Of Eternal Life (7 page)

Then she remembered that the facility was slated to become a PTSD treatment center. Her pulse kicked.

He could be a patient
. This could explain the drills. Were they bringing in PTSD patients under the cover of the drills to keep them secret for now? She evaluated Eli with a doctor’s eye. To want to keep this man secret, he must have been involved in classified or black operations. There’s no way they would let a recently graduated medical student have access to his treatment.

Unless I prove that I can cut it
.

Her eyes roved over Eli again, now seeing in him the possibility of securing her future career. This was it — her opportunity. She would treat him for PTSD, return him to Needles, and snag a position at the top of the newly turned research facility.

Her stomach twisted at the memory of all of those days running labs. She could do this. She had to. “Okay, Eli, I’m listening,” she told him, her voice smooth and professional.

His head snapped in her direction, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, and she mentally kicked herself. Her behavior could not drastically change; he would notice — as he just had — and distrust would stop the treatment before it began.

She decided to change tactics. “Why did you think
I
was involved?”

Eli’s eyes lost their light. “You said he was your boss.”

He?

Puzzle pieces fell into place. Major Taylor. In Eli’s mind, Major Taylor was some kind jailor keeping Eli at the facility against his will.

She had to make Eli feel like she was on
his
side, not Major Taylor’s. “Well, I’m not involved. I didn’t even know you were there, Eli. I would have done something if I had.”
Like begin your treatment sooner.

He nodded. “I believe you. I’m sorry.”

She blinked at the grossly underwhelming olive branch. She had been through hell in the last twenty-four hours. Before she could stop it, the fuse on Abilene’s temper went off. “You’re
sorry
? For kidnapping me. You’re sorry.”

He nodded again. For the first time since this whole nightmare began, he looked properly shamed.
Unbelievable
.

“Well, since Hallmark doesn’t make a card for that, I have a better idea for how you can apologize.” She leaned forward. “Take. Me. Back.”

He clicked his tongue. “See, here’s the thing. You
are
involved. It may not be in the way I first suspected, but your presence in that building was
not
an accident. I can’t let you go.”

She bristled, ready to rip him a new one, but he wasn’t done yet.

“Besides,” he’d adopted that too-casual tone again, “something has been … whispering at me since the moment I sensed your presence in that closet.” He eyed her. “It’s been saying that you belong to me. That you’re ‘the One.’”

He ran his fingers through his hair. She waited with dread for the next shoe to drop.

“Abilene, even if I
wanted
let you go, I don’t think I’d be able to.”

• • •

“I’m not alone here, am I?” he whispered.

She shook her head once. “I-it said that? That I’m ‘the One’?”

He nodded. “Sound familiar?”

“In the…I thought I heard — ” She swallowed. “I’ve heard it, too.” She paused.

“What does it mean?”

“Hell if I know,” he said. His eyes narrowed on her.

She flinched. “It’s not
my
fault!”

He glowered, angry all over again that she was invading his thoughts, taking over his senses. “You sure about that?”

Her grit returned in a flash. “Oh, this is just great! Yes, let’s add this to the growing list of ‘Ways Abilene is Ruining Eli’s Life,’” she made air quotes with her fingers. “It starts with how I forced you to kidnap me, and ends, for the time being, with me somehow compelling you to keep me with you. I’m sure some new hardship will crop up momentarily, and then we can add
it
to the list, too.”

Now he flinched.
Keep your cool, man. Play nice. Get her on your side.
She had a point. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit
that
.

For some reason, she had believed him, or at least pretended to believe him, when he had told her he’d been a prisoner in the facility. He hadn’t expected that. Apart from some initial doubt, she had swallowed his story whole.

Of course she believed you; you gave her the believable version of everything
, the Voice scolded.

True. If he had told her the nature of the experiments. The reason why he couldn’t die and
stay
dead … .

Well, suffice it to say, the outcome of their conversation would have been vastly different.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but a noise from outside brought Eli to full alert.

