AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then I guess it’s the cops.” Even though the local cops would never get to the whole truth. He pointed to the lights glowing up ahead. “We’re heading into the city. Can you give me directions to your place? Is there someone at home?”
She hadn’t touched her cell phone once since they escaped from the lab. Wouldn’t she want to notify her husband? Boyfriend? Family?
“I live alone.”
He supposed she’d want to be with someone, have someone comfort her. God knew, he wasn’t capable. “Do you have any family nearby? Any friends to stay with?”
“I don’t have any family...here. I’m kind of new to the area and I spend a lot of time at the lab, so I haven’t had much time to cultivate friends.”
Hadn’t she told him she’d been working at the lab for two years? Two years wasn’t enough time to make friends? Maybe she’d been taking some of her own medicine.
“When the police come, they may want to take you back to the scene. You’ll probably have to lead them to the facility.”
She gasped and grabbed his arm. “What do I tell them about you?”
He stiffened and glanced down at her hand gripping the material of his jacket. She dropped it.
Was she offering to cover for him? He figured she’d waste no time at all blabbing to the cops about the man who’d shot Skinner and then whisked her out of the lab. “Tell them the truth.”
No law enforcement agency would ever be able to track him down anyway. Tempest had made sure of that.
“I can always tell them you were a stranger to me, that you wouldn’t tell me your name.” Her fingers twisted in her lap as she hunched forward in her seat.
She was offering to cover for him. Why would she do that, unless she knew more than she’d pretended to know?
“You’d lie for me?”
She jerked back and whipped her head around. “Lie? You’re an agent with a government covert ops team. If I learned anything at the lab, it was how to keep secrets. I never revealed any of my patients’ names to anyone, and I’m not about to start now.”
“I appreciate the...concern.” He lifted a shoulder. “Tell the cops whatever you like. I’ll be long gone either way.”
She tilted her chin toward the highway sign. “That’s my exit in five miles.”
“Then I’ll deliver you safe and sound to your home, Dr. Whitman.”
“You can call me Ava.”
After riding in silence for a while, Ava dragged her purse from the floor of the car into her lap and hugged it to her chest. “What happened to Simon? He looked...dead inside.”
“He snapped.” His belly coiled into knots. If Simon could snap like that, he could snap, too.
“Did you know about his condition somehow?”
“I had an idea, and when I discovered he was heading out to New Mexico I put two and two together.”
“Was it the stress of the assignments? I saw most of you four times a year, but of course you weren’t allowed to discuss anything with me. You all seemed well-adjusted though.”
Max snorted. “Yeah, I guess some would call that well-adjusted.”
“You weren’t? You’re not? Can I do anything to help you?”
She touched his arm again, this time lightly, brushing her fingertips across the slick material of his jacket.
The human contact and the emotion behind it made him shiver. He clenched his teeth. “You can’t do anything to help...Ava. You’ve done enough.”
She snatched her hand back again and studied her fingernails. “This is the exit.”
He steered the car toward the off-ramp and eased his foot off the accelerator. She continued giving him directions until they left the desert behind them and rolled into civilization.
He pulled in front of a small house with a light glowing somewhere inside.
She grabbed the door handle and swung open the door before the car even stopped.
“Hold on. I’ll walk you up.”
“I thought you were anxious to get rid of me.”
He scratched the stubble on his chin. That hour-long drive had been the closest he’d come to normalcy in a long time. He didn’t want to leave Ava, but he had to—for her own safety.
