. Lungs seem okay.” She grimaced. “Baby is moving even now. Probably thinks there’s a party going on.”
Turning onto a less-traveled state highway, he said, too loudly, “Are you sure you’re okay? Because if you and the baby need medical attention, I will get you to a facility right now and figure out the security issues later.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m asking.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Like, do you really want to continue down this path? The mission.” Hell, did Jake want to continue down this path? Protecting a pregnant woman who had become the most interesting target for Beau Lequire. Right now, Jake’s precious privacy had been destroyed. His life was destroyed. Maybe the team’s safety, too. Crap.
“Yes.” She sat up straighter, and he caught a determined tilt of her chin from the edge of his field of vision.
“Yes, what?”
“Can you keep me safe until we get to Morpheus Squad?” She snagged the grab bar on the front dash as he took a corner too hard.
He eased off the accelerator. Thank God he knew these southern Appalachian mountain roads like the back of his hand. He’d driven them enough, logging hundreds of miles as he tried to outrun the memories of his fuck-ups. At least he’d gained a hell of a lot of knowledge of the terrain, the roads, and about a million places where a person could disappear. “I will keep you safe,” he said. Eyes on the road, but ears attuned to the woman next to him.
“Once I’m at the compound, the baby and I will be okay?”
“Hell yes.” His statement held more confidence than fact, but he could create a plan to ensure it happened.
“Then let’s keep going. We’ll be more careful. We only have to lay low until tonight, right?”
“Right.”
She sat back with a sigh. “Once the information is turned over, things will be less dangerous.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Why would Beau want to keep me silent then?” Her guileless wide eyes pinned him.
Shit. She thought all this would end in a neat package where she returned to a normal life. “He’s got all the motivation in the world to shut you up for good.” Imagining what Lequire’s revenge might look like sent a wave of searing rage through Jake. “Our solution to the problem with Lequire won’t be simple, that’s all I know for sure.”
A whiff of bleach and burnt oil drifted by him, and he rubbed his hands on his cargo pants. Glancing at Kiera, he flipped the levers to roll down both windows. He prayed he hadn’t caused lasting harm to her and the baby with the toxic fumes and cooking spray bomb.
“Either way, I’m taking a risk,” she said. “If I keep going or stop.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes.” God help him, but he wanted her to stay.
His reasons weren’t completely altruistic.
“Then let’s take the risk that includes avenging my brother’s death. And Mateo’s.”
His thawed heart re-froze. Mateo. There was one way Jake could honor his fallen brother, which meant protecting Kiera and her baby. So it said in the letter Mateo’s letter to Jake. Honoring Mateo’s memory probably did not include making a pass at his buddy’s pregnant fake wife.
Honor. Giving death meaning. If they could complete the mission Kiera and Mateo had been working on, then all the better.
They flew down the state highway, far into the mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina. Careening around blind corners and hairpin curves, Jake remained calm. He knew where they were ultimately headed and at least six different ways to get there from here. He turned off the state route onto a secondary road.
Those men knew what car he drove. Might have a tracker on this vehicle by now. Probably had used drones to find him in Murphy. No time to check on the computer.
Thank God for the thick tree canopy surrounding these narrow mountain roads. But the cover wouldn’t last. He needed to ditch this ride. Fast.
Although he kept checking in the rearview mirror, he hadn’t spied the vehicle from the Waffle Palace parking lot. Yet. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize it was only a matter of time before the bastards caught up with them. With reinforcements.
As he crested a hill, he spied a For Sale sign on a rusted, late-model Ford Taurus parked on the side of the road. Jamming on the brakes, he turned toward Kiera.
“Can you memorize that number?” he asked.
She shot him a tight smile and tapped her temple. “Does a bear poop in the woods?”
Despite the knee-deep shit they were in, he loved her sense of humor. Had seen precious few flashes of it since she arrived. The impish quirk to her lips warmed the cockles of his cold, dead heart.
“Want me to call about a car?” she asked.
“Please.”
He drove around while searching for cell phone signal. Then she sweet-talked the owner into meeting her at the vehicle in fifteen minutes.
While she waited on the wooded dirt driveway next to the Taurus, Jake ditched the Jeep on a nearby road cut. With efficiency, he removed the plates and any identifying information and wiped down the car. A thorough check did not find any trackers. Good. He might have bought them enough time to get out of this area and later make it to the team. As he checked his go bag and stuffed the extra tech from Kiera’s car in a second duffel in the back of the vehicle, he ensured the antidote vials were also safely stowed in a bag. A chill stopped him in his tracks. What would happen if he lost his supply and didn’t get the next dose in time? What if the antidote stopped working?
No one knew.
But the military doctors had made it clear: one day, the antidote wouldn’t contain the relentless chemical reaction occurring in their bodies and minds. Each of the guys would turn into a soulless monster.
Then?
No one ever talked about what that next step involved. Not yet, anyway.
By the time he jogged back to Kiera, he had his shit pulled back together. The car’s owner was happy to sell them the car for exactly the asking price, no haggling needed. Jake’s shoulder blades prickled as he expected a black vehicle to appear on the road behind them.
He ground his molars as the owner proceeded to describe every trip he and his family had ever taken in this car. In painful and minute detail. Complete with a listing of each Cracker Barrel they had stopped at between here and Myrtle Beach. Shit, man. This fellow needed to stop talking already. Every car passing by took another year off Jake’s life.
Finally, papers were signed with a fake name, Jake handed over a wad of cash, and he had himself a real nice family vehicle.
