Fight or Flight (13 page)

That did it. Regan set the lamp down and buried her face in her hands. Kelsey put her arms around her, wondering if she was going to cry. She’d never seen her cry before this weekend.

But she didn’t. She straightened and glared at Tyler again, but the awful burning was gone.

“Speak.”

“I’ve worked security for the Harrisons for ten years. They’re good people,” he started, but apparently decided now wasn’t the time to go there. “Two years ago someone they’d hired found you. They sent me to watch over you and report in regularly. You know that part. And I did it, for two years, without having any clue why.”

“I don’t get it,” Regan said. “How could you not want to know why?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to. I was STT in the Air Force. I’m used to operations where I know nothing outside the parameters of my job.”

“What’s STT?” Kelsey asked.

“Special Tactics Team,” Van piped up. She shrugged when everyone turned to stare at her. “It’s spec ops.”

“How do you know?” Tom asked.

“I read a lot.” She grinned. “There’s a website.”

“Of course.” Tom snorted.

“Anyway.” Regan motioned at Tyler to continue.

“Anyway, I sent electronic reports and talked to them by phone.”

“What kind of things did they want to know?” Regan asked.

“Your job, who you dated, your friends. Where Kelsey went to school, who
her
friends were, what the score of her soccer game was and how she was doing in classes. Basically, everything a grandparent wants to know, plus the kind of safety things an Air Force colonel and major would ask.”

Kelsey still stood ready to hold her mother back if she went at Tyler again, but something warm spread inside her. She had grandparents who wanted to know about her soccer game. It didn’t matter, just then, how one-sided it had been, or that maybe they’d tried to kidnap her as a baby. For a moment, she felt normal and loved.

But her mother kept asking questions.

“Why didn’t they just contact us themselves?”

“I don’t know. They must not have thought it would be safe to.”

Regan made a face, but continued, “Are they still in the service?”

“No.”

“What do they do?”

“I’m not sure. They’re scientists, always have been, but the security team isn’t privy to their business concerns.”

“But you have an idea,” Regan guessed.

He nodded, shortly. “They still have strong ties to military science. I think their company does work for defense, which would make sense. I don’t know for sure—it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between business visits and social visits by military personnel who were old friends. But I worked in the house, and picked up snippets of conversations here and there. I think…” He hesitated, eyeing Regan. “I think something they were working on before Kelsey was born is the reason you two are in danger now.”

That was it? Kelsey deflated. He hadn’t told them anything her mother didn’t already suspect.

“Why
are
we in danger now?” Regan asked. “Why did they wait?”

Tyler tried a shrug, but her mother would have none of it.

“Someone working for the Harrisons has to be leaking information. That’s the only explanation, if it’s not the Harrisons themselves.”

Kelsey raised her eyebrows. There was something different about the way her mother said that.

Tyler gave a curt nod.

“So they must have known where we were two years ago.”

“It’s possible.”

“Why didn’t they come after us until now?”

He sighed. His jaw flexed. Finally he said, “They had a colleague a long time ago who went rogue. He was underground for years, and resurfaced a while ago. They kept an eye on him. He had to start over, rebuild everything, and wasn’t ready for Kelsey until now.”

Kelsey watched her mother working that around in her head. It was too much for her to wrap her own brain around.

“Who is he? Why does he want Kelsey?”

“He apparently wants both of you.”

“How do you know that?” her mother asked.

Tyler shook his head.

“Who is he?”

He shook his head again. Regan took a deep breath and clenched her fist, but held tight to her calm. “Don’t hold things back, Tyler.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Please,” she whispered, and he closed his eyes.

“I don’t know everything. Just that a project Ben and Jeanne were working on had something to do with Scott, which is the reason he died.”

“The reason someone killed him,” Kelsey ground out.

“No, I don’t think they wanted him dead. They needed him, and when he was gone, they needed you. But not for the project itself. The person after you—” he looked directly at Kelsey now, “—wanted to change whatever they were doing and turn it into a weapon.”

Kelsey’s mind raced, tension shifting into appalled shock. “A weapon? Like, for the military?” All of a sudden she wanted to jump back to when she had no answers. “I’m a tool for murder?”

Her mother started toward her, probably to offer comfort, but Kelsey shook her head once, hard. “How? What did they do to me?”

“I don’t think they did anything to you. It was what they did to your father. You share his blood.”

She jerked to her feet, the urge to burst outside and take off running almost overwhelming her. “That’s like science fiction.”

“No, just science.”

