He wasn’t recoiling from her; if anything, his attention sharpened. “What can you do?”
“For one thing, I can read the minds of animals.” She grimaced. “I know, that sounds like I’m some crazy pet psychic, but it’s true. I know what they’re thinking, and I can even keep them from hurting people. It’s why I work as an animal control officer.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, that’s the reason I’m not dead. I can’t be killed with drugs.” She met his gaze. “It’s the same reason you’re still alive.”
His brow furrowed. “You think they did the same to me?”
She nodded and curled her fingers around his hand. “It’s the reason they kidnapped me. We’re going to one of their chop shops. They want to dissect me and use my genes to change ordinary people.” She hesitated, and then added, “They must have already used you as one of their test subjects, to see if they could change you to be like me.”
“They could not do that,” he said. “They took you after. Unless … ”
She nodded. “This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. There are others like us, and I’ve become friends with some of them. We think they’re trying to re-create the process that was used to change me and my friends.” The truck came to a stop, and she waited until it accelerated again before she murmured, “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
“You apologize to me.” He seemed dumbfounded. “You forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Whatever had been done to Walker wasn’t his fault; he was as much a victim as she was.
The truck’s wheels ran over a pothole, knocking Lilah off balance. Walker encircled her waist to keep her from falling, but as the truck picked up speed, they both slid backward toward the rear door.
“Incline,” she muttered as she looked toward the front. “Did you see anything when you looked outside? Were there any roads signs?”
“Only snow and cars.”
Lilah didn’t know how long they had slept, and now she was afraid it was much longer than she’d originally thought. “Could you see any license plates on the cars?” He nodded. “What state were they?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “White mountains behind the numbers.”
“Colorado plates.” Her heart sank. “That’s why they stopped. We must almost be there.”
“The sun is setting,” Walker said. “We will go soon. Darkness will help us. Hide us … ”
“I hope so.” Lilah checked the side pockets of the gym bag, which contained a half dozen pairs of socks and several wool knit caps. She handed one of the skullies and half the socks to Walker. “They’re not as good as shoes, but we can layer them.”
He sat with her, bracing his back against the boxes, and with her help tugged on the socks. He had long, narrow feet with a pronounced arch, she noticed, and well-shaped toes—not something she expected to see on a soldier who had probably spent several years marching along in combat boots.
He took the socks from her and brought her right foot up onto his thigh, pausing to admire it for a moment. “You have little girl’s feet.”
“Unfortunately they’re the only part of me that’s dainty.” She wiggled her own stubby toes with their short, bare nails. “These clothes won’t keep us warm for long. We’ll have to flag down a car or find shelter right away.”
He tried to loosen the cuff still hanging from his wrist again, first tugging, and then frowning at it. “Shelter is better.”
“We might get hit by oncoming traffic.” She watched him roll the socks over her feet. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to climb out while the truck is moving.”
He scowled. “No climbing.”
“You want to wait until they deliver us to the chop shop?” she countered.
“When the truck stops, we will jump.”
“We don’t know if they’re going to stop again.” She sighed. “With the ice and snow out there, we do have to wait until they stop at a traffic light. That should give us enough time to climb out.”
“We are jumping.”
She wriggled her feet. “Not in socks.”
“I will hold you.” He scooped her up and held her against his chest, with nothing supporting her weight but his arm. “Like this.”
“You can’t.” But his arm remained rock-steady as he held her aloft. “Walker, you’re still weak, and I’m no lightweight. Cut it out before you hurt yourself.”
“I am strong again,” he told her, sounding a little smug. “I could hold you like this for days.”
It was the longest sentence he’d said to her, and it thrilled her down to her toes, but she had to be practical. “Not if you dislocate an elbow.” She wriggled until he lowered her onto his lap. “You don’t have to prove to me how big and strong you are.” She braced a hand against his bicep, and tried to think of a diplomatic way to ask him about his size. “Have you always been in such good shape?”
He looked down at her hand. “Not like this.” He flexed his arm, and the muscles moved like shifting steel under her fingers. “My body has changed. I’ve never been this large or so heavy.” He stared at her. “What will happen to me now? Do you know?”
