Marked (37 page)

"I'm
sorry you didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Dom."

James
shrugged. "It's for the best this way. I'm not a huge fan of
big, mushy goodbyes. Hopefully if I survive this, Dom will forgive
me. Anyway, you heard Rachel, we didn't exactly have very much time.
Where are we headed by the way?"

"I'm
not sure. Really, we just need to find a city. It doesn't matter
which, just one that is big enough that Alec and I will be able to
disappear for a month or so. Once you drop us off you can go to
ground yourself for a couple of weeks, after which Donovan should
have Alec's phone up and running again. You should be back with Dom
before the month is over."

"What
about this town?"

It
took me a couple of seconds to realize what he was talking about; my
eyes just weren't as good as his, so it was a lot harder for me to
pick out the darkened silhouettes of the buildings that were just now
rising up from the horizon.

"I
don't know, James. The entire town doesn't look like it has any
buildings over two stories. That feels like the kind of place where
people pay attention to their neighbors. Not only that, we're still
awfully close to where we left everyone else. The last thing I want
is to still be inside of the Coun'hij's perimeter if they decide to
do some kind of door-to-door search."

"Doesn't
that violate the Constitution?"

"Probably,
but I'm not sure that would stop the Coun'hij, not when they might be
able to just scent-track me to my door."

"Good
point. Do you mind if we go ahead and stop for gas here even though
it's not your final destination? We're down to just over a quarter
tank, which isn't going to be enough to make it very far if we do end
up with a kill team trailing us."

"Do
you think there's even a working gas station here? The closer we get
the more I realize just how dead this town looks. Shouldn't there be
more lights?"

James
shrugged again. He was nothing if not laconic, but after a second he
went ahead and answered my question.

"The
buildings we're headed towards seem to all be industrial
construction, and most of them look abandoned. I think things will
start looking a little more lively once we get into the center of
town."

"Okay,
but let's not get too deep into the town. I'm perfectly happy with a
quiet gas station on the edge of everything if we can find it."

"Noted."

As
it turned out, the first gas station we came across fit the bill well
enough that I motioned James to go ahead and turn into it. James
climbed out and started pumping gas without having to be asked.

I
was feeling pretty good about how things were going—right up
until the white and blue police car pulled in behind us. I tried to
act casual, tried not to draw any attention to myself, but I
instantly started shaking.

There
was a good chance that this particular cop wasn't even looking for
us, but all it would take was for him to see Alec. One glimpse of an
unconscious, restrained man in our backseat would be more than enough
to get us hauled in for questioning.

I
tried to keep a surreptitious eye on the young-looking police officer
out of the passenger side mirror as he started fueling up his
vehicle. The SUV's tinted windows were a godsend inasmuch as they
stopped anyone from being able to look inside of the vehicle, but
right now they also meant that James couldn't see me trying to get
his attention.

It
boggled the mind that he hadn't already seen the police officer. If
nothing else, by now he should have been able to smell the gun oil on
the cop's gun.

"James.
James, can you hear me? There's a cop behind us!"

Apparently
I'd managed to be just loud enough for James to hear me without
alerting the cop. James stiffened slightly and then casually looked
over his shoulder. He stopped the flow of fuel into the SUV and
turned to rack the hose, but he was actually moving
too
slow.

It
was understandable. In a crisis situation, with all that adrenaline
surging through their system, it was even harder for a shape shifter
to avoid moving with the kind of preternatural speed that gave them
away as being more than just human. James was trying to move slowly
enough not to draw attention to himself, but he'd gone too far the
other way, and I watched as the police officer behind us looked up
and saw James slowly put the nozzle back into its receptacle.

The
officer stepped away from his vehicle, moving in our direction, as
James opened the driver's-side door.

"Evening."

"Evening,
officer."

"That's
a nice rig you've got there. Looks like you're from out of state—what
brings you through our little town?"

"We're
visiting some family in New York."

"Oh,
that's great. What's the occasion?"

James
stopped with one foot inside the vehicle. I wanted to reach over and
pull him into the SUV so we could make a run for it, but I knew he
was right. Leaving would just guarantee that we would have the police
after us. The only way forward was to make nice and hope that we
didn't make the officer's Spidey sense start tingling.

"My
brother just had his first child, and my wife is really good friends
with my sister-in-law, so I'm taking a week and a half off under
protest so we can go out there and help them with the new arrival."

James
was an even better liar than I'd realized. He put exactly the right
amount of unhappiness into his voice when talking about being forced
to take time off of work, but rather than just walking on in to the
convenience store like I'd been hoping he would, the police officer
was walking up to my door.

"You
headed into a busy time at work? What is it that you do?"

"It's
always a busy time at work. I work in finance. Nothing big ticket or
anything—I don't have enough experience for the really
high-profile stuff, but so far it's paying the bills."

"That's
all any of us can ask for, right? Still, with a job like that I'm
surprised you didn't save yourself the hassle of driving. It's got to
hurt putting so many miles on such a nice car."

An
edge had crept into the officer's voice. He was suspicious of
us—probably had been suspicious of us the entire time.

"I
would have loved to have flown, but Alice has a phobia of flying, and
there was no way I was going to get her on a bus, so this was the
only option."

"That's
a real shame that she's got a fear of flying…what's the
technical name for that?"

James
shook his head, a perfect picture of innocence, but I could tell by
the way his fist tightened around the steering wheel that he knew the
game was nearly up.

"I
never can remember. I can do net present value calculations in my
sleep, but all the Latin in the medical terms just goes in one ear
and out the other."

"Why
don't you ask your wife to roll down her window so that I can ask her
what the proper name of her particular phobia is?"

