Slow Burn (2 page)

There was a sharp poke at the back of my neck, and I moved my legs. I realized I was shaking. Was this guy serious? Had they captured my father? My dad always said that if they found either of us, they would kill us. Could I really believe it when this man said my father was alive?

Even if he was, did it matter? I was almost sure that they would kill him anyway, no matter what I did.

Maybe I should scream my head off.

But what if he was telling the truth? What if I screamed, and they killed him? I’d be responsible for killing my father. He’d never been the best dad on earth, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care about him. I didn’t want him dead.

I took one shaky step after another, trying to decide what to do.

“That’s right,” said the guy. His breath tickled my ear. “Nice and easy.”

There was nothing nice or easy about this. I didn’t want to do what he said. For all I knew, he was taking me someplace private so that he could kill me and dump the body. Whatever he was going to do with me, it wouldn’t be good.

My father had risked his life to save me. He’d gone up against a powerful corporation. He’d gone on the run. He’d given up everything. I suddenly was certain that he wouldn’t want me to give in easily. He’d want me to fight.

I took a deep breath. “Help! Help me! Someone help me!”

The man’s hand went to my throat, cutting off my air, choking off my words. “Fuck,” he said. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?” He looked around at the parking lot.

There were only a couple people there. A man and a woman. They’d both stopped moving and were looking at us with terror on their faces.

They weren’t going to be any help.

And the man was strangling me.

Of course, I’d be okay, even if he did. The serum that my father gave me made me next to invincible. I healed pretty fast. If I suffocated, I’d be okay. There were very few ways to kill me.

I flailed at the man, driving my fist into his midsection.

He was solid, like the trunk of a tree. He didn’t even react. Actually, it kind of hurt my hand.

He laughed. “You made things messier, but that’s all.” He released my throat, grabbed me around the waist, and threw me over his shoulder. People did not pick me up very often. I wasn’t fat or anything, but I was fairly tall for a girl—about five feet nine inches. Being slung over a man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes was disconcerting.

I shrieked, beating ineffectual fists against his back. The world was upside down now, and blood was rushing to my head.

The man hurried across the parking lot, one arm holding me tightly against him.

“Put me down, now,” I said.

He was still laughing.

Until he stopped. Cut off in mid-chuckle, the man suddenly stopped everything. He didn’t take another step. His grip on me loosened. He seemed to be losing his balance.

A blur of denim and muscles flashed in front of my vision.

In two seconds, I was standing upright, and the man who’d been holding me had crumpled to the ground. His suit jacket fell open, and I saw a gun on a shoulder holster.

Another guy was kneeling over him. He had a similar buzz cut—his dark hair was barely visible against his bare skull. He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. It clung to the muscles in his back and shoulders. Jesus, he must work out a lot.

Muscles turned to me. He had piercing gray eyes, a straight nose, a firm jaw. He was probably the most beautiful man I’d ever seen apart from magazine models. “You okay, blondie?”

“Blondie?” I said.

Muscles took Suit’s gun and tucked it under his jeans at the small of his back. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No,” I said. Who was this guy?

Muscles felt along Suit’s body, pulling out other weapons. Two more guns. A knife. “As long as you’re safe, doll.”

“Doll?” I didn’t know this guy.

He grinned at me. “You might want to look away for this part.”

“What?” I was realizing that he had some kind of urban accent.

Muscles turned Suit over onto his back. Muscles used the knife he’d taken away from Suit to slash the back of Suit’s neck. There was blood.

I
did
look away. What the hell was going on?

Muscles stood up. Whoa. He was tall. Probably six four at least. “All right, let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s?” I said. “As in you and me? I don’t think so.”

“I just saved you, doll,” he said. “Now, where’s your car?”

“Saved me?” I hugged myself. Okay, so maybe that was technically true. But he also had just really, really killed this guy right in front of me, and he was being overly familiar, and... “Who says I needed saving?”

“Um, you did yell for help,” he said.

I did, didn’t I? “But you... you cut him. And he fell down, and... what happened?”

