Lost: Project Xol Read online

  With his back to me, his fingers typing on my phone and then stashing it in the backpack, I yanked my bra and shirt on, toeing my socked feet into my shoes.

  “I texted him the stuff. Ready?” Luke said, standing rigid and ready to pounce, facing away from me. I answered by taking the backpack as I brushed past him.

  “Back to your bike?” I asked. I had no idea where we were in the city, but his motorcycle parked at the hotel we’d stayed at had to be our best option. To my lingering dismay.

  “See,” he said as he stepped out of the room first and glanced in both directions. “I knew you’d come around. You like riding on it, don’t you?”

  “Funny.” I followed after him, careful not to meet the attention of any of the hospital workers bustling around us in the hallways. He was right, though. Holding on tight to the strong man at my side was becoming too much of a treat.

  As we rounded a corner, a nurse called out, “Miss Shaw?”

  Luke took my hand and redirected us past another corner. In a matter of minutes, we’d evaded the nurse who’d noticed us. And in even less time, we’d thoroughly lost any sense of direction. Once we finally walked out of the swooshing doors of the exit, leaving the antiseptic stink of the hallways and the competing beeping of medical devices behind, I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “Are you okay to walk?” Luke asked.

  Was I limping? Panting? Or was he just worried?

  I tugged on his fingers as I scanned the city. I checked for Michael. Foolishly hoped Rosa would stroll into view. Hell, I tried to see if anything looked familiar. In a large city like New York, I was too overwhelmed to spot something to guide me. Maybe there was something to be said for navigational skills because I couldn’t landmark my way anywhere here. “Which way?”

  “Too far, I think.” He raised his arm, signaling one of the cabs waiting nearby.

  I huffed. “I’m fine.”

  He narrowed his stare at me, but with the start of something like a grin, he didn’t seem so sinister there. It was going to take a while for us to gain some middle ground of arguing. “I know that. But it’s not so fine if we have to walk far with Michael in the city.”

  Promptly shut up, and realizing he didn’t assume I was a weakling, I followed him to the car. Five minutes later, we pulled up to where his bike was waiting in the garage.

  It didn’t matter that I’d survived being on the two-wheeled machine all of yesterday and most of last night. Nerves took flight as I strode toward it. Worrying. Wondering. Fidgeting.

  “Do you think the helmet will rub on your injury?” He handed me the dome as I finished tightening the backpack straps.

  As if I’d get on that death-mobile without it. I slid it on as gently as I could. It was so big the paddings didn’t even touch the spot where I’d landed on the subway pole. I gave him a thumbs-up and he nodded once. He straddled the machine and I stood there, hesitating again.

  He twisted his powerful body, straining the muscles in his neck to glance back at me. “You coming?”

  “I trust you.”

  If he could manage to show such faith in me, I knew I had to at least try to put my life in his hands once more. I sat down and wrapped my arms around him, relishing the now-familiar heat and solidity of his body. “Giddy up.”

  ****

  Getting out of New York City was our goal, but beyond that vague sense of direction, I didn’t know where to go. Rosa’s place—and Luke’s—was destroyed. Zero had seen a strange man breaking into my home in Ann Arbor. No safe havens came to mind.

  Luke didn’t seem to know where to go either because as soon as we’d crossed the state line out of New York, he pulled off the highway at a gas station. Chatting wasn’t the easiest to do while on the bike, and I’d been too busy trying to make sense of this hell anyway.

  If someone was reporting Rosa’s death, that had to mean they wanted her out of the way. And who could wield that much power? Cops could. But what kind of a law enforcement officer was Michael? Too many deceptions from too many people I should be able to trust.

  A cop shouldn’t be trying to strangle me or demanding I give him my mom’s science data. My mother shouldn’t be asking me to retrieve something linked to a potential cure for cancer. A devilishly sexy ex-con shouldn’t be chauffeuring me across the country on the back of his motorcycle, and riding behind him shouldn’t be so—

  “You want anything before we head off again?” Luke asked as he tended to the gas pump.

