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Hotwire
…?

“We’re in business,” James said, peering in the window. “Get in the truck bed. I’ll give you my shotgun and you can cover us when we back out. You know how to use it?”

“I used one once, so I guess I’m as reliable as you are with the driving thing.”

“’K. It’s got grenade shells in it.”

Holy shit. No wonder there hadn’t been any sign of their pursuers yet. “How in the hell did you get those? Shit, James, this tailgate is held on by flexies. Remember that when you’re navigating with me in the back of this thing.”

James’s lips quirked as he threw their packs in the cab. “I’ll be careful. Traded a blow job for the shells.”

Matt laughed shortly. His experience had been that some twisted sexual offers were made in the Red.

James’s definition of “careful navigation” did not really square with Matt’s, at least not when he was the one sliding around in the back of a truck. He spent more time trying to stay in the thing than covering their asses.

When he got settled again after sliding back (James violently stopped after lurching backward out of the shed), bouncing up and slamming down (hole in the packed dirt drive), and sliding into the cab wall violently (no idea how James managed that), he could just see guys coming out of the creek bed. He had an impression of four or five men, a dog and a bandaged arm before he fired a shell in their general direction. James spun out the tires in the powdered dirt next to the road, then gained traction and leapt onto the pavement.

Matt hadn’t known that cars could leap, but he was now a believer.

“Jesus. Fucking maniac.” He flopped out on the bed of the vehicle and watched the clouds race by overhead. He turned his head and watched the road race by through a rusted-out hole in the side of the pickup.

Nice.

Chapter 9

M
ATT
was almost two hours late checking in. Lance himself answered, his lips in a tight line.

“You’re late.”

“I was busy.” Matt rolled his eyes.

Lance rolled his eyes back. “Any problems I need to know about?”

Matt shrugged. “It was on the more exciting side of the close-call scale. Things are a little easier when your extractee is SOUF.”

Lance’s mouth relaxed a little, and he even gave Matt a dry mini-smile. “Okay, we’re going with your gut on this, Matt. The retinal scans are inconclusive, but I had an interesting talk with Major General Selkirk. Sounds like there’s reason to justify the changes in Ayala’s scans.”

“What about the original contract request?”

“SOUFCOM is investigating. Whoever generated the request somehow obscured their chip ID, and falsified the chip logs from both ArmySF SubCom and SOUFCOM. The report of Ayala’s being alive and just out of re-education supposedly originated with the Boulder Blue cell, but no one can substantiate that. I have more you need to know, but first,
I
need to know Ayala’s need-to-know.”

“He’s psychic. Kind of. And it was engineered by SOUF. I think it’s just a Psi-force experiment.” Matt kept his voice down. James couldn’t easily overhear, but Matt wasn’t sure how comfortable he’d be with the info being shared. Not that Matt would be able to avoid telling James he’d shared it.

“Made escaping a little easier.” Matt added when Lance just looked at him blankly.

“I bet. I might have to bring Anais in on this, Matt. Although I’m not sure it makes a difference right now.”

“We think it’s why his retinal scans were fucked up. They implanted some kind of sensory input organ in his head after he joined Psi-force.”

Lance nodded slowly. “Okay. Here’s what you need to know: We’re seeing massive militia movements on the OR-ID border, especially around the Ontario, Payette, Weiser, and Hells Canyon crossing points.”

“Someone leaked our routes.” Matt felt a cold chill sweep through his abdomen. Gah.

“Not necessarily, Matt, although they shouldn’t know where you’re from, or where you’re going. Your ID may be leaked—the real or the forgery—and they chose the obvious routes. You’re going to have to make it up as you go, son.” Lance’s eyes were very grave. And worried.

Good lord, his grandfather was calling him son. It had to be bad. “There’s more?”

“Are you in the Emmett area?” Lance wouldn’t know, because they never reported an unsecured location in the Red unless it was an emergency. It was possible to triangulate his position from his signal, but hella hard to do in the amount of wave traffic around.