The car smelled like cigarettes and pulled to the right, but it would do for now. First stop was the Jeep, and he offloaded the supplies into the Taurus’s trunk. Heading west, they wound away from Murphy, traveling on forest roads and doubling back on little-used highways for several hours until they passed through the small town of Tellico Plains on the Tennessee side of the mountains. A little farther down the highway, he turned onto I-75 and drove south for thirty minutes, then pulled off at an exit chock full of cookie-cutter, four-story, two-star hotels.
It killed him to leave her in the car. He checked in to the hotel as quickly as possible, cringing as the front desk staff wrinkled their nose at the residual odor of bleach and burnt oil still clinging to Jake. His goal to remain unnoticed had already failed.
He checked his watch. Early afternoon. They had about six hours before it was safe enough to arrive at the Morpheus Squad compound. Ushering her through the lobby and into a quiet elevator, Jake held the duffel bags with his left hand, keeping his dominant hand free to protect Kiera.
He examined every inch of the clean and nondescript hotel room. Safe. No bugs. No recording devices. No dangers he could detect. He pulled the heavy upright chair next to the door.
“Bolt the door behind me and cram the chair under the doorknob.” He paused. “Is it safe for you to push the chair into place?”
With a flash of a smile that quickly fell, she said, “If I can crawl through a three-foot diameter tunnel as a house explodes behind me, run through the woods with shrapnel in my leg, and help to blow up a Waffle Palace, then I’m pretty sure pushing a measly chair a few feet across a vinyl floor is totally in my wheelhouse.”
He snorted. “How is your leg? Your … other injury?”
She glanced at him then to the floor. “Achy but not bad. I peeked while we waited to buy the car. No pus on the bandages or redness, like you said to watch out for.”
“Good.”
Then he went very still. How badly did he want to kill someone for putting her in danger.
“Jake?”
He blinked back to the reality of Kiera standing in front of him and the foreign sensation of shakiness in his gut when he looked at her. “I’ll be back in less than a half hour,” he said. “If it’s more than an hour, go to the Travel Suites two buildings down and stay in their lobby where the front desk worker can see you.” Although, shit, public places didn’t deter Lequire’s men, did they?
Remaining on high alert, he exited the room and waited for the clunk and scrape as she bolted the door and pushed the chair into place. In record time, he went through a drive-through for some food and rushed in and out of a nearby drug store to get necessary supplies before returning to the hotel.
The pause between his knock on the hotel door and the moment she threw the metal door guard? Torture. He willed his damned shoulder muscles to relax.
It took her too long to drag the chair away. All he wanted to do was break down the door and rush in there.
After closing and locking the door, he blew out a lungful of air. Kiera stood in the room, a small, pregnant figure all alone. If someone came in here, intent on harm, she wouldn’t stand a chance. That concept sucker punched him.
“Are you strangling lunch?” Her voice cut through his black thoughts.
“What?”
“You have a death grip on my hamburger.”
“Damn it. Sorry.”
Unclenching his fingers, he handed her the bag of food. “It’s not fancy. Or particularly nutritious,” he mumbled.
“You kidding? Right about now, I’ll eat anything not nailed down.”
“Then by all means, dig in. And don’t forget—”
“Water?” A flash of a smile, and she waved the plastic hotel cup, half full. “I’m on it.” Then she tore into the bag and took a bite, sighing as she sagged in the vinyl armchair.
Something tight in his chest gave way at the image of her enjoying her meal. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he had provided sustenance for her. Nothing at all.
Then the corners of his mouth rose, a foreign sensation for unused muscles.
Stick with the mission. He tried to review the next few steps of the plan. He checked outside the window once more, pulled the drapes shut, and joined her at a laminated desk for the meal. Only he didn’t sit. He stood.
Or more accurately, he hovered next to her.
Pausing after chewing a salty, crispy fry, he said, “After lunch, it’s time for your bad dye job. Then a rest period.” He hated the idea of changing the color of her beautiful, deep-red hair. Couldn’t be helped. Another thought hit him. “Uh, any idea if the hair dye is okay … with the pregnancy? I did get a box of ten-minute hair color, thinking it would be less exposure. But I didn’t want to ask the pharmacist.”
She squinted at the ceiling with that eidetic-memory look he’d seen plenty of times before. “It’s fine as long as it’s not black aniline dye.” She focused on him and winked. “Page forty-three from one of the pregnancy books. The super dark, goth hair dye contains a chemical that uncouples DNA. I believe uncoupling DNA is bad for growing babies.” She giggled.
He did not. Because the DNA inside of her was more than uncoupled.
He had to get Doc to check her out, make sure the baby would be okay. Then what?
Then they would wait and see.
When Jake had agreed to test the virus, the scientist in charge of the program had made it clear: do not get anyone pregnant. Ever.
Vasectomies were recommended. Some guys did it right away. Others swore to use protection. After his wife’s miscarriage, Jake couldn’t get the snip. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the finality of never having children. No legacy … nothing. So he had been careful, except for that one night. He had dodged the proverbial bullet then.
After the night with Kiera, he’d been so rattled that he had gone to the doctor the next day and done the deed. Now? No possibility of Jake, Jr. or grandchildren, or any future family. Probably better that way, all things considered.
His gaze swept Kiera’s small frame that carried a small baby. Damn it. Mateo knew the rules. He had protection. Why the hell did he take the chance with Kiera?
A question Jake would never be able to ask his friend.
Kiera was saying something. He asked her to repeat the question.
Her brow furrowed as fear shot across her features. “After the dye, then what’s the next step?”
“Then we wait.”
“Here?”
“I swear you’ll be safe.” He said it like maybe this time around the statement would be true.
He said it like a threat.