  “Off to where?” I snapped back as I stretched my arms over my head.

  He seemed too stuck on my chest so I smacked his shoulder. Shit. That was the bad one. The one I’d hit. I winced. “Sorry.”

  Rubbing it, he glowered at me. “No. My bad.” He cleared his throat.

  “Off to where?” I repeated, arms crossed over my chest. Well, my body might be liking him and his attention on my chest, my mind wasn’t about to roll over and just let him ogle me like a caveman.

  “You got any ideas?”

  I didn’t and I’d been hoping he might have one. He’d been fast to have a backup place for us to crash that first night we’d met. But that was just outside Cincy. It seemed unlikely he’d have a ready place to stay in…

  I glanced around at the run-of-the-mill gas station off the highway. “Where are we?”

  “Not in New York.”

  Hey, I’d take it. God. I had to lighten up. He didn’t have to do any of this. Yet he was still with me.

  “I thought we could drive a little more. Find a small city and get a room.” He licked his split lip as he removed the nozzle from the gas tank. “I’d rather not drive nonstop two days in a row. And if we don’t have a destination in mind, I’d hate to be heading in the wrong direction.”

  A day off, so to speak. To recoup. He wouldn’t get an argument from me. As much as I was enjoying the chance to mold myself to him and see just how hard his firm abs were, I didn’t want to while away hours on the bike.

  “I agree.”

  He tilted his head to the side at my words and strode off to pay. Cash, of course. We didn’t need a digital trail of our unusual trip. Yet Michael had still reunited with us despite us being careful.

  As we got back on the bike, I couldn’t shake that fact.

  How had Michael found us? Or was Luke right, that the man was merely aware of Rosa having an account at the bank?

  I zoned out to the wind whipping past us and the steady vibration of the engine under my thighs. Lost within my head, a scary place of too many competing ideas and worries, I picked at it all.

  Rosa’s research. The file names that we’d downloaded from the USB drive in Rosa’s safety-deposit box meant nothing to me. A lot of the raw scientific data my mom worked with likely wouldn’t. The extensions were both Word and Excel spreadsheet kinds, but without actually seeing the numbers and words, I was still in the dark. For as much as I was fluent in her scientific jargon, I’d understood her focus. Dementia. Not cancer.

  What had convinced Rosa to switch from working with her husband, Scott, on finding a cure for cancer, to dementia? Scott’s death?

  I’d never been close with Rosa, as her dedication to her research was her true child in life. But even if I’d ever known that she’d made a mini career crisis jump, I probably wouldn’t have asked her about it. Rosa just wasn’t that open. That willing to discuss anything personal. Like… the fact she’d ever had a spouse. I still couldn’t fully absorb how I’d never known that. Learning about it via Zero’s hacking skills held the sour aftertaste of deception.

  “This looks safe enough,” Luke said, breaking our silence.

  Safe enough. I jerked my chin from its resting spot on Luke’s back and eyed our surroundings. In the bright daylight, it seemed…well, safe enough. Not so rundown that hookers would be frequenting the motel but also not so pretty of an area that the lodging wouldn’t take our cash and fake names.

  A Cadillac passed us as we waited to turn into the parking lot
, humping the pavement and pulsing out rap.

  “If you say so.”

  Was this what my life would consist of now? Driving from one crappy hotel room to another, waiting on word from Rosa?

  I sighed and Luke must have taken it as a cue to soothe me. His calloused hand rubbed at mine that was gripping his jacket. “Or we could keep going.”

  “Just get us a room, please.” If I kept up with back-to-back stints of riding a motorcycle, my ass and thighs would go numb.

  Within the hour, we were secure in a room and had pizza delivered for a late lunch or early dinner. We’d claimed halves of the lone double bed, with Luke tossing his jacket on the left side of the mattress and me lying back on the right.

