Becca

I SING IN THE SHOWER. When I’m working, I talk to myself. Sometimes, I forget to bathe. That makes me weird.

The guy sitting next to me, racing my car through a security gate and a hail of gunfire, is fucking crazy with a capital Fuck.

“You okay?” he asks again.

“They shot at us.” I still can’t believe it. I thought the guard would help me. He didn’t even flinch as he pointed the gun at my face. I guess he thought I was colluding with Crazy Man.

My captor looks grim. “Yeah.”

I wrap my arms around myself. “Why would they do that? I work there.”

The man’s jaw clenches as he accelerates down the road. He takes a few turns at breakneck speed, and curses when the car wobbles. “Damn.”

“What?”

“They got the tires.”

I whimper. My poor Prius.

“The car is the least of our problems. I’ll replace it,” he says.

I don’t argue. Crazy Man might know how to file an insurance claim. Who knows?

“Stay calm. I’ll get you out of this,” he says, as if he wasn’t the one who got me into it in the first place. “The important thing right now is to not get killed.”

Understatement of the year.

But the way I see it, he’s the reason we’re being shot at, so staying with him would be lunacy. I need to get away and call Dr. Johnson and explain I’m not part of this data grab.

But first I need to get my data back from the maniac.

Swerving wildly, he pulls into a fast food lot and parks behind a dumpster.

By the time I get my bearings, he’s opening my door, unclicking my seatbelt and pulling me out. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I ask automatically, stumbling as he pushes me towards an unmarked van. The kind with no windows in the back.

“Somewhere safe.”

Shit. I should’ve fought him more back at the lab. Now I’m going to end up a prisoner in his rape van. Maybe he’s a mad scientist conducting his own kind of experiments. Hopefully not on me.

The research. My life’s work. The cure. That’s all that matters.

Still, I can’t help asking, “Can’t you just leave me?”

“No.” He holds my elbow firmly and guides me to the door of the van. “You saw those gunmen. They’re after both of us.”

Right. Or he wants me to believe that so I won’t run away. “You want to stay alive? Buckle up. I’ll get us out of here.”

Gnawing on my lip, I do as he says. Until I see my chance to get the hell away from him.

He drives like a maniac, making sudden turns and keeping off main roads. I grip the seat edge.

He could be taking me somewhere to kill me. Or, he could be telling the truth.

I have no reason to trust him. But after hosting Johnson and Santiago with all their bodyguards today, after all the gunfire I just saw, I have to admit not all is as it seems at Data-X. What reason would they have for treating our research facility like a military compound in a war zone?

“What did you mean by all they’ve done?” I ask finally.

“You know those cells you told me about?”

“Yes…”

“Did they ever tell you the source?”

My gut tightens as I brace myself for his revelation. He’s going to say something crazy, like aliens. Or superhumans.

He flips his right forearm over to show me his tattoos. No—I look closer. The tattoos are there to cover scars. Track after track, like a junkie’s —and burns, too.

I suck in a breath. What is he showing me? I brush my fingers over the marks and he jerks away like I scalded him. “Are you telling me you were the source of the cells? And it was unwilling?”

His jaw flexes, mouth forms a grim line. “I’m saying you have no clue what’s going on back there.”

Irritation spikes. “Well, why don’t you explain it to me, then?” I snap.

His gaze slides from the road to me, assessing and cool.

When he doesn’t answer, I make my move, snatching the gun he set down in the console between us and pointing it at him. I put every bit of steel I have into my voice. “Pull over.”

Annoyance flickers across his expression and his hand flashes out.

I don’t mean to—but I don’t have time to think. I just pull the trigger. I scream at my own mistake, drowning out the sound of the shot.

No, wait. There wasn’t a deafening bang.

It’s a tranquilizer gun. The dart strikes my captor in the place where arm meets chest.

“Fuck, Becca,” he bites out and swerves the van sharply to the side of the road and throws it in park. At first I think it’s because he’s going to get out and kill me, but then he slumps over the wheel, knocked out cold.

I thank God he had the foresight to pull over so we both didn’t die. As I reach over and turn off the ignition, it strikes me that he’s smart. And capable. And so damn sexy. And why in the hell am I admiring a crazy man who just kidnapped me and stole my data?

I shove my hand in his jeans pocket and jockey the data drive out. In the glove compartment I find a cell phone. I grab it and the data drive and jump out of the vehicle. I have no clue where we are, other than the Middle of Nowhere, California. Data-X’s lab is near Alpine, California, in the Cuyamaca Mountains of San Diego County. The van traveled higher into the mountains on a single-lane highway.

I walk a half-mile in the dark and stop, winded. I really need to get more exercise.

This is stupid. I’m taking the van. He can walk.

I head back to the van and open the driver’s side door. I guess I hoped my captor would just sort of fall out of the van so I could climb in, but no such luck. I pry his arms up off the steering wheel and pull, hard.

He hardly budges, and his arms weigh about a half-ton each. I stop to gather my strength, and find my eyes drawn to his scars again.

Was he telling me the truth? That he got those scars as a test subject for Data-X? I find it hard to believe, but after seeing the machine guns today, things aren’t adding up. I’ll have to ask Johnson about it when I call.

But first I need to get away from Crazy Man.

I put my foot on the running board and pull with all my might. He tumbles out of the van on top of me, knocking me down with his dead weight.

I giggle hysterically. This is the second time today I’ve found myself underneath his mass of solid, wiry muscle and it’s doing funny things to my libido. I wriggle out from under him and climb up into the van.

After an agonizingly slow three point turn, I race the van down the mountainside, calling information for Data-X’s main number, because I don’t have it memorized.