“What did they do to my father, then?” Her voice had gone shrill. She pulled her sleeves down over her palms and hugged herself. “Did what they did to him kill him?”
Stupid question
. He’d been shot. And she’d been fine for eighteen years. Just because she found out now that something had been done to her dad didn’t mean an alien was going to bust out of her chest.

The extreme notion pricked her bubble of panic and almost made her laugh. She took a deep breath, aware of her mother’s concerned gaze on her.
First things first
, she thought.

“How do you know this stuff?” she asked Tyler.

“I picked it up in bits and pieces,” he said quietly. “I wish I could tell you more.”

“This information is necessary,” Regan broke in, “but not immediately helpful.” She paused. “How much have you told them, Tyler?”

When Kelsey turned back to Tyler, he looked as if he was sitting on a bed of nails. Shit.

“Just about everything.”

Yeah. Shit.

“List it for me.”

“I had a secure phone, and they double secured the call from their end. No one could listen in, even on an in-house extension.”

“Obviously, it didn’t matter. What did you tell them?”

He ran his hand through his hair and winced, touching the butterfly bandages holding his cut closed. “That you were safe, and Tom and Van were with us but we were taking them to rent a car to go back to school. That you were researching their son’s death.” He lifted his hands. “As I said, everything.”

Regan slumped onto the second bed, her head down, her back curved. Kelsey hated it. Hated she looked so defeated. So small and hurt. There’d only been one other time she’d seen her mother like this—the day she dropped Kelsey at Whetstone. And even then, she put up a strong front. At the time, Kelsey had felt impatient with her. Her mother couldn’t protect her forever, she couldn’t keep her a child. She’d dismissed her mother’s fear as paranoia, maybe psychological illness.

Now, all she felt was regret and fear.

And she didn’t know what to do about it.

Regan needed to be alone. Since that wasn’t possible in a thirteen-by-thirteen room with four other people, she escaped to the bathroom, locking the door and stripping off her clothes to take a shower.

A long, hot, plan-inducing shower.

She already knew what she wanted to do. She just had to figure out how to pull it off without harming anyone, least of all Van and Tom. But right now, she couldn’t think. The rage was gone, leaving her completely drained.

She left her clothes in a heap on the floor. There was a laundry room somewhere in this motel. She’d go launder them after she was clean. Wearing a towel if she had to.

She was just stepping into the hot, gloriously pounding water when someone knocked on the door.

“Mom, give me your clothes. Tom and I are going to the laundry room.”

Regan smiled at the mirroring of her thoughts. She cracked the door and peeked through. “What are you planning to wear while you wash the clothes?”

Kelsey should have looked sheepish or cagey, but she met her mother’s stare head-on. “I’m going to wear his T-shirt and he’s going to wear his boxers.”

“And what will he wear for underwear later?”

“He’ll go commando.”

Kelsey tried a cheeky grin, but it didn’t fool Regan.

“He’ll wash them in the sink later,” Kelsey relented.

“All right. Be very careful. They’re still out there.” She didn’t want to let her out of her sight, but it wasn’t practical to tie a rope around her waist. She wasn’t willing to sacrifice Van any more than Kelsey, and the three had held their own the first time they confronted these jokers. The second time, too.

Besides, Kelsey wanted time alone with Tom and she deserved some. Much as Regan didn’t want to think about what would be going on in that laundry room.

“Just remember you’re in public.” She handed over her clothes. “Stay alert.”

Kelsey rolled her eyes and took the bundle. “Yes, Mother.”

Regan didn’t let go. “Wait.”

Kelsey paused, wary, and Regan hesitated. “About what Tyler said.”

“Which part?” Her voice came out clipped.

“About the reason they want you.”

“Doesn’t change anything. We’re still trying to get away from them, right? The reason they’re doing it doesn’t matter.”

There was pain behind the logic, Regan could hear it, but she didn’t know how to address it. And she was too emotionally weary to try right now.

“I suppose.”

Kelsey tugged the clothes from her hands and walked away, leaving Regan feeling like she’d failed. For now.

She closed and locked the door again and this time made it all the way into the shower. It felt cooler and she hoped it wasn’t running out of hot water already. She adjusted the temperature and ducked under the spray, and every muscle relaxed.

Something outside the curtain clicked. She froze, then tipped her head out of the water to listen. Someone was in the bathroom. That was the door she’d heard.

She blew out a sigh. “Tyler, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Too bad.” The toilet clinked. She stuck her head around the curtain to see him wrapped in a towel, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Besides showing off that he was in very good shape. She kept her eyes on his face.

“They took my clothes. I already go commando.” His grin tried to be unapologetic, but sadness weakened it. “You’re a captive audience. I have more to say.”