I
wanted to scream, but James' expression didn't change in the
slightest. "You heard the nice man, Alice. Roll down your window
so that you can tell him the name of your condition."

The
window came down with the perfect smoothness only found in
top-of-the-line vehicles, and as soon as our eyes met I knew that
he'd seen my face before. My time sense ratcheted to high alert as
the officer stepped backwards to buy himself room to draw his gun.

It
felt like he was moving in slow motion and I seemed to have forever
in which to analyze and discard countless plans. James was on the
other side of the car from us, which meant there was going to be very
little he could do. Hybrids are fast, but he wasn't going to want to
shift forms if he could avoid it, and even in his hybrid form he
wasn't going to be able to outrun a bullet.

"Show
me your hands! Now!"

I
put my right hand out of the window. "The other one is broken."

It
was as though he couldn't hear me. Maybe it was all of the adrenaline
in his system, or maybe he just didn't believe me.

"I
said show me your hands!"

"I
can't! This hand is paralyzed—it doesn't work anymore."

That
finally seemed to get through to him. The police officer blinked and
then pointed at my door with his gun. "Open your door from the
outside and then come out and face the car."

I
looked at James, who had both hands pointed straight up.

"Don't
look at him, look at me! Now do what I told you to do."

I
nodded and reached around so I could open my door. Once I was
standing against the side of the car, the officer motioned James
around to my side of the SUV, and then he cautiously approached us
and started frisking James. I was desperately trying to come up with
a plan that didn't end with us getting shot or imprisoned, when James
suddenly spun in place and made a grab for the officer's gun.

Even
with my time sense ramped all of the way up, I still almost couldn't
follow James' movements. He grabbed the gun with one hand and the
officer's wrist with the other, and then threw the poor man into the
side of our vehicle with enough force that I was half afraid he'd
broken the officer's neck.

As
the gun hit the ground, James picked the officer up and carried him
back to the police car. "Get back in our car, Adri!"

My
shakes hadn't ever gone completely away, but they were back now with
a vengeance. It took me two tries to get my door open. By the time I
managed to pull myself inside of the SUV, James was back and he had
the officer's radio in one hand and a police-issue gun in the other.

I
reached out for the tough-minded persona that had gotten me through
so much in the last few weeks, but she'd deserted me. Fighting
against the Coun'hij was one thing. Being an accomplice to knocking a
police officer unconscious was something else altogether. The police
officer had just been doing his job. I felt like we'd crossed a line
we couldn't ever come back from.

James
dropped the gun onto his lap and then set the radio on the center
console. "Just focus on your breathing, Adri. He's going to have
a massive headache when he wakes up, but other than that he's going
to be okay. It's his own fault really. If he'd followed procedure and
called us in I wouldn't have even tried something like that, not with
a dozen other cops on the way. He must have been fresh out of the
academy."

"What
do we do now?"

"We
get as far away from the scene of the crime as we can without drawing
attention to ourselves and we listen to his radio so that we will
know if someone saw what just happened and calls it in."

"How
can you be so calm, James? You could have been shot. And we're now
criminals."

James
started the SUV into motion without putting on his seatbelt. "I'm
not skilled with hand-to-hand in human form, but weapon control and
disarmament is something that Donovan made all of us practice years
ago. As for the part about being criminals, he recognized your face,
Adri. You're already a wanted woman."

"I
think I liked it better when you didn't talk as much. In fact…"

James
shushed me as the radio crackled to life.

"All
units, we have an officer down at the Gas and Grub on Second Street.
The officer involved appeared to be making an arrest at the time he
was attacked. The perpetrators are in a black SUV—probably an
Escalade—and were last seen headed north."

James
muttered something I was pretty sure Dom wouldn't have approved of,
and then pulled the SUV into a dark alley. "Time to lose this
ride—grab your gun and whatever cash Donovan gave you—leave
everything else. I'll grab Alec."

I
reached back for the small black backpack purse that had all of the
liquid assets, and then opened up my door and climbed out.

"Our
fingerprints are going to be all over this vehicle, James. They are
going to know we were here and it's going to be pretty hard to get
away on foot…"

"I
know, but we're going to have to deal with one problem at a time,
Adri, and they've made our car."

James
produced a blade from his pocket and sheared through the nylon
restraints holding Alec to the stretcher. Alec had lost so much
weight since Dream Stealer had first attacked him that James was
easily able to pull him out of the SUV using just one hand.

"Now
stand here next to me and we'll carry him between us. It's still not
perfect, but it at least has a chance of looking like we're just
three friends out for a stroll—that or two friends carrying a
third friend who's so drunk they passed out."

"You
think that will really work?"

"I
don't know—depends on how close they are. I'm sure I don't have
anything better than that though, and we need to get moving while I
look for another vehicle to steal."

James
grabbed the police radio and hung it from his front pocket, and then
we took off with Alec's arms slung over our shoulders and James
supporting all of Alec's weight with an arm around his waist.

We
headed east and made it two blocks before I saw the first set of
flashing lights. The sirens had been headed towards the gas station
since before we'd even started out on foot, but they'd somehow
managed to almost become background noise even just after such a
short time. Seeing the lights made me freeze up, but James just
shifted his arm from Alec's waist to mine and pulled me along.

"You
can't stop, Adri, we don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

James
turned right, putting a building between us and the police car that
had turned onto our street a moment before.

"They're
responding too fast. A town this small shouldn't have so many cops on
call, not on such short notice. Come on, we're going to have to
travel through the center of the block if we're going to have any
chance of getting outside of their search perimeter—it's only a
matter of time now before they find the car."