  Luke headed off to shower, and I resolutely refused to glance at the man as he whipped his shirt off over his head on the way to the tiny bathroom. Just yesterday, I’d had to assist him in taking his shirt on and off. Only two nights ago that I’d rubbed ointment on his taut skin, feverishly avoiding staring or murmuring appreciative noises.

  Seemed his shoulder felt better, then.

  Zero had told us to destroy our current smartphones and obtain pre-paid burners. So with that clean slate, I figured I could access the internet to try to make sense of something. Anything. I began with Scott Farger, the man who’d married Rosa and had been killed at the research compound Rosa was last known to travel to.

  Shit. Zero said not to use the internet…

  I chewed on my lower lip. Now more than ever, I wished I had my laptop. Even my ereader.

  Could I get away with it?

  I didn’t want to risk it, but I couldn’t sit here wondering and worrying. My anxiety for answers, any clues would drive me insane.

  After tapping the phone to the bed, I texted my friend. I’d consult the expert.

  Can I look at some articles about Scott on this phone?

  Zero’s reply was fast. I’d rather you not.

  Please? I’m so confused about all of this.

  In the silence as I waited for a reply, I could almost hear him huffing.

  Is there any safe way I can browse the internet?

  No reply. He wouldn’t snub me. Which meant he might be preparing to help me.

  Check out these links. Only these links. Then reset the phone to factory.

  A few more texts followed with links highlighted in them.

  Okay.

  He clarified: I’ve redirected the address for them. Just in case. I bet your connection will be slower than shit, but it’ll work.

  Thanks.

  Anything else?

  I’d already started to go to the first article link and it froze with his latest text. Anything else? I didn’t detect sarcasm in his words. He knew me well enough that I would be going crazy with too little information. I was greedy like that.

  Actually, yeah. Can you call the bookstore and tell them I’ll be off for a while.

  Mrs. Phelan wouldn’t be counting on me to come in for work until a couple of days from now. I highly doubted I’d be in Ann Arbor by then.

  Of course.

  Link after link, I began to grasp a picture of a very intelligent and optimistic scientist. Scott was a promising researcher in the field of genetics, centralizing his efforts to decoding the axolotls’ genes, specifically their abilities to regenerate parts of their bodies, and almost completely avoid cancer.

  Axolotls. Such a weird name. Prompted to see what I was reading about, I scoffed when the first image showed up. What an oddly cute but horribly ugly little animal. Endangered, too, save for the species living in labs. They’d likely had many in Scott’s lab back in the heyday of his most extensive studies in the nineties. Scott was hardly the first to take an interest in the unique animal. I skimmed past references that remarked on the species being studied way back into the 1800s.

  I didn’t know how long I read about Scott, whitish underwater salamanders, and where Rosa first started to show up in Scott’s scholarly journal entry credits. All I knew much later that night was that the info was dry enough to put me to sleep.

  I woke to a dark room, not only from the lights being shut off, but from nighttime having fallen past the dingy curtains over the windows. My phone slid off my chest as I rolled all the way over on the bed.

  Another grunt came from the opposite side of the mattress. Frowning, I adjusted to sit up, blinking my eyes. I must have really been out of it to miss Luke exiting the shower and climbing into the bed next to me.

  There he was though, adjacent to me but not touching my flesh. The bulk of his body twisted in the sheets and I squinted in the dimness to see. His grunts deepened to a growl. A roar.

  I reached over to touch him. As soon as my fingers touched hot skin, I was gripped by a hand and flung across the bed.

  Chapter Three

  Luke

  Fuck you, Ryan.

  Fuck you to hell and back.

  Fuck you—

  “Luke!”

  The fading clutches of the hazy prison cafeteria walls slithered from my mind’s eye. Darkness crept in as the nightmare receded. Dimness, a glorious light compared to the morbid blackness of that dream.

  I hadn’t had one in so long. Stupid me to assume that memory would stay in the past. My last conscious experience at the prison, when another inmate had jumped on me, nearly killing me.

  It’d been too long since I’d been rendered incapable of shutting it out of my thoughts. To shield my heart from the racing fear of dying.

  “Luke.”