“Not specifically.” It wasn’t a lie; Lilah couldn’t be sure he had been subjected to the same drugs as Jezebel’s stalker, and to tell him about the killer would only worry him more. “As soon as we’re safe, I’ll contact my friends. They’ll help us find out what’s been done to you.”
His reaction was abrupt and startling. “No. No hospitals. No doctors.”
“My friends aren’t like that,” she said quickly. “All of us have had to hide what we are to prevent the government and companies like GenHance from exploiting us. We would never risk exposing you to them.”
He set her aside. “I am not one of you.”
Lilah wasn’t about to let him push her away. “You could be.”
“My friends are dead,” he told her flatly. “I should be. It’s what I deserve.”
“You think you deserve to be experimented on?” Anger flooded through her, and she had to clench her jaw to keep her voice low. “You’re alive, Walker. If you want to die, all you have to do is stay here. They’ll mess with you for a while, but they can never let you go. As soon as they’re finished, they’ll kill you.”
He grabbed the dangling cuffs and tried to pull them off. Lilah didn’t interfere until she saw blood trickling from his wrist.
“Oh, my God. Stop. Walker, please. You’re hurting yourself.” Gently she uncurled his fingers from the metal and grimaced at the shallow gashes before she used the hem of her T-shirt to stanch the flow. “What were you thinking? You can’t pull these cuffs apart with your bare hands.”
He pulled the hem away and stared at the gashes, which were no longer oozing blood but still open and raw-looking. Then he studied the cuffs closely.
“I think they’re like police issue,” she added, trying to distract him from trying again, “except for the color. The cops use steel cuffs.”
“Brass.” He lowered his hand and looked around. “I need a lever to pry it off.”
“What you need to do is get ready.” Lilah stood, forcing him to do the same. “Because as soon as they slow down again, we’re jumping.” She felt the speed of the truck slowing. “Which would be right now.”
Before he could stop her, she grabbed the interior handle of the door and yanked it up.
Joey Narda wished he’d never taken this job. If he hadn’t, he’d be in his apartment right now, kicking back in his recliner and giving himself a slow lotion jerk while watching the six blondes in Prep School Pussies IV munch muff. Or maybe even getting a hummer from that chick Tammy who had moved in across the hall. She’d been smiling at him ever since she’d asked him to fix the leak in her sink pipe when the super couldn’t be bothered. And it wasn’t just because she had a great body, either; she was interested in him for real. While he’d worked on her sink, she’d asked him about his job and who he worked with, and laughed over his descriptions of Bob and the Cast-Iron Bitch who’d hired them.
Yeah, Tammy wanted him, bad. She was hot to suck on his pipe; anyone could see that.
He imagined her in those short shorts she’d been wearing that night they’d talked, and her tits bobbing as she peeled off her tight T-shirt and knelt in front of his La-Z-Boy. She had a habit of biting into the bottom half of her cherry red lips. Maybe before she blew him, she’d even talk a little dirty like the girls in the skin flicks did.
Let me suck it, Joe. It’s so big and hard, and I want it. Ooooh, please, big guy, I need it….
But Tammy was back in Atlanta, along with his apartment, his sofa, and his porn collection, while Joey was … He didn’t know where the fuck he was.
He checked the GPS again, but the display still showed a cartoon car heading into nowhere with the words signal lost hovering over it. He should never have used it to find a faster way to Denver, and now it wasn’t working at all. He’d have to reset the thing, but for that, he’d have to take it off the dashboard stand and fiddle with it, something he wasn’t doing until he stopped.
When he found a place to stop.
The stupid-ass thing had told him he could shave fifty minutes off the drive if he left the highway and took some back roads, but now he was stuck on this crappy mountain going exactly nowhere. He hadn’t seen any signs for the last thirty miles, which made him wonder if the narrow, two-lane road was even on the map at all. Bob would know, but Joey would punch himself in the balls before he woke up his partner and told him he’d taken a different route.