Chapter Three #2
“Your parents are dead.” Her voice was soft. “And you don’t have any siblings or other relatives listed. I’m…I’m sorry.”
His temples were pounding. His gut was twisting, and he had more fucking questions than ever before. “How does a dead man in Miami…how does he end up in some government lab?”
She bit her lip. Then she started typing on the computer again. “Lazarus, right? That’s what you said?”
“Yes. Project Lazarus.” He’d heard the whispers.
She searched and searched online, but Shelly didn’t turn up anything. He could practically feel her frustration. It matched his own. “We need more help,” she finally said. “I’ll call Blane. Tell him about you. He’s the sheriff, so he’ll have pull that we can use.”
John stiffened at the mention of the other man’s name. “I don’t think so.”
But she jumped to her feet and whirled to face him. “Why the hell not? Look, we can’t just leave a search party looking for you endlessly. We’ll go to Blane, we’ll tell him—”
“That I’m a dead man walking? That I’ve got super speed, super hearing, that I’m some kind of super freak?
” John demanded. John. The name still felt odd but it was better than not being anyone at all.
“He’ll call in his contacts, all right, and the same government assholes who locked me up before will swoop in again.
I won’t go back to that hell. I can’t.” He couldn’t be locked up again.
“They killed me, Shelly. Killed me so that they could bring me back, and I can’t go through that again. ” Not and keep his sanity.
She held his stare. Nodded. “I understand.” There was sympathy on her face. She felt sorry for him. Dammit, he didn’t want her pity. He wanted her. He’d wanted her for months. A ghost in his head. An obsession that was now right in front of him. He wanted to reach out and take her.
“I won’t let them take you, I promise, John.”
Her words were sweet, but she had no idea what they were up against. He’d never forget the explosions that had rocked the lab. The attack that had come from nowhere. Another test subject had been there—one that he’d never been allowed to see, but he’d heard the docs talking about her.
Willow.
She’d escaped the wreckage of that lab, too. Only he didn’t know what had happened to her. At the time, he’d been jealous of her—Willow got a name.
He got a freaking number. Twelve. John cleared his throat. “Someone else was being held there. A woman named Willow. Heard the doctors talking about her. Always wondered…hell, did she experience the same nightmare I did?”
Shelly’s hand closed around his arm. He was still just wearing his jeans, and the flesh to flesh contact with her seemed to burn right through him.
Did she have any idea how much he craved her touch?
He’d been isolated in that lab. Treated like an animal.
He barely remembered what it was like to be human, but he was trying. Fucking hell, he was trying…for her.
“We won’t tell Blane everything. Just enough that he’ll help us.
” She bit her lower lip. He didn’t want her doing that.
When she did cute shit like that with her mouth, she made him want to bite, too.
“Let’s go to town. We need to get you some clothes and supplies, and we can stop by the sheriff’s station. ”
He’d come to her with only the clothes on his back. Humiliation burned through him. “I know I wasn’t always like this.”
She didn’t speak.
“I was normal. Maybe I can be normal again.”
Her smile lit her face. Made her dark eyes shine. Made his heart ache. “I’ve always found normal to be highly over-rated.”
His lips parted. He leaned toward her, wanting nothing more than to pull her close, to feel the warmth of her against him.
She was laughter and light, and she was what he’d dreamed of when he’d been in that lab.
When he’d been empty inside, a dead man locked away from the world.
She was life. She was everything, and she was right the hell there.
But then her smile disappeared. “John? What’s wrong?”
He’d scared her. He’d let his mask slip again. The desperation he felt must have shone on his face. The old guy at the bar had seen his desperation, too. John knew he had. And that was why the man had demanded that John get the hell away from Shelly.
I can’t leave her now.
He tried to think. Tried to figure out what to say that would make her forget the stark hunger that must have been on his face. A craving for her. “It’s Christmas,” he blurted.
Her eyes widened. Then she nodded. “Almost Christmas. We have a few more days.”
“But you don’t have a tree. No decorations. Nothing here.”
Shadows swept over her face. “No, no, I don’t.
” She dropped her hand. “I…um, I haven’t had the best year, I guess you could say.
My father died. My…my brother, too.” Her lower lip trembled.
“My mom died when I was just a kid, and they were all I had left. I didn’t exactly plan to celebrate this year.
I came here to get away from everything back in Miami.
This place—it was always my retreat. You know what I mean, right?
Everyone needs a safe place and—” She stopped.
“Oh, God, I sound like such a bitch. No, you don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry, I—”
“I’m sorry about your family.” Tension had thickened his body and his temples were pounding. Again, he had that instinctive feeling of danger. The feeling that something was very, very wrong.
“And I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you.” She swiped away a tear that had trickled onto her cheek. He didn’t like that she was crying. “Christmas was always so happy for me. Putting up the tree without them just didn’t seem right.”
He nodded. He wanted to pull her close. To hold her. Was that okay? Was that wrong?
Her breath sighed out as her gaze searched his. “But you don’t know that, either, do you? You don’t remember holidays, good or bad.”
“I remember…” His voice was a rasp. “I remember what a holiday is. I know Christmas is trees with twinkling lights. Families exchanging presents. I know that just like I know Halloween is when kids dress up and get candy. I know facts—I don’t know my own memories. It’s like they were just wiped away.”
Another tear slipped down her cheek. He realized that she was crying for him. Before she could brush away the tear, his finger slipped across her cheek, catching the drop. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Baby, please, don’t ever cry for me.”
She was right there. Standing in front of him. He was touching her. His dream. His fantasy. He’d lost so much, but she was there. And she meant something to him—hell, she meant everything. If he could just figure out the puzzle pieces.
“You can make new memories,” she told him. “You can get your life back.”
Could he?
“We’ll get Blane to help us. You’ll see. He’s one of the good guys, too. We can figure this all out.”
He wasn’t as convinced as she was. His hand lingered against the silk of her cheek. Her scent filled his lungs. He wanted nothing more than to put his mouth on hers but…
Her choice. Always.
He stepped back.
“I-I have an SUV in the garage. Four wheel drive. My brother kept it here and after he passed, I just…” She gave a hard shake of her head. “I know your shirt has a bullet hole in it, but if you can wear it to town, I swear, we’ll get more clothes for you once we’re there.”
Like he cared about a hole in his shirt. What mattered more—her. “The shooter could be in town.”
“It…it was a hunter…” Yet Shelly didn’t even sound as if she believed those words.
John shook his head. “Someone is targeting you. If we go to town, you stay with me, every second, you understand?”
“What are you? My bodyguard?”
His heart seemed to jerk.
She laughed. “I was just kidding. Though someone with your super skills would make for one killer bodyguard.”
You’re a killer…
The whisper slid through his head.
“Come on. We should get going before Blane and his crew waste more time searching for a dead man.” She hurried toward the door.
But his gaze fell back on the computer. She’d found no hits with Project Lazarus, but they had found an obituary for John Smith.
And John Smith…he could read between the lines of the obituary. He’d been a loner, a trained hunter, military through and through.
Someone who knew how to fight. Someone who knew how to kill.
Someone who was very, very dangerous.
And whatever they did to me in that lab, they just made me even more of a weapon.