“I shot him from over there,” said Muscles. He pointed. “I would have shot earlier, but I couldn’t get at him without you in the way.”

“I didn’t hear a shot.”

“I used a silencer,” he said. “And he’s been given the serum, so unless I severed his spinal cord, he wasn’t going to be really dead.”

I didn’t say anything. This guy knew about the serum? Was he from Dewhurst-McFarland too?

“You know about the serum, right?” he said. “Your dad said he explained it to you.”

“My dad?”

“Yeah,” said Muscles. “Maybe I should have led with that. I knew your dad. He sent me here to protect you.”

“Knew?” As in, past tense.

Muscles’ face fell. “Right. You don’t know yet.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “They got him, doll. He’s dead.”

I put fingers to my lips.

“Look, we have to get out of here,” he said. “The police are going to show up. Or worse. Operation Wraith will figure out they’ve got an agent down. Where’s your car?”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t believe me about what? Don’t believe he’s dead? Don’t believe I know him?”

“Don’t believe any of it.” My voice cracked. I was going to start crying.

He rubbed the top of his head. “Okay, okay. Uh, he told me to tell you something. It was, um...”

I took a step back from Muscles and the bloody body. This wasn’t happening to me. This couldn’t be happening.

“When you were five your dad got you a pony for your birthday, but you were afraid of it. And you wouldn’t touch it until he showed you it was safe.” Muscles spread his hands. “Would anyone else know that?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Fine, you talked to him.”

“Where’s your car, doll?”

I pointed. “Two blocks that way.” My dad made me promise never to park my car in the bank parking lot. I’d seriously considered doing it today because I was so late. But now I was glad that I hadn’t. I understood why he’d made that rule. If my car had been close, then the guy from Dewhurst-McFarland might have seen it. They’d have been able to use it to track me down.

“My name’s Griffin Fawkes,” said Muscles. He was behind the wheel of my car. I couldn’t begin to even think about driving right now. He said it was better to take my car, because he was driving a stolen car, and it was best to ditch it. I was trapped inside a confined space with a car thief. “How do we get out of here? We get on I-68? East or West?”

“I don’t know,” I said, buckling my seatbelt. I was feeling numb. I knew my dad had been in danger, but it had never seemed real before. It had all been away from me. There hadn’t been guns and knives and dead men in suits. “Where are we going?”

“Back to wherever your dad has you hidden,” said Griffin.

“Back there?” I said. “But don’t they know where I am now?”

“No,” he said. “You called one of Frank’s old phones. They tracked that call. I did too. I didn’t know where you were. I only knew that Frank was gone. And he made it clear to me that if anything happened to him, he wanted me to keep an eye on you. But he never got around to telling me where you were. So, I tracked the phone. I assume Op Wraith did too. So, they only know you’re somewhere near Cumberland. You should still be safe wherever he’s got you settled.”

I had called one of the old numbers, hadn’t I? So this was my fault? My head hurt. And he’d used the word ‘wraith’? What was he talking about?

“So,” said Griffin. “Where to, doll?”

“Thomas, West Virginia,” I said. “We need to get on 220 South.”

“I saw signs for that on I-68,” he said.

“Well, you don’t have to get on the interstate,” I said. “You could...” I thought about how to explain it.

“What?”

I shook my head. “Never mind. Cumberland’s confusing. Just get on the interstate.”

“Okay.” He started the car. “You doing okay?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.” I leaned my head against the window. “What’s Op Wraith?”

“You don’t know about that? Really?”

“Should I?”

“Well, you know about the serum,” he said. “Op Wraith is a group of assassins-for-hire. They all have the serum.”

“Oh,” I said. “Actually, I did know about that. I just didn’t know the name.”

“I used to be Op Wraith,” said Griffin. “But I happened to be breaking out the same night your dad was stealing the serum. We helped each other out that night, and we’ve been helping each other since.”

“You were an assassin?”
This
was the guy that my dad sent to look out for me? I guessed he was scary enough. As long as he only messed with other people, not me.