In less than a second, Eli had Abilene flat on the ground beneath him, covering her with as much of his body as possible. She struggled for breath, and he knew he’d knocked the wind out of her. He gazed down apologetically, and his gut wrenched when he noticed her blue eyes were filled with fear.

She gasped in a breath when her diaphragm unfroze, but Eli placed his fingers gently over her lips, shaking his head once and mouthing a silent
shhhh
.

Just then a clatter sounded from two houses down. Abilene’s eyes grew wide, and she nodded to let him know she understood. He was embarrassed at how relieved he felt to see her fear vanish.

He bent down further and put his mouth directly against her ear. “We have to move,” he breathed.

He didn’t wait for her acknowledgment before scooping her up with him and pulling her toward the back door he’d scouted out the night before. He walked hunched over and noticed with approval that Abilene was following suite.

Eli didn’t know if the noises from outside were from squatters or someone who meant Eli harm, but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Whoever it was had already moved to the house right beside theirs.

Eli stuck his head out the back door and quickly ascertained that no one was in the backyards adjacent to this one. There was thick brush dead ahead, and Eli tugged Abilene toward it.

As soon as they were hidden among the foliage, a local policeman rounded the corner and entered the back yard, his gun held at the ready. Eli pulled Abilene farther into the brush just as the policeman noticed the house’s open back door.

The man straightened and jerked out his walkie-talkie. “I think I’ve found them,” he whispered into the device. “Send back-up!”

The walkie-talkie squawked once, and then Major Taylor’s voice crackled through, “Hold your ground. Do
not
go in until I get there!”

Abilene stiffened beside him just as Eli’s stomach dropped. The car. They had to have found the car.

“Damn it,” Eli whispered. He wasn’t free.

Yet.

Eli continued to pull Abilene through the brush until they reached another backyard. A quick visual scan told him there were no officers nearby, and he took off at a silent sprint, tugging Abilene behind him.

When they were out of hearing range, Abilene gasped out, “They came after you. With
guns
!”

The horror in her voice brought Eli to a skidding halt, but one look at her face, and he could tell she was appalled with the officers and Major Taylor, not with the fact that she had been abducted by someone who merited an armed man-search.

Progress.

“Yeah, I noticed that,” he said with a quick smile. “We’ve gotta get out of here, darlin’. They’re not going to stop once they find we’ve bugged out.”

He scanned their surroundings. This neighborhood hadn’t been struck as badly as the abandoned one. Signs of life dotted several of the houses and yards. A few houses over, Eli spotted wash out on the line that might actually fit him. He headed toward it, Abilene’s hand still tucked inside his, and pulled a t-shirt and pair of jeans from the line. He didn’t stop to put them on just yet, but continued to the street, remembering he’d seen a convenience store nearby when he’d been driving last night.

A few minutes later, Eli was punching out the window of the convenience store with his t-shirt-covered fist while Abilene glared at him.

“Do you have to break in?” she asked.

“They’re not open,” he said as he reached past the jagged glass and disengaged the lock. He opened the door wide for Abilene to proceed ahead of him. She sniffed at him, but then walked into the dark interior.

The door chimed behind him. “Why don’t you find some breakfast while I change clothes?” he asked, reaching for the drawstring of his scrubs. Abilene spun away with a gasp.

“Okay,” she whispered. He could tell she was blushing, even without being able to see her face, and grinned to himself.

She was fun to tease.

While Abilene roamed the aisles, he quickly pulled on the jeans and t-shirt. Both were a little tight on him, but they were way less-conspicuous than his ill-fitting scrubs and bare chest. He glanced at Abilene to make sure she wasn’t watching before moving to the cash register. The cash drawer key winked at him in the light, and Eli shook his head at small-town life.

It’s almost like home
, he thought as he relieved the register of its cash, guilt nibbling at his conscience.

And just like that, Eli had a plan.