Matt swallowed. “How did you know?”

“Most RIA troop movement is heading into that area. Lots of private militia already there, but I can’t tell who. They aren’t trying to hide it, either—moving fast. They really want this guy. Your only open flank is to the north.”

Great. The arid, rugged, mountainous flank. His leg gave a preemptive twinge. “And I bet it’s only open relative to the other flanks.” He really didn’t need an answer to that.

“You’re certain about this Ayala?” Lance asked again. This time, he was just being Matt’s Grampa.

“Yes.” Matt didn’t hesitate.

Lance sighed. “One more thing. Ayala’s father was told James was MIA. This morning they sent someone to update him on Ayala’s status. His father knows about the re-education camp, now. I know he was in the closet in high school, so….”

Matt winced. “I’ll talk to him. Thanks, Grampa.”

“Check-in at your regular time tonight.” The screen went blank.

Shit. He and James had to talk. Matt put his leg back together and trotted up to the dinosaur vehicle. “See anything?”

“Lots,” James answered from under the truck. He didn’t elaborate, which Matt was okay with.

“So, we need to talk.”

“Give me the quick and dirty.”

Matt let his mind go there, for just a split second. Sex under life-threatening conditions was always hot…. “Um, they believe you’re you.”
Mostly
. “But that’s the only good news. SOUFCOM’s investigating who knew you were still alive to issue the contract request and we’ve been ratted out to the RIA, who has apparently shared the info with every private militia and wannabe in the state. They seem to know where we are and where we’re headed. Apparently, you’re well-liked and no one wants to see you go.”

“They find us together, they’ll string us both up from the nearest tree.” Probably not, actually. Probably they’d just string Matt up. James knew he was a high-value POW.

“Not a lot of trees in Idaho, anymore,” Matt pointed out. James snorted. It was a new one. It sounded a little disgusted. Matt mentally filed it in his growing lexicon. Snorticon. Whatever.

“There’s more. Your father was given your current status this morning, including the stint in re-education camp.”

James gave Matt a blank look. “Doesn’t matter.”

“James—”

“Drop it, Matt. Let’s just deal with now. You can bail. They aren’t after you, right? Maybe you need to cover your own ass.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself; it’s not in my job description.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. We don’t have time for this crap right now, James. We have to figure out how they know where we are.”

“Those guys who stumbled into our camp last night are probably responsible.”

“Yeah, but how’d they pick up the trail so fast on the river?”

“Pretty obvious route.”

“How did they find us in Emmett?”

“Trailed us.”

“You would have seen them, James.” Matt didn’t have any clue where in the hell this unwavering faith in James’s abilities came from. “To trail us, they had to keep us in sight at least occasionally. You would have picked up their intentions.” He’d started out talking out of his ass, but it made sense once he was finished.

James was silent. Then he turned to look at Matt. “Lucky guess?” He sounded far less certain now.

Matt didn’t think so. “’M gonna have to scan you for trackers, James.”

James stared a second, nodded, and got off his belly, leaning against the side of the truck.

Matt sat next to him. James gave a little shudder when he opened up his leg. “That’s just weird.”

“Thanks.” Matt glared at him.

“Sorry.” James reached out and patted his shoulder a little awkwardly. James’s touch left little tingling fingerprints on Matt’s shoulder blade.

The recoder had bad news. “You have nano-trackers.”

“You’re fucking kidding me! They would have had to inject them! When would they have done that?”

“It had to be after we left Boise. The recoder would have picked up anything systemic when I did your leg chip.”

“So, our nocturnal visitors. But I never let the fuckers near me. Even if you’d fallen asleep on watch—”

“I didn’t fucking fall asleep.”

“—I would have felt it if they even got near me. I’m not
that
out of practice. You don’t lose instincts like that in POW camp, or re-education. I even woke up when I swallowed that bug.”

