Invasion (20 page)

Oh yes, Mumsy will return her to me reformed.

I really should have thought of this sooner.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, or even if I’ll be back. If Carly is home and He-Man isn’t with her, I’ll be having Carly for Christmas.

David
:

“You can’t just leave me behind!” wails Carly.

Stopping my manic rush, shoving my world into a duffel, I give her my entire focus. I’m burning her image into my brain, stepping in and holding her tight, inhaling her essence, tears of grief rising. “I don’t want to leave you at all, precious.” Kneeling down I come to her level, still gripping tight, like a desperate man on death row, I’m broken inside. “Nothing about this feels good or natural, but I know enough about the system to know you’re safer without me right now. I can’t drag you into this mess where fuckwits kick in your door in the middle of winter, before xmas when nothing is open and getting a replacement is near impossible. They’re assholes, and I just changed the damn lock. Do you think I’m happy leaving you behind for Mark to find because now he can just walk in? I’m not. It’s acid on my heart, babe.”

“Don’t go,” she pleads, covering my face in kisses.

They’re soft and wet, warm too, reminding me that I’m still freezing, yet I shut out everything but her. “Until I know tonight won’t happen to you again, I have to leave. I’ll be back for you, I promise. If I never come back it’s because I’m dead. This is a vow, Carly. I swear on my own life that only death will prevent me from returning to you.”

Her legs fold and she crumples against me, wailing misery and injustice into the dark room. We haven’t switched on a light, we don’t dare. We’re behaving like fugitives. It’s wrong that she’s forced into this in a place where she’s supposed to be safe.

Cradling her head in my hand, cupping it, I rock her, resting my temple on her hair, ashamed. “I failed you.”

When she pulls away, her cheeks shimmering with sorrow’s stain, she slaps me. “I fucking love you! Just like that! You arrived and kidnapped my heart so hard I couldn’t let you go home for even one night.”

Anger is good. Anger will help her cope.

I refrain from taking this rope bridge with her. Everything hangs in the balance and getting volatile now won’t change the facts. Her chest is still running with blood, and despair circles my thoughts. “You need a hospital, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I just needed to mark you. I need
something
to be mine.”

“I
am
yours!”

And as if to make her statement more true than it already is, she grabs the hunting knife from my pocket, stabbing me with it. It’s so sharp it cuts into skin like a peregrine through air, and for a moment I wonder if she just hit a vital organ. Then she yanks it out and takes it to my naked chest with savage accuracy. CM bleeds from my skin, the incision delightfully distracting, returning a measure of warmth to my torso.

I love that she’s marked me, that we’ll have scars forever. I’ll never be forgotten should fate part us.
She’ll
never be forgotten, even if I lose my memory again. Tracing the bloody CM, her initials, it’s a better gift than a ring, than a church, than all that shit. This is eternal. This is real.

She’s ranting at me, “You think you’re the only one needing something reliable and constant? I do too! I need you to be mine too! I’m sick of being alone, or wondering if I’ll ever find someone who won’t run because I have a biological clock ticking like a time bomb. I can adopt, god knows the world needs more folks adoptin–”

Laughing, finding her tirade and insecurity so sexy, I grip her head with both hands, unable to moderate the pressure because my need for her is so great it’s ruining me. I’m running out of crucial moments, time I can’t spare, because I love her.

Shit.

But it’s true.

Kissing her lips until mine are numb, both of us bleeding, I confess between oral rape, “Looks like I’m being hunted for espionage shit.” Sitting back, I grab the pillowcase off the pillow, pressing it to her chest. “Go to hospital. Please?”

“You’re bleeding too. Christ! What have I done? Gavin, I’m sorry! You can drive us, then we’ll go on the run
together
, after we get stitched up. Jesussssssss …” Her hands claw at short hair, panic flirting in her gaze.

Regret and shame are expressed all over her visage, her eyes anguished. She’s sorry, but it’s too late. My babe just compromised me, second time tonight. Three times a charm. “I’m hunted, Carly. The second I walk into a medical facility the same shit that just went down will happen again. Facial rec is everywhere nowadays. I can’t risk it. I need
time
!”

“So we can’t go to a hospital?”

“You can, but I can’t. I just dodged being shot by several dark operatives and you stab me when I come back upstairs. Great timing sweetheart.”

“Shit! Gavin, what are we going to do? I know a vet who might be able to–”

“Don’t worry about me, just call an ambulance, say you don’t know who I am but I vanished. I’ll be in touch when it’s safe.”

I make a quick mental note to grab that magical medical kit of hers. Now I’m grateful for her hoarding. I’ll have supplies and as soon as I’ve put distance between me and public enemy number one, I’ll stop and sew myself up before I lose too much blood.

My DNA is everywhere now, but it’s moot. They know who I am. They know
where
I am.

My instincts were right. I’m on the run, and I really wish I knew why. I’m out of time.