Home.

He had to go home.

He would never be free until Major Taylor was no longer a threat, and Eli knew of only one man who could make that happen: Sergeant Collins.

Eli glanced at the cash in his hand. Enough for a cross-country trip.

A feminine
ahem
caught his attention, and Eli looked up to find Abilene staring at his handful of ill-gotten gain.

“I’ll pay it back,” slipped out of his lips before he could stop it.

She didn’t buy it, but she didn’t tell him to put it back either, and he wondered again what part she had to play in all of this.

He couldn’t very well let her go now; she could tell the authorities about him. And he would
not
pay attention to the warm feeling in his chest at the thought of taking her home to Georgia with him.

He couldn’t afford any distractions.

But distraction or not, he really had no choice….

“We need to go to Georgia,” he blurted out.

She raised both of her eyebrows and examined him for several long moments. Finally, “Okay.”

Eli waited for the catch.

It didn’t come.

“Okay?” he repeated.

She took a deep breath and brushed her curls back. “Look, something is going on here, and I want to know what it is. Besides that, I’m not going to fool myself into thinking I have a choice as to whether or not I go with you anyway. And you
will
let me go once we have everything figured out?” She paused.

He nodded dumbly, unsure of why this was going his way.

“Well, then…okay,” she finished with a shrug.

They looked at each other.

She shifted her weight and raised an eyebrow. “Sooo…are we going to go or what?”

Eli forced himself to move, stomping out of the convenience store without waiting to see if Abilene followed.

She confused him at every turn. And for some reason, though he’d gotten his way, he felt like he had just lost a very important battle.

He mentally slapped his cheeks and avoided looking at Abilene’s slight form where it had stopped beside him. It was time to act.

Step one: steal a car.

Abilene was the first to wake the next morning. She blinked in the early morning light and surveyed the dingy hotel room in whatever God-forsaken hole Eli had finally stopped in after twelve solid hours on the road.

This was officially the most awkward road trip of her existence. She had been ecstatic that he’d given her an excuse to stay with him yesterday. She needed to stay with him to make him better, and he did
not
belong back at the facility. They were coming after him with guns? She was a baby in the medical field, but even she knew that would set him back, perhaps permanently, if he was suffering from PTSD.

But now, she wasn’t sure the possibility of heading up a medical facility was worth the torture of being strapped to the side of her silent, brooding patient for the amount of time it would take to make headway with him. He hadn’t talked to her once, even when she’d tried to start conversation.

Granted, her conversation starters were pretty glaring diagnosis tactics….

Her eyes sought him out across the room. He lay flat on his back in the other double bed. He’d lost his shirt sometime in the night, and his bare chest gleamed as it rose and fell with his breathing.

Abilene’s mouth went dry.

She was in trouble. Every time she looked at him, she had very unprofessional feelings. And, God, when he touched her, Abilene
burned
. Sensation after sensation plowed through her until mere kissing and touching were not enough. She wanted them naked. Straining.

Maybe she was lucky that her medical school schedule had kept her from dating. She would have gotten nothing done if she was this easily distracted by a handsome face and hard body.

Flawless body
, her mind corrected.

Time to move, before he woke up and caught her staring at him and drooling. That would be hard to explain. She extricated herself from bed only to stub her toe on the night stand. She swore before she could stop herself. Her eyes flew to Eli. His breathing hitched, but he rolled to his side and continued sleeping.

She dared to brush the hair from his face. With his face relaxed, he looked
young.
Gone were all traces of the intensity he’d portrayed since she’d first seen him. He looked maybe 25 or 26. Her age, 27, at the most.

Funny, she would have sworn he was much older than that. He had a hardness to him that denoted experience and a tough life.

He sighed in his sleep and turned his face into her hand. She jerked it away.

When he made a contented noise and snuggled deeper into the pillow, she looked at the room again. Her eyes drifted to the open bathroom door, and a different kind of longing filled her.