Regan yanked the curtain closed and backed under the water again, the thought of him naked under his jeans floating through her head next to the image she’d just captured. “Does it involve my daughter’s safety?”

“Not directly.”

“Then I’m not in the mood to hear it.”

“There are reasons I didn’t question my employer.”

“Tyler—”

“Just listen, Regan. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I’m asking you to listen anyway.”

He was wrong. She did owe him. He’d found her in his yard, taken her to the hospital, chased all over Ohio with her, and got beaten not once, but twice. He’d done everything in his power to prove she could trust him. She was too broken to give that trust, and had almost killed him because of that. So, yeah. She owed him.

“All right.” She poured shampoo into her palm. “I’m listening.”

He didn’t talk right away. The silence grew as she lathered and rinsed her hair and put conditioner in it. Half her body had been soaped by the time he spoke again.

“I come from a world of dark things,” he finally said. “I’ve had lots of exposure to the ways people hurt other people.”

“I imagine you have.” She bent to wash her legs and feet.

“Most of the work I’ve done for Ben and Jeanne has dealt in some way with that darkness.”

Regan jerked a little at the casualness with which he referred to them. She’d barely known their names, never mind used them so easily.

“Are they dark people?” she asked, thinking of Kelsey.

“No. They fight it.”

“Ah.” Of course, fighting the darkness meant touching it. Sometimes worse. “I understand.”

“When I got this assignment, I couldn’t believe it. You and Kelsey were so fresh and innocent and light.”

She laughed. “No way.”

But his serious tone didn’t change. “It’s true. You were very different from what I was used to.”

She heard the toilet seat clink again and assumed he’d gotten to his feet. She rinsed her body quickly and ducked her head back to rinse the conditioner, keeping her ears free of the water so she could hear him.

“I liked being around you. You may have noticed.”

Something buzzed low and deep inside her. “The garbage can thing?”

“Yeah.” There was a smile in his voice now. “The garbage can thing. I talked to Kelsey a lot, about school and soccer. Gave her some advice on boys.”

Regan hadn’t known about that. She’d seen Kelsey talking to him occasionally and hadn’t liked it, but it was suspicious not to be friendly with the neighbor and, at the time, she hadn’t thought any harm would come of it.

Maybe she wasn’t wrong. Maybe if she’d followed her instincts and kept Kelsey away from him, he wouldn’t have been so quick to help them. To put himself in danger.

She started to turn off the water. At the squeak of the faucet Tyler said, “Leave it on.”

“It’s getting cold.”

“I’ll be quick. I don’t want anyone to listen in.”

She turned the temperature all the way to hot and leaned against the wall. “Okay.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would have tried to learn more about what I was doing there. Two years is a long time, and Ben told me at the beginning it might be a few months. But it only took a few weeks for me to realize I didn’t want to know if the darkness had touched you. So I never asked for details. Not until this week.”

Regan watched his shadow through the curtain. He’d moved closer. “Why was it so important to you?” But she knew why. He’d started to tell her, in the bathroom at McDonald’s when she’d tried to kill him with her bare hands. Nausea flared at the memory and she squeezed her eyes closed. She couldn’t face what she’d become, even temporarily. Even if she hadn’t succeeded in what she’d attempted.

“Regan.”

It was low, almost pleading. The curtain moved slightly. Regan pulled away from the wall and slid it sideways enough to see his face, and the pain and hope there almost undid her.

“Tyler,” she whispered, and then there was no space to say more. He caught her against him, his towel falling to the floor, his mouth capturing hers in a desperate, plunging kiss. One hand braced on the back of her neck and the other just above her hips, he stepped over the edge of the tub and crowded her against the wall.

Regan fell. Not physically, because she held him as tightly as he held her, and neither one was letting go. But she fell just the same, into a swirling maelstrom of desire and fear and need. She met him more than halfway, pushing her body closer to his until even the water wouldn’t fit between them anymore.

“Your ribs,” she murmured against his mouth, but he only kissed her harder. She kept her touch careful, somehow maintaining awareness of his injuries even while the rest of her brain misfired.

Tyler broke away and cupped her head in his hands. “Regan?” It was a question this time, and she nodded. He took her mouth again, running his hands over every part of her body he could reach. She moaned, and he answered it with a growl deep in his throat. The ache his kiss had brought earlier returned, throbbing. She pushed forward and pinned his erection between them, but that wasn’t where she wanted it to be.

“God, Regan.” He gasped in her ear before biting down on the lobe. She shivered, her elbow thumping against the plastic wall of the shower, and she froze.

“The kids,” she whispered.

Tyler chuckled. “They’re adults, all of them. And you can’t be naive enough to think Kelsey and Tom aren’t—”

“I’m not,” she murmured. “But that doesn’t mean I want them to know what I’m doing.”