Without shame I let my tears fall, kissing her with the tenderness of a rainbow, transmitting and communicating how treasured she is. Then I stand, grab my shit, and bolt.

Before I change my mind.

Before I let them kill me for secrets I don’t know. They think I know, but I haven’t got a fucking clue.

“NO. Don’t leave me like this!”

But I’m already leaving, grabbing her first aid kit on my way out, stopping long enough to grab the rest of my gear, a helmet and one of their assault rifles, and am past the kitchen, shoving breakfast bars and water into my backpack, snatching the keys for Mark’s off-road wheels.

My life stretches behind me as I gun into the dark forest, going as fast as the terrain and engine permit, sobbing, hauling ass into the night.

Fuck.

Men don’t cry.

But this is worse than the IED. They blew up our bodies, but tonight they blew up my spirit.

It hurts.

God above it hurts like lava on my heart.

She’s my everything.

This is wrong, and when I get my memory back I’m going to find who was responsible for this, and end them.

Carly
:

It’s freaky and scary all at once. I’d just bandaged up my chest after spraying it with instant skin, and dressed because the temperature indoors has plummeted to arctic, when the rotor blades of a helicopter swoop in over my quiet corner of the planet, the search light on it so bright my world is in a spotlight.

We chose this home because it’s away from traffic and most civilization, so we had privacy and isolation, and now the serenity keeps breaking into a gazillion pieces, like my heart.

It’s like a nightmare, like a movie, the bright light flooding the front of the house, men in SWAT gear storming into my home like a tornado of wrath, stampeding up the steps and lifting me clean off my feet without so much as an introduction, abducting me outside while the guns sweep my home for Gavin.

“Put me down! He’s not here!” I scream, but he’s got those communication plugs in his ears, the helicopter making so much noise, the shouting and mayhem so loud that he can’t hear me even when I’m yelling.

They bombard my sanctuary, rifling through everything, tearing into it like I’m a criminal. It’s violated and raped while I sit on the hood of a vehicle parked in my drive, when a strapping black man comes to me, wearing a woolen black coat that reaches almost to his calves.
Stereotype
.

“Carly Carmichael?”

“What?” I hiss at him, my teeth clenched to stop them from chattering.

“I’m Special Agent Golding. Are you aware that you had a fugitive living in your basement?”

“What!” I shriek, pouncing off the car, ready to run inside to go and see. “Did you arrest him? Oh my fucking god!”

“No Ma’am, it would appear that he’s managed to evade us.” He shoves a photo in my face. “Have you seen this man?”

“Yes,” I nod, my heart bleeding at the sight of him looking so dapper. Gavin in a suit is enough to make my pussy throb for him.

“David Hearse is wanted for questioning. Do you know his whereabouts?”

I shake my head, feeling numb in too many places. My chest is utterly empty. It’s a cavern full of echoes now. “Who?”

Golding indicates the photo. “David Hearse. You say you’ve seen him. When and where? Did he approach you? Did he threaten you?”

“Hurt me?” I laugh, and it becomes hysterical. Oh god yes he hurt me, and I loved every deranged minute of it.

“His name is Gavin, and he’s my handyman.” And my lover, and my world, and the air in my lungs.

Suddenly it all hits me at once, a crushing force laying waste to my spirit, blowing the organs clean out of my body, and I drop breathlessly to the ground with such force that I’m thankful for the soft snowdrift. For an eternity I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating with my head next to shiny black shoes, and the asshole just stands here, impartial and blasé.

Hunched over I wail and shriek into the powdered crystals, iced and frozen and uncaring. If I die now, it’ll be too late. I won’t die happy. I’ll die destroyed.

Launching up with a second wind I bash the bastard, hammering him with my fists, kicking his shins, screeching, “You did this! You awful assholes DID THIS!”

And then my hysteria returns and I lose my shit completely. I cry and keen and bellow like a wounded animal into the night, a spectacle for soldiers and special agents standing idly by while watching me fall apart.

So many arms, not one hug.

Being a military man doesn’t mean you lose compassion. Gavin held me like I was made of spun cobwebs, too delicate for words. He made me feel like the only woman on the planet. His love is fierce and warm and nurturing.

“ASSHOLES!” I shriek, until I’m hoarse and my throat feels like I’ve swallowed splinters.

An ambulance siren breaks the night, blinding my brightly washed world with red streaks of horror, men in white running toward me, some superior-in-command pointing at me for them, indicating the basket case.

They’re going to lock me away. They’re going to torture me to give him up. They say he’s wanted for questioning. No one sends an army to retrieve a man only wanted for ‘questioning’. I might be a civvy but I’m not completely stupid.

“
I
haaaaate
you
!” I spit at Golding, fighting off the medics.

“Please ma’am, just a sedative. The officers can’t question you until you’re calm,” says the EMT.

“Officers!? What officers, asshole? I see my tax dollars running around with guns and military badges! They tipped my house inside out and exploded my front door! It’s CHRISTMAS! The first decent one I was going to have in years!
Asshole!
”