“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.
“Shoulda stayed home.” As Joey massaged the half-hard bulge of his sullen dick, he slowed to a crawl and peered through the windshield. The snow had begun falling an hour ago, and now the wipers were barely keeping it from blocking the glass. “Come on, man. Show me something besides all this shit.” That was when he saw the road leveling out and widening, and blew out a breath. “Okay, that’s more like it.”
On the other side of the cab, Bob shifted, mumbling something in his sleep.
“Keep dreaming, man; just keep dreaming,” Joey murmured as he slowed and peered again through the frosty glass. A second lane appeared on the right, leading off at a steep incline into a winding trail. The GPS blipped, showing the new road with a balloon marker. When Joey tapped the balloon on the screen, it displayed the words
Frenchman’s Pass
and a chevron with a tiny knife, fork, and gas pump.
“Truck stop, all right. That’s what I’m talking about.” Joey moved into the turn lane, but the truck’s dash lights suddenly blinked on and off. At the same time, the engine began to die. “Aw, come on, not now.” Without thinking, he pounded the dashboard with his fist.
“Whaaat?” Bob sat straight up, staring first at the white windshield and then at Joey. “Where are we? Denver?”
“Not there yet.” He had to keep Bob from blowing a fuse over this. “I gotta stop. Something’s wrong with the engine.”
His partner rubbed a hand over his face. “Nothing’s wrong with the engine. Parker had it serviced before we left Atlanta.”
Joey smiled nervously as the truck’s dashboard went dark. “Maybe they missed something with the electrical, Bob.”
“Son of a bitch.” Bob yanked off his seat belt. “Don’t pull onto the shoulder; there’s too much fucking snow. Stay in the turn lane and put the flashers on.” He peered through the windshield. “Where are we?” Without waiting for an answer, he checked his watch and snatched up the folded map from the seat between them. “We should be coming up on the exit to Denver.”
“Yeah, about that.” Joey ducked his head. “We’re not exactly on the highway anymore.”
His partner lowered the map. “
What
did you say?”
Now he was in for it, unless he talked fast. “It was the GPS, man; it screwed me up. I wanted to make better time, you know, so I hit the alternate-route thing, and it told me to take this turn off the highway and then a couple more, and then . . . Jeez, Bob, it’s not my fault. I was just trying to get us there faster, man.”
Bob’s lips flattened. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” He hunched his shoulders. “In the mountains somewhere. Okay?”
His partner grabbed the GPS and reset it, but the screen returned to the
signal lost
screen. “Shit.” After he banged it twice against the edge of the dash, it went blank. “Useless. Just like you.” He threw the GPS at Joey’s head.
“Motherfucker.” Joey howled and clapped a hand over his ear. “What’d you do that for?”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Bob shouted, “and you put us here, you pinhead.”
“No, we’re not.” He rubbed his sore ear and sniffed back a stream of loose snot trying to drip from his nose. “There’s some town down the road, and it’s got a truck stop. I saw it on the GPS right before it died.”
Bob ignored him as he tried to dial out his mobile phone. “No signal. Do you know what Parker is going to do when we don’t show on time?”
“We can still call in. There’s gotta be a phone in that town,” Joey said, cringing when Bob made as if to throw the phone at him. “Shit, will you stop? It’s not my fault the GPS sucks.”
Bob went still, his eyes wide. He stared at Joey and then turned around toward the back of the cab. “Did you hear that?”
“Man, you broke my frigging ear.” Joey frowned. “I don’t hear nothing with this storm blowing.”
“Somebody just rolled up the back door.” Bob pulled the glove box open and took out the weapons he’d stowed inside. He passed a .32 to Joey before he took a Glock and tucked his hand inside his jacket to hide the weapon. “Take the other side. Unless he’s holding, shoot out a knee so I can get a look at him.” He glared. “And whatever you do, pinhead, don’t fucking shoot me.”
Joey climbed out, the icy wind scouring his face before snatching away his first breath. As he was driven back against the side of the cab, he leaned out, expecting to see flashing lights, a state trooper, something. Behind the truck was nothing but empty road, framed by snow-frosted trees and four-foot drifts.
The wind blew in his ears, so loud he could barely hear himself as he muttered, “This is bullshit, man.”
He saw Bob come into view, his back toward Joey, and shuffled toward him. He stopped only when he realized Bob wasn’t wearing his jacket any longer. He had on a different shirt, too, and one of Joey’s skullies—
That’s not Bob.
It was the stiff. There was no one else it could be. Even as his brain argued,
But he’s dead, man, a Popsicle
, Joey knew it was the GI. Those GenHance doctors had pumped him full of drugs and shit, and it had resurrected him, like
Dawn of the
Fucking
Dead
.
Or he’d never been dead....
She stepped out, dressed in Joey’s Megadeth T-shirt and his favorite cords, her fiery hair whipping around her flushed face. In all this cold, this storm, she was hot? She met his gaze, and he fell into her eyes, those big, gorgeous eyes, like bits of the sea framed in gold. Lust dried his mouth, and crept down his throat to pour into his chest, his belly, his crotch. Automatically his gaze dropped to her rack, which stretched out two of the skulls on his tee, which made everything easy. He’d shoot the GI, and take Ginger up front with him, and have a little party with her while Bob worked on the engine.