“Oh.” Matt looked at him in dawning comprehension.

“Shit,” James muttered. “I didn’t swallow a bug, I swallowed a
bug
.”

Matt checked further with the recoder. The nanos were infesting James’s digestive tract. They couldn’t procreate, but they didn’t die off, either. It would take days to eliminate them all.

“We have to kill the fuckers.”

“It’s not a virus,” James snapped.

Matt only just kept himself from sticking out his tongue. “Sometimes they behave like them. Gramma Anais developed some nasty biotech nano-viruses in her day. She makes us each carry parasitic bio-nanos in case we get infected. That might kill ’em. They work better in the digestive tract than the bloodstream, anyway.”

“How come QESA has parasitic nanos and the military doesn’t?”

Matt shrugged. “Still experimental. She’s retired. She just does shit like this for fun. I’m dosing you with them.”

“That woman has a fucking weird idea of fun.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Matt pulled a titanium case out of an inner pocket of his pack then resealed it. He coded in Anais’s password. All her “creations” were password protected, and everyone kept the passwords secret on pain of death. She’d deliver on the threat too.

James paled suddenly when Matt uncapped the hypo. “A
needle
? You have to stick a
needle
in me? There’s no spray version or something less… less….”

“Penetrative?” Matt offered innocently.

“Invasive.” James substituted. “I hate needles.”

“C’mon. You got an HIV vaccine, right? That’s by needle only.”

“I was twelve. Dad had to…,” he mumbled the rest so quietly Matt couldn’t catch it.

“Huh?”

“He held me down,” James said in exasperation. And with some panic in his voice.

Matt stopped messing around with him. “James. Chill. The dose is loaded into a needle, but you have to take it orally for this, anyway. Open up.”

“Shit.” James glared then let Matt give him the nanos.

They waited a few minutes. Then Matt started tracking progress with the recoder. “Your nano load is dropping.”

“Good.” James still sounded a little pissed. They didn’t talk; Matt just occasionally swept him with the recoder. He slipped an arm around the back of James to check his kidneys.

“James, you have blood on the back of your shirt, I think.” It wasn’t always easy to see on the black all-weathers, but Matt had seen enough blood to pick it up. “Take off your shirt and let me look.”

“Is that a line?” James raised an eyebrow at him.

Apparently he wasn’t annoyed anymore. Matt grinned. “No.”

James whipped his shirt off over his head.

Mmmmm. Nice, muscley chest. He may not have been working out regularly since being captured, but he got something done.

Matt flicked his eyes over all the newly exposed skin, cataloging it quickly. James had lost some definition in his abs, maybe. It would be a stretch to say he had a six-pack, but he definitely had abs. His shoulders and pecs, though, they were defined and large, the kind of beefy, dense strong-man muscles that were the opposite of the wiry leanness Matt always managed. And the light-gold hair dusting between his nipples and down the center of his chest to his abdomen—and treasure trail, incidentally—was a nice touch. Matt got lost, visually tracing James’s clavicle, getting hung up where it disappeared into the deltoid.

“Isn’t it on my back?” Matt jerked and pushed the recoder into James’s kidney. It made one of his pecs flinch. Matt turned away quickly to adjust himself, and put the recoder down.

“It’s barely a scratch. I’ll put some topical on it.” And rub up on James’s skin in the process.

James’s skin was awesome. That tawny color, a little sweaty from the daytime heat and the running-for-their-lives thing. Smooth, but not soft. It had texture.

Matt tried to keep his fingers only to the necessary spots, but he might have strayed just a tiny bit. James held perfectly still. Frozen. Matt dropped his hand. Then he picked up the recoder again to keep his fingers busy with something other than touching all that nice skin.

James put his shirt back on, silently.

“A
M
I
still infested?” It seemed like they’d been sitting in this charged silence a long time. The sun was kind of warm, and it was strangely peaceful, in spite of the danger.