“They’re in the laundry room.”

“Van?”

“Asleep.”

This was as close as they were going to get to privacy, and if they waited until they were completely alone, it might never happen.

Right now, she desperately needed it to happen.

Making love with Alan had been gentle, quiet. Fucking Tyler Sloane in the shower blew that experience away. His mouth and hands were everywhere, hot and slick and touching her with the perfect amount of pressure no matter where they landed. She clutched at his head when he took her nipple into his mouth and dug her fingernails into his shoulders when he went lower. She stopped him before he went past her belly, tugging him to his feet.

“No time,” she murmured. His neck was next to her mouth so she latched on and sucked, hard, closing her hand over his erection. He slammed a hand on the wall and held her up with one arm around her back.

“I don’t have anything,” he warned her. “I haven’t had sex with anyone in two years, and I never intended for this to happen.”

She laughed against the skin of his shoulder. Such a difference from Alan’s earnest need to protect her. “It’s been just a few times in nineteen years for me.” She hesitated, then made the second-most-foolish decision of her life. “I don’t care, Tyler.” She stroked him and raised her leg, trying to lift herself to the proper position. He shifted his grip under her buttocks, moving her almost against his own will, judging by the tightness of all his muscles.

“You have to care.”

“I don’t.” STDs and pregnancy seemed distant, ridiculous specters. Long before either became reality, she’d either have resolved their situation, or she’d be dead.

Tyler might have a problem with that
, a little voice of reason said. She tugged his head back by the hair so she could see his eyes. “I could get pregnant. That doesn’t bother me.”

Tyler stared at her, his expression tight and hard to read. Then his features softened, a new light in his eyes glowing even deeper than it had a few minutes ago.

“No,” he whispered roughly. “It doesn’t bother me, either.”

He shifted her again, letting the wall do most of the work to hold her up, and drove deep and true on the first thrust. For a moment they held still, both arched, savoring the feel of him inside her. Then Regan clenched around him, and it was almost over before it began. He thrust half a dozen times, sliding against her clit and driving her up until pleasure burst. She bit his shoulder so she wouldn’t scream. She couldn’t process all the sensations filling her, from the heat of his own release deep in her body, to his almost inaudible moans in her ear and the tenderness of his open lips on her cheek.

It seemed to take forever for her to recover. Tyler held her there, against the wall and surrounded by his body. She felt sheltered and cherished but also splintered and raw. Aftershocks swept over her each time they breathed, and when Tyler pressed his face to her neck and she felt wetness that she wasn’t sure came from the shower, a tear slid down her own cheek.

A minute later she realized the moisture on her neck felt different because it was warm, whereas the shower was approaching icy. She shivered and Tyler slowly released her, letting her get her balance and pull away from him to turn it off.

“I—”

He stopped whatever she was about to say—she didn’t even know what it was—with another kiss. His lips clung to hers and his hand caressed her face, and she knew no words were needed. Not for now.

Regan envisioned the two of them emerging wet from the bathroom and being chastised by her daughter, leered at by Tom and laughed at by Van. But all was silent in the room outside as they dried off and wrapped towels around themselves. Tyler rubbed a hand towel over his hair until it was mostly dry while Regan used the motel’s blow dryer on hers. She was almost done when Kelsey knocked on the door.

“Here are your clothes.” She pushed them through the crack Regan had allowed. “Where’s Tyler?”

“He’s in here. Brushing his teeth.”

Kelsey’s lips twitched. “We don’t have toothbrushes.”

Of course they didn’t. They’d dumped just about everything when they left the packs in the elevator.

“He’s using his finger and water.”

“So…should I hand his clothes through, or leave them out here?”

Regan hesitated a stupid second, making Kelsey laugh.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Give them.” She grabbed the jeans and shirt and yanked them through, shutting the door harder than necessary on her daughter’s self-satisfied face.

“So I guess we don’t need to worry about them finding out.” Tyler picked up his jeans from where Regan tossed them on the tiny sink and pulled them over his long legs.

“I guess not.” She chuckled, letting go of the tension and fretfulness she’d built up over the last few minutes. There was no sense getting worked up. It was done.

“Are you okay?” She eyed his bruises and cuts before he pulled his shirt over his head, but he just shrugged her off.

“I’m fine if you are.”

Their eyes locked. Neither of them was close to fine, but she nodded anyway. She stood behind the door while Tyler went out, then dressed quickly. When she came out of the bathroom herself, it was to applause. She could tell Tyler was trying not to smirk and threw a pencil from the desk at him. But the laughter felt good.