  Again. Softer. I woke the rest of the way up. Panting and desperate for air.

  Cassidy lay under me on top of the sheets. Her arms were raised and I held onto her wrists above her head. Pinned her. She was completely beneath me.

  I stared at her as all traces of sleep vanished.

  Her wide-open blue eyes. Mouth slightly parted. Breasts heaving up against me as I bodily crushed her to the mattress.

  Her tongue shot out to trace the seam of her lips and heat flared through my body.

  “Luke?”

  A question now. Not a command to snap out of a nightmare. Her pulse tapped a fast beat at her wrists and I despised myself for frightening her. For freaking her the hell out. I could survive with an immediate bad rep from my past actions. But I wasn’t anywhere near okay with her feeling threatened by me when I wasn’t even in control.

  “Luke.”

  Four times now she’d pleaded my name. Each time hitting me in the gut. Yet there was no edge of anger. Or shakiness of fear.

  Something too close to compassion. Comfort.

  I exhaled long and hard and let my head fall down. Next to her soft mass of hair and above her slender nape, I surrendered. I dropped my face to the bed, unwilling to face the concern in her gaze.

  Each rise and fall of her underneath me grounded me. Keeping me firmly in the present, in this shitty motel room with even shittier water pressure in the shower. Even though she was under me, she anchored me back in reality, forcing me to know, to accept that dream represented the past.

  I let go of her wrists and bent my arms to take some of my weight off of her. I had no right to sandwich her to the bed like this. No privilege to soak in her steady support and warmth. That sweet, welcoming fragility of her body.

  But I couldn’t move. I focused on breathing, relishing the power of each breath she took, and felt a little less lost. For the first time, I took. I accepted and greedily drank in the comfort she offered.

  After too long of a moment, she shifted. A movement so slight and gentle I held my breath. She touched one hand to my back, and then the other. Smoothing them in an X, she crossed her palms over me and secured me in a hug.

  I squinted my eyes shut tighter, not daring to inhale a deep breath because I knew it would be a shuddering one.

  She held me there. And grounded me.

  We lay there until both of our hearts eased from racing, until our body heat had melded into one cloud of blissful peace. At least I assumed she was
n’t freaking out anymore. Not when she was breathing so softly and evenly, tickling the skin on my shoulder with her exhales. Especially not when she began to rub her palms up and down my back, pressing firm but delicate strokes into my skin.

  She chose to. She chose me. The intensity of such a worth stunned me.

  “Better?” she asked later.

  I borrowed her words. “Getting there.”

  I could feel her cheek rise in a smile against mine.

  Still, she smoothed her hands over my back, tracing her touch back and forth and hardly even flinching when she’d first coasted over the scar from the wound Ryan had given me in prison.

  I’d violently shoved her off of me and pinned her to the bed, and here she was comforting me. “I’m sorry.”

  She ceased one hand’s path across my back and patted twice.

  “I…”

  “Had a bad dream,” she finished.

  I raised myself off her to look her in the eye. In a plank position above her, I wasn’t ready yet to forfeit all of her warmth while she offered it.

  “I…” I couldn’t leave her wondering. But I hated to confess how messed up my life had been before she’d crashed into it.

  In just one stupid little nightmare, I’d lost control. Of my actions, of my fear. She had to be the one to pull me out of it. To take care of the hell when I was always the one to do so for others. I’d never been on the receiving end of comfort. I’d been too busy taking care of—

  Jonah.

  I pushed up from her then and stood from the bed. “I have to make a call.” Refusing to look at her and see if she felt as ripped off from out abrupt separation as I did, I turned my back to her and rubbed a hand over my lips. I retrieved my phone from the pocket of my jeans and checked the screen.

  Nothing. Of course there would be no missed alerts. No one had this number.

  How could I have gone this long without even checking in with him?

  Faint light spread throughout the room and I spun to see Cassidy scooting up to sit against the headboard. With a sigh, I sat next to her, careful—nervous—to touch her after letting her feel all of me, inside and out.