“Well, it’s not like I enjoyed it or anything,” he said. “That’s why I’m not doing it anymore. But Op Wraith is after you, and I’m not going to let them hurt you.”

I chewed on my lip.

“I’m here to keep you safe, doll.”

“My name isn’t doll,” I said. “It’s Leigh.”

He glanced at me sidelong from the driver’s seat. “Right.”

“Where are you from anyway? The Bronx?”

“Jersey,” he said. “Ocean City.”

He was like a thug or something. A thug. A tall, muscled, threatening, really attractive thug. “So, you’re just going to come back to Thomas with me. And then what?”

“And then I watch you,” he said. “And if anyone tries to hurt you, I hurt them first.”

“Uh huh,” I said. Watch me. What did that mean exactly? Would he be following me everywhere? “And where are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know, on your couch or something.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He was merging the car onto the interstate, but he glanced at me again anyway, and it nearly gave me a heart attack that he wasn’t watching the road. “Look, I promised your dad. He helped me get out of Op Wraith. I owe him. He never shut up about you, you know.”

“Really?” I said. I wanted to believe that.

“He always went on about how sweet you were.”

“Sweet?” That’s funny. Maybe we never really had a chance to talk about my coke-fueled car accident, my dad and me. But nobody who knew me would describe me as sweet. Nobody.

“Yeah,” said Griffin. He made a face. “I guess I’m really freaking you out here, huh? A guy like me.”

He was, actually.

“I’m not a bad guy, you know,” he said. “Really, I’m not. And I meant it when I said I’d keep you safe. So, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not. My dad is... gone.”

He was quiet.

I’d lost my father, and I’d never had a chance to really know him. He hadn’t known me. He’d spent most of my life avoiding me for one reason or another. And now, we’d never get that back. I’d never have a relationship with him.

This time, when the tears threatened, I didn’t squelch them. I let the sobs erupt out of me.

Griffin reached over and awkwardly patted my shoulder.

I pulled away.

He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, doll. I really am.”

There was basically only one way I wanted to spend the evening after I found out that my father had been killed. It involved a bottle of marshmallow-flavored vodka and a shot glass. (I really liked flavored vodkas. They made getting plastered a lot more easy.)

I didn’t know what I was going to do with Griffin during that, but maybe he’d want shots of marshmallow-flavored vodka too. He couldn’t crash on my couch forever, like he seemed to think he could. I was going to have to figure something else out.

My apartment was a pretty tiny one bedroom in town. The kitchen and living room were one room, and neither of them was big. There wasn’t a bathtub, only a standup shower. It was too small of a place for two people to live in. Way too small. He’d have to find his own place to live.

But I could let him stay until we got it figured out. He
had
saved my life after all.

I showed Griffin where to park, and he pulled my car into the gravel parking lot. Without waiting for him, I got out of the car and started up the steps to my apartment. The stairs were rickety wood things that clung to the siding and groaned when you walked on them. The railing was a little bit of a joke, because it had come apart from the steps in a few places. My apartment had its own outdoor entrance, though, so that was something.

Griffin got out of the car. “Hold up.”

I stopped. “This is my place.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but you should let me go first just to make sure that it’s safe in there.”

“I thought you said they didn’t know where I was.”

“As far as I know, they don’t,” he said. “It’s still better to be cautious.” He jogged up the stairs ahead of me, pulling out one of the guns he’d taken from Suit. The stairs emitted a series of strained squeaks.

I went after him more slowly.

He tried the doorknob at the top of the stairs. He looked down at me. “The door’s unlocked.”

“Yeah, because I left it that way.” I caught up to him. Now we were both on the landing to the steps.

“You don’t lock your door.” He gave me a look as if I’d just admitted to not washing my hands after I used the bathroom or something.

“It’s Thomas,” I said. “There’s never been a crime here like ever.” I reached for the doorknob.

He put out his arm to stop me. “No. You don’t know who’s in there. I’m going first.”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, you don’t have to—”

“Shh!” He flattened himself against the doorway, holding the gun up against his chest like he was in a 1980s action movie or something. He burst through the door and raised the gun in one fluid motion.